“WHERE there is no vision,” the prophet warned, “the people perish.” And if there is a single quality missing from the endless debates between the various contenders for next year’s Republican presidential nomination, it is the kind of vision that Edmund Burke personified in his 18th-century time, and still can in ours.
Burke’s was a largess of spirit, a generosity of heart, and profound yet simple understanding of how close and personal, how intimate and unpretentious, how simple true conservatism can be. It is nothing like the grandiose appeals to as many interests as possible, or the detailed programs designed to appeal to them, that have marked this year’s querulous “debates,” with their gotcha lines and snappy repartee. That’s not vision, it’s just electioneering.
“To make us love our country,” Burke wrote, “our country ought to be lovely.” Instead of announcing grand programs and making sweeping promises, or just collecting grievances and venting them, we should learn to love the little platoon we belong to in society: family and friends, church and neighborhood.
Conservatism in its truest sense, like charity, begins at home. It is something to be practiced day by day, not proclaimed every four years at rallies to Get Out the Vote or denounce Income Inequality. But we forget how small-scale the best kind of conservatism should be—humbling, not proud. It should amount to something more than just electioneering. Patriotism, be not proud, or it becomes nothing more than chauvinism.
The essence of conservatism should be as simple, yet considerate, as good manners, which become ever more rare in this argumentative society, so full of resentment that it confuses grudges with principles. Our public discourse should be marked by civility, not applause lines.
To quote Burke on the love of one’s country, “There ought to be a system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish.” Instead, as Russell Kirk once observed, “the traditional system of manners is much decayed nowadays. Throughout Western society, and particularly in America, and for loveliness, Western civilization since Burke’s age seems to have been intent upon one of the principal studies of Alice’s Mock Turtle, Uglification.”
Taken a good look of late at the tear-downs now going up in old, once settled neighborhoods, destroying any sense of proportion or modesty? Or just watch some of the ghastlier programs on television.
The loss of someone like Parker Westbrook the other day, with his love and appreciation of historic preservation, should remind us of how much we are losing in our rush for political gain and disdain for custom and tradition. Edmund Burke, where are you when you’re most needed?