EDMUND BURKE AND THE
ORIGINS OF MODERN
CONSERVATISM

David A. Norcross

Who is a conservative, and who is more conservative? Much time and intellectual energy are spent on these questions, usually with little satisfaction. Instead, let us consider the philosophy of a classic conservative as a means of comparison. You could do no better than Edmund Burke as a template for what conservatism really is. Now, clearly not every conservative knows a whole lot about Edmund Burke. Many have probably not read Edmund Burke, but Burke and his principles describe the classic conservative. Political philosophy—right, left, center, how far right, how far left—is a pretty personal thing; it’s pretty complex. The use of labels is probably, while not the best of ideas, just too tempting. Do not expect the practice to go away.

In New York, as chairman of the 2004 Republican Nominating Convention, I was required to deal with Republicans of all stripes: left, right, and center. One of the ways I did that was by not trying to put any of them into a particular box. But Burke will give us a yardstick, a box you can use to see whether principles or people fit. This will give you a way to judge how they think.

HISTORY BEFORE BURKE

You cannot understand Burke without an understanding of English history. And you cannot understand the politics of America, and therefore American history, unless you understand Burke.

American history really didn’t start in 1776 or even 1750. Arguably, it started with the Norman conquest of England in 1066; all of the ensuing developments of representative government in England led to the government we have in the United States today. Consider that in 1688, just forty years before Burke was born, there was an English “revolution,” the so-called Glorious Revolution. It was, for the most part, bloodless but represented real change in leadership; Michael Barone calls it “our first revolution.”

In 1688, the English, in essence, chose their king. It is interesting to read Burke’s explanation for how they selected a king but didn’t elect the king. What they did was follow the bloodline (which was a very strong, and perhaps imperative, tradition and guide for the English), to select a person who satisfied the requirements of the bloodline and yet would be a king to do what the leaders determined needed to be done. They sought to be rid of James II and his Catholicism and to replace him with a Protestant who was interested, they thought, in the development of English culture and commerce. The continuation of English culture and the desire for commercial opportunity are constant threads throughout English history and indispensable elements of Burke’s philosophy.

So, in 1688, they selected a king. But in 1649, only forty years before, King Charles I had been executed and a different leader chosen very definitely by the sword. Oliver Cromwell led a bloody and bitter civil war to create “the Commonwealth,” and he sought radical change in the culture and traditions of England. That war saw bloody battles and massacre and ultimately led to the emigration of thousands of Royalists. It was as bitter and hotly contested a change in England as had occurred before or has since. In 1660, the English leaders rejected the brutality of the Commonwealth and restored the traditional monarchy by offering the crown to the son of the executed Charles I. When the leaders restored Charles II to the throne, there was no sitting Parliament. But a group of leaders came together and devised the Restoration, restoring the crown to Charles II. They then, in a measure most respectful of tradition, passed an act legitimizing their actions. In essence, they said, “We weren’t really Parliament when we chose the king, but now that he’s chosen and he’s here and we’re in place, we’re going to say we were Parliament.” We have had transitions in this country from president to president not as smooth as that was.

In the course of forty years, England had had three chief executives selected by the “people” and still managed, at the end of much tumult, to protect (or restore) traditional English values, including representative government and commercial opportunity.

You would think that between the time Charles I was executed and the time it put William and Mary on the throne (1689), considering the turmoil of the civil war, the country would have lost its bearings and its respect for very basic traditions. But it did not—so strong were the foundations of its society. The country continued to be a commercial and military success. It continued to grow and prosper without any serious disruption at home in terms of commerce or the day-to-day life of the citizenry.

In 1714, not long before Burke was born, England picked a whole new royal line. William and Mary died childless; Queen Anne had no children; so the English came to another roadblock. They picked the House of Hanover; they found a German elector; and they chose him to be their king: King George I. Burke is careful to say they didn’t elect him, but they selected him. So now there were four leaders changed in the course of fewer than one hundred years, and England soldiered on. The merchants in England continued to be successful, England continued to grow, English commerce grew. The country thrived during that period, notwithstanding the possibility for extreme turmoil. There was in fact little disruption.

