Where did all the conservatives go?

Burke, revolution, and the modern American political climate

The system is broken and should be torn down. This message is has been a shared refrain that has bridged the perceived divide between the progressive left and populist right for nearly a decade. Systemic racism, deep state corruption, late-stage capitalism, globalist influences, wealth inequality, obstructionist judges - the specific malady may differ, but the proposed solution is unsettlingly similar: burn it all down.

Many Americans have legitimate reasons to be unhappy with the recent trajectory. Healthcare costs, social unrest, a porous border - a litany of problems have seemed inadequately addressed, while a succession of administrations have lauded themselves as successful. COVID, political violence, and inflation are just a few of many crises in the 2020s that have led many on both sides to become convinced that the current political and social structures are inadequate to deal with the problems facing the nation.

The systems that Americans have built over the years - from the Constitution to government agencies like FEMA and alliances like NATO - are suddenly left with many critics and few defenders. Everyone, it seems, is arguing for unprecedented change.

Where are the conservatives?

Merriam Webster defines conservatism as the “inclination to preserve what is established: belief in the value of established and traditional practices in politics and society.” Neither political party currently provides a comfortable home for conservatives. The progressive left is, by definition, opposed to such preservation, while the modern Republican party has at its head a president who has openly declared that he is not conservative, but a man of “common sense.”

“A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.” - Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke was an 18th-century British political theorist and parliamentarian known to historians as the father of modern conservatism. Burke lived through two major revolutions, one American and one French. He sympathized with the American cause and ardently opposed the French revolutionaries, while accurately predicting that one movement would end in prosperity and the other in decades of bloodshed for all of Europe. His rationale for this was that the American Revolution was consistent with the existing values, laws, and legal principles of the colonists. The Magna Carta and English common law enumerated a series of individual rights and limited the power of the monarch. The American Revolution, in Burke’s view, began with the colonists simply demanding their due rights under the English system. When the Crown denied them those rights, they resisted. With the Declaration of Independence and later the US Constitution (which replaced the failed Articles of Confederation), Americans were preserving and improving upon the inheritance that was passed down to them by previous generations.

This stood in stark contrast to the French Revolution. In Burke’s view, the French Revolution ripped up the foundations of French society. Far from preserving and improving existing rights, that revolution aimed to establish a totally new legal, moral, and political framework based solely on etherial “rights.” This version of freedom would prove to be a vicious one, with nobility, clergy, merchants, and commoners alike falling victim to the mercies of a mob unmoored from the checks of traditional morals.

Modern readers may find his rhetoric a touch overwrought, but he did accurately predict that the revolution would convulse through waves of violence unchecked by social or religious controls. He also suspected the violence would not stop at the borders of France, and that eventually a strong man would step into the chaos to bring order. That man would be Napoleon.

We must all obey the great law of change. - Burke

Burke did not deny that systems of government needed to be able to change, improve, and adapt, but he cautioned that these changes should be calculated to preserve the legal and social inheritance that has been passed down from previous generations.

The birth of the US Constitution is a particularly good illustration of this principle. With it, the framers sought to address two problems at once. The first and most pressing was the utter failure of the first post-independence government, the Articles of Confederation, to address the crises of debt, inflation, trade policies, internal revolt, and foreign threats facing the young nation. The country needed a stronger central government to harness bickering states into effective action.

But the framers were conscious of preserving the individual liberties that they had so recently fought to protect against abuse. They reasoned (after much negotiation and compromise) that the new government must therefore be federalized and limited. The resulting document was a triumph of preservation and improvement.

With the Constitution, a dramatically more powerful central government would be empowered to address the many threats facing the fledgling United States. A national legislature could levy taxes, raise an army, honor treaties, and pass nationally binding laws. An elected executive could appoint judges, command the army, and enforce laws. A court system would review the actions of both to ensure that they did not violate the law of the land. Finally, a set of limits was placed on the power of the central government via the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the document.

This last addition demonstrated dual wisdom, for it not only codified existing rights to ensure they were protected for future generations against the actions of the government or electorate, but also established the precedent that the Constitution was a living document - able to be changed and amended as needed by a process that was built into the system itself from the start.

“Society is indeed a contract... it is a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are dead, and those who are to be born." - Edmund Burke

The framers who wrote, haggled over, and ratified the Constitution were brilliant and flawed men. They understood that they had a duty to those who came after to build a durable system that could be adapted as lessons were learned and needs arose. And indeed, the American system has changed. Seventeen more amendments and nearly 250 years of case law have been added since, yet the core elements of divided power and individual liberties remain.

