2.3 The Invention of Modern Liberalism and Conservatism: part 3

Edmund Burke (1729-97)

The Age of Enlightenment lasted from 1651 to 1779. It’s defense of reason and individual rights inspired the Declaration of Independence and American Revolution. However, before the Constitution was ratified the anti-Enlightenment or Romantic age rejected reason in favor of God controlling the boundaries of life. Reason and planning were not to challenge ancient answers.

The Invention of Modern Conservatism

The Declaration of Independence was a Bill of Particulars, charging the Crown with 27 specific crimes against the colonies. Slave holders forced Jefferson to remove “Introducing slavery to the colonies”, charge number one in the first draft. The other crimes had existed for years. So why a revolution in 1776?

Thomas Paine, a tenant farmer’s son, wrote Common Sense (1776), a forty-seven page pamphlet arguing that if the colonists’ charges were just, no excuse justified waiting to act. Despite widespread illiteracy Paine’s argument spread as supporters read the pamphlet aloud on street corners, in taverns, and at meetings.

A desire for independence and self-government is as much myth as history. Half the population did not care who ruled. One quarter wanted to retain British rule. The motives of the last quarter were mixed. Colonists faced the same issues troubling Britain. Britain suffered religious wars. Religious intolerance threatened the lives of Catholics and Baptists in Northern colonies. Wealthy Britains wanted the powers of nobility. Wealthy colonists wanted an American aristocracy. Wealthy colonists advanced policies for trade, industrialization, and slavery favoring themselves over Jefferson’s citizen farmers. For example, the slave dependent cash crops cotton and tobacco ruined the soil in three – four years. The new continent had vast lands for slash and abandon farming, but only by expanding into indigenous lands in violation of the Royal Proclamation of 1763. That expansion triggered centuries of war.

Despite challenging Britain, the American revolution did not create conservatism. There wasn’t a conservative political party before the Constitution. Parliament, stuck between Filmer’s monarchy and Locke’s Enlightenment, debated the colonies’ value. Expensive Continental and Colonial wars with France had strained British resources. Future wars against indigenous people would throw good money after bad. Parliament realized it could retain comparable financial benefits through colonial trade with the independent colonies without those expenses.

Enter the author of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke (1729-97).

Conceding that governing across the ocean was problematic, Edmund Burke’s Parliamentary response tried to split the baby. He argued that the united colonies should be “free” to establish its local government. But,  push comes to shove, the colonies still belonged to Britain. So where did conservatism begin? The American revolution was concerning. The threat driving conservatism was the French Revolution.

A personal truism: understanding social-political theories requires understanding the ground beneath the authors’ feet. The American Revolution was a distant attack against soldiers. Said bluntly: soldiers are paid to kill and die. The French Revolution executed nobility. Burke’s Reflection on the Revolution in France (1790) grew from his defense of family privilege and social class.

Following the Norman Conquest (1066) William the Conqueror seized large tracts of prime land and established Royal Forests. The people driven from those lands were as much refuse as refugees. In 1171 King Henry II invaded Ireland, grabbed land, and granted governorships, land, and titles to the nobles in his army, including Knight William de Burgh, which became Burke. Edmund Burke headed one the oldest Irish Gall (outsider) houses. Centuries of nobility and privileged traditions shaped his understanding of the world.

An ultra-Royalist, Burke’s supported a theocratic Church-State, which protected his noble privileges (Great Chain of Being). With a Church of England father and Catholic mother Burke, again, tried to split the baby insisting only on a theocracy. His contemporary, the second founder of conservatism, de Maistre, demanded Catholic rule to avoid the individual moral judgement compromising protestantism. Predictably, Burke defended the traditional hierarchy of class that protected his privileged position.

Just three percent of the people in Burke’s constituency could vote when he was elected to the House of Commons. Even with such a tiny, privileged group of electors to represent, Burke believed in custodial authority. Members were to vote as served their purposes, not to fulfill a will of the people. Despite universal poverty Burke opposed public education and public assistance. Consistent with the Great Chain of Being, the lower classes existed solely to serve the interests of their social superiors.

Authors write long, profound books, but we can distill these to elevator pitches and position statements. For six centuries the Burke line benefitted from the 1066 laws of William the Conqueror and the privilege of class. Burke’s elevator pitch was predictable:

“The obligation of each generation is to pass to future generations, unchanged, the traditions of the past.“

Burke wrapped this beliefs in layers of “time tested truths”, “the guidance of God”, “a world too complex for humans to deliberately change”. Despite being exploitative, these platitudes sustained a stable society for centuries. With minor variations Herbert Spencer, William Graham Sumner, and Vilfredo Pareto will repeat Burke’s lament in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Burke’s is a failed argument. The problems the United State, Britain, and France faced were not caused by a loss of values. From 1066 to 1500 social change was by degrees: gradual shifts in accepted beliefs, slight increases in Silk Road commerce. These reflect homeostatic changes: adjusting the thermostat for cold or warm days. The changes leading to Britain’s struggles, and the American and French Revolutions – colonialism, international trade, slavery, the industrial revolution – altered fundamental societal structures. The countries’ survival required dynamic equilibrium changes (institutional transformations): finding new ways to build houses because global warming had melted all the igloos. The constant was the need for a place to live. What had to change is how the constant need was fulfilled. Burke’s and conservatism’s concern, however, was retaining the power and privilege that tradition granted.

Next: Liberalism and Conservatism part 4, de Maister, homeostasis, dynamic equilibrium, and the principles of conservatism