Chapter 20

Conservatives and Liberals

It might come as a surprise to American and British readers that today Conservative parties in Europe exist exclusively in countries which are predominantly “Protestant.” This is certainly true as far as the conservative label goes. One might, naturally, argue that the CSU (Christian Social Union) of Bavaria is more or less a conservative party and the same can be said of the Austrian Volkspartei. Before the Soviet expansion there was no “Conservative party” in either Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia. This is not only due to the “unpopularity” of the conservative cause—“conservative” to the popular mind means “no progress”—but also to the revolutionary and anarchical temper of the Catholic nations. The situation overseas is not very different either.1 And it is equally significant that, North or South, due to a similar lack of mass appeal the Liberal parties are small. The only sizeable liberal party exists in Switzerland which has escaped the impact of two World Wars.2 Today these liberal parties could as well be called denominationally neutral (if not slightly “anticlerical”), parties of an uppermiddle-class pattern. They are in many ways conservative. In the past, however, in the days of pre-, early, and old liberalism, the parties and factions under the liberal banner had often not only a grand bourgeois but even an aristocratic character. Liberal monarchs were not rare, not even in the House of Hapsburg—witness Joseph II,3 Leopold II, Franz Josef. Frederick II of Prussia and Catherine II of Russia were liberals in a sense, and personal friends of Voltaire4 that arch-preliberal. The prototype of the autocratic, nay, tyrannic “liberalizer” was, of course, Peter the Great.5 Like Atatürk, he hanged people because they did not want to become “free,” “modern,” “progressive.” The desire to compel change can lead to far greater oppression than the reluctance toward change. This is not surprising because the ordinary man is not at all eager to change existing conditions, until or unless he is in desperate straits. For this reason alone revolutions of the “Progressivists” have resulted in worse bloodshed than traditional ones. The pressure they had to apply was always much greater. The new shoe always pinches more than the old one.

At the same time it is obvious that the conservative aim cannot be a totally static world, because that is undesirable and impossible. It would be inhuman. The “state” and “society” of the ants, the termites, or the bees are completely immutable. Man is always faced with change—be it revolutionary (involving destruction) or evolutionary. If evolution is not revolution in slow motion (this also exists) it will be characterized by accretion and synthesis; and if it does move in the right direction, it can indeed be called “progress.” In the Church, for instance, this would be the profectus ecclesiae of which more than fifteen hundred years ago St. Vincent of Lérins spoke in his Commonitorium. An evolution of this sort is necessary and salutary. There must be action among men and there must be thought, and with these two elements in the Western World change is unavoidable. The problem is to achieve organic progress, which means the preservation of real values, the resuscitation of past, forgotten or abandoned values, and the addition of new values harmonizing with the patrimony we have received. Of course not everything that is old or taken over from the preceding generation is good; not everything seemingly brand new is bad. (There is very little that is brand new!) Man is created in the image of God, he is the measure,6 he has to evaluate the concrete things and the abstract thoughts he encounters. The Christian is “priest and king.” He participates in the Royal Priesthood of all believers.7 He is emphatically not a parrot or an automaton, not a slave or an IBM machine.

Nor is the Christian a reactionary. Those who use the conservative label are, at times, unfortunately mere reactionaries, which means that they react with hostility against new trends, often against all new trends. There are many aspects to Luther, but as an enemy of the Renaissance and of Humanism he was a reactionary. There is one aspect to Metternich which is also reactionary. (Other aspects make him a product of Enlightenment,8 others a prophet and seer of extraordinary perception.) In other words, there are “conservatives” who in reality react only negatively to existing trends. Usually such an attitude is sentimental rather than rational, or it is merely based on rationalizations of sentiments and emphatically not on cold reason. The case of the reactionary is very similar if not identical to that of the “uncommitted leftist” who is uncritical (and in this word lies the key) toward the order of the day, who says uncritically “yes” to currents or events which he believes to be leading to his utopia. (Sometimes he cheats and adjusts his utopias to the “straws in the wind.”) In other words, the reactionary is a no-man and the non-Marxist leftist is a yes-man. This is the reason why I personally prefer the reactionary as a representative of is a yes-man. This is the reason why the human race to the leftist, the “liberal” in the debased and perverted American usage. I respect more the man who wants to swim against the stream than the one who is determined to ride “the wave of the future.” After all, he who wants to reach the sources has to swim against the current: There is always something honorable in swimming against the current—even if it is quixotic. I also find somewhat more reasonable the man who looks backward (into the known) than the one who pretends to know all about the future, which is unknown and, except for the seer, unknowable. I consider more rational the person who clings to existing foundations or to a cellar than the man who tries to climb roofs over nonexistent buildings.

Still, the reactionary position should be rejected as antirational. Reason rather than sentiment is the distinguishing mark separating man from beast. Naturally reason, wrongly employed, perverted and under the yoke of emotions, is worse than mere sentimentalism9—and this, precisely, was the “rationalism” of the Enlightenment. God created man, after all, in such a way that his head is above his heart.

It is, however, this false rationalism of the dying eighteenth century10 which created a reaction against reason, and this particular reaction again affected not only the nascent conservative camp of the early nineteenth century but even the Catholic Church. (One cannot blame the faiths of the Reformation for their attitude, since antirationalism belongs organically to their theology.)11 Instances of anti-intellectualism (which is closely related to antirationalism) in Catholic theology are the more surprising since scholasticism is the grandfather of modern rationalism.12 The revival of scholasticism in Catholic theology was delayed until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The Encyclical Aeterni Patris was promulgated in 1879. Then, as we know, there appeared in Catholic theology a scholastic ubiquity and exclusiveness which were particularly noticeable in America.13

When we speak of conservatism on the European Continent we are talking not only about a movement (though not a mass movement) but also about a coherent set of ideas. Whereas the term movement might be criticized because it imparts the notion of a large number of people with identical sentiments developing a dynamism based on numbers, there can be no doubt that Continental conservatism represents a doctrine or, much better, a variety of related doctrines. It would not be completely illegitimate to talk, horribile dictu about an “ideology,” a Weltanschauung, mirovozzreniye,14 or világnézet. Continental conservatism also represents an effort to establish a synthesis of irrational and rational values in which the irrational values are never antirational but belong to the category of suprarationality, to a realm which has not been conquered intellectually and perhaps might never fall entirely under the sway of human reason. Continental conservatism represents a philosophy of life, a practical philosophy, yet one to be exercised by a philosopher as Unamuno ideally conceived him: “Man ought to be a philosopher not only with his reason, but also with his will, his sentiments, his flesh and his senses, with his whole soul and his whole body.”15 In other words, Continental conservatism is intellectual though not cerebralist. Joseph de Maistre, one of the first systematic conservatives, wrote in his “Letter to a Royalist from Savoy”: “You must know how to be royalists: In the past this conviction was based on an instinct; today it is scientific.”16

The term conservatif, conservateur in the political sense, like the term liberal, originated on the Continent. The French were the inventors, and when it was introduced in Britain for party purposes in the 1830s, it was not accepted without a struggle. Sir Robert Peel protested against this label for the reformed Tory Party as “un-English,” but he yielded later and used the un-English term. An endeavor was made to rename the Tories “Constitutionalists” and this effort was repeated in the 1880s but without success. Lord Randolph Churchill, who belonged to the leftmost wing of the Conservative party, called himself a “democratic Tory.” Today parties calling themselves conservative exist in Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and Canada. Then there are conservative parties which use other labels. The Anti-Revolutionary party of the Netherlands is Calvinist in inspiration and most decidedly conservative in outlook. The Monarchist parties of Italy are conservative and so are, up to a point, the Liberal parties of Australia, Italy, and India (i.e., “Swatantra”). Italy’s Democristiani and the Christian-Social party of Belgium have conservative wings. Conservative thought, however, exists in many other countries, layers, and groups, especially in “study circles,” Kreise, especially in Germany. Quite a number of periodicals are conservative in policy and appeal.