This is the world into which Burke was born, the world in which he became a politician. He spent many, many years in Parliament, was in leadership only a very short period of time, and was in opposition much of that time. Burke’s philosophy was shaped by those extremely important, potentially disruptive, events through which England survived—not only survived, but thrived. Through that whole period, Parliament gained strength, in part, because it had been the vehicle for selecting the new leaders.

Thus, we see that one of the Burke basic tenets is that government is necessary. There is a divergence on this point between Burke and Paine. Burke, much like Blackstone, said any government is better than no government. Clearly, in the hundred years before Burke was born, and when he was becoming active in politics, a smoothly functioning government was essential, and was essential to the continuation of people’s comfort and people’s commercial development. You can’t understand U.S. history without understanding that period of time and the growth of the power of people to select their leaders by means that were not revolutionary, even if the Glorious Revolution was called a revolution.

At all times and through all of those potential upheavals, the preservation of existing freedoms was foremost in the English psyche. And that’s how it became part of our psyche. Burke understood as no one else in his time—that might be unfair to Blackstone—that the preservation of existing freedoms was essential to progress and the goodness of human life.

Understand that throughout all of this turmoil, every time there was a bump in the road, Parliament developed a little more power. If you think about it, from the regicide of Charles I to the Britain of today, and to where we are today, in terms of the power of the people, and of legislative bodies, you will understand that it is that development that shaped Burke’s philosophy and that has shaped Britain, and the United States, and for that matter Australia, New Zealand, and Canada as well.

BURKE’S PHILOSOPHY

Burke gained prominence during the period of the Enlightenment, the so-called Age of Reason. At that time, society was just beginning to embrace Romanticism. Burke was not really a man of either of those philosophies, which makes him all the more interesting. He was pretty much a man of his own philosophy, his own thought, and his own “undisciplined reading,” as he called it.

He had debates with Rousseau, who was much more a believer in the innate goodness of man. Burke was not, incidentally. Burke realized that man (and woman, lest I be accused of leaving half of mankind out), left to their own devices, and with no government, wouldn’t lead very happy lives, wouldn’t understand progress, and wouldn’t progress. So for Burke the Romantic notion that you can create government out of reason alone—which I believe is essentially where the French were after the French Revolution, and before they destroyed the model—was never an alternative. Burke never separated human reason from historical experience. Those two things, history and experience, along with a third, tradition, are the keys to Burke.

History is a means to preserve the progress that had already been achieved. What is it that we are trying to preserve? What is it about our way of life that is most important to us? To Rousseau, it was probably man’s ability to figure out how to make everything better. To Burke, it was the actual progress that had already been achieved, and also the capacity of mankind to keep good changes coming, to build productively on the past.

Tradition is typically thought of as something dry and dull. But it isn’t dry at all—it’s the everyday life of today looked at forty years hence. One great concern today is that we may be abandoning traditions and years of experience that have kept us progressing. Ironically, “Progressives” don’t really understand progress.

Burke and his knowledge of tradition, history, experience, and survival in times of potential upheaval describe why Great Britain today and the United States as well as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are so very different from virtually any other model of government in the world. Yes, those nations have a monarch, and we have a president that we elect every four years, but have you ever asked yourself, “Why are there such difficulties in other parts of the world with what we assume as second nature?” It’s because it is second nature. And it is second nature because we have respected history and tradition and experience.

There is a continuum of development in the United States, a continuum that Burke not only would have understood but, I suspect, would have expected. One of the notions of conservatism is that it is a rejection of change; this is the simplistic explanation of conservatism you hear from liberals. But that isn’t truly what conservatism is. Conservatism is a resistance to the rejection of history, tradition, and experience. Regardless of how you feel about the health care plan (Affordable Care Act), I think you must concede that it is a significant change in a tradition that involves a very large part of American economic society. Conservatives consider whether that change is good or bad based on its rejection of prior norms. Liberals just see all change as progress.

