Week 4. (Traditionalist) Conservatism: Dissident from Liberalism, Foe of Modernity: The Challenge to Individualism and Free-Market Capitalism
in the Name of a Traditional Community.
NOTE: THIS IS NOT THE LIBERTY- CONSERVING CONSERVATISM OF THATCHER-REAGANISM OR TODAY'S NATIONAL REVIEW, OR NEO-CONSERVATISM, OR THE CURRENT IDEOLOGY OF THE BRITISH CONSERVATIVE PARTY. ALL OF THOSE ARE VARIANTS OF LIBERALISM.
Andrew Heywood, “Conservatism,” Political Ideologies, READ pp. 65-88 ONLY
Roger Scruton, “Authority and allegiance,” “Constitution and the State,” The Meaning of Conservatism (St. Augustine’s Press, 2002): 17-63
DEADLINE TO SUBMIT A RESPONSE PAPER.
So you'd like to see a traditionalist conservative outlook on the world...
Check out The Salisbury Review: The Quarterly Magazine of Conservative Thought (UK), Modern Age (US), The American Conservative (US; only some of its contributors are
traditionalist, more of an umbrella journal for right-wing thinkers who oppose imperialism and favor localism), or some of the articles now in NATIONAL REVIEW (US; once under
William F. Buckley the umbrella journal for the broad coalition of the US Right, it used to prominently include traditionalist conservative views as part of its philosophy of fusionism;
but as described by Paul Gottfried, below, it has lost its libertarian audience and mostly been taken over by neo-conservatism; it still runs occasional articles by traditionalist
conservatives).
Traditionalist conservatism in the arts?
Check out the Ethos of the Prince's School of Traditional Arts (UK)
Traditionalist conservative political-ish groups
Cornerstone Group (UK caucus of traditionalist conservative MPs), the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (US), the H. L. Mencken Club (US), the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
(US; only partly traditionalist, more of an umbrella organization for the ideas of the U. S. Right)
So you'd like to know how traditionalist conservatism became so obscure and marginal in US politics, which, as we'll see, is basically different camps of liberalism and social democracy alternating in political office...
Check out Paul Gottfried, "How the Left Conquered the Right," (2011 lecture)
So you'd like to know how the American right under William F. Buckley marginalized the traditionalist conservatives in the 1970s and 1980s, and the neo-conservatives/paleo-liberals took over the movement...
Check out Paul Gottfried, " 'Up from Liberalism,' " arguing that the rise of the New Left and the counter-culture in the 1960s led Buckley and the American right to switch enemies. Instead of challenging big government, corporatism, and the welfare state, the leadership of the right, centered around Buckley's National Review, focused on challenging the New Left, the counter-culture, the new social movements, and revolutionary socialism. This required them to concede significant ground to social liberalism, especially on Washington-led racial integration, Washington-led moves for gender equality, big government, and foreign military interventions to promote freedom worldwide. Traditionalist conservatives, who are localist, traditional family-ist, and anti-war, could not accept these concessions, so Buckley and the movement leadership forced them to the margins. So marginalized was traditionalism that by the 1990s, the neo-conservatives/paleo-liberals, who had basically remained true to the social liberalism-cum-imperialism of John F. Kennedy, were the dominant group on the American right.
So you'd like to know more about 19th century British conservatism, especially Benjamin Disraeli's one-nation Toryism (which most of today's traditional conservatives, like Scruton, greatly admire)...
Check out Michael Freeden, "The Chimera of Conservative Dualism," Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford UP, 1996)
So you'd like to know more about One-nation Tory groups today...
Check out the Tory Reform Group, led by Kenneth Clarke. Although for the European Union and immigration, Tory Reform dislike the welfare-state-slashing Thatcherite classical liberals that form the other wing of the British Conservative Party. That wing are currently led by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, who has a daughter named Liberty, and who famously wept at Thatcher's funeral. The current Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, tacks between these two groups--he was not seen to weep at Thatcher's funeral. (Roger Scruton is basically an anti-EU, anti-immigration One-nation Tory.)
So you'd like to know about Red Toryism: traditionalist conservatism with a semi-socialist concern for the poor...
Check out the current work of Philip Blond and his Res Publica think tank; or the work of the famous American Red Tory social critics Christopher Lasch and Robert Nisbet.