I voted “Other,” since my choice was a combination of BOTH “Orientation toward transcendent absolutes” AND “Loyalty toward settled attachments” simultaneously. The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the second can be a specific instance of the first; the first subsumes the second.

Not only are they not mutually exclusive, the belief in the two together virtually defines traditionalism. Other belief systems tend to go in one direction or the other. Generic conservatism could be an attachment to whatever is, without reference to transcendence. Certain types of liberalism and universalism posit a transcendent truth, but only as the basis of individual rights and equality, not in reference to any settled attachment or social institutions. Traditionalism, by contrast, recognizes that, to a significant extent, we only come into a relationship with transcendent truth through a particular tradition that embodies it.

There’s something that’s alsways concerned me about traditionalist conservatism: it can unwittingly become liberalism. Can’t we say that egalitarianism is a transcendent absolute based on habit and a transcendent absolute? People from Michael Lerner to Jimmy Carter to Anthony Campolo would probably agree.

I think the core battle of our time — or of any time —- is which absolutes, which habits and which attachments take priority over others.

Mr. Carver sums it up nicely. On the one hand, part of our current dilemma is that the liberal tradition of rejecting tradition has been around long enough (centuries) to become our authoritative tradition. On the other hand, even if the entire world were traditionalist there are still some substantive traditions that are better than others (e.g. Christianity is clearly superior to Islam). It is a real mess. We can’t just defend abstract traditionalism without ultimately reducing ourselves to the multiculturalism that is destroying us. The only way out, it seems to me, is to foster a new Christendom that restores much of the old Christendom. That tends to be an uncomfortable thing for both Protestants, since Christendom is inherently Catholic, and neo-Catholics (post Vatican II), because it would require repudiation of most of the conciliar/liberal “spirit of Vatican II” (and neo-Catholics are more papist than the Pope even though they should know better). If it were more than a joke to suggest it I would say sharpen your swords and carry your crosses, prepare for the Great Crusade. As it is I think liberalism’s self-destruction is as inevitable as its current dominance, so survival through liberalism’s global domination and self destruction is all any particular tradition can reasonably hope for. Of course Christendom is not entirely reasonable: Blood, Sword, and Cross! Repent!

“As it is I think liberalism’s self-destruction is as inevitable as its current dominance.”

I like the sound of that.

Commenting on Matt’s discussion, Larry Auster says, ” ‘As it is I think liberalism’s self-destruction is as inevitable as its current dominance.’ I like the sound of that.”

I like the sound of that too, until I remember that a parasite’s self-destruction often comes with the host’s death.

Liberalism is killing cultures and nations everywhere it is ascendant. Liberals here, of course, are killing the Constitution and the American nation (the very two things that, together, allow them to exist and flourish in the first place) in umpteen-gazillion ways.

Once the host no longer exists liberals have to go elsewhere, as fleas, lice, and ticks crawl down off the carcasses of cold, dead animals, forced to search out new hosts.

Some parasites die at this point. But look what else had to die in order to get to this stage.

Liberals across the ocean are killing the “Ancient Nations of Europe” and endeavoring to replace them with soulless, rootless, traditionless, identityless “things” which will not be congenial to liberalism, any more than Stalinist-type régimes, Big-Brother “1984”-type ones, or Islamist-sympathetic ones would be.

Even in Israel, that tiny sliver of a country populated by what are among the world’s most ethnically self-conscious folk, wherein one would think hard political realities would be starkly obvious to every single citizen, homegrown Jewish liberals strive ardently for the adoption of policies that must inevitably cause not just the death of their country, but — and here’s that paradox of liberalism again — the death of liberalism itself there, once Israel has been replaced, thanks to these blind, deaf, and dumb morons, by something resembling Iran.

They who had a warm, comfortable home in which to live and flourish unmolested will then be crawling down off the cold dead carcass of what they killed, like fleas and ticks searching for a new home.

Frightening use of imagery.

Unadorned is right that liberalism will not survive the death of the civilization that gave birth to it. But there is another possible scenario. As I outlined in “The Apocalypse of Liberalism,” http://www.counterrevolution.net/cgi-bin/mt/fs/fcp.pl?words=apocalypse+of+liberalism&d=/000463.html, either liberalism kills the West, and then liberalism will die too (as Unadorned has just pointed out), or else the West REJECTS liberalism and survives as a non-liberal (yet civilized) version of itself. The chances of such a happy event may be small indeed, maybe as small as a mustard seed. But the point is that the destruction of liberalism does not necessarily imply the death of the West.

The link I gave in the previous comment doesn’t work. Here it is again.

http://www.counterrevolution.net/vfr/archives/000463.html

I voted for “other.” Orientation toward transcendent absolutes is clearly the most important part of conservatism, but I can’t call it the center of conservatism because I see conservatism as a mixture and balance of transcendent absolutes with other principles including particularity. It’s roughly analogous to a republican constitution, like that of ancient Rome or of the United States. A republic does not have a single center where sovereign power is located, but several centers among which power is distributed and which exist in mutual balance and tension with each other. A republic, like conservatism—and like human consciousness itself—exists in the “in-between” that Voegelin talks about.