Yet, as the reader probably senses, conservatism on the Continent and in Britain are not the same. Systemization and absolutism in thought are alien to the relativistic post-Protestant mind and just as the Labour party by and large was the first to drop orthodox Marxism, British conservatives, representing a party with its roots deep in British soil, eschewed at the very beginning the notion that a conservative could espouse a whole coherent body of doctrine. The Conservative, then, is a gentleman, and a gentleman (British version) is not in need of elaborate ratiocinations. Life to him is a series of attitudes, a way of behavior, an instinctive knowledge of the right thing to do, a positive reaction to everything “natural” (in a deeper sense), and a healthy suspicion of “constructions,” of length and involved argumentation, of intellectual formulations of what to him is obvious. Needless to say, there is much that is aristocratic about the British Conservative, much that Britain consciously-subconsciously inherits from Greek kalokagathia .17 This is not so on the Continent where the predominant religion is Catholic, where the rational scholastic background is stronger, where the “cleric” had an influence at least equal to if not greater than the nobleman’s. Yet the “cleric” was originally not only a priest but also professor. The nobility, moreover, in some countries (Italy, for instance) was always strongly urbanized and not agrarian. There exists a certain tendency in various aristocracies to be leery of intellectuality, a tendency which, more often than not, has a military or agrarian background. But it is strongly developed only in the British upper crust18 (and, for good reasons, is absent in the Boston Brahmin set which is neither military nor markedly agrarian, but urban).

Commercialism and industry, which want to “get things done,” are also frequently “anti-intellectual.” Here we get the clash between the “doers” and the “talkers.” This combination of an industrial-commercial with an agrarian-military-naval upper crust created a general anti-intellectual atmosphere in Britain, and this inevitably had a greater impact on the conservatives than on the leftist (Laborite) attitude. The Laborites as a Socialist party are a Continental if not an international party—and this in spite of their amazing parochialism. There is such a thing as the parochially minded internationalist, and he is indeed also to be found in America, which a German author once called a Grossinsel, a gigantic island wedged in between three oceans and the Caribbean.

What we have said of Britain is true mutatis mutandis of the United States. The intellectualized aristocracy of the United States consists even today only of thin layers on the East Coast, and here and there in the rest of the country. The captains of industry and the big traders are not excessively given to thought and art. Therefore the intellectual life of America gets little human, little moral, though often a substantial material aid from them, and, unfortunately, they do not often reflect whom and what they are supporting. The result is that intellectual and artistic life in the United States is not tied to conservative thought, and conservatives until very recently were not overly interested in intellectual and artistic affairs. All this had nothing to do with the totally fallacious concept of the “young nation” which allegedly has to “mature” in order to develop a dynamic intellectual and artistic life. (Luxor, Karnak, Mohenjo-Daro are “young,” the Acropolis is older, present-day American culture and civilization—as an integral part of the West—are very old because they have such a long prehistory!) An Oxford don (just like a “long-haired” American professor) is always in danger of appearing as a funny figure to his countrymen. A professor of the Sorbonne, on the other hand, until recently was a demigod, a member of the French Academy a god. And the son of a Ruhr industrialist who is a self-made man will consider it natural that he study to become a doctor utriusque iuris (doctor of civil and canonic law). The obsession with la pensée, les lettres et les arts in France is just as great as the preoccupation with Kultur in Germany or with Kul’tura in Russia.

Since the intellectual will always have a natural inner leaning towards systemized thought, the Continental conservative will tend in the same direction. In other words, he will be an ideologist. (This term, by the way, has been coined by Napoleon, the devoted empiricist.) Thus it would not be surprising to see a German book called Die Weltanschauung eines Konservatives whereas it would be rather odd to find one entitled The Conservative Ideology written or published in America or Britain. Here let us return to our question: “Is there really a basic difference between Anglo-Saxon and Continental conservatism?” And if the difference is not so marked: “Are we faced with two ideologies, one systematic and the other loosely constructed?” Geography in these matters is of importance. The word Tory, after all, originally had an Irish and Catholic (Jacobite) implication. The term Whig is Scottish and Presbyterian. The word conservative in its political implications was born in France, the word liberal in Spain, the word socialist in England.19 All this, perhaps, is not so accidental.

This introduction is necessary to remind the American and the British reader that the formulations, “Conservatism is opposed to all ideology” and “Conservativism is alien to intellectuality” have only local significance. From these formulations to John Stuart Mill’s high-handed declaration that the Conservative party is the “stupid party,” the distance is not so very great.

Conservativism on the Continent was based on disciplined thought from the start. Chronologically it falls into the period of late Romanticism and opposes ideas and ideologies emanating from the sentimental disorders of early Romanticism. Its opponent is the French Revolution (including the Napoleonic aftermath) with its egalitarianism, nationalism, and laicism. But, as it so often happens in the battle of ideas, the good old principle fas est ab hoste doceri is applied a great deal too liberally, with the result that early nineteenth-century conservativism has a rigidity and harshness reminding us of the hard school through which these early conservatives had to go: the school of the French Revolution and the interminable sanguinary wars caused by the Napoleonic aftermath.20 Their school, as we said, was tough and therefore an element of severity and repression characterizes early conservativism, a certain belief in force if not in brutality, an unwillingness to enter any sort of dialogue or to conduct a gentle and shrewd reeducation of its opponents. One does not discuss with assassins from whom one never expected humaneness, leniency, or tolerance.21 They must be mastered, fought, jailed and, if worst comes to worst, locked up or exiled. In view of the horrors of the French Revolution and Napoleon’s trail of blood all over Europe from the gates of Lisbon to the heart of Moscow, this attitude is not surprising.

Continental conservatism was liberal only inasfar as it was a continuation of the Ancien Régime—which it was only in parts. Yet “popular movements,” movements of the masses, are automatically more sanguinary than reactions coming from small elitarian minorities. The collectivist left always wanted and, if in power, has tried to exterminate minorities—royalty, aristocrats, priests, “bourgeoisie,” intellectuals, Jews, “capitalists,” bankers. It never happened the other way round. There never has been an attempt from the most fanatical reactionaries to exterminate workers or farmers. And something similar is true of verbal warfare. There exists a whole polemical literature charging minorities with every imaginable or unimaginable vice and describing in detail their evil character. Yet who would dare to denounce the character of one’s own country’s entire working class? Or its peasantry? In his memoirs a former butler might denigrate a duke (or, even better, a duchess) who once employed him: a lovely piece of scandal titillating the prurient. But what duke would write an abusive book about his former butler? This, indeed, would be considered a total denial of the principle of noblesse oblige.

Let us admit that the older conservativism on the Continent had a strongly authoritarian bent and that it operated with affirmations which brooked no discussion. Much of conservative thought had been stimulated by Edmund Burke whose speeches and letters had been translated into several languages, but this Whig infusion did not generate much flexibility. The idea that one could rule fruitfully, effectively and efficiently through an executive of policemen, gendarmes, informers, and jail wardens was (let us admit it) pretty widespread. This is the way Metternich was running Central Europe. Foreign armies intervening to crush local revolts did the rest. Yet early conservatism, we must bear in mind, was only authoritarian: It was never totalitarian. Its weakness was that the pendulum had turned: The image of man was no longer Roussellian. Europe had practically gone back to Calvin without having stopped at St. Thomas Aquinas.

Unfortunately, as we see, the worm of reaction was at work in early conservatism. It was unfriendly to popular representation in many forms22 and had a bias against republican forms of government under almost any circumstances. Thus the Congress of Vienna (which strongly reflected conservative feelings and views) transformed the Dutch Republic with its hereditary stadholder into a kingdom reuniting the two constituent parts of the Netherlands which had been separated since 1579. The old Italian aristocratic republics of Venice and Genoa were incorporated into neighboring countries and the only remaining independent republic in Europe was Switzerland. (There were, of course, the small German city republics, and Cracow, San Marino, and Andorra—places of no importance.)23 Yet the total identification of monarchy with the conservative principle was not really conservative. The establishment of the Kingdom of the Netherlands was a “reactionary” deed (the resuscitation of an order of the remote past)24 and the incorporations of Venice and Genoa into Austria and Sardinia-Piedmont were contrary to tradition. As Constantin Frantz, that great Prussian “anti-Prussia” conservative, pointed out, the reconfirmation of the partition of Poland was the great crime of the Congress of Vienna, partly because it destroyed one of the largest realms in Europe, partly because the redrawn demarcation lines of the partition—the fourth—pushed the Russian borders right into the heart of the continent and thus made Russia the arbiter of the larger part of Europe for a long time. In the reconfirmation of Poland’s partition an antirepublicanism of the leaders at the Vienna Congress played an important role. Aristocratic Poland was an elective monarchy, a rzeczpospolita (republic, commonwealth). The reaction of the Poles to this state of affairs was, as one could expect, leftist and republican. A very large sector of the Polish lower nobility, the szlachta, became socialistic. Józef Pilsudski, the great general, “militarist,” and dictator, was formally almost all of his life a leading member of the Polish Socialist party, which was filled with noblemen who were sentimentally conservative and intellectually leftist.25

Popular representation, the Diets of old in most parts of Europe, was a traditional institution, whereas the modern parliaments made up of parties were decidedly not. Yet the French Revolution had dishonored, in the eyes of many an early conservative, the very idea of representation, so that only local representations composed of the various estates did survive. The French parlements never reappeared. As a result we see that the early conservatives had cast their lot with the absolute monarchy, and this Gerlach, a great conservative, called quite rightly “the Revolution from above.” In other words, the early conservatives conveniently forgot that mixed government and not absolute government is the great Western political tradition. The conservative concept of monarchy envisages the king in a dialogue with the people whom he patriarchally (but not paternalistically) treats as his children—but as adult children and not as minors. The trauma caused by the howling mob of Paris had gone too deep.

