In the end, what Bramwell despises is any pre-political loyalty of any kind. Even party loyalty, which is only barely pre-political, must be dispensed with in favor of purely individual political calculus. How, I wonder, is this anything but a rather smart version of Andrew Sullivan’s prescription for conservatives? That it should appear in the pages of The American Conservative is perhaps the most remarkable thing about it. ~Fr. Jape

Well, give TAC credit for always entertaining a wide assortment of ideas.  In the same issue as Bramwell’s piece, Jeffrey Hart writes how ideology has replaced prudence under Bush and offers an almost entirely different analysis of the problems facing conservatives. 

Jape dissects the Bramwell piece pretty effectively and hits on a few things that I admit I missed the first time through.  Though I will save more fully extended comments until later, since I am short on time now, one thing that stood out for me as particularly strange in Mr. Bramwell’s article was this:

But the movement never had any first principles to begin with.  Although it boasts a carefully husbanded canon of supposedly foundational texts, the men who wrote them–Kirk, Strauss, Voegelin, Weaver, Chambers, Meyer–were notorious eccentrics given to extravagant claims whose policy implications remain largely obscure [bold mine-DL].

This is something that I confess to not fully understanding.  Even supposing that all of these men were eccentrics who made “extravagant claims,” there surely is a policy implication, for instance, when Kirk writes:

In a genuine community, the decisions most directly affecting the lives of citizens are made locally and voluntarily. Some of these functions are carried out by local political bodies, others by private associations: so long as they are kept local, and are marked by the general agreement of those affected, they constitute healthy community. But when these functions pass by default or usurpation to centralized authority, then community is in serious danger.   

The policy implication would be to favour those things, possibly through some kind of regulation and legislation if necessary (though prudence and subsidiarity would take over here), that tend to secure the stability and sanity of those local communities and preserve local control of as much of the community’s life as is feasible.  One might readily draw from this that economic policies that seem to encourage upheaval, constant mobility, sprawl, the dislocation of people and the shuttering of local industries and shops are inimical to healthy local communities and should be criticised, reformed or even scrapped entirely.  There might be many more policy implications in such a view of community.  That would presumably be the business of policy-makers to determine.  If, however, we are speaking of having first principles, why is it the business of the philosopher, author or literary critic to tell the policy men the policy implications of his broader ideas?  Surely it is for the philosopher or the man of letters to reflect on fundamental principles of politics and ethics and to state their view of the essentials, whereupon policymaking types could adapt these to present-day practical concerns. 

Often enough the policy implications of basic principles expressed in the works of a Kirk or a Bradford are not so terribly obscure; the “problem” tends to be that the implications of their writings do not fit very well with one’s own idea of what good policies are.  But more strange than that is the idea that a seminal thinker who plainly lays down basic principles (Kirk’s list is called, after all, Ten Conservative Principles) never did lay down much of anything because the policy implications of those principles are supposedly obscure.  Obscure to whom?  Perhaps they are obscure to those who do not accept some of the first principles?  I don’t know. 

In any case, if his article helps to sharpen and focus the debate on the state of conservatism, which I think it already has done, it will have accomplished a great deal.  Make sure that you get ahold of a copy of the new American Conservative for the Bramwell article and for all of the other worthwhile content you will find in it.