Earlier this year, I gave a speech at Cedarville University, in Ohio — a speech in the university’s series “What Is Conservatism”? A little slice:
The definition of “conservative” changes with time and place. What do you want to conserve? That’s the question. George Will says that the American conservative, traditionally, wants to conserve the Founding: the Enlightenment principles and ideals of the Founding. There are many people on the right who think the Founding was a colossal error.
See how murky things can get? If you’re anti-Founding, are you conservative?
Will also says, “The traditional role of the American conservative is to preserve the liberal tradition.” Harvey C. Mansfield, the conservative professor of political philosophy at Harvard, says the same.
So do other learned people.
One can get bogged down in nomenclature — in taxonomy. It’s usually best to avoid the bog. Here is another slice of that speech I gave:
. . . what is Milton Friedman? He is often called a “libertarian.” He dealt with this problem of words in the introduction to his book Capitalism and Freedom in 1962. “Because of the corruption of the term ‘liberalism,’” he wrote, “the views that formerly went under that name are now often labeled ‘conservatism.’” But to Friedman, that was unsatisfactory.
He told the reader, or warned the reader, that he was going to stick with “liberalism.” He would use it “in its original sense — as the doctrines pertaining to a free man.”
A few months ago, a biography was published. Its title: “Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative.”
What was Friedman? A liberal? A libertarian? A conservative? The answer, at one level, is yes.
At regular intervals, William F. Buckley Jr. published collections of journalism (his own journalism, I mean). In 1993, his collection was titled “Happy Days Were Here Again.” Its subtitle: “Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist.” Four years later, William R. Everdell reviewed another book by WFB, for the New York Times — and a very interesting review it is. Have a look:
About 150 years ago, when liberalism was revolutionary, Pope Pius IX condemned it in his “Syllabus of Errors” . . . At the time, everyone knew what liberalism was: a political faith in the pre-eminent value of private property, a free market, a free press, freedom of religion, and the reassignment of privilege from birth to wealth.
William F. Buckley Jr., one of the most prominent of American public intellectuals, has been one of those most responsible for the 20th-century redefinition of liberalism in America as “conservatism.” It has been greatly due to his work as a writer, editor, and occasional financial angel that the word “conservative” no longer means a noblesse-oblige Tory or a God-and-King authoritarian, even in Latin America, and that the word “liberal” has been turned into a term of opprobrium embracing socialism and every other ism on the American left. Buckley’s success at pushing the American public philosophy in his direction has been genuinely momentous.
Mr. Everdell was none too keen on this development. Anyway . . .
The 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence fell in 1926. Coolidge was president. (We will have the 250th anniversary the year after next. Almost certainly, Donald Trump will be president, again.) Coolidge gave a great speech — a great speech. In my talk earlier this year, I quoted a much-cited and -admired portion of that speech. Here’s Coolidge:
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
Yes. That is my problem with “post-liberalism.” There is no “post,” really — no after. Only a going back, to birth, station, hierarchy, autocracy, etc.
Yesterday, the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, appeared on Steve Bannon’s show. That show is on a network billed as “Real America’s Voice.” Roberts said, “We are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless, if the Left allows it to be.”
Some of us like the first American revolution, the real one: redeemed (in blood) about 90 years later, and later still, with civil rights for all Americans.
To return to Coolidge: They called him “Silent Cal,” but when he spoke, it was well worth it.
I would like to return to George Will, too, and paraphrase something he said in a podcast with me — this:
The most important word in the Declaration of Independence is “secure.” “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men . . .”
“Secure”! Be clear about the order of things: First come our rights — our natural rights — and then comes government. It is the job of government to secure our rights.
Finally, I would like to tell you what I said at the end of that speech — the one I gave in Ohio, in February, I believe:
A few years ago, I met a man named Mark Haidar. His original name is “Mahmoud” — Mahmoud Haidar. He is a computer engineer and tech entrepreneur in Dallas. Very successful. He is affiliated with the George W. Bush Presidential Center.
His family was from Lebanon, but they had to flee in 1982, with the outbreak of war there. They went to Kuwait, where Mark was born. When he was four, they went back to Lebanon.
The family was very poor, like many. One of Mark’s sisters froze to death at five months old. The country was beset by fighting of various types.
One day, two employees of the United Nations came to Mark’s school. He told me, “This was the day that changed my life.” They brought with them two computers — by which Mark was fascinated. Obsessed. He wanted to learn everything about computers he could. Out in the world, he felt relatively helpless. Behind a computer, he felt empowered. It was the only thing in his life he could control. He explained to me, “Computers do exactly what you tell them to do.”
He found something called “Encarta.” This was an early Microsoft encyclopedia. He began reading about the United States and discovered the Declaration of Independence — which excited him. Which lit him on fire. He knew, in his core, it was true: Human beings have rights that no man or system can negate.
Thereafter, he had a tradition. Every time he got a new notebook in school — like a spiral notebook — he would write on the cover the words “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Americans may be jaded about this — we lucky native-borns — but around the world they are not. They know better. They know how precious and rare this is. And how right.
So, if I have a credo — a Ce que je crois — it’s that: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And government had better secure those rights.
Yes.
P.S. The year 1776 was pretty good for publishing: Smith’s Wealth of Nations; Gibbon’s History. One could go on . . .