Tea at Trianon: American Conservativism: Why has it Flopped?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, March 24, 2012

American Conservativism: Why has it Flopped?

American conservatism "was a series of attempts to keep the current situation from coming about." (From A Conservative Blog for Peace.) To quote:

Rod Dreher links to Jim Kalb, apparently a paleocon.

It helps to define what you mean by American conservatism. The Pilgrims? The ‘Enlightenment’ deist founding fathers? Burkean? Kirkian? The Old Right? Libertarian? Neocons going back to CIA operative Bill Buckley’s Cold Warrior statism running the Old Right off? But except for the neocons it’s all in retreat (our Ron Paul Revolution’s blacked out and even if we won they’d probably throw out the election; cue Emma Goldman quote).

At bottom, conservatism is the desire to remain true to type. So American conservatism is the desire for America to remain American.
But what does that mean? WASPs/northern Protestants only? Whether or not, why shouldn’t WASPs like being WASP, Germans like being German, etc.? Nothing wrong with that. Or a concept not an ethnos, a propositional nation (but with a few English values that can be universal)? The Old Republic? Freedom, live and let live, as long as you don’t harm others? (Government limited to that phrasing of the golden rule so we can all get along. Works for immigration: welcome! We don’t want to turn you into Protestants but play by this one rule of ours, which is not exclusively any faith’s; if you don’t, bye.) (Read entire post.)