Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland, was only 33 when he was killed in 1643, fighting for the royal side at Newbury.
Yet he had already accumulated enough wisdom to come up with the thought in the title, one that encapsulates a key aspect of conservatism. The allusion isn’t so much to any particular philosophy or, God forbid, ideology, but to a temperamental predisposition.
A man predisposed to conservatism isn’t only prudent himself, but also holds prudence as one of the highest virtues in life both public and private. Burke, for example, singled out the imprudence of the French Revolution as its catastrophic failing.
Prudence precludes radicalism, whatever its political hue. Radicalism is a property springing from emotional impetuosity, which is why it mostly afflicts young people or those who never grow up and remain infantile even in their dotage.
Predisposition to conservatism tends to manifest itself not only in political convictions but in just about everything. For example, I can’t imagine a conservative sporting a ring in his nose or an ACAB tattoo on his knuckles (if you don’t know what it stands for, I congratulate you: you’ve remained unsullied by the sordid side of life).
Yet predisposition alone does not a conservative make. That’s like the difference between musicality and musicianship: the former is innate, the latter is also a result of a sustained effort and training.
Translating one’s instincts into satisfactory answers to what Dostoyevsky called “the accursed questions of life” is no easy task. That explains why conservatives are – and always have been – greatly outnumbered by radicals (right or left), liberals, socialists of every colour and some such.
Unlike conservatism, none of such views of life requires any effort to develop. Neither a socialist nor a right-wing radical will torment himself trying to work out a proper relationship between the sacral and secular realms. Nor would he wonder how a passionate commitment to something (such as equal education for the whole population or elimination of foreign aid) above all else would affect all else.
Conservatism is neither a philosophy nor a political system, but it is likely to propel a man towards a certain set of ideas about life in general and political life in particular. It can’t be otherwise, for a conservative puts reason before emotion as a cognitive tool and call to action.
If a radical responds to life by dipping into a box of emotionally charged platitudes, a conservative has to think things through before deciding what, if anything, needs to change. That creates a habit of intellectual reflection, gradually deepening and widening a conservative’s mind.
His nemeses, on the other hand, have little need for reflection. Everything is as clear to them as the sum of two plus two. The readymade solution is already there. Just add emotion and stir.
That’s why conservatives tend to be more intelligent than any kind of radicals. A conservative nature demands and encourages a steady development of mental acuity. That doesn’t mean any conservative will be an accomplished intellectual, only that such an ambition naturally flows out of his temperament.
Radicalism or any other antipode of conservatism, on the other hand, thrives on intellectual and moral paucity. That doesn’t mean that any socialist will be a fool, only that intelligence is a hindrance for him – as much as stupidity is for a conservative.
Morality is also an aspect of conservatism, and much of it is closely linked to intelligence. Morality always derives from reason, but not always from man’s reason alone.
The link between reason and morality was established in the book conservatives tend to respect more than their antipodes do: “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”
Serpentine wisdom thus goes hand in hand with dove-like morality (to use a modern word shunned in that book), and that signposts both the intellectual and moral holdings of conservatism. This irrespective of an individual conservative’s faith or lack thereof.
A Western conservative is bound to ask himself what it is that he wishes to conserve. Sooner or later he’ll arrive at the only possible answer: Western civilisation. That answer may not lead him to Christianity, even though this is the foundation on which our civilisation is built. But it would certainly keep him away from fire-eating atheism.
A conservative untouched by the hand bearing the gift of faith may remain an agnostic, someone who treats God with respect even if unsure He exists. But he’ll never become an atheist, someone who aggressively insists that there is no God.
That’s impossible for any number of reasons. First, an atheist performs mental sabotage by blowing up the aforementioned foundation, letting the edifice of Western civilisation totter and collapse in his mind. Also, an atheist expresses a radical view universally espoused by every impassioned enemy within Western civilisation.
A conservative will always remember he is a sheep in the midst of wolves, and he’ll never agree to join their ranks. His intuition if nothing else won’t let him.
Prudence, restraint, intelligence, courage, moral fortitude – such are the qualities every conservative needs to foster in order to survive in a world getting more lupine by the minute. When surrounded by hostility, it’s in human nature to seek allies, the company of one’s own kind (that explains, though not always excuses, the clannishness of minority groups).