Yet the early conservatives were antinationalistic and in this respect they had reacted in a very healthy way against the nationalism of the French Revolution, this mass outbreak of ethnic identitarianism. French (ethnic) nationalism had provoked German nationalism and nationalisms fostered also by German Romanticism (Herder!) sprang up in every nook and corner. People speaking the same language now wanted to live in one country under one government, as nation une et indivisible. Against this “herdist” outbreak Metternich reacted as violently as the Hohenzollerns, Frederick William III, and Frederick William IV. This new nationalism of a leftist character was rampant among the German students who were also enthralled by democratic and republican ideas: These young men, who had in many cases fought against France, now proved that they were taken with identitarian, with leftist ideas—though not quite as much as their former enemies. And the way conservative governments repressed their movements showed that even these leaders had been affected by the tyrannical spirit of the French Revolution. Force called for Force.

In purely human terms the young German republican-minded nationalists merit our sympathies. They sensed, as the supporters of leftist movements always do, the “dawn of a new Age.” They had that juvenile enthusiasm for turning a new page in the book of history. The fate of a man such as Karl Ludwig Sand, the student who murdered A. von Kotzebue,26 seeing in that German playwright the worst enemy of nationalist-minded Germandom, is very moving.27 There can be little doubt about the idealism animating these young Germans at that time. Yet we should not forget that these currents, which Metternich and his collaborators tried to suppress and eradicate, led to a very evil evolution at whose end we can clearly see the big leftist movements of our age, socialism, communism, and above all National Socialism which, naturally, saw in the nationalist movement of the post-Napoleonic period one of its spiritual ancestors.

A typical representative of this new nationalism, of this leftist ethnic collectivism copied from the French Revolution was Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, who developed mass calisthenics in Germany, which he called Turnen. He also inspired a fanatical notion of Germanism. Jahn invented an “old Germanic” costume and during the Prussian-Austrian-Russian occupation of Paris he walked, lonely, furiously, aggressively through the streets of Paris with crossed arms and his long hair falling over his shoulders. He tried to climb the Arc de Triomphe to knock the tuba out of the hands of the symbol of Victory. Inside Germany this very popular man waged a one-man war against the French language, and declared that for a young girl to learn French was just as wicked as to become a prostitute.28

This very popular demagogue was later arrested by the Prussian authorities, jailed for several years, but acquitted in a public trial.

Jarcke, the great Prussian Austrophile, comments very rightly on German nationalism, especially the type fostered by Jahn and Arndt, as an imitation of French patterns. He also hinted at the possibility that the Slavs, in turn, would copy the Germans—as indeed they did.29 The German calisthenic associations (Turnvereine) with their rhythmic mass performances and their nationalistic choral singing, found enthusiastic imitators among the Western Slavs whose “Falcon Leagues” (Sokol) were nationalistic, democratic, and socialistic in their ideology. The sokol-slets (“Falcon Flights”), gigantic mass performances in Prague, Zagreb, Laibach, and Belgrade, were later taken over under new names by the Communist masters of these countries. Their identitarian character is most evident:30 The individual appears merely as a cog, as a constituent part of a whole, pronouncing identical words, making identical movements in performances which aim to overwhelm by their size. Ethnic nationalism, as the early conservatives saw very clearly, would destroy the whole fabric of Europe and would even act as social dynamite because in many areas the ethnic units though mixed, still represent specific classes. In a place such as Brünn, capital of Moravia—a typical example—the burgher class was solidly German and only the lower social layers were Czech. Now, with the rise of nationalism, replacing the geographic and dynastic patriotism of an earlier period, they viewed each other with a twofold hostility. In East Central Europe we encounter situations where class, language, and religion form a triple pattern filled with explosive possibilities.

In their antinationalism the early conservatives were certainly right. They were less right, however, in their gradual acceptance of another evil gift of the French Revolution: conscription. This institution rests on the democratic notion that everybody has the same rights. And people who have the same rights have the same duties. Taine spoke about the French citoyen who held in his hand the ballot and therefore was burdened with the knapsack. Militarism, as an ism, was really born with the French Revolution, and it is evident that, if a major power introduces conscription, its neighbors, in self-defense, have to do the same. (Luckily, Britain, protected by her fleet and profoundly liberal, had to introduce conscription for the first time only in 1916.) With this new order ended the era of the old-fashioned cabinet war, a war between mere governments employing armies of volunteers who fought for money. These “mercenaries”31 were professionals who liked soldiering as a career and usually picked a good general.

These limited wars came to an end with the French Revolution. And since all able-bodied men had to serve, whether they had a natural talent and enthusiasm for war or not, they and their families had to be propagandized and indoctrinated. Now nation was pitted against nation, not merely government against government. This new concept of total war was the natural result of the two totalitarian trends toward democracy and toward identitarian nationalism.32 Another “democratization” and escalation of warfare took place in World War II when not only civilians were massacred from the air, but also noncombatants were encouraged to attack occupation armies. Thus the partizani of the Russian Civil War became the new pattern: The murder of the occupants resulted in the shooting of hostages and other atrocities. Amid the applause of the American and the British public and the enthusiasm of their press a new level in savagery had been reached.

The early conservatives were not fully aware of this basic deterioration. No real efforts were made in Europe to return to the old system of professional armies. The leaders liked the idea of oversized military establishments. Later even the old antinationalist attitude was given up. This evolution was largely due to the rise of Marxism with its accent on “internationalism.” With the decline of early liberalism and its replacement with old liberalism even the word liberty became more and more suspect. Had not liberty been one of the slogans of the French Revolution with its triple program of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity? The fact that liberty was almost immediately betrayed by the Revolution was slowly forgotten. Economic freedom, a free market economy, world trade—all these became increasingly unpopular with European conservatives who, without realizing it, assumed increasingly reactionary traits by just saying “no” to the prevailing currents.

These changes in the old European conservatism cannot be entirely understood without bearing in mind that its leadership consisted less and less of intellectuals,33 more and more of men with agrarian roots: landed gentry (with second sons in the army) and farmers. Thus by the end of the nineteenth century anti-intellectual trends were clearly noticeable and with them a fair amount of anti-Jewish feeling.34 Many Jews, for social, religious, and historical reasons, preferred old liberalism or even socialism to a political outlook with a strongly Christian background. While the Jewish elites remained attached to monarchy, the rank and file of the European Jewry, very much to their undoing, were receptive to democratic and republican ideas.35 With the aftermath of World War I we find in Germany, for instance, a party such as the Deutschnationale Volkspartei which figures in the public mind as the conservative party of the Weimar Republic. Upon closer examination we find, however, that very few of its tenets could have been called conservative. The party was militaristic and nationalistic. Its feeling for the great traditions did not extend beyond the nineteenth century. Again this has to be understood historically. The Second German Reich, founded in 1871 in the Hall of Mirrors of Versailles, was very definitely what real conservatives called a “child of the Revolution,” referring to the spirit of destruction which started with 1789. A restoration of Old Germany in a conservative spirit could only have been carried out by Vienna and not by Berlin, by the Hapsburgs and not by the Hohenzollerns, by the Old South and the Old West (Vienna, Frankfurt, Aixla-Chapelle) and not by the colonial Northeast. (Historic Prussia36 lay outside the borders of the Holy Roman Empire, which is Germany’s “First Empire.”) The mere idea of a “national monarchy” is nonconservative.37 For this very reason Bismarck, himself a Prussian Junker, was opposed by the Prussian conservative diehards. Earlier, Friedrich Wilhelm IV had flatly rejected the idea of becoming German emperor as long as the Hapsburgs were around. And for all these reasons genuine conservatism in North Germany had no real parliamentary representation—no more than Italian conservatism, because Italy’s unity also had a revolutionary, anticonservative background. In Italy it was even impossible to concoct that curious brew of conservatism and nationalism which we have seen in Germany. Italian nationalism rests more obviously than any other on leftist foundations: Mazzini, Garibaldi, Gioberti, and the House of Savoy (formally excommunicated from the Catholic Church between 1870 and 1929).

