Monday, December 17, 2007
Cultural Conservatives
We, as a society, are obsessed with labeling ourselves and others. Sometimes this is a pointless exercise, sometimes those labels carry valuable information.
In the introduction to The Superfluous Men, I find a label that is new to me, and one that immediately struck me as relevant:
Conservatism in America between 1900 and 1945, then, means the following: The most important single doctrine in the conservative frame of reference is that the best things in life are not political and cannot be obtained by political means. The religion that is so often present in a conservative mind is only a part of this larger principle. True conservatives may value a tradition of freedom, the heritage of architectural form, the conventions of centuries of poetry, or the rural life lived by their families for generations. Conservatives generally have an acute sense of what makes life worth living, and they do not associate it with political activity. The business of politics is to keep a larger society functioning efficiently and invisibly, so that people may worship, write, create, cultivate, or otherwise do what gives their lives meaning. In this sense, conservatism is insistently “cultural†and demonstrably “interdisciplinary†. It treasures anything that nourishes the soul, from art to religion to literature; it normally associates the greatest treasure with the past, with that which has proven most nourishing to most people over the longest time.
Because of this stance toward the past, and toward cultural concerns, conservatives remain relatively detached from everyday life, from the fads, tumults, patriotisms, and heresies of the newspaper. Others may shout for a specific reform, advocate a new art form, join a new religious, political, or social group, or demand war for some higher goal. Cultural
conservatives will very rarely do this, whatever political conservatives or military conservatives might advocate. Instead they might style themselves superfluous, as Albert Jay Nock did in his memorable autobiography in 1943, The Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, because not only are conservatives detached from society and are often critical of it, but they find that society really is not much interested in their ideas and that they are in a real sense superfluous to the basic concerns of their own culture.
Cultural conservative, as opposed to political conservative, military conservative, religious conservative, economic conservative, etc. Now there is a label that fits like a glove.
Comments
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I may fall under most of those.
Weetabix | 12/18/2007 12:05 PM CDT
