A Conservatism That Makes No Sense
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A Conservatism That Makes No Sense The Conservative Sensibility, George Will, Hatchett, 2019, pp. 640, $15.99 hardcover. Dan Asia Accepted: 15 July 2020 # The National Association of Scholars 2020
George F. Will’s The Conservative Sensibility is really about the American conservative sensibility, as those of Europe and America differ. Europe’s is more concerned with “conserving social hierarchies and established churches,” while American conservatism seeks “to conserve or establish institutions and practices conducive to a social dynamism that dissolves impediments to social mobility and fluidity.” Conservatism seeks to limit the size and reach of the state to allow for individual autonomy. One might say that as the state contracts, humans flourish. Will notes that we are indeed exceptional, as no other country has a creedal identity based on a set of ideas. Dan Asia is an American composer whose work ranges from solo pieces to large scale multimovement works for orchestra and includes six symphonies. Since 1988, Asia has been Professor of Composition and head of the composition department at the University of Arizona in Tucson; [email protected]. He wrote “Can We All Just Get Along?” for our fall, 2019 issue.
If American conservatism seeks to conserve, what does it precisely seek to conserve? According to Will: “[w]e seek to conserve the American Founding.” He notes that progressivism started over a century ago with Woodrow Wilson, that its concepts run counter to those of the Founding, and that its prevailing ideas have been exceedingly detrimental to the country. Conservatism is the true liberalism—classical as it were— as it champions the rights of individuals over society’s larger forces, including government and religious institutions. The differences between conservatism and progressivism are manifest in many policy issues, but it comes down to disquieting differences in understanding the nature of man. The world the conservative inhabits finds that man has natural rights that are permanent and inalienable. And that these rights are predicated on an understanding that man himself has a certain nature that is immutable. The progressive holds the notion that man and the self are plastic and greatly, if not entirely, malleable; that “human nature . . . is always in a state of becoming.” The ten chapters in this lengthy book include “The Aim of
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Education.” In it, Will supports the notion of civic education. The Preamble to the Constitution says “We the People,” and we must ask what this phrase actually means. The states were to some extent formed of disparate religious sects, each with its own approach to the worship of God. What might have united them was only their realization that, if they had come to these shores to worship their God, others should be left alone to worship theirs. A war in support of independence also made them brothers and sisters in a way that might not have been possible had it not occurred. Thus they were all comrades, and many gave their lives to be free of foreign dominat
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