In France, however, Charles Maurras succeeded in establishing a synthesis of some sort of conservativism, monarchism, nationalism, and agnosticism. It was only a matter of time until this weird concoction was condemned by Rome and it happened in the pontificate of Pius XI.38 Maurras, who, in spite of his hatred of the Germans, collaborated with the Nazi occupants and spent several years in the jails of the Fourth Republic, was reconciled with the Church before he died. The newspaper Action Française was taken off the Index in summer 1939 by Pius XII.

Maurras was a brilliant man with deep insights, but he had basically an un-Christian mind. People of all age groups supported him fanatically and faithfully. Yet it is a painful question whether we can call him a conservative. A certain German school of thought, interestingly enough, insists that Christianity and conservatism are mutually exclusive, because Christianity has a “linear” and conservativism a “circular” concept of existence.39 Now, it is true that Christianity thinks in terms of Creation, Incarnation, Salvation, a Day of Judgment: Christianity believes in time, in an unfolding of truth, in a historical mutation. Yet, is conservatism a Weltanschauung according to which past, present and future are blotted out, and there is no “fulfillment”?

We are back to the problem posed at the beginning of this chapter. In the earlier parts of the book we have defined democracy, totalitarianism, and liberalism. The definition of conservatism is all the more difficult because this term bears a relation to time and space. Can it perhaps be understood only in a framework of Historicism? What about a Japanese conservative? Would he have to oppose Christianity in the name of Buddhism? Or Buddhism in favor of Shintoism?40 If this is the case, then conservatism becomes a completely relative term, unlike democracy which always and everywhere means equality and majority rule, or liberalism which stands for a maximum of personal liberty. I am afraid that conservatism in a purely etymological sense can only be understood in the context of a given culture and civilization. If we, on the other hand, speak here about conservatism, we can only do so in referring to a set of values which are perennial in our Christian civilization,41 values which we want to conserve, which we want to defend not only because we like them, because they are congenial to us, but also we carry the deep conviction that they are true. And if they are true, they are true independently of time and space.

Naturally the true and beautiful (they are not necessarily identical) can appear in different “outward” forms. The cathedral of Trondhjem in Norway and the Cathedral of Mexico City are very different in form and expression. They were built in different ages. They have to be loved and respected across national boundaries. There are, on the other hand, limits to our worldwide acceptance of other values. A highly conservative Portuguese administrator in central Angola might advocate the building of a courthouse in an African style but he will not “respect” the age-old tradition of sacrificing small children.

Talking about conservatism in practical, programmatic terms, we must insist that we are talking about our notion of conservatism. As we have seen, the term itself is not a very lucky one. In Neues Abendland,42 a defunct German conservative review, the proposition was once made to use instead of the word conservative the complicated triple adjective “Christian, liberty-loving, tradition-connecting” (christlichfreiheitlich-traditionsanknüpfend). One might argue that the middle term (liberty-loving) is superfluous because this postulate is implicit in the Christian concept of the person. Somebody might insist that for the sake of a more universal appeal “Christian” should be supplemented with “Judaeo-Hellenic,” but the Synagogue is implicit in the Church: There is no New Testament without the Old and no Christian theology; no Christianity as we know it, without the Hellenic, Platonic, Aristotelian, and Patristic background. It also might be argued that there were and are Jews who are conservatives without being Christians.43 It is surely significant that they were and are widely read in Christian writings. I am thinking here of men like Franz Werfel, Uriel Birnbaum, Martin Buber, Thomas Chajmowicz, Hans Joachim Schoeps, Raymond Aron, Robert Aron.44 (I am not thinking of the Jews who have become Christian and conservative thinkers. Among them we would have to name Friedrich Julius Stahl, founder of Prussian conservatism, Benjamin Disraeli who became Lord Beaconsfield, René Schwob, Hermann Borchardt, Daniel Halévy, and many others.) Still, “historically” (i.e., in its development), ever since the beginning of the nineteenth century, conservatism existed in the affirmation of Christian values. Even Charles Maurras, personally through most of his life an agnostic and a nationalist, was a “fellow traveler” of Christianity.45 Even the conservative Jews, as intelligent persons, know that, as a small minority they themselves have to refer to Christian semantics. Historically speaking it was, after all, an attack against the Christian order not by noble, but by ignoble savages that made conservatism necessary—primarily as a restatement of values under attack.46 In this sense—important to remember—conservatism is not an “ism” but the systematization and reaffirmation of the permanent values of Western culture and civilization.47

In the domain of “social thought,” early conservatism was strongly determined by two factors: the opposition against preliberalism and old liberalism (paleoliberalism), the opposition against deism and laissezfaire (as well as against Guizot’s Enrichissez vous!)48 which resulted in a very receptive mood for social reforms and a negative attitude against a far-reaching economic freedom. It is in matters like these that we can sense the American errors and misconceptions about earlier conservatism in Europe. (There are others about the New Conservatism.) The old agrarian-aristocratic leadership in conservatism demanded from the manufacturers that they should treat the workers in the same patriarchal way as they treated their house servants and frequently their agricultural laborers. In Sweden Socialists and Conservatives often voted together against the Liberals in these matters. The founders of modern “Christian Social Thought” are almost without exception members of the first two estates.49 Baron Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, Bishop of Mayenee, Count Georg Hertling, Baron Vogelsang, Prince Alois Liechtenstein, Count János Zichy, Vicomte A. de Villeneuve-Bargemont, Count Albert de Mun, Father Heinrich Pesch, S. J. Naturally there are exceptions: Frederic Le Play and the highly sentimental Frederic Ozanam.

Social reforms in the sense of “social security”—the insurance of the workers first against accidents and sickness, then against old age and unemployment—started more or less in Central Europe under the direction of the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns. Conservative forces of a paternalistic character were behind these innovations. As a matter of fact, the violent dissent between William II and Bismarck (a national liberal) on the whole labor question led directly to the break between the two.50 (There were, needless to say, also subtle personal reasons for “Dropping the Pilot.”) Joseph A. Schumpeter in his Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy describes how William II, aided by “conservative civil servants” (von Berlepsch, Count Posadowsky), inaugurated these changes: “The monarchy, after having for a time given in to economic liberalism [Manchesterism, as its critics called it], simply returned to its old traditions by doing—mutatis mutandis—for the workmen what it had previously done for the peasants.51 The civil service, much more developed and much more powerful than in England, provided excellent administration machinery as well as the ideas and the drafting skill for legislation. And this civil service was at least as amenable to proposals of social reform as was the English one. Largely consisting of impecunious Junkers, entirely devoted to their duty, well educated and informed, highly critical of the capitalist bourgeoisie, it took to the task as the fish takes to water.”52

In retrospect we might say that these reforms were an error because the worker was treated as a child and his welfare was placed in the hands of the State rather than his own. But taking the conservative outlook of the fìn-de-siècle and the early twentieth century into consideration, the reforms could be expected as some sort of Continental version of “democratic Toryism.” The American reader, in this connection must remember that royalty is distinguished from nobility, and that agrarian reforms might have the full backing of the crown. He also has to bear in mind that royalty and nobility are not by nature friendly to the plutocracy, that the nobleman on the Continent dislikes the manufacturer and the banker, and, one should add, that “the university” has a position apart while the clergy was usually torn between populism and royalism. Today royalism is no longer a temptation. A large part of the clergy (including their theological inspirators) are hell-bent on ingratiating themselves with their “customers.”

