BOO KS
575
Plato is the most elaborate of social planners, a category which includes
Aristotle as well. And as for religion, the very word "utopian" derives
from the work of Sir Thomas More (beatified 1886, canonized 1935).
Mr. Kirk's all-out war against liberalism and secularism raises so
much smoke that he cannot make out parts of the everyday terrain;
in
consequence his program is, for the most part, vague or muddled.
When a program emerges from the application of principles, it must
be based on clarity about practice. It can only be confused by such a
dogged refusal to make distinctions where there are obvious differences
as Mr. Kirk exhibits when he writes, "The culmination of liberalism, the
fulfillment of the aspirations of Bentham and Mill, and of the French
and American democratic spokesmen, . . . is also the completion of
capitalism. It is communism. Rockefeller and Marx were merely two
agents of the same social force-an appetite cruelly inimical to human
individuation, by which man has struggled up to reason and art."
If
communism is the completion of capitalism, and Mr. Kirk likes neither,
what are his own economics? He gives no hint.
A conservative program, when it is based in part on contempt for
mass education, must deal with the issue soberly, as Mr. Kirk does not;
it must tell who is to be educated, and how, and why. When it comes
to practical proposals it must do better than Mr. Kirk's desire to get
rid of the graduated income tax, one of his very few particular sug–
gestions. When it offers guidance for the future, its meanings, at least,
must be clear, so that choice can be based on principle and principle
clarified by choice. Mr. Kirk announces delphically in his last para–
graph: "Our world may be passing from contract back to status.
Whether that process is good or evil, conservatives must prepare society
for Providential change, guiding the life that is taking form into the
ancient shelter of Western and Christian civilization."
Conservatives were once characterized by John Stuart Mill as "the
stupid party." Much that conservative politicians have advocated in
our day entitles them still to the name.
If
a new conservatism is to be
forthcoming in theory, it will not win the respect of intelligent people
unless its criticism is responsible, its ideas clear, and its program exact.
Ralph Gilbert Ross
