Bruce P. Frohnen (Ohio Northern University College of Law) has posted Nature, Tradition, and Virtue: Restoring the Conservative Good Life on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This paper argues that conservatism is an expansive political philosophy, able to contain within itself many differing political forms (from democracy to monarchy) as well as social structures shaped by differing circumstances and traditions. It certainly can contain political programs aimed at reintegrating religion into our public and private lives, protecting the American nation and people from a neoliberal program aimed at reconfiguring society in a manner turning most people into wards of the state, and taking back from ideological usurpers the rights and duties of self-government on which our constitutional republic was built. The key—or at least the conservative—question regarding such movements is whether their adherents would foster meaningful communities of virtue, or to further centralize political and administrative power.
Conservatism properly understood is not an ideology. It does not provide a utopian political blueprint that demands peoples and societies be made to fit intellectuals’ theories. It is, rather, an understanding of human nature and the social order encompassing a full vision of personal virtue and the common, good life, including what is essential for its pursuit. It is easy to overlook the conservative understanding of a good life because it is less about institutions than character. As Russell Kirk pointed out, the conservative understands that right order in the commonwealth requires right order in the soul. More, right order in the commonwealth by nature aims to maintain conditions in which persons may achieve order in their souls. The American political tradition saw neither individual virtue nor social order as mere functional goods, but as aspects of a good life. That good life was well captured by Willmoore Kendall and George W. Carey’s characterization of Americans’ traditional self-understanding: “self-government by a virtuous people deliberating under God.”
Conservatism by its very nature is rooted in the Western natural law tradition. It is explicitly religious, not because it insists on imposing any specific religious practice (or even belief in a personal God) on any society or person, but because it recognizes both man’s higher calling and the Judeo-Christian basis of American culture and civilization. A central tenet of conservatism is the simple observation that culture comes from the cult—historically as well as etymologically. Common beliefs lead to common customs, mores, and institutions shaping reasonable and just expectations within the bounds of the natural law—the permanent, moral order of existence. These norms, shaped by historical experience while rooted in recognition of eternal goods, are what must be conserved and restored if we are to salvage a decent way of life from the chaos attending today’s increasing solidification of power in the hands of technocratic elites.
In the current legal context, conservatism requires opposition to the centralized, tutelary state as the enemy of family, faith, and local freedom. Such opposition may be successful, as shown in the recent Dobbs decision, when public argument is joined with peaceful activism and determined legal and political action aimed at returning responsibility and governance to local communities.
