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The Iraqi fiasco that traditionalist understandings would have avoided
Stanley Kurtz, who issued some thoughtful warnings about the prospect of Iraqi democratization in spring 2003 and then seemed to fall silent on the issue for the next three and a half years, has lately returned to the theme. At The Corner today he lays out some of the fundaments of traditional conservatism, contrasting it with the modern “conservatism” that made certain people imagine we could create democracy in an ethnically and religiously divided Muslim country. This modern or neo conservatism, a variant of liberalism, says that an appeal to individual rights and self-interest is sufficient to organize and sustain a society, even in the absence of a common culture and peoplehood. Traditional conservatism understands that society depends on common affections and common moral habits—i.e., a common culture—that pre-exist and are deeper than rights and interests. Indeed, a liberal regime of individual rights is not sustainable in the absence of a pre-political common culture.
A main traditionalist insight is that for any society to exist, including a liberal society, it must have allegiances and principles that are both deeper and higher than liberalism. Email entry |