[Alex Linder]

"What makes Buckley's recruiting of [Russell] Kirk [author of #1 conservative post-war book The Conservative Mind (Regnery, 1953)] for National Review interesting -- indeed brilliant -- is that Kirk championed a form of conservatism that Buckley quite distinctly did not favor. Buckley was himself a libertarian, even if he had not yet so described himself. He was also what we today call a neoconservative and a religious conservative. Kirk's Burkeanism was incompatible with all three philosophies. ... ...in fact Buckley's and Kirk's visions were irreconcilable.

"If Kirk had not joined the magazine, he would likely have been an opponent. In many ways, he would have been a formidable adversary. He was erudite, thoughtful, and an excellent writer. He moved readers: His regular column for National Review probably generated more letters a than any other. By bringing Kirk within the National Review family, Buckley turned a potential adversary into an ally. Buckley's decision was more likely intuitive than deliberately Machiavellian, but either way, it was a brilliant move.

"Buckley saw conservatism as synonymous with both individualism and libertarianism. ... Kirk rejected individualism root and branch. 'Individualism is social atomism; conservatism is community of spirit,' he wrote. This is a bedrock difference (p. 111)

"First and foremost, Burkeans and traditional conservatives honor the traditions of their culture and nation. (I use those terms synonymously.) In this, they draw upon the philosophy that Edmund Burke articulated in Reflections on the Revolution in France. The central theme of Burke's great work might be summarized this way: Civilization depends upon the rule of law. The rule of law is constructed from more than a constitution and statutes; it is interwoven into the very fabric of society. That fabric is comprised of institutions, which have evolved over time and are the products of our ancestors' accumulated wisdom and experience. All institutions are imperfect and in need of constant care, improvement and perhaps even reform. But we cannot precipitously sweep them aside and replace them with what at the moment seems better without ripping the social fabric into shreds and destroying the rule of law. Our brightest minds cannot design entirely new institutions superior to the old. Mortals are unequal to that task. Wisdom is the product of experience -- not abstract theory -- and the wisdom embedded in institutions and law is not always evident to us. Even more importantly, newly created institutions will lack authority. We grant institutions authority, in significant part, because they were bequeathed to us by our ancestors. We honor them because of their history and traditions. In addition, institutions have particular classes of people who are devoted to them, as the best lawyers are devoted to the law, clerics to the church, scholars to their disciplines and universities. These people see themselves as taking part in a sacred, intergenerational covenant. They are responsible to preserve what their predecessors painstakingly fashioned, to ensure their institutions serve society in the present day, and to preserve and improve them for future generations. Indeed society itself is an intergenerational covenant. 'Society,' Burke wrote, 'becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.'

"Burkeans and traditional conservatives are, in a sense, societal Darwinists (as opposed to social Darwinists) who believe our institutions -- governmental and private -- have evolved over time to serve us well. Things that have not served society well have been discarded; things that worked well have been retained and refined. Because our lives are too short to allow the individual to acquire great knowledge, we must stand on the shoulders of our ancestors and work with contemporaries to assemble a collective wisdom. All of this is summed up by the aphorism The individual is foolish but the species is wise.

"Although Burkeans do not favor change for change's sake alone, they are not opposed to all change. They recognize that change is necessary because societies must adapt to new circumstances. paradoxically, therefore preservation requires change. But because we cannot always be sure why things have come to be as they are, we cannot always predict the consequences of change, and change should be made cautiously. As Burke put it, 'We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation.' Kirk added that 'conservatism is never more admirable than when it accepts changes it disapproves, with good grace, for the sake of a general conciliation.' (p. 112-113)

Well, there's your loser attitude right there. How has 'general conciliation' worked out on the racial question?

"Burke, however, did not merely accept change as something that was necessary for preservation. He did not believe that he lived in a perfect world, and he recognized improvements were possible. He was a reformer; indeed, at times he advocated radical reform. In 1792, for example, Burke proposed a detailed program to eliminate slavery in the British West Indies, even though it had become an integral part of the plantation system and abolition would require severe shocks to the economic and social systems. Still, he sought, as carefully as possible, to anticipate problems. His forty-two-point program would have immediately and dramatically improved the lot of the slaves, prepared them for emancipation, and then emancipated them. It included elaborate programs for housing, social services, and education. Burke thought not only about how individual former slaves could become economically self-sufficient, but also about how they could build strong families and communities. Every community, for example, needs leaders, and Burke would have sent the brightest black children (or at least the brightest boys) to London for first-rate college educations. He considered the needs of the former slave owners as well. Burke's proposal was not adopted, but it is a fine example of the Burkean method nonetheless: a readiness to undertake reform, even radical reform, to reduce suffering and improve society, combined with an effort to foresee and ameliorate the deleterious effects of those changes." (p. 113)

You can say that. You can also say Burke wasn't taking his own advice. He is famous for saying he doesn't think the individual should rely on his own private stock of wisdom, but that's for the other guys. He has perfect faith in his own ability to rewrite society from the ground up, which is just what he proposes re British West Indies. We can thus see, even in the father of modern conservatism, the seeds of the conservative's traditional inability to resist the left on race in any effective political way.