Or R.L. Dabney on Northern Conservatism

There is a sort of conservatism which has been popular ever since people recognized the difference between what we used to do and what we could do. Let us, in reference to that excellent quote of R.L. Dabney’s, call them Northern Conservatives. The essence of this conservatism is to keep yesterday’s evils, while forgetting that yesterday’s evils were, yesterday, quite new.

Such conservatism does have a habit of standing against tomorrow’s evils (and tomorrow’s goods). The problem with standing against tomorrow’s evils upon the foundation of yesterday’s evils is obvious, though: when tomorrow comes, I’ll be standing on today’s evils, and when the day after tomorrow comes, I’ll be standing on tomorrow’s evils. Standing on the escalator and trying to hold against the guy standing two steps up is not just futile, it’s stupid.

Let’s have an example!

The man who wants to go back to classical liberalism is one such Northern Conservative. He wants to step back a few decades or centuries, but he does not want to be rid of the rebellion which birthed this whole mess. The seeds of modernity’s collapse were already sown in Locke and Grotius and Marsilius, let alone J.S. Mill or his fellow liberal thinker, Karl Marx. Indeed, many of the sins we struggle with are visible already in Aquinas. Going back to yesterday’s evil, however far away ‘yesterday’ was, is a losing game.

Now, such conservatism does not set out with the mission statement of fighting against the position it will take up tomorrow. Such conservatism is the fruit of Godless conservatism, antipathy to progress which lacks a solid Standard. It’s how we get slightly famous ‘conservative’ political commentators who avowedly practice witchcraft. It’s how ‘conservatives’ can advocate and practice homosexuality. Because the man without God does not have an unchanging standard, the movements he makes tend to drift towards the culturally accepted position. Or to recoil violently but superficially (thus, groypers).

Mere conservatism, conservatism without a binding principle save ‘What we did yesterday was best,’ is forever drifting. The result I will let Dabney summarize:

“American conservatism is only the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader…. No doubt, after a few years, when women’s suffrage shall have become an accomplished fact, conservatism will tacitly admit it into its creed, and thenceforward plume itself upon its wise firmness in opposing with similar weapons the extreme of baby suffrage; and when that too shall have been won, it will be heard demanding the integrity of the American Constitution requires at least the refusal of suffrage to asses. There it will assume, with great dignity, its final position.”

The only remedy is a firm anchor in God and His word, which does not change or fade or discover need for alteration.

God bless.