Many American conservatives think that the debate between traditional and new conservatives is only fought in America, but here in Europe it’s just the same.
I think it’s very important that the American Conservatives know something about the evolution in the thought of the European Conservatives. For many American Conservatives, conservative thinking in Europe isn’t important for them, because they usually think that European Conservatism is limited to ‘throne and altar’-thinking and that there is no philosophy behind it, except an ordinary reactionary thought where no progress of technology is allowed. This is a grave mistake and it’s something that progressive and leftist thinkers keep intact because they fear that people in Europe would understand the aesthetic and philosophical beauty of Conservative thought, just like many Americans became aware of that beauty after the publication of The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk.
In Europe, Conservative thought was born in Great Britain when Edmund Burke wrote his Reflections on the Revolution in France. It's true there’s a difference between Burke’s conservatism and the more autocratic conservative thought of De Maistre or Louis De Bonald. But these thinkers, especially de Bonald, had a great influence upon early American conservative thinkers, especially on Robert Nisbet, in his book The Quest for Community.
Conservatism is bound to regional differences and that isn’t unusual. Conservatism conserves the specific tradition of a local entity or region, or country. Conservatism in America conserves the ideals of the American Revolution, but those ideas aren’t so much different from the ideas of European conservatism. Edmund Burke, the godfather of both American and European Conservative thinking, supported the American Revolution and many European traditional conservatives are very supportive of the ideas of the American Revolution, such as federalism, autonomy, limited but responsible government, and strong local communities.
It was Alexis De Tocqueville, a French young aristocrat who, in 1830, wrote a very strong book for conservative thinking on government: Democracy in America. De Tocqueville is one of the most central historical persons of European Conservatism.
Individualism as a difference
One of the greatest differences between European conservative thinking and American conservatism is the case of individualism. In the American context, individualism is taken as autonomy of citizenship and within strong communities; I could say America has had individualism as a basic autonomic culture from its beginning.
In Europe, in contrast, individualism is defended by those of radical enlightenment, those that you would call ‘liberals,’ cultural leftists. Within the French counter-revolutionary tradition there has always been a great hatred towards individualism because in the European context, individualism was a threat to tradition and religion; in America this was not the case and therefore American conservatives promote that individualism within community. In Europe that isn’t possible.
So why is it that leftist thinkers defend individualism in Europe? Because individualism is a means to impose a bigger government and a Marxist cultural revolution upon Europe. In Europe, individualism has never been a part of the traditional order or culture. The European culture has always been defined as a communitarian, limited government society where the local and regional communities, and institutions like the family, were the basis of European traditional culture; individualism has always been alien to our culture. European leftists chose individualism as a means to wipe out the traditional European social hierarchy.
Individualism, if it isn’t part of the traditional culture, leads to big government, because if the institutions in the middle are destroyed, the open space, the ‘gap’ has to be filled with a greater whole to keep order and peace within a society, and that greater whole is government power and legislation. In the sixties and seventies, the cultural Marxists and progressive intelligentsia used the weapon of individualism to fight the traditional hierarchy and its institutions like the Church, the family, and local community.
That’s why on many issues Europe is more leftist than the U.S. It isn’t traditional Europe that is now standing as the European Union, but the progressive Europe, the alien Europe I call it.
American conservatives have no problem to defending individualism because that’s part of the American social structure; your type of individualism is that of the autonomous civilian who lives in a social community but with particular constitutional rights.
The problem is that most American conservatives think in American terms if they watch Europe and therefore they believe that European conservatism isn’t true philosophical conservatism. However, traditional European conservatives are also philosophical conservatives in the tradition of Edmund Burke, we just have other priorities and battles to fight than the American conservatives.
The paleo-neoconservative debate in Europe
Within European conservative organizations there is much debate whether we should orient in the neoconservative direction or keep our classical conservative thought. In Belgium and the Netherlands, many Dutch and Flemish (Dutch-speaking half of Belgium) conservatives want to move towards neoconservative thinking. The magazine where I write, Bitter Lemon, is a traditional conservative magazine, we try to balance traditional (paleo) conservative thought against the neoconservative wind.
Many American conservatives think that the debate between traditional and new conservatives is only fought in America, but here in Europe it’s just the same. Some ex-liberals or socialists and libertarians want to move the European conservative ‘movement’ towards a neoconservative movement.
It’s sometimes said that paleoconservative Americans can better cope with Europe than the neoconservatives. That’s quite understandable because paleoconservatives mostly have a thomist-catholic view on the world. I also found a reason in the essay of Stephen J. Tonsor, “Why I Am Not a Neoconservative:”
Conservatism has its roots in a much older tradition. Its world view is Roman or Anglo-Catholic; its political philosophy, Aristotelian and Thomist; its concerns, moral and ethical; its culture, that of Christian humanism.
