Majorityrights Central > Category: Conservatism

It’s not uncommon to find thinkers within the Australian Liberal Party who want to create a fusion between liberalism and conservatism.

The former Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, is one such figure within the Liberal Party who has argued for such a fusion. In his book Common Ground he claims first that,

“As its name implies, ours is a liberal government holding liberal principles.”

He then sets out a typically right-liberal view of liberal principles, in which the market is held to be a better regulator of society than the state. He rejects the idea that “because something is considered desirable it should be provided by the state”, preferring that it be provided “by voluntary action on the part of individuals joining freely together, and by the mechanism of the market”.

So, if Mr Fraser believes in right-liberal “principles and values”, what role is left for conservatism? His answer is significant. He explains that,

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In the first part of this double post I focussed on the good, hard look a Conservative must take of his position if he is ever to start thinking seriously about his - and our - deepening troubles.  For, the West is entering upon a period of crisis of proportions unseen since the fall of Rome.  It is a crisis that touches upon all areas of life except, by and large, the economic.  And it is NOT the crisis of Conservatism.  That departed over the horizon a hundred years ago.  It is the crisis of advanced liberalism.

I argued that our newly introspective Conservative must think on the causes of his political enfeeblement.  He must acknowledge as fact the victory of liberalism throughout Western society.  In so doing he may realise that liberalism extends to him, too, in all but name.  If he is even to begin to understand the grave responsibility to the future that inhabits the mantle of Conservatism he must first resile from all the anti-Conservative beliefs and values he has imbibed.  Then, if he is wise, he will acknowledge that even that may not be enough.  There are additional difficulties posed him by economism and globalised capital and by democracy which could well be insoluble.  Still, as a Conservative there is only one direction in which he can tread. 

I hope that my Part 1 post made depressing reading.  It was certainly intended to.  But now we are going to change to a major key (well, almost).

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Yesterday morning, when I started up my PC and opened OE, I found there a veritable barrage of mail from just one correspondent.  Let me say at once that he is no low-life spammer.  He is a currently self-absented reader and commenter and, to be sure, an interesting and determined fellow.  Although the subject matter of his e-mails was diverse there was, it must be said, a common thread running through them.  As threads go, some might consider it, on occasion, overly common.  No doubt, it will re-appear eventually on this page.  But I am not going to short-circuit that process now.  Anyway, one of the orphaned communications spoke of something more interesting to me - not Jewry but Conservatism, and dead Conservatism at that.

So, with thanks to Wintermute for this link to a seemingly funereal but, in the end, uplifting OQ article by the late John Attarian I am going to kick around a few Conservative notions and notions of Conservatism – not at all the same thing -  and, hopefully, spark off some interesting comment.  I shall do so in two parts.  This first one will commend realism and try to sketch out what that might amount to.

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I always like finding examples of genuinely conservative thought in history. It makes a nice change to be able to present these gems, rather than to be always a critic of liberalism.

So I was pleased to find the following piece of writing by John Jay, who was a Founding Father of America and the first Chief Justice of the United States. Jay wrote that,

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OK, let’s get it over with.  It can’t be a surprise anyway.  So, here goes.  I am that perennially dissatisfied, lip-pursing, inflexible animal, that teeth-grinding, curtain-twitching, unwilling observer of the willingly self-destructive, that moral fish out of water, that antique … a social conservative.  Variously known as a behaviour fascist, authority freak, anal retention expert, fun Hun and all-round intolerant bastard.

There.  Now I’ve said it.  Doesn’t feel any better though.  Whoever said confession is good for the soul, or whichever Viennese doktor said whatever Viennese doktors used to say on such horizontally confidential matters, was l-y-i-n-g.

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