Conserving 18th Century Liberalism Isn’t Good Enough

Conservatism does not care about the past.  Well that’s a very odd thing to say.  Individual conservatives certainly care deeply about the past, what their forebears did, how things have always been done, and so forth.  But conservatism itself does not care.

Let’s first consider an obvious objection.  Conservative thinkers have long lauded the wisdom of the ages embodied in tradition and been wary of innovation precisely because it attempts to substitute for long experience what people in the mere present think best.  Better to endure some hardships preserving the old ways than to cast aside their unrecognized, and so irreplaceable, boons.

This is a fair consideration, but it does not prove that conservatism is concerned with the past.  Even the most severe conservatives will admit that tradition is not omniscient.  It was produced in and by the past, and the past was different from the way the future will be.  Societies must be able to adapt to changing circumstances.  Though tradition is a good, it is merely a part of the good of the society, and one that may be sacrificed when necessary to secure that greater good.

This key admission, a concession to reality, makes conservatism a poor adversary for progressivism.  The progressive can always claim that his proposals are necessary to secure the greater social good, fixing the evils caused by our benighted ancestors.  The conservative has no coherent rebuttal.  By his own admission, the goods provided by tradition are often unnoticed—because they are—but this is no defense.  We must act on what we know, not what we do not know.  Thus, the vague and inarticulate defense of tradition is no match for specific arguments and concrete evidence.

This does not mean that conservatism cannot defend against progressivism at all.  One shudders to think of how terrible things would have been just in the past century if there had been resistance at all to the advance of progressivism.  By simply existing and by exerting actual power instead of bad arguments, conservatives can do what they set out to do, to conserve, at least for a time.  And there is occasionally a more pragmatic argument in their favor: sometimes the advantages of tradition are immediately obvious.

The problem with conservatism comes out of that key word: conserve.  Something can only be conserved if it has substantive existence in the present.  You don’t conserve the ethos of Sparta in contemporary Greece, because no one still adheres to them.  Conservatism is about keeping aspects of the present alive.  Aspects of the present reaching back in time might be good candidates for conservation, but they might also be the most outdated and needing reform.

Conservatism amounts to nothing more than a preference for the way things are over the way other people want to make them.  Notice the tense: “the way things are” refers to the present.  Conservatism does not involve a preference for the way things were—past tense.  That preference is reaction.

Progressivism cares very much about the past.  The past is anathema, an obstacle to be overcome and a taint to be expunged.  The past must be trampled underfoot by the glorious march of progress.  The future is a concern for progressivism, but mostly as a direction.  What are we going to do in fifty years is not a question it seeks to answer.  Instead, it asks how are we are going to bring the present forward fifty years, or how are we going to keep it from going back to fifty years ago?

This view of time makes little sense to conservatives and reactionaries.  Nothing is going to stop fifty years from now from arrive—at least, nothing short of the end of the universe.  People will be born, live, and die.  They will face challenges and strive to overcome them; they will experience joys and try to preserve them.  Time is simply a feature of human existence.  But for progressives, time is like a schedule.  It has tasks that need to be accomplished, and deadlines that need to be met.  To dismantle a project is to literally go back in time.  To fail to keep up with the schedule is in and of itself an evil.  And eventually, after much striving and toil, we will reach the earthly paradise at the end of history.

What kind of ideology can stand against this madness?  Progressivism’s great strength is that it incorporates all periods of time into its worldview and associates its own advocacy with the progress of time itself.  Nothing anyone does will prevent the passage of time: tomorrow will come whether we like it or not.  Any ideology with a chance of opposing progressivism must have a similarly comprehensive worldview and an antithetical understanding of the temporal flow.  Conservatism does not provide such a worldview.  Neither does reaction, but neoreaction does.

Another weakness of conservatism, one that arises out of its primary concern for the present, is that it is within the flow of time itself.  Serious-looking men will speak somberly about the “eternal values” that conservatism seeks to support, but in fact, the actual content of conservatism varies substantially over time.  Fifty years ago, racial segregation in the United States was a conservative position, while today conservatives execrate it.  Conservatives used to advocate protectionism; free trade is the order of the day today.  Whenever progressivism wins a victory, the next generation of conservatives will grow up intending to conserve that bit of progress.  Progressivism could not have achieved anything like the successes it has attained in the past few centuries without conservatism ratifying those successes after a period of time.  Progressivism progresses, and conservatism conserves that progress.

Reaction, on the other hand, is timeless.  If someone wishes to return to the past, that past is not going anywhere, and it will still be there when the next generation arises, no matter the petty victories of progressivism.  Short of an expunging of the historical record and the establishment of an Orwellian propaganda machine, there will always be the possibility of studying the past, drawing inspiration from it, and wanting to reinstate old ideas and practices.  Reaction can stay the same over time.

Reaction clearly cares deeply about the past that it wishes to restore, and it also cares about the present that it wishes to refurbish.  However, it does not care about the future.  If reaction were to care about the future, it could only do so as a mirror of progressivism.  Instead of seeking to prevent backsliding and bring about progress, reaction seeks to forestall evolution and produce restoration.

It’s quite easy to understand why reaction has not been very popular.  Those dissatisfied with the present day more often look to progressivism, which offers deliverance from evil, while those who appreciate what they have turn to conservatism.  It takes a certain amount of imagination to even conceive of fighting for a past that no one alive has ever known.  In the modern day, the past also looks grimy by comparison with the present.  No one wants to live in a medieval town any more—those were disgusting.  People have difficulty dissociating the ideas and practices of an age with its level of technological development.  Thus, reaction has only occasionally managed to muster a serious opposition to progressivism.

Neoreaction stands a chance if it rejects the progressive theory of time.  We do not simply wish to return to a lost paradise—there never was such a thing.  Nor do we seek a future utopia.  Instead, we expect the future to be quite similar to the past.  Human nature being what it is, there will always be conflicts for power, wealth, and other desirable things.  There will always be violence and crime, ignorance and oppression.  There is no point in trying to abolish these things because it cannot be done.

Amidst the storm and clangor of battle, neoreaction plants its standard opposite progressivism.  Progressivism is destructive to society.  We do not think, as conservatives do, that there has already been enough progress—we think progress itself is misguided.  All the same, the world has changed a great deal in the past centuries.  We do not wish to simply turn the clock back, but to let it keep going forward on its own without our or anyone else’s “help.”  We believe that the traditions and ideas of our ancestors were useful, and to cast them aside has been folly.  And most importantly, we understand why this was and remains the case.

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