Motus Mentis

I’ve been unexpectedly busy over the past few days, with little time for writing. I do have something substantial for you to read, though: an essay by the late Joseph Sobran on the nature of conservatism. It was written in 1985, and bears the title Pensees: Notes for the Reactionary of Tomorrow.

I’ll quote the opening paragraphs, just to prime the pump:

MOST POLITICAL DISCUSSION nowadays moves in ruts the discussants don’t even seem to be aware of. They talk about rights, freedom, the Constitution, foreign policy, the budget, all sorts of disparate things they never seem to get in focus.

It may help if we step back from politics a bit.

The main political line of division in the United States is between people we call liberals and people we call conservatives. The debate between them has been described in various ways; I would like to offer one of my own, based not so much on theory as on personal introspection.

At certain moments I find myself enjoying life in a certain way. I may be alone, or with friends, or with my family, or even among strangers. Beautiful weather always helps; the more trees, the better. Early morning or evening is the best time. Maybe someone says something funny. And while everyone laughs, there is a sort of feeling that surges up under the laughter, like a wave rocking a rowboat, that tells you that this is the way life should be.

Moments like that don’t come every day, aren’t predictable, and can’t very well be charted. But the main response they inspire is something like gratitude: after all, one can’t exactly deserve them. One can only be prepared for them. But they do come.

This may seem a thousand miles from politics, and such moments rarely have anything to do with politics. But that is just the point. Samuel Johnson says:

How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!

But the same is true of all that human hearts enjoy. Laws and kings can’t produce our happiest hours, though in our time they do more to prevent them than formerly.

“To be happy at home,’ Johnson also remarks, “is the end of all human endeavor.’ That is a good starting-point for politics, just because it is outside politics. I often get the feeling that what is wrong with political discussion in general is that it is dominated by narrow malcontents who take their bearings not from images of health and happiness but from statistical suffering. They always seem to want to “eliminate’ something”“poverty, racism, war”“instead of settling for fostering other sorts of things it is beyond their power actually to produce.

Man doesn’t really create anything. We don’t sit godlike above the world, omniscient and omnipotent. We find ourselves created, placed somehow in the midst of things that we here before us, related to them in particular ways. If we can’t delight in our situation, we are off on the wrong foot.

More and more I find myself thinking that a conservative is someone who regards this world with a basic affection, and wants to appreciate it as it is before he goes on to the always necessary work of making some rearrangements. Richard Weaver says we have no right to reform the world unless we cherish some aspects of it; and that is the attitude of many of the best conservative thinkers. Burke says that a constitution ought to be the subject of enjoyment rather than altercation. (I wish the American Civil Liberties Union would take his words to heart.)

I find a certain music in conservative writing that I never find in that of liberals. Michael Oakeshott speaks of “affection,’ “attachment,’ “familiarity,’ “happiness’; and my point is not the inane one that these are very nice things, but that Oakeshott thinks of them as considerations pertinent to political thinking. He knows what normal life is, what normal activities are, and his first thought is that politics should not disturb them.

Chesterton (who hated the conservatism of his own day) has good remarks in this vein. “It is futile to discuss reform,’ he says, “without reference to form.’ He complains of “the modern and morbid habit of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal,’ and he criticizes socialism on the ground that “it is rather shocking that we have to treat a normal nation as something exceptional, like a house on fire or a shipwreck.’

“He who is unaware of his ignorance,’ writes Richard Whately, “will only be misled by his knowledge.’ And that is the trouble with the liberal, the socialist, the Communist, and a dozen other species of political cranks who have achieved respectability in our time: they disregard so much of what is constant and latent in life. They fail to notice; they fail to appreciate.

We can paraphrase Chesterton’s remark about reforming without reference to form by saying it is futile to criticize without first appreciating. The conservative is bewildered by the comprehensive dissatisfaction of people who are always headlong about “reform’ (as they conceive it) or are even eager to “build a new society.’ What, exactly, is wrong with society as it is already? This isn’t just a defiant rhetorical question; it needs an answer. We don’t have the power to change everything, and it may not be such a bright idea to try; there are plenty of things that deserve the effort (and it is an effort) of preserving, and the undistinguishing mania for “change’ doesn’t do them justice”“isn’t even concerned with doing them justice. What we really ought to ask the liberal, before we even begin addressing his agenda, is this: In what kind of society would he be a conservative?

For some reason, we have allowed the malcontent to assume moral prestige. We praise as “ideals’ what are nothing more than fantasies”“a world of perpetual peace, brotherhood, justice, or any other will-o’-the-wisp that has lured men toward the Gulag.

The malcontent can be spotted in his little habits of speech: He calls language and nationality “barriers’ when the conservative, more appreciatively, recognizes them as cohesives that make social life possible. He damns as “apathy’ an ordinary indifference to politics that may really be a healthy contentment. He praises as “compassion’ what the conservative earthily sees as a program of collectivization. He may even assert as “rights’ what tradition has regarded as wrongs.

There is much, much more, and the quality is consistent throughout. I will likely return to it all in future posts, but for now you must go and read the whole thing here.