Buckley defined Conservatism through the metaphor of a man standing on the train tracks of history, yelling ‘stop!’. Scruton defined Conservatism as the stewardship of the beautiful, in a particular way of life. The intuition expressed in both definitions is sound. For Conservatism to mean anything, then it must include the preservation or conservation of something important. Scruton is closer to that mark than Buckley is, because he’s closer to a fundamental principle than Buckley is. But they both still miss the mark considerably because their focus is too much on present particulars, without reference to what makes those particulars important.
There is no conservative political manifesto which, as we make our faltering way, we can consult, confident that it will point a sure finger in the direction of the good society. Indeed, sometimes the conservative needle appears to be jumping about as on a disoriented compass…
…Still, for all the confusion and contradiction, I venture to say it is possible to talk about “the conservative position” and mean something by it. At the political level, conservatives are bound together for the most part by negative response to Liberalism; but altogether too much is made of that fact. Negative action is not necessarily of negative value. Political freedom’s principal value is negative in character. The people are politically stirred principally by the necessity for negative affirmations. Cincinnatus was a farmer before he took up his sword, and went back to farming after wielding some highly negative strokes upon the pates of those who sought to make positive changes in his way of life…
