Canons of Conservatism

Here are my thoughts on someone's thoughts about Russell Kirk's (no relation to Lake Avenue's Pastor Gordon Kirk) conclusions on conservatism (click link in title).

Part 1

I would say that the first canon is a cornerstone and I hope Mr. Burgess-Jackson is misunderstanding it because to reject it outright would lead me to believe that he is not a conservative. He may be reading it as the transcendent moral order and natural law must be code for "fundamentalist Judeo-Christian principles". While many conservatives, including myself, do thus ascribe, Kirk does not specify this. It could vary well mean classical Aristolean ideals or some other traditional construct of moral ideals and sense of community of which there are many in the world.But to not have any set of moral ideals or ethical truths, really means that a conservative would have nothing to conserve. A conservative does not defend the status quo or calls to restoration to the "good old days" for its own sake, that is traditionalism in its worst sense. He or she does not call for conservation of a system even solely because it continues or restores relative security and prosperity, that is sheer pragmatism. A conservative believes that a set of values has proved best for the preservation of the society and though those values may be worked out differently as a culture grows and becomes more complex, he or she tends to believe those values come from moral and social principles that permanently guides the affairs of man. Such as there are absolutes of good and evil, that man is inherently weak but must strive for eternal virtues. The principles in and behind many of our founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution can be seen as either blandly deist or profoundly Christian but once set as the foundation of our society, their radical nature upon the world stage also becomes the foundation of our conservative values.