Nor should one think for a moment that the Russian autocracy was hostile to the working class. In the absolute monarchy until 1905 there was no special love lost between the emperors and the manufacturers. Here the German case was repeated. Subjects, according to monarchist theory, are “equidistant”53 from the sovereign, who might socially attract aristocrats (or even plutocrats)54 to his court but might have a better political understanding with other layers. The termination of serfdom, which had prevailed over a large part of European (Central Western) Russia, was the work of Alexander II. The first efforts to establish trade unions under Nicholas II were made by the secret police, the Okhrana, to prevent the exploitation of the workers. Very comprehensive laws to protect the laborers were issued in Russia as early as the reign of Anna Leopoldovna in 1741.55

Still, if we try to visualize conservatism on the Continent before 1914 or even before 1933, the general picture we get is not too reassuring. The conservatives of that age are largely negativists. In opposing a naive and utopian pacifism, they show themselves in favor of conscription and militarism. In opposing an inane humanitarianism they become spokesmen of an excessively disciplinarian outlook and defenders of physical and capital punishment.56 In rejecting the internationalism of Socialists and Communists they accept the identitarian nationalism of the left. Despising an inefficient and demagogical democracy, they tolerate tyranny and dictatorship. Faced with the Jewish old liberalism alliance they often adopt anti-Semitism. Seeing the rapid growth of big business, of industry and finance, they develop an agrarian hatred for a free economy. Revolted by a sterile leftist intellectualism they become pure sentimentalists. It is almost always a negation that determines their stand and gives them a “reactionary” character. While often, though not always, sympathizing with their “no,” one misses a constructive, positive stand.

The people calling themselves conservatives surely were not negativists in all matters. In this or that domain they had preserved their sense of what we have called the perennial values of the West. They did make a stand for local institutions and traditions against the centralizing tendencies. They defended religion, knowing that without religious foundations our civilization57 would neither exist nor last. They had no illusions about the dangers of popular representation and were on the Continent fully aware that it was not the task of the monarch to be merely a sacred cow: It was his duty to refuse his signature to a law he could not accept in good conscience. (This, after all, is the reason he receives a civil list.) Conservatives knew that the very poor had to be helped and to be protected against exploitation—just as those envied by the mobs needed safety and security. Yet they saw the liberals as just as much their enemies as the Socialists and were convinced that Marx was merely the answer to the egotism and the avarice of the liberal capitalist—a gross oversimplification yet solemnly believed by the conservative Christian world (Another fausse idée claire, de Tocqueville would have exclaimed, but it was not totally lacking in substance.)58

It is true that in the 1920s and 1930s state and society, torn within the framework of parliamentarism by bitter strife, were heading for disaster and that some conservatives were looking desperately for ideas which might “sway the masses.” Elections could be won only by majorities, and parliamentary majorities served as the basis for cabinet choices, yet it was evident on the Continent that conservatism could hardly act as a dynamic idea and grip the multitudes. Wherever conservative parties existed, they were too small to be decisive. In short, conservatism could not really engage in demagoguery. It could not promise to nationalize the factories, to expropriate the land, to abolish military service, to lower the standards of school examinations, to decrease the tax on liquor or cigarettes or entertainment, to facilitate abortion and divorce, to improve social security or to lower the income tax.59 The leaders of the conservative parties (wherever they existed) more often than not had gentlemanly notions about keeping their word. Usually they were not even good stump orators.

Their country came first in the thoughts of these conservatives, and they found themselves in a most difficult situation when the parties of the nationalistic left became engaged in a bitter warfare against the parties of the international left. Should they just call down a plague on both houses? Or did they have a moral obligation to join what they considered the lesser evil? The average conservative, looking over the situation, saw on one side the Marxist parties—Socialists (Social Democrats), independent Socialists, Communists—all pledged more or less to the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Socialists, after all, were Marxists who had poured some water into their wine, while the Communists were Marxists who preferred to drink their whisky straight. But both had the same origin, both used the Red Flag, both frequently joined in alliances (“Popular Fronts”) against the “bourgoisie.”

Looking in the other direction, the conservatives saw the nationalistic leftists, Fascists, Nazis, and so forth. The example of the Fascists was rather confusing. Their totalitarianism was not overly developed. Italian fascism became gradually totalitarian, and it is a matter of speculation whether, without the evil influence of Nazi Germany, this development would ever have reached a climax. The general situation in Italy had worsened in 1921-1922 to such an extent that almost any change would have been welcome. And since only the nationalist left had the drive, the energy, the brutality to lead the country out of its parliamentary chaos and trade union terrorism, even such an errant son of socialism as Mussolini had to be welcomed. Only those who recall Italy’s situation in the early 1920s will be able to understand today the embarrassingly often quoted reference of Pius XI to “this man of Providence.” Did an alternative to fascism exist? In theory, yes. The King, with the support of the army, should have established a “provisional absolute monarchy.” An authoritarian rule from above would have created a stability without inviting totalitarianism and the hubris of a dictator whose head is turned by power.60

Still, in a way, the Italian example paralyzed the resistance of conservatives against nationalist leftism and cast a spell of evil fascination upon them. Not that conservatives could have prevented its rise. Their small if not tiny parties were incapable of stemming the tide or changing the course of history, but stronger opposition or louder protestations could have kept their record cleaner. In Germany the Deutschnationale Volkspartei played along with Hitler willy-nilly. Herr Hugenberg,61 owner of the Berliner Lokalanzeiger, joined the Nazis in a parliamentary arrangement, the “Harzburg Front.” The paramilitary organization, Stahlhelm, imbued with a stronger spirit of opposition, was later forcibly dissolved.62 Herr Treviranus tried vainly five minutes before twelve to found a popular Conservative party, but as could be expected, popular success was denied it. Only in Austria did the conservative forces battle to the last moment against nationalistic and international leftism, against Brown and Red—and therefore went through a real Golgotha in the dark period of Nazi oppression. However, when we say that conservatives on the Continent chose nationalistic leftism in preference to its international brand as the lesser evil, we do not want to imply that they were really in favor of it. Conservatives on the Continent, with the exception of Switzerland, were and are monarchists, and the nationalistic totalitarianisms were either openly or implicitly antimonarchical. (This is also true of Italian fascism.) Conservatives had to choose between their legitimate ruler and a leader. A nationalistic monarchy does not exist, because Christian monarchy, as we said before, is an international and interracial institution. Conservatives are federalists (“States’ righters”) and totalitarians are centralists. Conservatives also stand for the privileges of the Church; leftists of all dispensations want to reduce her influence, drive her from the marketplace, or eliminate her altogether. Conservatives are “diversitarian,” totalitarians are egalitarian and identitarian. Conservatives are patriots; leftists at best are nationalists. Conservatives are traditionalists; leftists always want to make a “clean break with the past.”

Yet though this is often not realized sufficiently, cooperation of conservative forces with nationalistic leftism was at least suicidal as frank opposition would have been.63 In all countries where cooperation was attempted, a visible or invisible break came at a given time and the forces of tradition, the enemies of nationalistic leftism, as much as its competitors, the deep-Red leftists, had to face the concentration camps and the axe of the executioner. Again and again we have seen how conservative leaders, thinkers and writers who had just escaped the Brown hangman fell victim to his Red colleague. A conservative Prussian, Hungarian, Rumanian, or Croat is just as badly off today as he was under the Nazis. The Italian monarchist is just as much in opposition today as he was in the First Italian Republic, Mussolini’s Repubblichetta. A Czech monarchist, faithful to the Hapsburgs, is just as swiftly jailed today as under the Nazis or under Dr. Beneš, the former darling of American “liberals.”

Still, the black period of dictatorship in large parts of Europe served as a beneficent if terrible and tragic school for European conservatives. In so many ways they were cleansed of the leftist poisons which had affected them in the first and, even more so, in the second half of the nineteenth century. First of all, they again learned to appreciate the great value of liberty fully. In jails and concentration camps, in fear and trembling due to the silencing, the boycotts they were subjected to, the suspicion cast upon them, their bereavements through assassination and execution—out of all this they learned the bitter lesson that liberty is necessary to the dignity of man, necessary for the preservation of tradition, necessary for educating their children in their own image. In the past they had often sneered at the liberty the democratic interlude had accorded them because they had been free even before 1918, and because they saw in the liberty of the time between the wars the reason for paralysis and chaos—an error, no doubt, because it had not been liberty that created the disorders but the entire political-social framework. Now they realize that truth has the chance to be attractive in liberty only, because all suppression provides the halo of martyrdom, and truth aided by force loses its luster. An error shouted from a flaming stake has more power than the truth proclaimed by a public loudspeaker protected by a dozen gendarmes.

