So you wanna be a conservative
A letter to some "Young College Republicans Club" kid somewhere, probably.
Understand that conservatism isn’t an ideology. It is not a political creed to strictly live by. It is not something that merely appears on a ballot for you to check off come election day. Do not be a “Republican.” Rather, what your beliefs are really inspired by—your desire to conserve and protect, that repulsion you feel toward coffee-shop sophistry and manifestos put forward as “academic literature”—is actually nothing more than a general attitude, a body of sentiments.
This is (generally) a good thing. It allows you, young conservative, to become a good reactionary—that is to mean, not clinging to tradition simply because it is so, but to understand that “sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery.” You know that it is far easier to destroy than it is to build. Do be aware that tradition is often an irrational phenomenon, and that human beings are not inherently rational or reasonable. Yes, the liberals are correct in saying that this can be a bad thing, but they make the mistake of over-rationalizing the world, that the same tools chemists and physicists use can also somehow be applied to the troubled fields of politics, ethics, and aesthetics, that man is perfectible, that nature is merely a social construction to be corrected and perfected by the “right people.” You either know very well or at least intuitively feel, young conservative, that tradition is valuable and is worthy of conservation, because it binds people together, ensuring the stability and longevity of the commonwealth.
Do not, however, confuse being a conservative with being an aesthetician.1 Surely we know now, just as Edmund Burke knew in 1790, that some things really are lost to the sands of time.2 So do us all a favor and don’t become a gauchiste. Don’t be an edgelord on Twitter and post about >muh 1950s. Don’t think that you can simply write your own manifesto, or relegate all your political views to Theory, as leftists often do, as means of properly explaining the world, or to “win the culture war once and for all.” This goes against that general attitude we went over earlier. This is because you (perhaps intuitively) understand that institutions can and often serve a variety of non-political functions. To employ the left-wing mindset is to incorrectly assume that the world is nothing more than a struggle for power, and that all institutions, no matter how initially non-political, must somehow pass a rigorous ideological test.
But don’t confuse this with being a RINO, either. Do not fall for the trap of moral relativism or hide behind the vague platitude termed “limited government” to avoid controversial moral afflictions. Understand that there is no such thing as moral neutrality, and that the struggle we are in right now (many call it the culture war) has very little to do with actual politics and more to do with basic sociocultural questions of human existence (how is one to actually live amongst others?). All the basic philosophical cornerstones of Western civilization are in question, and one side needs to win out, so don’t get too caught up in the “minutiae of daily conduct.” We’re not simply arguing about guns or taxes anymore.
Most importantly, though, understand the paradox of your position within a modern political context. Modern conservatism, historically, has merely conserved the good things about liberalism. It has largely been a tool to keep at bay the flagrant extremes of liberalism, to keep liberalism from eating itself. The interesting thing about conservatism is that “the moment it is uttered it is obsolete.” How does one escape this paradox? I am not sure there is any way to. Perhaps the best thing to do is to recalibrate your mind. Do not worship the past or fantasize about it. Instead, learn from it and seek to preserve the intellectual framework that guided our forefathers so that we may prudently apply it to our modern era. “[W]hile we are not our past, our past has produced us. To do away with it would be to do away with us, the nation.”
This is not to say that aesthetics are not important, they are. But engage in aesthetics substantively. Don’t be a bohemian.
Edmund Burke was a pragmatic reformer. He was by and large against revolution, of violently tearing down what had previously been allowed to develop over centuries prior. He also understood, however, that we ought to reform in order to conserve what is most beneficial to us.