The Imaginative Conservative is an on-line journal for those who seek the True, the Good and the Beautiful. We address culture, liberal learning, politics, political economy, literature, the arts and the American Republic in the tradition of Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Edmund Burke, Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, Wilhelm Roepke, Robert Nisbet, M.E. Bradford, Eric Voegelin, Christopher Dawson and other leaders of Imaginative Conservatism.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, few states in the world could be called democratic. Yet much personal and local freedom existed under the reign of law.
Near the close of the twentieth century, nearly every political regime throughout the world professes to be democratic. Yet in many lands, personal and local freedom has been extirpated.
On the face of things, it appears that the triumph of democracy, far from preserving or enlarging freedom, has brought to power a host of squalid oligarchs.
You hear the word fascism bandied about in the press and media quite a bit nowadays but almost always as a pejorative describing one's enemy.[1] Zeev Sternhell says, “The label fascist has become the term of abuse par excellence, conclusive and unanswerable.”[2] It is also the ultimate way to insult an opponent though no one ever claims the label. Unfortunately, its increased usage today is not accompanied by a proper or historical understanding of the term. When most people think of fascism today, they think of an egomaniacal fuhrer, or possibly an ideology that was defeated in WWII, and more recently espoused by uneducated skinheads or militants in northern Idaho. The most common, but largely false and simplistic answer given to the question, What is Fascism? is: The extreme right wing of the political spectrum, i.e., conservatism, or, the polar opposite of Marxism. The term itself originates from the Latin; fasces, literally meaning: the bundle of rods sporting an axe-head that symbolized the unchallenged state authority of Rome. (You can see this symbol on the backside of a silver Mercury dime, cir. 1916). Later it came to mean: high office or supreme power or command. The first apparent use of the term: Fascist, was by Benito Mussolini when he formed the Fascist Party of Italy in 1919.
by Brad Birzer, TIC co-editor Russell Kirk deserves special attention on the topic of ideologies. In his twenty-nine books on politics, history, constitutional law, literature, social criticism, economics, and fiction, the legacy of the French Revolution and the loosening of the ideologues upon the world haunted him at a profound level. Tellingly, Kirk’s most important influence was Edmund Burke, the originator of conservatism in the post-medieval world and the most articulate spokesman against the French Revolution. Following the careful scholarship of Raymond Aron, Eric Voegelin, Christopher Dawson, and Gerhart Niemeyer as well as the social criticism of Eliot, Kirk argued that one could define ideologies through three of its “vices.”
“Philosophy"—love of wisdom—is a word first used by Heraclitus. "Sophia" as listed in the dictionary means "perfect scientific knowledge, wisdom," but a "sophist" is “a quibbler, a cheat." And Plato made a sharp distinction between sophistes, philosophos, and the sophos, the sophistes being a person who, claiming that he possesses wisdom, takes money for teaching it. The philosophos, by contrast, knowing that he knows nothing, is one who all his life loves wisdom, seeking and striving for that which is truly possessed only by the gods. Aristotle, who was Plato's student for twenty years, distinguishes between a philosophos arid a philomythos, while Plato already had set the philosopher, the lover of wisdom, off against the philodoxer, the lover of opinion. This shows how anxious the Greeks were to distinguish between the mind's trustworthy productions and its treacherous ones. It is too bad that our language has not adopted "philodoxer" together with its cousin, "philosopher."
To what end were 205 million human persons—created in the Image of God—murdered in the twentieth century, one must ask?
And, why did millions more suffer for being simply human persons, unique, unfathomable, unrepeatable? The answer, unfortunately, is not an easy one, and very few scholars—historians, philosophers, or theologians—have attempted to answer this question.
In 1886 Friedrich Nietzsche, the mad prophet of the modern man, wrote, “The greatest event of recent times–that “God is Dead”, that the belief in the Christian God is no longer tenable–is beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe.”
In the summer of 2003, I had to vacate my college office. With limited file-cabinet space at home, I had to lighten my files drastically. Reading and skimming my way along, I relived many episodes, including ones that I had quite forgotten. Also, I came upon old essays and reviews by various hands. One said in part, “Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn primarily is a man of moral imagination.” The author was none other than Russell Amos Kirk, and the citation came from his review of my 1980 book Solzhenitsyn: The Moral Vision.
As I reread that review, I was happily put in mind once again of the important influence that Russell Kirk had exerted upon me. To be sure, influence does not yield xerox-copy duplication. Kirk’s Gothic imagination, with its ghosts and gargoyles, has no deep hold on my affections. Nor has this Chicago native fallen under the sway of what I shall call his rural romanticism. But I did at that moment begin trying to articulate for myself the nature of my indebtedness to Kirk.
Developments in recent American politics have raised questions about the intellectual roots and philosophical depth of conservatism. The direction of American foreign policy, for example, has inspired debates about the meaning of American conservatism. George Carey, in a Fall 2005 Modern Age article, suggests that American politics has turned away from conservative principles. Liberalism is the paramount political ideology in America. This may come as a surprise to those who equate conservatism with the Republican Party and who measure the success of the conservative movement by election results. Republicans control the policy-making branches of government and they have gained ground on the Supreme Court. In the mass media, conservative voices seem to be present more today in popular print, on the radio, and on television than ever before. Conservative books commonly become best sellers and conservative think tanks and foundations have burgeoning budgets. But it may be that many conservatives have lost touch with the intellectual roots and engendering purpose of their political movement. They conflate fleeting election politics and media exposure with the enduring work of maintaining Western civilization. In the formative institutions of American culture, the academy, the arts, the church, and the family, conservative values are in retreat. How does one make sense of these competing notions of conservatism’s political and cultural vitality?
