Counterfeiting Conservatism: Are You Sure You Want a Revolution? (Ideas) (Viewpoint Essay)

CONSERVATISM IS THE "ISM" that came into being to resist the existence of "isms." This makes for potentially insurmountable challenges: How to evince a political belief that avoids the rigidity of ideology? Can one take a political position without becoming a political program? Can the principled stand against a politics based upon the application of universalized principle avoid becoming universalized? From the first moment that conservatism was articulated as a philosophy--Edmund Burke's critique of the "mechanic philosophy" of the French Enlightenment that sought the creation of a new society along stiff geometric lines--a philosophy of tradition was born, distinct from the unconscious practices that make up any given tradition. Even as Burke cautioned against a revolutionary spirit that sought to unclothe the mysterious origins and meanings of practices, conservatism was itself forced to call attention the very existence of the thing it wanted to keep shrouded from inspection.