Recovering Our Constitutional Soul

Harvey C. Mansfield, Harvard's lone conservative in the political science department, is interviewed in today's WSJ and has some very perceptive thoughts on the progressive project in the twentieth and twenty first centuries and what conservatives need to do from here on out.  First on the progressive project:

The Obama campaign's dissection of the public into subsets of race, sex and class resentments is a case in point. "Victims come in different kinds," says Mr. Mansfield, "so they're treated differently. You push different buttons to get them to react."

The threat to self-government is clear. "The American founders wanted people to live under the Constitution," Mr. Mansfield says. "But the progressives want the Constitution to live under the American people."

For Mansfield, the main thrust of the progressive project concerns the redefinition of the principle of equality, or, in another way of saying it, the elimination of inequality in public and private life:

American elites today prefer to dismiss the "unchangeable, undemocratic facts" about human inequality, he says. Progressives go further: "They think that the main use of liberty is to create more equality. They don't see that there is such a thing as too much equality. They don't see limits to democratic equalizing"—how, say, wealth redistribution can not only bankrupt the public fisc but corrupt the national soul.

How conservatives should act in the face of this opposition, with specific regard to reining in the entitlement state:

"The Republicans should want to recover the notion of the common good," Mr. Mansfield says. "One way to do that is to show that we can't afford the entitlements as they are—that we've always underestimated the cost. 'Cost' is just an economic word for the common good. And if Republicans can get entitlements to be understood no longer as irrevocable but as open to negotiation and to political dispute and to reform, then I think they can accomplish something."

Mansfield on how conservatives should go about practicing politics:

Then there is the matter of conservative political practice. "Conservatives should be the party of judgment, not just of principles," he says. "Of course there are conservative principles—free markets, family values, a strong national defense—but those principles must be defended with the use of good judgment. Conservatives need to be intelligent, and they shouldn't use their principles as substitutes for intelligence. Principles need to be there so judgment can be distinguished from opportunism. But just because you give ground on principle doesn't mean you're an opportunist."

And finally, a rebuff to all those Republicans who think the electoral problems in 2012 were because of adherence to "outdated" principles:

Nor should flexibility mean abandoning major components of the conservative agenda—including cultural values—in response to a momentary electoral defeat. "Democrats have their cultural argument, which is the attack on the rich and the uncaring," Mr. Mansfield says. "So Republicans need their cultural arguments to oppose the Democrats', to say that goodness or justice in our country is not merely the transfer of resources to the poor and vulnerable. We have to take measures to teach the poor and vulnerable to become a little more independent and to prize independence, and not just live for a government check. That means self-government within each self, and where are you going to get that except with morality, responsibility and religion?"

Mansfield studied with perhaps the most important political philosopher of the twentieth century, Leo Strauss, at Stanford in the early 1960s.  Like Strauss, Mansfield takes seriously the principles of both the American Founding and classical political philosophy and bases his politics around reviving these principles and applying them to the current day.  Conservatives would do very well to heed his advice.

If you are interested, for an extended and provocative take on where Mansfield himself fits into American conservatism, read this essay by Thomas G. West, who currently teaches at Hillsdale College and was a student of Harry Jaffa's at the Claremont Graduate School in the early 70s.