Le Sabot Post-Moderne

You're right. Conservative and liberal/progressive are relative terms: relative to some context and relative to each other. So while the Orange Revolution may be "liberal" relative to the Ukraine it holds many of the same values "conservatives" in the US or Europe do.

I like your analysis that our "conservativism" has to reference some set of values/principles/traditions/culture that we want to conserve. On that analysis, while we celebrate democracy, a democracy in which the people vote to implement sharia law, oppress women and make non-muslims dhimmis would not be in line with our "conservative" values of personal rights, religious freedom, etc.

And in the church, "conservatism" is almost meaningless. I find that I have more in common with Pope John Paul II than I do with some Reformed protestants who are liturgically conservative and theologically "progressive."

I like your idea of rooting it into a sort of classical humanism. Remember, as a fellow calvinist, that Calvin himself was considered a more humanistic theologian by the measure of his day than, say, Luther (even with the doctrine of election) because there were classical humanistic values that came from his legal education in Paris as opposed to Luther's monastic background.

How do you propose to articulate classic Humane Conservatism? I did like your snipe about preserving the canon without reading it, but the devil is in the details. How to articulate it without reference to a canon of writers/thinkers/artists who articulate and portray those values?

Very nice post, and good comment from Greg as well. I too liked the bit about preserving the canon without reading it. I also agree with Greg about the importance of your concluding question. The "crux of the biscuit", as Uncle Frank used to say.

As for how to articulate and promote this conservatism, I think even having the discussion about the canon and the basic principles is a good start. I don't think everyone will agree on all points, but at a certain point, I suspect the 70% or so on which all agree will become evident. And if the discussion is carried on in a reasoned way, then each participant will learn from the arguments the others bring to bear against their views.

My sense is that it would be a mistake to try to forge a single systematic ideology for conservatism in the sense that Leninism or Stalinism or Maoism or Trotskyism or Bolshevism are for the Left. It seems to me that, insofar as the humane Christian conservatism we are speaking of here respects the reality of sin and depravity, it will have to be more complex and tolerant than your typical left ideology is.

One thing it must do is to take seriously the notion of humans as created in the image of God and yet now fallen. That seems to me a non-negotiable core tenet of a humane Christian conservatism. Its view of human nature must be in the neighborhood of St. Paul's, Augustine's, Luther's, and Calvin's.

What about neo-Calvinism? I'm thinking about the stuff I am being introduced to at Macht's and Gideon Strauss's blogs. I think many contemporary American reformati take their cue more from Old Princeton and from the Southern Giants (Dabney, Thornwell), and perhaps we have neglected Kuyper and Doyeweerd (I know I have).

Great post, Chuck. Good stuff to grind on.

As far as a developed anthropology, some Reformed thinkers have been better than others, obviously. Having done my grad work at a Dutch Reformed seminary it was Kuyper and Dooyeweerd and Bavink and Berkof that we read and were taught. Actually, Berkof and Bavink had at one time taught (and I think that Dooyeweerd had lectured) at my school and their rather intimidating and dour portraits hung in our systematic theology classroom looking disapprovingly down.

That being said, I'm going to say something now which will indicte my credibility with you: what those thinkers lacked was not rigorous theology but developed and nuanced philosophical and epistemic categories with which to dissect contemporary problems. I once saw a debate on medical ethics and beginning/end of life issues between a Dutch Calvinist prof and a Dominican monk prof. The catholic guy wiped up the floor with our dude. Our guy kept trying to resolve all of these complex problems with references back to the Ten Commandments, while the Dominican had classical, neo-classical, Thomistic and other categoriesand vocabulary with which to parse the hard questions.

Here's my point: as we look at the canon and try to come to a consensus, Humanistic Conservatism has to present a more nuanced anthropology than most Reformed thinkers have yet presented. Especially with the questions that face us today: abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, genetic manipulation, AI, cloning and human/animal chimeras (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6534243/).

I would affirm all five points of TULIP, but the Western Civilization that gives context to Reformed theology is more complex than just Reformed theology (not saying that you would disagree with that).

Dear Disco,

Well I don't know if it is "conservative" or "radical" to advocate a free-market economy in a political culture of a representative, democratic republic, but it seems to me that if you look at everything that the statists pretend they will deliver to "the people" in exchange for acquiring from "the people" all of the power, and all of the rights, then the free-market, democratic system has the statists beat, hands down, every time.

Give a man a fish, he eats a meal; teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime, feeds his family, and sets aside enough of a surplus to fund the further development of his country.

Thus, "conservatism," if it means capitalism, constitutional government, and the certain knowledge that political "perfect" is the enemy of political "good," is actually much more "humane" then any of the inefficient, criminal, and downright genocidal systems which purport to supplant it in the name of a suffering humanity.

Just a thought,

Alvar