BOO KS
569
I did not, unfortunately, find anything new or creative in the pro–
gram of
The Conservative Mind.
Typically, Mr. Kirk says, "In con–
structing a program, American conservatives must first inquire what
social institutions the United States have to conserve." He does not go
on to ask what new must be 'created; he treats change, in fact, as a
kind of aboriginal evil that must be eradicated. And if the task of con–
servatives is to conserve, it cannot escape the question: on what basis
shall we choose what we ought to conserve? We do not want to con–
serve everything that exists, for then we would retain all the follies
that Mr. Kirk hates. He cannot ask us to choose on the basis of reason,
for that is the criterion of the liberal, and his arch enemy. What other
bases do we have?
Unthinking conservatism might answer this question in terms of the
endurance of tradition, the depth of commitment to institutions which
are basic to a way of life. But then it follows that we defend cannibalism
and human sacrifice and slavery where those institutions are rooted in
a society. I am not sure that Mr. Kirk is caught in this net. He does
not explicitly deal with the matter but he does say things like this:
"Human slavery is bad ground for conservatives to make a stand upon;
yet it needs to be remembered that the wild demands and expectations
of the abolitionists were quite as slippery a foundation for political de–
cency." Whatever one may think of particular abolitionist documents,
surely in their opposition to slavery they were right.
There are, of course, other criteria which can help us choose:
values we want to realize, or the will of God. Mr. Kirk is vague about
the former, and flirts consistently with the latter, without attempting to
find out what it means. He offers six canons of conservative thought,
beginning the first with "Belief that a divine intent rules society as well
as conscience," and ending the sixth with "Providence is the proper in–
strument for change, and the test of a statesman is his cognizance of
the real tendency of Providential social forces." The second point, une–
laborated, makes the first useless as criterion, for now we need still
another criterion to allow us to distinguish "Providential social forces"
from social forces which are not "Providential." (Incidentally, these
canons rule out some of Mr. Kirk's heroes, like Santayana.)
Mr. Kirk describes his book as " a prolonged essay in definition,"
and says it "does not pretend to be a history of conservative parties."
It is, however, a kind of history of conservative
ideas
from Burke to
Santayana, and has the special virtue of treating the ideas of literary
men, Fenimore Cooper, James Russell Lowell, W. H. Mallock, who have
been neglected as political thinkers. Mr. Kirk bases his discussion of
