Canons of Conservatism - part 2

At the risk of having my arguments quickly shredded by noncognitivist logic, I still hold out for Canon 1 key points. I think we can all agree a conservative needs a set of moral values to hold “which rules society as well as conscience”. But alternatives such as appealing to authority or to a consensus of traditional values is nowhere near as strong as appealing to transcendent truths.

Be that as it may, I am interested in your line of argument that the “ability to reach a set of moral rules from several different starting points is a sign of the strength of those rules.” This line of argument can solve 3 problems – 1) how noncognitivists and transcendentalists (with a small t) can agree, at least on other tenets of conservatism, 2) how the “family resemblance” self -identification as conservatives may work on a generational basis, 3) resolving an obvious weakness of American conservatism being based on “radical” ideals of democracy and equality

Because one of the obvious weaknesses of my formulation of Kirk’s canon and applying it to American modern conservatism is that the same founding documents of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, etc as the foundation of our heritage are also used by liberals as the source of their ideals. How does conservatism then differ from liberalism? Beyond saying that liberalism is looking forward – extending ideals and “rights” – and is thus “progressive” and conservatism tends to look back both to “preserve” freedoms but to remind us of obligations, both are seeking to strive for ideals. The classical liberalism of 50 years ago in many respects has become the standards of conservatism. Instead of quoting Washington, Adams or Lincoln, today George W Bush in appealing to conservative principles seems to be “channeling” John F. Kennedy.

I learned conservative values at my mother’s knee and from Biblical precepts that founded my church (even as most denominations speedily departed from those precepts). I never much rebelled from this understanding of life and politics even in the revolutionary sixties and my college years. But in addition to gaining a historical overview of ideas and a somewhat undistinguished ability to analyze such ideas to present circumstances, I hopefully lost some of the racial and pariochal ideas of my parent’s generation.
Meanwhile, many others have come to the conservative cause in very different ways. Basically they may have been dragged kicking and screaming by their intellect over the course of years while everything inside them cried out for continued rebellion against the Establishment. They didn’t like the political system, the economic system, the international system, organized religion, etc. Those academic and social authorities who championed this revolution could not even like themselves – since they had to define themselves as White Anglo Saxon Protestant male chauvinists part of a hopelessly consumerist & traditionalist society in a capitalist / imperialist state. As the post modern era dawned (is this simultaneous with the Age of Aquarius or what?) and then the Iron Curtain fell, the choice faced all of us. To deconstruct our heritage into a multicultural soup of past grievances, present rights and entitlements, and future evolution by a potent mix of ecology and technology – this is what is left for the Left. Or to reconstruct our values, keeping what is important to our society, especially the unique strengths of our constitutional federal republic.