[I]n ordinary colloquial speech in the United States, a conservative is a defender of legislatively untrammeled free enterprise, of the absolute rights of property-ownership, with an eccentric fringe of adherents who drive around in vans with placards on them, proclaiming the unconstitutional character of the federal income tax. That is the ideology of the moneyed interest that was the other main enemy, alongside radical doctrinaires, of English conservatism from Bolingbroke to Disraeli.
Anthony Quinton
EPISTEME: December 2023
2 days ago
4 comments:
Does this mean there are no 'real' conservatives -Tories- in the US?
The group (or groups) closest to the Anglophone tradition were the Southern Agrarians and those like Russell Kirk. Buckley certainly had a taste of it, but the mainstream American conservative movement has been more of an amalgamation of the old ideological Manchester-school liberalism of the 19th century, opposition to Soviet Communism, and a commitment to a quasi-messianic version of American exceptionalism.
Calling conservatives Tories is also a bit inaccurate, though they do it themselves sometimes. Burke was a Whig, after all.
I've never been able to like (or respect) Kirk, but the Southern Agrarians seem more worthy of attention. From my brief acquaintance with them, however, they seem romantic reactionaries. Perhaps a bit like young Disraeli's 'Young England' movement. Surely that is no more a viable political tradition in the States as it was in early 19th century England?
I agree, for the most part, with your negative assessment of Kirk, and would certainly recommend the Southern Agrarians instead.
I think that there is a bit of romantic nostalgia, though when many were writing (in the '20's and '30's), the South that they wrote about still existed. I share your doubts, but mine are probably more extreme. I doubt that there has been much of skeptical conservative political tradition in the US at all.
I'm still not completely certain what that means for American politics.
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