In the 1960s, during the emergence of the post-war Conservative movement, there was a raging identity crisis on the right. The conflict between the libertarian and traditionalist wing of the new Conservative movement created a serious chasm on how conservative governance would work should the movement amass power. The writer and philosopher Frank Meyer proposed a solution to this problem with a theory he termed “fusionism”. The theory was one of personal liberty grounded in traditions and guidance from the past wisdom. However, many on the right , led by National Review founder L. Brent Bozell, Jr., resisted the mixture of these two political ideologies and argued that they were incompatible because they each had a different end. While libertarianism had personal liberty as its end, conservatism was based on a society of virtue. The latter is the true end for a society and one which the modern conservative movement has long abandoned in favor of a shallow and trite individualistic thought.
What do I mean by virtue? The Catholic Church outlines seven virtues that we are to strive for in its Catechism. The Cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) are virtues that are innate to every human being, while the Theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity) must be attained through careful prayer and reflection on the lives of Jesus and the saints. The virtues, specifically the four latter ones are not merely Catholic, but have roots in the pagan culture of the ancient world. Ancient philosophers, particularly Aristotle, wrote extensively on the virtues and even stated in The Nicomachean Ethics that “happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities.” Virtues are not merely relative to a society, but are universal in application throughout many cultures.
To further illustrate this point, the English lay theologian C.S. Lewis also states in Mere Christianity “think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five.” What we term ‘good’ or ‘bad’ behavior is not specific to one culture, but to many cultures before us and will continue to be accepted by many cultures after us. While the philosophical and abstract discussion of these virtues is important, their practice must also be examined.
One issue that plagues modern society is the problem of unjust force. This issue is often discussed on the left with scorn towards any use of force and on the right by saying that the force was justified or that it should have been more severe. The true conservative position is a mean of the two extremes. The solution to this problem is in accord with the virtue of justice and perhaps the maxim would be to use as much force as would be necessary to halt the criminal or something of that nature. Justice, at least in our legal system, dictates that each person must be given a trial before conviction. Therefore, the just thing to do would be to arrest the criminal with necessary force, but not enough to kill the criminal and execute judgment in an unjust manner. I will note that while I referenced our legal system specifically (which may seem relative), the virtue of justice is universal and observed in our nation.
To harken back to a prior issue of the Crier, the issue of marijuana legalization may also fall into the discussion of virtue. The pro-marijuana position is to legalize it, while the anti-marijuana position is to ban it since it could cause medical complications or act as a gateway to more serious drugs. The simplest opinion against marijuana legalization is that it inhibits the exercise of free virtue in a society. While some may claim that marijuana is acceptable in controlled amounts (the virtue of temperance), it is the virtue of prudence which is truly involved in the matter. If a society is encouraged to indulge in marijuana use, their prudence is impaired and anything which hampers the free practice of virtue should not be encouraged.
Conservatism in today’s polity has become devoid of any philosophical discussion of virtue and relies solely on the trite concepts of freedom and liberty to defend its positions. Freedom and liberty are certainly great, but they must not be the ends of a society. In order to be effective, they must be illuminated by virtue. The 2nd U.S. President John Adams summed up the Conservative mantra best when he said “liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.”