They found out that though pacifism as an ism is a utopian error, peace is nevertheless a great good and war really only an ultima ratio (more “ultima” than “ratio,” we would be tempted to say), that thorough “militarization” of a nation has paralyzing and debilitating effects, and that, ideally speaking, those should be soldiers who have a real calling—which is true of all professions, sacred and worldly.

They found out that there is such a thing as Christian humanism and even humanitarianism; that there is nothing uglier than severity for severity’s sake, brutality for brutality’s sake; that the basic attitude of the Christian is one of love.

They made the amazing discovery that a free economy really delivers the goods, that manufacturers are not all devils incarnate and that “social justice” can be based only on economic realities and not on generous hearts alone. They also gave up much of their leaning toward the conspiratorial explanation of history, which sees history mainly as the work of secret societies and religious sects. They found out that the average man has a fair amount of goodwill but is weak and often overpowered by evil emotions and that his political acumen is exceedingly modest (to say the least)—all of which suffices to explain the vicissitudes of modern history without constant resorting to involved theories.

They also parted with that childhood disease of so many conservative movements, anti-Judaism. They now saw that anti-Jewish feelings inevitably must turn against Christianity. After all, the Synagogue is the Mother of the Church, a fact symbolized in stone inside and outside so many medieval cathedrals.64 Anti-Jewish sentiments never characterized conservative thinking in Portugal,65 Spain, or Italy. Nor are they really at home in the conservative movements of the Americas—unless we make the gratuitous mistake of calling Nazi movements “conservative”—which, unfortunately, is done again and again.66

This “chastising” of the conservatives which invited them to return to their roots, has an analogy in the reforming (and re-forming) of the liberals. The neoliberals, as we have pointed out before, have waked up from their Roussellian dreams and have cooled in their affection for democracy which, however, is now such a shibboleth that not many of them are too emphatic in their critiques. In jails, in camps, in hiding, the liberals found out that the average man is not abounding in either goodness or shrewdness, and the Common Man67 can be just as monstrous as the despot corrupted absolutely by absolute power. They also discovered, just as the conservatives did, that parliamentary democracy does not at all favor the spreading of their ideas, and that they have to work for the common good through entirely different channels—deviously, laboriously, often in a clandestine way, communicating their ideas from brain to brain and less from heart to heart. The latter would be so much simpler, but neoliberalism could no more engender a dynamic mass movement than conservatism, new or old, can.

In view of these facts it is not surprising that the New Conservative and the New Liberal in Europe are nearly the same. There is only a slight shift in emphasis. It can be said that all existing European monarchs (and all pretenders of vacant thrones) are neoliberals and that most neoliberals write for conservative publications and often work through conservative parties. Many an American will consider certain European thinkers to be conservatives while they call themselves liberals, humorously accepting or nonchalantly rejecting the conservative label.68

There is the question of what attitude a European conservative of the old or new dispensation should take vis-à-vis the existing order. A conservative, as we said earlier, is a conserver. Yet does the average European conservative loyally and unreservedly underwrite the present state of affairs—or should he oppose it? I am afraid the latter is the case, and it is precisely this circumstance which renders the term “conservative” in its etymological sense so precarious. The term “revolutionary conservative” is frequently used69 and although it sounds like a contradiction, it is not unjustified. As a matter of fact, a real conservative, European or American, cannot possibly accept the world he lives in, nor the direction in which this world moves. If we analyze his mind, his views, his ideals, he is far more of a revolutionary than either the Communist or the uncommitted leftist. It is immaterial whether he wants to change the political and social order of his country through “peaceful means” and using the Constitution, or whether he wants to effect the revolution through a violent overturn. (There are various methods: conspiracy, large-scale organization or the patient-impatient waiting for the collapse of the old order.) If the change can be evolutionary, by reform rather than by revolution, organically and constitutionally rather than by sheer force, the conservative, will obviously prefer it because he respects the past, his entire historic heritage. A conservative east of the Iron Curtain is, most naturally, a revolutionary because he wants to make mincemeat of the existing order. Yet what about an Austrian conservative? An Italian conservative? Can a Continental conservative believe in the supremacy of parliaments, in the principle of majority and equality? Or should he take his stand against “ex-quality” and for quality, truth, justice, reason, loyalty, and charity? The voting systems of all existing democracies wilfully and programmatically disregard quality. The notion of majority rule (as Berdyaev and so many others have pointed out) disregards truth (parties representing contradicting philosophies get equal chances and equal treatment). Justice has nothing to do with equality, but with the principle of the “everybody his due,” as Royer-Collard said. Not the sovereignty of the “people” (a mere abstraction) should be dominant, but the sovereignty of reason; not just volition, but thoughtful, methodical reflection. Loyalty is incompatible with democracy, which rests on switches of allegiance and change. (Without change totalitarianism is the immediate danger.) Love, which in its ideal form is not only deep but also permanent, has no place in a democracy—except in the form of abstractions. Christian love is for persons, for God, for men, for women, for children, for families. It is incompatible with the notion of a supreme public servant who can be hired and fired like a domestic.70

The conservative in the free West has to reject not only much of the political order, but also social conditions, artistic trends, cultural institutions, human relations. It is evident that these are all interconnected. One need only remember one item: the affirmation of state omnipotence which characterizes all of leftist thinking, as in the present system of social security which makes the individual hopelessly dependent upon the state. The conservative does not for a moment deny the importance of security for old, ill, or unemployed persons. But to achieve protection for them there are other and better avenues besides the omnipotent state which (terrible European experience) can be wiped out the day after tomorrow. And what then? To the Christian conservative who is deeply conscious that stat crux dum volvitur orbis, the idea of the total collapse or bankruptcy of his country is a tragic one, but it remains for him a distinct possibility. Where will the old, the sick turn if money completely loses its value, if the paper becomes mere paper,71 or if the government, the state which signed the banknote, disappears? Certainly the best security is a large and faithful family ready to help when help is needed, but there are other values of greater permanence: real estate, fields, pastures, small houses, domestic animals, gold, other valuables, even stocks or private insurance. The whole underlying notion of our social security system is that the average man is improvident, that he does not think about tomorrow, that he is incapable of taking care of himself and his savings, that he has to be treated like a child. This is largely true, but the answer is not to treat the person as a child forever, but to educate that overgrown child, to teach him to stand on his own feet.

And here lies one central point of a conservative program, i.e., to educate people according to their ability though not to saddle them with responsibilities out of proportion to their capacities, their knowledge, their experience, by giving those on top the illusion that each individual’s vote is decisive.72 Imagine if one should drag an innocent passer-by from the street to the operating room of a nearby hospital and force him at gunpoint to perform a delicate operation. The man would burst into tears. However, if one were to ask him to sound off on problems such as nuclear experiments, Vietnam, the borders of Israel, support for Indonesia, aid to Latin America, or recognition of Red China, in most cases he would start spouting opinions. Demographic inquiries have been made in both the Old and the New World, and the results of both are shattering beyond belief.73 The reply of the convinced democrat is that the man in the street merely votes for a representative, but is the representative better equipped? In order to practice medicine (i.e., perform the delicate operation mentioned above) one has to study from six to eight years. In order to become a representative in a diet (or a member of a Cabinet), one need fulfill no other requirements than to have been on the hoof for several years, a purely vegetative principle.74

The attitude of the Western occupiers of Germany toward the Nazis, and their notion of “denazification” shows a curious inner contradiction in the light of these facts: The Allies, professing democratic convictions, based their attitude on the conviction that one man is not as clever and well informed as any other man. An industrialist with a substantial education or a professor of a university who joined the Nazi party and made a few silly speeches was amply punished—and perhaps rightly so. “They should have known much better.” A postman who distributed the mail and also joined the Nazi party was merely a “kleiner Mitläufer” and got off very lightly. This is entirely in keeping with the principle of the suum cuique, to everybody his due. But then, why on earth restore democracy and give each one an equal vote? Why punish “the German people” if, as a result of the Djihad to “make the world safe for democracy,” they (i.e., not “they” but the majority of them) had been made in 1918 “masters of their own destiny” with the “privilege” of “deciding at the polls”? As a matter of fact, the greater the percentage of voters, the worse the outcome of German elections. In America usually less than 70 percent of the voters actually take advantage of their “privilege.” (If everybody can do it, is it still a privilege?) In the German elections of 1932, free and unfettered elections in a most unbecoming atmosphere of hysteria75—more than 98 percent cast their vote. Poor fish, they really did not know what they were doing! They were really überfragt und überfordert; they were given questions and asked for judgments way above their capacity.76