Literature in Revolution. Edited by George Abbott White and Charles Newman. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston-Triquarterly Book, 1972).
Time was when the study of humane letters stood central in formal education. Public men were brought up in a literary discipline, and "rhetoric" meant more than an orator's style. The domination of the political order by men who knew their poets and their philosophers went farthest in old China, but it existed to some degree throughout the civilized world until the First World War. Woodrow Wilson was the last American president representing this literary culture - and he imperfectly.
In political leaders, and even among those many unknowable individuals who (in Dicey's argument) are the real authors of public opinion, the literary culture nurtured political understanding. To those who must make political decisions, humane letters supplied two principal supports. First, the literary discipline set them in a tradition, which gave them ethical awareness and historical consciousness. Second, the literary discipline woke their imagination, so that they might approach the complexity of public concerns with broader views than a vulgarized pragmatism can give.
I didn't know the story of King Haakon--democratically elected king of Norway!--and his noble opposition to the German National Socialist invasion of the Kingdom of Norway in 1940 until today. That such such heroism existed in the twentieth century gives me great hope for humanity.
When the Germans invaded Norway in the spring of 1940, overwhelming it in terms of numbers and technology, the king led the opposition, rallying his people to resist. His brother, King of Denmark, did just the opposite, accepting Nazi rule, while the Swedish king did much in his power to help Hitler project his evil throughout northern Europe.
From one of the few remaining radio stations--itself, somewhat hiding in a mountainous, rural region--Haakon spoke to the Norwegians.
I am deeply affected by the responsibility laid on me if the German demand is rejected. The responsibility for the calamities that will befall people and country is indeed so grave that I dread to take it. It rests with the government to decide, but my position is clear. For my part I cannot accept the German demands. It would conflict with all that I have considered to be my duty as King of Norway since I came to this country nearly thirty-five years ago.
The decision is yours. But if you choose to accept the German demands, I must abdicate. For, I cannot appoint Quisling as prime minister.
Brad Birzer’s postings of two of Russell Kirk’s many warnings against the evils of ideology and Steve Masty’s pertinent questions prompt me to offer the following thoughts.
About a decade ago, just after the 9/11 horrors, our colleague Robert Eden sent an email to the Hillsdale College faculty offering “some basic distinctions as we sort out the elements of Islamic teaching” in what, he predicted, will become a supercharged atmosphere (my words, a loose interpretation of his intention) filled with intellectual fog. He said, in part,
‘Ideology’ is a term that was introduced by the French political philosopher Destutt de Tracy in order to highlight the novelty and importance of the modern project of putting politics and social life on a rational scientific footing...
The neologism was deliberately formed in order to exclude teachings based upon divine revelation, with Christianity and Judaism of course chiefly in view; but the exclusion applies with equal force to Islam....The school of Ideologues for whom Tracy spoke sought to liberate science and reason from clerical supervision so that the Baconian project of the conquest of nature could transform social, political, and economic life unimpeded by the constraints of revealed law or revealed truth. The very term ideology bespeaks the culture-war....
As the politicos battle it out (or, at least make a show of battling it out) in D.C., I can't help but be struck by Kirk's brief but solid definition of "ideology" from his "Errors of Ideology."
Unleashed by the French Revolution, ideologies have plagued the world for well over 200 years now. They continue to infect. We, the infected. . . . and, it festers and festers.
From Russell Kirk, “The Errors of Ideology.”
Ideology, in short, is a political formula that promises mankind an earthly paradise; but in cruel fact what ideology has created is a series of terrestrial hells. I set down below some of the vices of ideology.
1) Ideology is inverted religion, denying the Christian doctrine of salvation
through grace in death, and substituting collective salvation here on earth
through violent revolution. Ideology inherits the fanaticism that sometimes
has afflicted religious faith, and applies that intolerant belief to concerns
secular.
2) Ideology makes political compromise impossible: the ideologue will
accept no deviation from the Absolute Truth of his secular revelation. This
narrow vision brings about civil war, extirpation of “reactionaries”, and the
destruction of beneficial functioning social institutions.
3) Ideologues vie one with another in fancied fidelity to their Absolute Truth;
and they are quick to denounce deviationists or defectors from their party
orthodoxy. Thus fierce factions are raised up among the ideologues
themselves, and they war mercilessly and endlessly upon one another, as
did Trotskyites and Stalinists.
Now I contrast with those three failings certain principles of the politics of prudence.
1) As I put it earlier, ideology is inverted religion. But the prudential politician
knows that “Utopia” means “Nowhere”; that we cannot march to an earthly
Zion; that human nature and human institutions are imperfectible; that
aggressive “righteousness” in politics ends in slaughter. True religion is a
discipline for the soul, not for the state.
2) Ideology makes political compromise impossible, I pointed out. The
prudential politician, au contraire, is well aware that the primary purpose of
the state is to keep the peace. This can be achieved only by maintaining a
tolerable balance among great interests in society. Parties, interests, and
social classes and groups must arrive at compromises, if bowie-knives are to
be kept from throats. When ideological fanaticism rejects any compromise,
the weak go to the wall. The ideological atrocities of the “Third World” in
recent decades illustrate this point: the political massacres of the Congo,
At the beginning of the twentieth century, few states in the world could be called democratic. Yet much personal and local freedom existed under the reign of law. 
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