What Is Conservatism?

An imaginary reader e-mails in and asks about Conservatism. What is it, what good does it do, and who says so? Excellent questions, all. To answer I will go at once to the writings of Russell Kirk who reminded us that conservatism is not an Ideology. As Kirk once wrote, "there is no Holy Writ, no Das Kapital and no Thirty-Nine Articles to provide and preserve conservative dogma." It is perhaps as Kirk once stated: conservatism is a state of mind, a type of character, and a way of looking at the civil and social order. A conservative person is one who values historical and permanent things...yet also knows that change can be worthy (and sometimes, ironically, a means of preservation). Conservatives believe there exists an enduring moral order and that certain aspects of human nature are also constants. Sometimes the twain shall meet, and sometimes, Not. Both harmony and disharmony are therefore indicated – but Harmony can better be attained and maintained when the fact of fallible men is remembered, not denied or ignored. Conservatives believe that Utopia, the land toward which our well-intentioned and left-leaning Ideologue friends ever-sail, cannot exist here on earth. We must do what we can, of course - but what that "What" is turns the wheel that will help us cruise happily on, or steer us all into the rocks.