Conservative Student News

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All that is gold does not glitter.

Quick! Take out a blank sheet of paper, close your eyes, and concentrate. What comes to your mind when you think of “conservatism:” Ronald Reagan? Ann Coulter? The Amish? Write it all down! And then try to connect the dots.

Perhaps a picture will emerge on your paper. Or perhaps, it will start to emerge but then fall apart just when you think you have glimpsed something interesting. This may be inevitable, given that any comprehensive intellectual and social idea tends to lose its coherence when popularized.

I myself have heard a fair share of popular conservative pundits, and they have given me the following popular impression about conservatism: Conservatives support President Bush, Rush Limbaugh, and the war in Iraq, while opposing abortion and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

On the surface this is a very curious set of allegiances. Is there no disagreement at all between President Bush and Rush Limbaugh? Is there no tension between opposing the death of infants and encouraging the death of certain Iraqis? Were there no conservatives before the Cold War? And, at any rate, is this not a thoroughly random set of issues to form the sine qua non of a comprehensive political and intellectual movement?

Of itself, it is. In fact, these issues look suspiciously unlike sine qua non and suspiciously like the political and social outgrowth that usually follows on a more coherent body of thought. To what trunk do these branches and twigs belong? Is there indeed a unified system of thought—an Idea of Conservatism—that nourishes and supports them? Down in the sap and the roots of the organism, what is conservatism?

The most immediate answer, of course, is that there are a few of them.

Now that we step back and survey this doughty tree, we notice at least two branches formidable enough to reckon with. Those branches might go by the names of “anti-Communist conservatism” and “libertarian conservatism,” with the former being the much more adventuresome of the two. The chief spokesman for anti-Communist conservatism is most probably Whittaker Chambers, a journalist who wandered into Marxist Communism in his youth and fled out of it in his maturity.

Life is full of choices. Making the right decisions, choosing the best path to take, and figuring out what is best course of action to take can often be quite difficult. However, with a charitable disposition and positive outlook on life, one is assured contentment and reward from the paths they choose to walk.

As children, we form many of our fundamental beliefs about the world as we are presented with various ways of living one’s life. Once we grow older, we can choose to either embrace or reject these beliefs. In many ways, the environment in which we are placed, or in which we place ourselves, shapes the person we become. It shapes the way we make decisions and it creates a foundation from which we judge the rest of the world and our experiences.

However, although the environment we live in affects our lives, we, in turn, can choose how to react to people, places, and situations that arise. We can have a positive impact on our environment by acting upon our reason and the knowledge we gained from experiencing life.

In Claire Berchem’s article, her decision to study abroad is reflected upon, for, the experience she has gained from taking advantage of this opportunity has given her a new look at life. She encourages students to take the same path, for there are some things one truly cannot appreciate without giving them the time they deserve. Understanding another culture and appreciating its beauty, as well as perceiving the intricacies of its daily life and the history that make it what it is, takes time—time that is worth giving—for the experience it gives back.

The decisions we make do not merely affect us, but also those around us. Even little choices or ones that seem mundane and insignificant can have a serious impact on the direction our life takes. The choices we make influence future decisions we make and soon we develop habits. In my article, I discuss the influence celebrities hold over the lives of modern man. We idolize other humans, as if they were divine beings, which we should all aspire to emulate by imitating their ways of life. Little choices, such as watching T.V. on a regular basis can soon lead to an addiction or obsession with the lives of celebrities. Society is attracted to the glamorized lifestyle of the stars that the media presents, and their actions show this unabashed worshipping other humans.

With charity and a contrite heart that seeks to do what is right, it is impossible to despair in the choices one has made. When one does something with the right intention, their conscience is at ease and therefore they are filled with a sense of happiness and contentment. Mr. and Mrs. Busam share the ongoing story of their choice to share their love with each other through marriage. Living for each other and for the children God bestows upon them, they find a purpose in the daily decisions they make to act with charity. The path they have taken is more than a way of life, it is a vocation. It is what they have been called to do and through it they find happiness in serving God with love.