Continental conservatives have also learned or unlearned other things. They found out that man is not totally wicked (which they tended to believe). They never fell for Roussellianism, of course, but they came to see that Pascal was right in describing man as neither beast nor angel, weak—very weak!—rather than wicked. (And naturally they remembered Pascal’s afterthought: “. . . and, unfortunately, he who wants to act like an angel becomes a beast.”)77 They also found out that one has to face not only new political ideas but also scientific discoveries and artistic trends without prejudice, coolly, reflectively, not automatically rejecting the new or fostering the old. In other words, they have learned not to cling furiously and childishly to untenable positions if reason told them that they were really wrong. Not everything Marx, Darwin, Freud, Picasso, or even Voltaire produced is wholly bad. There existed and in part there still exists such a thing as a “conservative demonology”78 but it has been largely overcome in Europe—far more so, I am sure, than in the United States. Of course the position of American conservatives is psychologically a very different one from that of their European political coreligionists. America is more basically conservative than the European Continent, but precisely because American conservatives derive a greater strength from the subsoil (the “grass roots”) of their country than Continental conservatives do, they are more hated, more intellectually combated, more vilified and vituperated by the leftist establishment. The position of European conservatives is much weaker, but more generally respected, if not secretly admired. Such bodies as the Académie Française with its enormous prestige are not dominated by leftists. Nor are our universities, if we disregard Italy and Sweden (intellectually the most backward countries in Europe). The European conservatives, however, are not given a chance to rule. They are sometimes considered brilliant, witty, profound, learned, or gifted, but nobody expects them to sway the masses or form a body of men who will decide the future. (A man such as Adenauer was “venerated,” but he was never “popular.”) Their basic chance is the total collapse of modern Western civilization, in which case they might take over by default from the Big Left. The general attitude toward them (as, only too often, toward monarchy) is a melancholy-apathetic one: “They’re basically right, they probably have the answers . . . but, unfortunately, they have no chance.”

American conservatives probably have a better chance. But what is the Continental conservative’s attitude toward conservatism in America? Economically-socially speaking he is at first surprised to find it deeply imbued with preliberal ideas. Adam Smith never had the slightest place in European conservative thought, but upon some reflection the European will understand why “Manchesterism” does indeed belong to the traditional American scene. What the Continental conservative misses most in the American conservative outlook is, as we hinted, something like a coherent system of thought. Naturally, he will encounter feelings and emotions, but not a cogent philosophy. Professor Eliseo Vivas, a conservative Venezuelan thinker who teaches in an American university, has said quite succinctly that it should not be

necessary to show in detail that the problem of conservativism is a difficult problem that touches on all domains of human interest, scholarly no less than practical, philosophical no less than legal, moral and theological no less than economic and social. I take it as agreed that if the conservative movement is going to make more than a trivial and fugitive impact on the life of the nation, it will have to develop a philosophy that is systematic, that is comprehensive, that takes full and honest account of current positive knowledge, and that is, therefore, no mere repetition of dried-up old chestnuts that appealed to men a generation or two ago but have lost their flavor and freshness.

Professor Vivas then went on to say that this involves “one major negative job,” i.e., to show the falseness of the current liberal (leftist) ideology. But besides this task there is also the necessity to have “some working notions as to which of our values are basic and which are not.”79 Our author puts truth in the first place. But this can serve merely as a basis for a blueprint. As far as we can see, the blueprint to this day has not been worked out.

It might be objected in the best Anglo-Saxon80 fashion that true conservatism cannot be bothered with utopias and that the cry for a “philosophy that is systematic” comes dangerously near to a demand for a coherent ideology, which is also “unconservative” and of the left.81 But what is the alternative? An empiricism, so dear to the American or British heart? (“This works; that doesn’t work.”) A discussion based on noble feelings is impossible. Any program to which a large number of people is pledged needs a rational profile. Conservative movements (anywhere and at any time) must have a clear demarcation line which separates them from those merely disappointed by the evil trends of the present age and therefore prone to be moved primarily by hatred. Charity as the foremost Christian virtue (charity properly understood, not mushiness) must head up every genuine conservative program. Leftism is always motivated by hatred. Let us beware of taking in the haters of the haters. The spiral of hatred should be left to the mutually competing (not “opposing”) leftist camps, forming a dialectically organic whole. But to draw a clear demarcation line we must have a concise philosophy. It does not yet exist and thus there is a real danger that American conservatism may remain a mere “reaction” to the soft, hysterical loathsomeness of American leftism (a reaction condemning the nascent conservatism to sterility), or that it will be nothing but a literary movement—something the French simply call de la littérature—very smoothly even beautifully written but nothing concrete, magnetic, or dynamic.

The roots of this state of affairs are manifold. There is the aforementioned dislike for systematization. There is also the fear of looking into the future, of envisaging something radically different from the present order, in other words, not only of breaking with the present leftward trend, but of advocating something revolutionary: something too old, too new, or too farfetched.

Let us ask this painful and crucial question: Can American conservatives hope for a better world on the basis of the present American Constitution, as it is now interpreted, i.e., within the framework of a political order which is more or less (though not fully) democratic? I personally do not believe that such hope is realistic. Yet, to say so openly, an American conservative needs a great deal of courage. In the last 150 years the American left, through repeated Constitutional changes and latitudinarian interpretation, has democratized the originally far less democratic Constitution as designed by the Founding Fathers. We must now ask whether the majorities within the American people are ready to reverse this trend, whether this process can be terminated democratically, whether the system can evolve into other directions. I am rather pessimistic about this possibility, though we should not discard it from our calculations altogether.

There is, admittedly, a lack of pietas in planning about what will happen to us once our parents are no more. At the same time we can be certain that such a moment will come and that we have to face it emotionally and even financially. The American conservative (or any American, with the exception of the radical of the New Left) has no program as to what order to establish in place of democracy in America should it once cease to exist. The historian knows that nothing is permanent on this earth and a popular Viennese witticism says that “everything has an end, only the sausage has two.” Let us only think for a moment what effects a total atomic war might have on the American Republic. Before, in, and after such a war the present system of legislation might prove too slow, too cumbersome.82 Elections might be out of the question. The devastations and the mutual recriminations would render Congressional legislation impossible. A system of many parties after the European pattern might paralyze Congress to the extent that America would have become an absolute monarchy with a time limit.83 Under these circumstances a military dictatorship represents a great likelihood, and since such a rule is usually pragmatic rather than ideologically very tinted, it is the least oppressive among the authoritarian forms.

Even if we rule out catastrophes, there are other forces working quite automatically against the present strongly democratized order. Among these the most important is the rise of the experts and of expertise. Most American conservatives have a strong dislike for this trend. They put their main hope in the “people” and in Congress. Yet the increase in weight of expertise and (as a concomitant of the administrative-executive branch of the government) is well-nigh unavoidable. This is an undemocratic if not antidemocratic evolution, observable all over the world, because, as we have demonstrated elsewhere, the gap between the scita (what is known) and the scienda (what ought to be known to arrive at rational judgments) is ever-widening. It is widening because our civilization and culture become more and more complex, because our globe is shrinking, and because (unlike in the very ideal direct democracy of the Swiss canton Glarus with 45,000 inhabitants) the man in the street is completely bewildered by the issues of the day and the problems he is called upon to decide directly or indirectly at the polls. This bewilderment, as we have said before, is shared by the vast majority of the Congressmen or parliamentarians. And, to repeat another argument, only a budding expert can judge between several expert views and coordinate them. Conservatives such as the late President Hoover and Ralph Adams Cram have insisted on the importance of a first-class administration.84 Morally and intellectually the democratic age was terminated a very long time ago, but so few people are contemporaries of their own time. At the end of the last century Eduard von Hartmann, the German philosopher, wrote: “The belief that the liberty of the people can be guaranteed by parliamentary government has ceased to exist for some time. . . . The world is fed up with parliamentarism, but nobody has a better solution, and the knowledge that this despised institution has to be carried over as a necessary evil into the twentieth century fills the minds of the best of our contemporaries with anxiety.”85 Of course, the problems of preserving liberty under majority rule or of governing rationally with amateurs are not the same. Since the masses increasingly prefer that what they think is security to what is real liberty and since the complexity of the world has grown by leaps and bounds, this statement is today even more true than seventy years ago.86

