Matching Ideas to the Moment

Applying conservative principles to contemporary events

This is one of my favorite weeks of the year.

Each June, the newest cohort of the fellowship I run gathers for its initial seminar. It’s four days of text-based conversations about American conservatism and public leadership.

You can probably understand my excitement. I get to meet a new group of 15 highly accomplished professionals committed to careers in and around governing. We get to read and talk about some of the most thought-provoking works related to policy and public life. And we get to think about how America’s leaders should tackle our nation’s biggest challenges.

Prior to the seminar, I always re-read all of the material in the giant curated book we assign. It’s a collection of book chapters, essays, articles, speeches, and so on. Although I put the curriculum together years ago, I always seem to find new ideas in those pages. In fact, over the last week, I got so re-inspired by Glendon’s Rights Talk, Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, and Hayek’s “Freedom, Reason, and Tradition,” that you’re probably going to see columns on those works here soon.

A Reforming Conservatism

Today, rather than riffing off those authors, I thought I’d summarize and share the recent essay I wrote on conservatism today for the journal of the George W. Bush Institute.

This fellowship exists because I believe it’s crucial that conservative public leaders spend time thinking about conservatism’s principles. But I also recognize that the application of these principles always takes place in the context of contemporary policy and politics. If we want ideas to inform the times, we need to understand the times.

In that essay I discuss how and why the “new right” is at odds with more traditional conservatives. I argue that the traditional wing had prioritized a set of -isms (rules of thumb for governing). The new guard has been focused on preserving specific things. Now, I’m a big advocate of the “conservatism of -isms.” Almost five years ago I wrote a long-ish piece for National Review titled “In Defense of Proceduralism” describing why that approach is so important to conservatism and America.

But I’m also sympathetic to some of the new-right’s arguments about protecting neglected aspects of collective life. I recently wrote in partial defense of the new right’s direction on family policy.

My essay doesn’t argue for a simple splitting of the difference. Instead, I’m in favor of using state power in a specific, targeted way: Not to solve all problems, but to enable others to solve them. (This is an idea I’ve been working on for several years now.)

From The Catalyst

Capacitating Conservatism

Here’s the essay in a nutshell.

I start at the beginning: The nature of conservatism.

The baseline question for conservatives never changes: “What are we trying to conserve?” Nor does the answer, which always begins, “The things that have enabled our society to flourish.” But that’s where the conversation gets interesting.

Then I lay out my proceduralism argument.

For about 50 years, from the middle of the 20th century to the dawn of the 21st, there was general agreement about the contours of U.S. conservatism. Above all, what distinguished it was its commitment to preserving processes over specific things. In other places and times, conservatives have generally aimed to protect specific aspects of society, like the monarchy or the church or the caste system. But American conservatives largely aimed to preserve rules of the road or procedures via a collection of -isms. These included liberalism, democratic-republicanism, communitarianism, capitalism, federalism, localism, and originalism.

Though I think this is the right way to go, I admit that process can only take us so far.

We must recognize, however, that our -isms are only instrumental. They aren’t the stuff of the good life; they are, on the contrary, what (hopefully) helps produce the good life. Yet it’s not always exactly clear how our -isms produce the good life; there’s a certain mystery to their functioning.

Then I explain my take on the new direction of the new guard.

It is important to understand what the New Right’s wants to use the state for: to conserve things. The New Right uses restrictionist trade policies to protect American manufacturing and blue-collar jobs. It’s open to child allowances and other government subsidies for parents in order to strengthen families. It’s willing to clamp down on immigration and ramp up efforts to instill national pride in students in order to rebuild American solidarity. Frustrated by the seemingly amoral nature of the judicial doctrines of originalism and textualism, some on the New Right advocate that judges use new methods of interpreting laws and the U.S. Constitution that would allow them to strengthen the hand of the state in pursuing the common good.

As this agenda demonstrates, much of the New Right – indeed, many of today’s conservatives – are less concerned with preserving methods of governing and more concerned with preserving the traditional family, stable jobs, American identity, and social cohesion.

Then, at the end, I offer the outlines of a new approach.

The next step in creating a new agenda for conservatives would be to develop an approach that synthesizes our proper commitment to process and the New Right’s proper commitment to things.

So what is that approach???

Read the full essay to find out!