Radicalism Defined

Last updated on: November 1, 2017 at 10:01 am by Dan Peterson

Radicalism Defined 2017-11-01T10:01:54-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Russell Kirk earned his doctorate at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Probably the first serious conservative writer that I ever read, apart from William F. Buckley Jr., was Russell Kirk (1918-1994).

Here, from his classic book The Conservative Mind, is his attempt to sum up the essence of what he termed radicalism, which he vigorously rejected. The basic principles of all Western radicalisms, he said, are:

(1) The perfectibility of man and the illimitable progress of society: meliorism. Radicals believe that education, positive legislation, and alteration of environment can produce men like gods; they deny that humanity has a natural proclivity toward violence and sin.

(2) Contempt for tradition. Reason, impulse, and materialistic determinism are severally preferred as guides to social welfare, trustier than the wisdom of our ancestors. Formal religion is rejected and a variety of anti-Christian systems are offered as substitutes.

(3) Political levelling. Order and privilege are condemned; total democracy, as direct as practicable, is the professed radical ideal. Allied with this spirit, generally, is a dislike of old parliamentary arrangements and an eagerness for centralization and consolidation.

(4) Economic levelling. The ancient rights of property, especially property in land, are suspect to almost all radicals; and collectivistic reformers hack at the institution of private property root and branch.

As a fifth point, one might try to define a common radical view of the state’s function; but here the chasm of opinion between the chief schools of innovation is too deep for any satisfactory generalization. Once can only remark that radicals unite in detesting [Edmund] Burke’s description of the state as a divinely ordained moral essence, a spiritual union of the dead, the living, and those yet unborn.

As abstract lists go, I think this one is reasonably good. (Although Kirk published The Conservative Mind in 1953, it seems to cover contemporary twenty-first-century radicalisms rather well.) And the fact that I accept it helps to explain one of the reasons why, although I lean strongly libertarian on economic and certain other issues, I can’t quite go full Libertarian. I am, temperamentally, too conservative (in Kirk’s sense) for that. Permit me to illustrate why with a few brief comments keyed to the quotation above:

(1) I believe in the ultimate perfectibility of humankind and in their literally divine potential. I am, after all, a believing Latter-day Saint and not, as Russell Kirk was, an Anglo-Catholic (who grew increasingly Catholic as the years passed). But I don’t expect such perfection in this life or this world, pending millennial divine intervention, and that’s one reason for my deep objection to entrusting any human beings with too much power.

(2) I believe that tradition, while it should never be absolutely binding and must always be wisely questioned, needs to be respected and taken into account. It’s for this reason, among others, that I’ve worried about the redefinition of marriage. For example. I like G. K. Chesterton’s idea that tradition is “the democracy of the dead,” and that they too should have a vote. I dislike our current tendency to use words like new and innovative uncritically as adjectives of praise.

(3) I don’t like direct democracy. If I had my way, we would go back to the election of United States senators by state legislatures, and the Electoral College would function as it was intended to do.

(4) I believe strongly in private property and free markets. If we want to establish a cooperative society — which I believe the concept of Zion ultimately requires — I believe that we should do so voluntarily, not under coercion.

(5) I don’t like Kirk’s use here of “the state.” I would prefer to say that society ought to be, and that the ideal community (including the Church) is, “a divinely ordained moral essence, a spiritual union of the dead, the living, and those yet unborn.” I take very seriously the concept of “the communion of the Saints.” And I’m delighted that Mormonism, with its concept of temple service and sealing, is unusually well positioned to emphasize such spiritual union and communion.

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