Some change is progress, of course. When the American Revolution was over, the crown was offered to George Washington. If you think about Burke’s philosophy, and you think about Americans who knew about Burke, you can certainly understand why somebody said Washington would make a good monarch. The secret to our success and to our foundation is that we got past that with a pretty radical change. What would have happened if George Washington had accepted monarchy? It might have worked. But I think at that point, we understood that we could make the change; we could keep the traditions; we could embrace the progress with a new kind of executive.

Burke was a kind of contrarian Whig. For Burke, opposition was fine, even if it was within your own party. Being able to think your own thoughts and present your own ideas was a good idea. He saw political parties as a way to limit the monarch. He, like the rest of the Whigs, was a constitutional monarchist. He got into a significant dustup with the king over this. The three Georges pushed back on the growth of the importance and power of Parliament. They were looking for a bit more control. Burke saw that as a very bad idea indeed and fought against it successfully. It’s easy to see why he did: having the king become a tyrant clearly was not what Burke saw as progress respecting history, tradition, and experience.

BURKE AND HUMAN NATURE

One can’t separate human nature from human experience. The French tried. The French Revolution threw it all out. The revolutionaries threw out the church; they threw out the king; they threw out the nobility, killed most of them; they did a do-over. And the do-over didn’t work. And Burke saw that it wasn’t going to work. Thomas Jefferson thought highly of the French Revolution, had some significant disagreements about it; Burke and Jefferson had serious combat over his position on the French Revolution.

But Burke wasn’t hidebound. He was not a man who didn’t understand or appreciate change. He supported the American Revolution; he was appalled by the French Revolution. And he was appalled when the French got done, because there was nothing left of history, of tradition, and there was no experience to guide them on the new course.

With reason and the human mind and knowing that man is good, the French tried to create something new. The something new is now known as the Reign of Terror, decried by Burke, who watched it. And then, when that was over, they fell into . . . Napoleon. Napoleon certainly would not have been a Burke favorite.

You look at the French Revolution and you look at the American Revolution and you see the difference: the French tore everything down and threw it out. In today’s parlance, they threw the baby out with the bathwater.

Burke was troubled by the French Revolution because human nature is central to governance, and man is not inherently good. Burke, by the way, said that the king wasn’t nearly as bad as we read in the history books. Burke did believe that liberty was God’s gift. Burke’s opposition to the French Revolution was a very contrarian notion. It was so contrarian, Burke broke with the leader of his party over his opposition to the French Revolution. Ultimately, the party came back to him and the English king actually said, “Burke, I’ve read your book. I think you’re right.” Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France is a seminal treatise on conservatism.

Burke’s reaction to the French Revolution galvanized an already conservative inclination that had been developed because of the history that was so proximate to his life and that was so clear to him, followed by, during his lifetime, the American Revolution, in which he supported the colonists. He didn’t support freedom for America; he supported the rights of Englishmen who lived in the colonies. That was different, but it was consistent with his philosophy.

OF REVOLUTIONS GOOD AND BAD

The English Revolution actually started in 1215 when the barons told King John, “You’ve got to stop taking stuff away from us. You’re taking our power away; you’ve got to give us something.” Now these were enormously wealthy, landed people. This was major change, but it was gradual, even surviving the reign of Henry VIII. Parliament survived, waxing and waning; more powerful, less powerful. The Glorious Revolution, with little bloodshed, shuffled one king off to France in a reasonably happy frame of mind, and then substituted a new one with the proper bloodlines.

Consider three more upheavals: the Russian Revolution, the American Civil War, and the Arab Spring. First, the Russian Revolution pretty well tracks the French, with even worse long-term results.