Individual liberties do not absolve us of responsibility. Burke would point out that the freedoms and systems we take for granted were hard won for us by previous generations. Just as these were passed down to us, so we must consider what we are passing down to others.

This does not require us to bury our heads in the sand about the problems in our history or the flaws in our system. For example, a clear-eyed approach would acknowledge that there is work to do in many areas, such as expanding opportunities to all citizens, modernizing our immigration system, and ensuring individual liberties are protected in the age of big data and AI. But progress takes time, and it doesn’t happen without effort. We will never put that effort in if we don’t view the American system as worth working on.

Those who came before us poured blood, treasure, and effort into building the systems we have today, and we should consider the past, present, and future value of each before we throw it out. This applies to both the large and small scale - our Constitutional system as well as individual elements of government.

Let’s take FEMA as a smaller example. There is understandable concern about how FEMA has allocated funds during recent years, and its response to COVID could be characterized as disappointing at best. This has led several influential Republicans to call for its complete disbandment. But is that a wise course of action?

FEMA was created in 1979, the height of the Cold War, with the mission to increase civic readiness for natural and manmade disasters. FEMA does more than hand out blankets and water bottles during emergencies - it is responsible for training a network of staff and volunteers who can be activated in times of emergency. It is responsible for assisting in the distribution of federal aid during disasters, and has no law enforcement or command powers during disasters - those reside with the local and state governments.

One of the most important things FEMA provides is institutional experience and training. It has a robust training program for local and state emergency managers (or interested citizens like the present author) who can draw on experience and knowledge gained by being involved in the response to countless emergencies throughout the country. This experience and knowledge sharing is critical. Most municipalities in the United States do not experience frequent disasters, so FEMA’s training and practice exercises provide invaluable readiness for local responders.

FEMA does face challenges with funding and staffing. Like most emergency readiness agencies, funding contracts during times of calm, only to be expanded during disasters. Unfortunately, this is not conducive to a quick response - it takes time to stand up staff, train new hires, and purchase resources, time which can lead to a slower perceived response, and the perception that FEMA is incompetent.

Improvements should be made in defining the mission set, communicating expectations, budget accountability, and material readiness. But the reality is, the world is an increasingly dangerous place, and disasters, natural and man-made, are not going to stop anytime soon. It would be wise to have a framework for training and equipping local responses to these disasters, even if that framework needs improvement. Otherwise, we risk leaving ourselves and our children less prepared to respond to future unforeseen disasters. Burke’s principles would favor the reform of FEMA over its disbandment in this example.

He who saves his Country does not violate any Law - Donald Trump (in reference to a quote usually attributed to Napoleon)

"You can't just put a Band-Aid on a broken system. We need real change, not superficial fixes." - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Judgments based on long-standing traditions are more reliable than judgments of individuals with conflicting interests. - Edmund Burke

Burke would find little harbor in either of the current US political parties. Many Republicans would claim he failed to have the backbone to do what needs to be done to “save the country,” while progressive Democrats would say he is whitewashing history and enabling a racist system of oppression. Yet Burke’s own life told a different story. Though he was an ardent defender of the British system of his day, he was conscious of its flaws, as in his criticism of Britain’s handling of the Stamp Tax crisis in the colonies. He worked within the system to root out and stop oppression and corruption, such as when he brought light to the East Indian Company’s abuses on the Asian continent, or when he, as a Protestant, worked to pass legislation protecting the rights of Irish Catholics. These actions frequently drew ire from his own party and constituents (his support of Catholic rights was so unpopular he was once forced to draw a sword and face down an angry mob), but he rightly understood them as necessary to preserve, improve, and expand access to the benefits of the system he inherited.

This balance of preservation and improvement is sadly lacking from the American political scene at present. Neither party could be accused of being consistently conservative, and many presently malign conservative rhetoric as unrealistic. Yet it would be wise to consider Burke’s warnings on the results of the American Revolution vs those of the French in light of the present calls for dramatic action.

We are the inheritors of many great gifts in the United States, from natural resources to individual liberties, to a system of balanced government limited by the Constitution. We can work together to preserve and improve those systems, rather than rashly throwing them away. We owe it to those who came before and to those who will come after.