Every choice we make has an affect, whether it be upon us, others, or the world around us. Therefore, as rational beings, we have a responsibility to act according to our nature. In doing so, we must avoid what our feelings tell us. We need and strive to live for the good of all.

Summer is approaching. It is full of opportunities, new paths to take and decisions to make. Now, we only need to use what God has given us and make the best of what life has to offer in the following months and throughout our lives. Using what we have been given wisely will make us happy and bring happiness to those around us.

Not all those who wander are lost.

From the underground Communist networks to the witness stand against Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers’ novel-autobiography Witness offers an exemplary glimpse into the conservatism that defined itself against Communism.

This conservatism perceived a great evil, suspected (in fact, was well nigh certain) that the evil would win the day, and nevertheless determined to resist on principle to the last ball of lead. Poignant and proactive, this version of conservatism is somewhat outdated, not having survived (quite understandably) the unexpected collapse of Communism itself.

“Libertarian conservatism” is somewhat more enduring, encapsulating a general “anti-socialist,” “anti-Big Government,” and “laissez-faire” economic position. F. A. Hayek is largely responsible for introducing this conservatism to the U.S. through his writings Road to Serfdom and Up From Liberalism. He argues chiefly from consequence: Government-planned economies do not work, and the more thoroughly they are attempted, the less general freedom a citizenry has.

What Hayek lacks is a more holistic grounding for his ideas about the meaning and real importance of “liberty,” or its role beside universal principles of justice in the pursuit of the good human life. In fact, what both libertarian conservatism and anti-Communism seem to require is a deeper foundation for the things that they both assume are goods. These two branches must derive from a strong trunk somewhere—and one suspects from the very nature of the question “what is good?” that this trunk will be far older and stronger than they.

The old that is strong does not wither. The trunk of conservatism might be called “classical conservatism.” Russell Kirk, a twentieth-century man of letters and a historian of conservatism, attempts to unearth the roots of this trunk in a book not surprisingly entitled The Roots of American Order.

The principles that comprise Kirk’s “Idea of Conservatism” extend backwards much farther than the American War for Independence or even the controversies between the Whigs and the Tories. They also go deeper than the Magna Carta and the English practice of limiting its monarchies. Nor do they seem to terminate with Cicero and the Stoic teachings on “natural law,” for these were preceded by the ethical teachings and realism of Plato and Aristotle. It seems, in fact, that conservatism has its deepest roots in the transcendent moral code of the Hebrews.

But to undertake a description of the roots of conservatism, one must already have an idea of what one is looking for. In the Roots of American Order, Kirk assumes an explication of conservatism that he lays out elsewhere in The Conservative Mind, in which he attempts to describe and define conservative thought proper from Edmund Burke to T. S. Eliot. In the course of this descriptive definition, he brings several crucial ideas to the fore—not as an exhaustive summary of conservatism, but as the sine qua non of the heart of the movement. The classical conservative, he concludes, affirms at least six key ideas that inform his interpretation of human liberty and the human good:

(1) A transcendent order (a realm of ideality, or a “natural law”), which rules both the individual and the society

(2) Human variety and mystery, in opposition to uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarianism

(3) Need of civilized society for orders, ranks, and classes, not complete democratization

(4) Close relationship between freedom and property such that to restrict the latter is to restrict the former

(5) Tradition and prescription over the recommendations of “sophisters, calculators, and economists” who would reconstruct society on abstract designs

(6) Recognition that change may not be salutary reform, and that hasty innovation may destroy more than it amends

These six hardy “root ideas” feeding into the trunk of conservatism appear consistently not only in Kirk’s works but in others of the twentieth century, some avowedly “conservative” and others not. In fiction, for example, I have found them quietly permeating the writings of T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (although he may fall into the “anti-Communist” camp); in non-fiction, I have discerned them most clearly in Richard Weaver and the Southern Agrarians.

The existence of such works in our own day bears witness to a welcome truth. Plato and Aristotle have endured for six centuries of nominalism, Augustine and Aquinas for two centuries of materialism, Cicero and the Stoics for a whole century of totalitarianism … and something of their thought and values remains alive in the literature of the West.

The truth of the matter? Deep roots are not reached by the frost.