Institutions more than men have the tendency to survive themselves. Thus we face the curious situation in which totalitarian dictatorships with an ideologically limited expertise and87 ideologically paralyzed economies are facing democracies politically weakened by rank amateurism but provided with a strong economic system based on liberty. This looks like a semi-plus and a minus versus a minus and a plus. In the United States, however, expertise is increasing, especially so in administration, and in this domain, unfortunately, the leftists occupy important positions. There are several reasons for this state of affairs. One of them is the aforementioned American “conservative” anti-intellectualism. As a result, American conservatism tends to be proamateur and antiadministrational, a position European conservatives would rarely take.88 In this respect American conservatism follows American folklore, which loves to sneer at the expert-intellectual-egghead and adores the (successful) amateur.89 Yet American conservatives in continuing such an attitude are fighting historically a losing battle. Instead of adopting a sour, standoffish, offended attitude they should try to get good men into permanent positions in the executive (civil service, diplomacy, etc.) and not leave the field to the forces of destruction. Unfortunately, they have not done this in the past.90

Naturally, it is difficult to enter institutions and organizations which already are under the control of the opponent (not to say “the enemy”). American conservatives have a valid excuse inasmuch as they started to become conscious of their position and of their need to organize only in the last decade or so. The same is true not only of much of the administration but also of the universities, the colleges, the publishing houses, the press, cinema, theater, and all the other means of mass communications. The leftists, as the Children of Darkness, in this respect have been much more clever than the Children of Light. In the positions where the leftists now are safely entrenched they can use against their opponents every imaginable tactic. They can give them the “silent treatment.”91 They can boycott them, use defamation and discrimination of every sort. And this, indeed, they are doing.

Yet American conservatives have to be careful not to become reactionaries by just blindly negating everything America’s leftist establishment stands for. They have to use the scholastic distinguo.92 Thus, to quote an instance, a conservative coming to the conclusion that a man is innocently indicted, has to protest the verdict, even if he finds himself suddenly in the company of other most loathsome protestors. Thus during World War II it was quite a scandal that the cause of the Americans of Japanese descent on the West Coast was almost entirely “left to the left.” The laws and regulations which sent them to “relocation centers” (humane concentration camps) were, in a way, harsher than the Nuremberg Laws, since even a drop of Japanese blood put these American citizens into the category of enemy aliens. (The whole procedure was declared superfluous by the FBI and no such measures were taken in Hawaii, where 37 percent of the population is of Japanese descent and which was far more exposed to Japanese invasion than, let us say, Nevada.)93 The record of American conservatives on racial tolerance in the United States is rather poor. Here is another field “left to the leftists” who sometimes act as idealists, but sometimes just love to exploit an iniquitous situation. Of course the cause of the mulatto—there are hardly any Negroes in the United States—will not be helped by laws emanating from federal legislation.94 Leftists, deeply unconscious of the complexities of the human soul and almost always apt to refer all problems and troubles to the central government, think that all that is needed is “the right law.” America has always been a country of lawyers. The cry, “There should be a law against it!” conforms to the popular temper. Yet the “Noble Experiment” of Prohibition shows that laws which go against the grain of vast majorities are not really enforceable: At best they will be obeyed according to the letter but not the spirit. The full emancipation of the BASP, the “Brown Anglo-Saxon Protestant,” will be a painfully long process since racial differences clash with the prevailing trend of identitarianism. (We therefore have to expect racial tensions in “modern” rather than in “backward” countries.)95 Delight in diversity will help solve the racial problem, and this precisely ought to be a point in the psychological program of conservatism, which is opposed to equality and identity.96

“Internationalism”—conservatives must remember—is leftish only if it wants to establish an identitarian global brew, an odious uniformity encompassing the whole world. In this sense internationalism is only a global nationalism. The nationalist wants the powerful centralized “national state” which assimilates (or exiles) minorities and establishes perfect uniformity within the state. Revolutionary France, Italy after the Risorgimento, the Republic of Indonesia, the Soviet Union in fact (but not in theory)97 represent such patterns. The internationalist of the leftist dispensation dreams of a unitary world state with a globally elected President which then would administer our planet from one capital, imposing laws voted for in one quarter of the globe over the rest. Under the circumstances this would spell the end of our civilization. This, however, should not mean that some time in the remote future a federation (but never a centralized) government with limited powers might not come into existence. Here as in so many other domains, timetables play a crucial role. It can well be argued that even today many governments are far too centralistic and curtail the free and sane development of the constituent parts of the State. This is even true of the United States whose federalist principles are part and parcel of the Constitution. It is also true of Spain where the centralism of Madrid often suffocates provincial life.98 “Federalizations” or “unifications” represent exceedingly delicate and complex tasks. Just as broken bones can grow together the wrong way, so too with countries. The Italian Risorgimento, which led to a centralized state, has had the most deteriorating effect on the once so rich Italian culture. Something similar can be said about the establishment of the Second German Reich in 1871. Even though it was far less centralist than the Italy of Cavour, Mazzini, and Garibaldi, its federal structure was vitiated by the fact that it represented really only a Prussian conquest. It resulted in a Prussia with frills. Prussia with all its annexed areas comprised almost two-thirds of Germany. A cultural slump without parallel was the result, which took time to be overcome.99

Wise people in Europe realize that it would be a terrible mistake to have an omnipotent central government in a unified Europe or even a common parliament.100 Though de Gaulle’s stand on many a question was open to grave criticism, his concept of une Europe des patries, a “Europe of Fatherlands” was basically sound. And when we speak about the federalization of the world in the not so near future, we readily admit that the term “world government” is debatable. There might be a “global Chairman;” a global President or a global Emperor is conceivable, but not desirable; a global Parliament would be madness. It would be an idiomatic and philosophical madhouse. As a matter of fact, without at least some vague common religious denominator, such a federalization would have no inner cohesion. Theists and atheists do not speak the same language. This alone should make us ponder over the timetable. The notion that “We must get together in order not to hurt each other” is not a sufficient foundation. World citizenship in the full sense of the term would not be desirable either—nor European citizenship for a “United Europe.” Just imagine five million Spaniards or Italians planning to settle in Norway. When we talk about other “United States” we refer to an orchestra with many well-tuned instruments. There is no happy family in which the members do not respect each other’s personality. Still, the world is tending toward unification, and as an ultimate goal this can and should be envisaged on a federal basis. On the other hand, the time has not yet come. In this respect, the leftists of the United States are like people who see a small boy and a small girl. They might one day get married; it would be gruesome, however, to marry them off at the ages of seven and five. Without exaggeration we might call such an idea a perversity. The Greeks had a word for the right time: kairós (as opposed to khrónos which is any time). The kairós for the world state has not yet come—unless it were the conquest of the world by a morally and practically superior state, as the Roman Empire used to be in its best days, when it was imposing the Pax Romana on the Western world.

American conservatism must be revolutionary in the sense that it must have the will to renew radically the face of the country. And for this purpose it needs a systematized idea, a philosophy animating a concrete vision of America and the rest of the world as they ideally ought to be. I am convinced that such a philosophy must be universally valid and that the vision cannot remain a local affair. We are living in a world where, it is true, small things must be protected and the sense for what is locally and organically grown should be reawakened.

Colossalism is an evil. Nevertheless, the time of parochialism is over. One of the greatest conservative writers, Hermann Borchardt, said in his The Conspiracy of the Carpenters:

For we too, my friends, are partisans—let us be honest. We too, my friends, we Christian conservatives, are, let us hope, an international party: and if we are not as yet, we mean to become one. The difference between the Urbanites and us is not, then, that they are international and we are national. I hope not: A national party in our day is about as important as a bridge club or an association of canary breeders. No, the difference is that we are the party of God, while they are the party of Satan, the Lord of the World. Because we are the party of God, not a single soul and not a single government need fear us, for we hate intermeddling unless it is forced upon us. We are glad to live in isolation if people will let us live in isolation. We do not believe that we have a mission, or that salvation will originate with us. We do not believe that God has created individual men and nations as equals: therefore they cannot be ruled in the same way. We believe that equality is of the devil, and that the Lord our God delights in multiplicity.101