That’s also the culture of Old Europe, the Europe where community of place and region reigned and where religion was still important.
Some conservatives in Europe think that they should forget that Old European Tradition and move on with a New Europe, a Europe that is greatly influenced by liberalism and not the Old Catholic worldview.
I’m part of the first type of European conservativism: I want to keep the Old Europe alive, but with an open view to modern problems.
The American conservative reader may conclude from this article that European conservatism isn’t very different from American conservatism and that Europe’s conservative thinkers are more then just ‘throne and altar’ reactionaries.
Why do NeoCons hate France?
Why exactly do NeoCons hate France? After all, for anyone who has studied or lived in France, as I have, it is apparent that France does in fact have a strong conservative tradition, one could argue, even stronger than the one in the U.S. France has its problems – like any country, especially its liberal media and bureaucracies – but it certainly does not deserve the unhinged neocon propaganda it receives.
Neocon Denis Boyles, French-hater par excellence, author of boilerplate articles and book Vile France: Fear, Duplicity, Cowardice and Cheese, rants about the current election in France over at National Review. Unsurprisingly, he is disappointed that the neobliberal Francois “I am a Clintonian” Bayrou probably will not make the final round in the election. He says:
“Only a Bayrou-Sarkozy contest will force the center-left and the center-right to stake out genuine differences. Sarkozy trails in that projected contest, but what his campaign should be about — creating fundamental change — is best suited not only to his real personality but more importantly to a pursuit of a mandate for change.”
Following Burke, shouldn’t conservatives be skeptical of unbridled change? Or shouldn’t we at least give reasons for it, and not just blindly celebrate it?
And in an ideal world, what change would Boyles like?
(1) For France to become an obsequious client state in a neocon global empire?
(2) Of course, globalization, globalization, globalization. Suicidal free trade, etc?
(3) For France to relinquish any pride in her traditions (especially those conservative ones, against which the neocons have declared war)?
Of course, if National Review were conservative – which it is not – it would come out in support of Le Pen, the only real conservative in the race. But Bayrou barely mentions him in his article.
The typical neocon / neoliberal dismissal of Le Pen is that he is a “socialist.” If this were true, which it is not, it would not automatically disqualify him from being a conservative. This type of economic reductionism practiced by Republicans, the building of a political philosophy upon an economic system, is more reminiscent of Marxism than conservatism. For any real conservative, tradition, family, and ancestors should matter more than ideological adherence to an economic system. Le Pen is a real conservative because he has an interest in conserving, i.e. preserving, France, the French and their totemic traditions.
Paut Gottfried has recently written – and he is correct – that authentic conservatives in the U.S. should be looking at the Front National for inspiration. Even though we may not follow it point for point – Americans definitely would want a more decentralized variant – it certainly passes as more conservative than the Republican Party, arch-defender of neoliberal corporate globalism.
So why do the neocons hate France? Chilton Williamson, although writing about John J. Miller, hits the nail on the head, and could be discussing almost all neocons, when he writes:
“Miller and his co-author (an old school chum who teaches history at Seton Hall University), are very angry with France and with the French. The proximate reason is President Chirac’s opposition to the Iraq War. An amazing list of more distant reasons is also adduced, ranging from the French-Indian Wars of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the XYZ and Citizen Genet Affairs of the 1790s, Napoleon’s insults to the young American republic, Napoleon III’s contemplated support of the Confederacy and his invasion of Mexico (perhaps if he’d won, the Border Patrol would today be arresting Frenchmen in berets along the U.S.-Mexican border?), Clemenceau’s bamboozling of President Wilson at Versailles, Jean-Paul Sartre, Charles De Gaulle, and Deconstructionism.
Only at the conclusion of the book, with its coy references to the French people’s “historic levels of anti-Semitic sentiment” and the French government’s failure “to grapple with a rising tide of anti-Semitic sentiment,” are we given a hint at what is really eating the authors. “
Of course, the French are not truly anti-semitic, unless of course by “anti-semitism” one means criticism of Israel, under which charge about half of American Jews would be found guilty. But since the Suez Canal crisis, the French have been a little more pragmatic and patriotic (i.e. concerned with what actually is in France’s interest), which is bound to upset any neocon itching for perpetual war in the Middle East.
It is also amusing that the anti-French neocons are in fact the modern manifestation of the Jacobins: armed with liberal abstractions, they are prepared to transform the world to liberal democracy. And, simultaneously, they denounce the French conservative tradition, which is skeptical of this Jacobin nonsense.
The neocon hatred of France is about one issue and one issue only: Israel. It has nothing to do with France’s political and intellectual traditions.
http://conservativetimes.org/?p=423