Ends of Conservatism

I was reading Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility last night and it occurred to me that I do not know what we mean by political conservatism today. I assume we seek to conserve material resources, but not just those. We also seek to conserve non-material things as well, things like spiritual and cultural values. But how do we rank these different sorts of ends? Which ones are most important? I think most people say they rank material and cultural things below spiritual things, even if we don't always behave accordingly.

A little reflection shows the truth of that common opinion, since material things cannot be a really final end. We seek them, and especially their surrogate, money, in order to achieve something else. Even if it's only pleasure or comfort, it's clear that money is essentially a means to something more final than itself. Of course we can disagree about whether pleasure or comfort can be final ends--can they be the purpose of life?--but that doesn't change the fact that they reveal the provisional character of material prosperity. It must be a means to something else beyond itself.

Even if we admit material things are only a means to something more important, that is, more final, that doesn't mean we can ignore them. As a means, they are necessary (or at least useful) in securing those more final ends. It is the essence of political conservatism to teach us how to manage material resources so as to conserve the things we truly ought to value. The obvious danger is that we can become distracted by the task of managing the means and lose sight of the end.

In the case of the modern Republican party, that danger emerged most vividly in the last twenty years as it sought to woo religious conservatives. There is nothing inappropriate about such a link, unless it obscures the need to articulate the nature and meaning of the ends towards which the conservation of material things works. But this is exactly what I think has occurred.

Because religious movements come with ready-made spiritual ends, there is no possibility of articulating those ends anew. But constant re-articulation of ends is essential in a political movement. I think we can see the consequence of the failure to articulate our ends as a nation in the quality of our current political discourse. Our political leaders--both those who old office and those who aspire to it--are limited to platitudes about the economy. And the rest of us are stuck sniping at each other from absurdly polarized positions.

A true conservatism must articulate the ends it really seeks to preserve. Until we manage to have that conversation in an open and honest way, we will never be clear about what it is we are trying to conserve. Let us not settle for a conservatism that only seeks to conserve our material prosperity. We need to recognize higher ends than that.