It’s also in human nature to shun enemies and everything they stand for. A conservative has a sensitive nose enabling him to smell evil from any distance. The moment a whiff of it touches a conservative’s nostrils, he’ll know it for what it is.
Such sensitivity is partly congenital but mostly acquired over a lifetime of emotional and intellectual self-training. The same education teaches a conservative to detect evil behind the camouflage of seemingly virtuous phraseology.
That ability is a litmus test of conservatism: every conservative trait of mind and soul comes into play to pass it. Conversely, no hapless individual who fails that test can possibly be a conservative.
That’s why, for example, I can’t regard any Putinversteher as a fellow conservative, even if he holds sound views on everything else. Such a man has to be intuitively predisposed to fascistic right-wing radicalism hiding behind a rather thin veneer of conservative slogans.
Putin, with his recruitment skills honed at the KGB, delivered a full compendium of such slogans designed to seduce Western radicals: Christianity, no homosexual or transsexual ‘rights’, a strong hand on the tiller of free enterprise, you name it.
Many Westerners who wrongly believed themselves to be conservative responded to the mantras with emotional, knee-jerk alacrity. That was mellifluous music to their ears, and no Western leader they knew played the same tune.
I remember talking to a conservative Christian woman about Putin’s Russia some ten years ago, listing all the crimes Putin had already committed and those he was bound to commit in the future. Her reply to every item on that list, and there were many, was the same: “But he is against homosexual marriage.”
Eventually, after 2014, she passed the aforementioned litmus test of conservatism, by realising that scowling evil was lurking behind the mask of conservative-sounding shibboleths. Yet many others have failed, and continue failing even after 2022, emphasising yet again the difference between conservatism and its grotesque radical caricatures.
Alas, the Carys and Burkes of yesteryear are gone. Conservatism, though always in retreat, has been routed, at least as a factor in the dynamics of public life. I doubt the few remaining conservatives are in any position to save other people’s souls and especially minds.
But they can still insist on saving their own, and I’ll leave you on this solipsistic note.
Bravo, Mr Boot! Except on one point (where I may well be wrong) I am completely in agreement and am grateful to you for so clear a description of conservatism. Now I know where I stand! Except on the one point on which we regretfully differ: atheism.
I am unable to accept that a theistic basis for understanding life is necessary. All gods are creations of the human mind and my god, if you like to look at it in that way, is that there is, in reality, no god. If, instead, you prefer to believe in the god of the new (or old) testament and all his reported doings, so be it. But I decline to follow you or those of the same view. That leaves me without a guide to living, but not without the ability to construct for myself my own, private, guide to life.
In so far as you think you may be wrong, surely you’re not an atheist but an agnostic?
But it is necessary to change. We have recently discovered, and are discovering every day, that every moral, political, and scientific precept we have held for the previous 1,000 years (or more) is wrong! Thank goodness (not God) for your so-called “radicals”! They are advancing civilization and improving the human experience.
Necessary change is part and parcel of conservatism, so no contradiction there. (Burke: ‘A state without the means of some change, is without the means of its own conservation.’) However, the net effect of any kind of radicalism on our civilisation and indeed human experience has been hugely negative. Lasting change needs to be organic and gradual, which adjectives seldom feel comfortable in the same sentence next to ‘radical’.
I agree that necessary change must be “organic and gradual” The two essential components of the Darwinian evolution that you are so keen to disparage. Consider that you may be (are) mistaken!.
Perhaps I should have marked my comment with the sarcasm level at the maximum setting?
Brian, I’m getting slow in my old age. Before long I’ll start confusing Biden and Sunak with statesmen.
When I was a younger man I was convinced I had the conservative temperament. Subsequent life experiences and intellectual exploration have made me doubt that.
‘Prudence, restraint, intelligence, courage, and moral fortitude’. The first three are easier than the latter two.
My compliments to the author for another judicious treatment of an excellent subject!
“an ACAB tattoo on his knuckles (if you don’t know what it stands for, I congratulate you: you’ve remained unsullied by the sordid side of life).”
ACAB = All Cops Are Bastards.
That’s right. Obviously, you haven’t remained unsullied.
I had never thought of it this way before. A conservative begins as an sheep with an intuition, but to survive a world of wolves, a he must cease to be like a sheep and become like a serpent and a dove. This article is as good a meditation on Matthew 10:16 as any.