Second, I want you to put the Civil War into the mix. It was, in many ways, a failed revolution, and it has taken a long time for us to get over it—assuming the majority of us are over it. But it still was no great challenge to the fundamental institutions of government. Both South and North followed Burke’s principles: history, tradition, experience. And when it was all over, unpleasant as that was, and difficult as it was, the South was able to come back to the tradition and experience and history they understood, though they clearly would have preferred a different result. But it wasn’t the institutions that got challenged in that war—and Burke would say, “That’s why we got through it.”

Third and last, consider the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring, thus far, appears to be ignoring all of Burke. The Arabs don’t have the tradition. My question is whether their religion will let them accept a form of government not dominated by religion. And I readily admit that in the Burkean sense, religion is a huge part of their tradition, and, in fact, a part of their tradition with which they now struggle.

I was called upon in Tunisia, Nigeria, and Russia to try to give advice on how to develop political parties. In both Nigeria and Tunisia, the question was that they wanted political parties, but they didn’t want any opposition. Political parties are perforce made up of the government and opposition. So when you have a tradition that doesn’t accept opposition, it’s difficult to export our democracy. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, but in my view they are going to have to endure a long period of trial and error before they get there. Burke nailed it: the tradition isn’t there, the history isn’t there, and the experience isn’t there.

Stability. All of the last revolutions that we have talked about resulted in terrible bloodshed, upheaval, and an overthrow of existing ways of life. They were a result not of slow development, or gradual development, but of radical change.

If the Progressives were willing to move forward slowly, to progress with some attention to history, tradition, and experience, then I would have no quarrel with them, and neither would Burke, because Burke was certainly not antiprogress. Where the question becomes critical is an example like ObamaCare. Is that progressive? Is that within the bounds of our history, tradition, and experience, or is that too much? Obviously, we have two very vigorous sides to that question, but when is progress bad? “When it’s too fast” is the glib answer to that.

BURKE ON ECONOMICS

Let’s talk about something else in which Burke was a believer. Before Jack Kemp, Bill Roth, and Ronald Reagan, Burke was a supply-sider. “Who,” he said, “is to judge what profit is appropriate; surely no one on earth.”

I spent some time in the former Soviet Union as the Russians were overthrowing communism. I remember being asked, “I want to ask something I don’t understand about the United States. Talk to me about potato chips.”

I said, “Okay, let’s talk about potato chips.”

“How do you know where to send the potato chips? How do you know that? How do you know that Joe’s Grocery Store gets eight cases and Mallory’s Grocery Store gets sixteen? How do you know that? Who tells you that? Who’s in charge of that?”

Obviously, the markets are in charge of that. Burke understood that. While he was in Parliament, some bright spark decided that they were going to put a tax on corn because there was too much of it, and they were looking to enhance revenues as governments then and now are wont to do. Burke was appalled. There was a shortage of grain, the grain price went up, and then Parliament’s solution was: let’s build a bunch of granaries around the kingdom, and then we can take the corn and put it in the granaries, and then let it out as people need it.

Burke’s reaction: “Are you crazy? When the government buys the corn, the government goes into business against itself.” So it pays too much for the corn; now it’s got to give the corn away, and the people must pay for the extra corn anyway. It’s a market lesson. By the way, the corn tax did not work, and they didn’t build the granaries. Burke’s opponents wanted “compulsory equalization.” This has faint echoes today. Burke said, “Equalizers never raise what is low; they pull down what is high.” That is precisely what happened. We would do well to consider that history.

All markets are related. Consider ethanol and corn. There is an ethanol subsidy; thus, farmers grow a lot of corn, and it’s used to make ethanol. The price of food goes up; the price of feed goes up for the corn-eating critters we eat. You really can’t mess around in a market, says Burke, unless you’re willing to accept the consequences. And the consequences seldom, if ever, provide what it is that you thought you wanted when you started to tinker with it. Most consequences it sometimes appears are unintended. Legislators would do well to consider that carefully.

Lest you wonder about labor, labor is a commodity. If there isn’t enough labor, and I need it, I’m willing to pay more. If there’s too much labor, I’m going to be able to pay less. And you’ve heard this argument today on the minimum wage. If you impose a minimum wage, and I’m an employer, I can avoid the consequences of that by refusing to hire as many people. So Burke was right about that. Labor is indeed a commodity.

