A Commentary on Conservatism (Not the Nasty American Kind)
Graphic by Christiana Zembrowski
The late English philosopher, Sir Roger Scruton, spoke on conservatism in a 2017 lecture, describing a conservative as “someone who has found something to love and wants to retain it.” He then went on to define it, more generally, as a “philosophy of love.” Although I’m sure this will be perceived as controversial, especially on this campus, I tentatively agree. Not entirely, as I still see issues with how that “love” is expressed, but I see no conceptual problem with it.
However, it is of extreme importance to delineate between what Scruton is talking about and the nasty, brutish flavor of conservatism that has infected America, primarily through the Make America Great Again movement. Though American conservatism and what Scruton describes may share some of the same language concerning the love of country and maintenance of tradition, they could not be further apart in terms of their origins and implications.
At its most basic level, American conservatism is misguided. It is strikingly ironic that those who brand themselves as conservatives in today’s America are really democrats in the classical sense. It is undeniable that the nation’s foundation is rooted in the Enlightenment era ideals of classical liberalism. Friedrich Hayek, one of history’s most famous economic and political philosophers, detailed this relationship in his 1960 essay “Why I Am Not a Conservative.” “‘Liberalism’ was here the common tradition on which the American polity had been built: thus the defender of the American tradition was a liberal in the European sense,” he said.
Furthering this point, I would argue that MAGA is neither a conservative nor a liberal ideology. Its abandonment of key classical values such as free trade and institutional restraint has rendered it a philosophy without a home. Frankly, it is a shield used by hateful individuals to hide behind, and a sounding board that enables them to project their anxieties and fears onto others. That is not philosophy, nor love, but bigotry in its purest form.
At its heart, my understanding of conservatism is that of a philosophy of preservation; respect for what came before and what is yet to come. It takes only a few to tear down the work of many. This is yet another reason why groups like MAGA that act in the name of conservatism can never claim the title in actuality. It is the few who are seeking to destroy institutions and our customs built over hundreds of years in favor of their way of life. Edmund Burke put it best in his seminal thoughts on the social contract: “[Society] becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” If you sever the connection between those who came before and those who are living now, there is no foundation for the future generations to stand on.
Returning to Hayek, if we take his stance on America’s inheritance as classically liberal, then the conservative thing to do is to preserve the pillars of classical liberalism that America was founded upon. Protecting the free press, independent courts, and the institutions that have defined what makes America unique among most nations is essential to upholding democracy itself. Measures to illegitimise the press or to erode the rule of law are not conservative acts but radical ones that give conservatives a bad name.
Now, there is an obvious counterargument. The framing of this conversation, I admit, can be seen as an exercise in idealism. I’ve selected the philosophies of the most preeminent architects and dismissed the movement as it exists in the United States today. If the majority of self-proclaimed conservatives align themselves with the MAGA movement, then who am I to accuse them of not being real conservatives? It is an objection I do not dismiss lightly, but one I ultimately find unconvincing. It is farcical to judge the validity of a doctrine on the behavior of its loudest proponents; if this were the case, every other ideology that has strayed from its original intent would fail this test at the first hurdle. Burke and Scruton represent a distinct and serious tradition with a long history that pre-existed party politics. Conflating the two mistakes a corrupted version of an idea for the idea itself.
So what does this mean in practice? If we take Hayek’s view that America’s foundations are classically liberal, and we take Burke’s view on conservatism as a fundamental act of stewardship from generation to generation, then the most authentically conservative thing an American can and should do is defend the institutions that this current administration seeks to tear down. Our independent judiciary and the peaceful transfer of power are the accumulated work of the living and the dead, gifts for those to be born.
To love your country is not to attach yourself to delusional fantasies of what it was or to selectively advocate for some and not others. It is a love of what was built over generations prior, and feeling the weight of responsibility to pass it along to those yet to be born. The MAGA movement has been built on fear and the systematic dismantling of what so many worked so hard to build in pursuit of an ideal that never existed in the first place. That is not love of country but self-interest. So call the movement what you like, just don’t call it conservatism.
Noah Basden ’29 (nhbasden@college.harvard.edu) hopes to not get canceled for this piece.