Think about labor unions. I’ve never been a very big supporter of labor unions, but it seems to me that the willingness to withhold labor if it’s a commodity is a legitimate way to address the employer. That is unless the result of your withholding work gets you a wage that is too high for the product to be salable—then everybody will suffer.

Again, if you’re going to intervene, try to understand the consequences of your intervention and whether they are good and whether your intervention is more than you need to do or just about right. If you guess wrong, you may be sure the market will sort it out in the end.

Burke also said two other things: “Once you look to the government for bread, you will always expect it.” That’s worth thinking about today. And this is worth thinking about even more: “Do not inflame the poor versus the rich. We are in it together.” That’s all got to do with markets; it’s all got to do with our history, our tradition, our experience. If we ignore or abandon those principles of Burke, we do it at our risk, and we need to carefully consider whether we’re willing to accept the consequences.

BURKE AND THE CHURCH

With regard to public education and civil policy, Burke thought that the church should not meddle. But he was clearly a very religious man in the sense of a belief in God, the importance of the history and tradition and experience of the church, and what these had meant in England.

We have growing secularism in the United States. Can you teach without reference to faith? Can you maintain society as we know it without religion? That’s part of our history, tradition, and experience; that’s a huge part of our history, tradition, and experience. It’s why people keep talking about the Judeo-Christian ethic of the United States. If you take it away, with what do you replace it? I have no idea.

While Burke’s religiosity has been questioned by some, he had a clear understanding that religion is an essential element in keeping order in society. He was less interested in denominational differences than in religion’s social utility as a way to order man’s relationships with his fellow man. The question comes down to what happens to a society if you remove religious tradition and observance. If you take religion out of the equation, what is the replacement? I worry about the rise of secularism in the United States. I began to worry about it in terms of the fundamental role that religion plays in our society. How important is it? The only thing I can think of is Rousseau and his perspective that man is basically good and inclined to do the right thing, with or without societal or religious control. But is that true? Burke rejected that notion. If Burke is right, and I think he was, where do we find the substitute for the institution of religion?

BURKE’S INFLUENCE ON AMERICA

Who made a more important contribution to our revolution and to the form of government that followed—Burke or Paine? Who contributed more to the philosophy that sparked and sustained our revolution? Paine’s contribution and Burke’s contribution are entirely different. I believe Burke’s contribution to be far greater than Paine’s. From my perspective as a politician, that’s true. But that’s not really a fair comparison. Paine’s rhetoric was rather over the top, but it also encouraged the colonists to take the steps that they needed to take. You can legitimately wonder whether Burke’s philosophy—reasoned, wordy, very prolix—would have gotten the colonists where they needed to be in terms of freedom from Britain, and recall that Burke was never in favor of American freedom from Britain.

Burke started with the notion that government is what keeps man in line so that man has the opportunity for improvement, while Paine takes a more grudging view of government’s organizing and controlling. It figures, because Burke wanted to progress; Burke didn’t want us to be free of England. Paine wanted to throw the bomb! He certainly was not opposed to any kind of government; he certainly wasn’t much in favor of a centralized executive, but he would have centralized power in one great legislature, which looks a lot like France.

Burke provided the serious, philosophical underpinning of early American political society and for the conservative movement that is as appropriate and important today as it was in 1775 and 1776. While Burke may have made a greater contribution to the result, it was surely Paine who lit the fire.

Any form of government that is democratic includes the possibility that the majority will go too far. We are presently positioned to jettison Burke’s principles and take that step too far. We have already proved the point that “when you look to the government for bread, when you get it, you will always look to it for bread.” That’s how we got where we are. Is our next step reconsideration of Burke’s basic principles as they apply today? Will we abandon the lessons of history, experience, and tradition in search of a progressive utopia?

If we are true to Burke, we will not go too far. We will realize that we cannot abandon tradition, history, and experience.