Traditionalist conservatism in the United States is a political and social philosophy and variant of conservatism. It has been influenced by thinkers such as John Adams and Russell Kirk.
Definitions The 2010 book The Dilemmas of American Conservatism, edited by Kenneth L. Deutsch and Ethan Fishman, has one paragraph about traditional conservatism. It says it is a variation of conservatism that is negative to American individualism, American inability to recognize the importance of social bonds and strong anti-authoritarian tradition of the United States. According to Deutsch and Fishman, traditional conservatives derive their views from Aristotle and Edmund Burke. They place emphasis on the rule of law as a means for liberty, leading by example in the fostering of reason and the existence of a transcendent morality. These views are only shared by a small minority of the American conservative movement and are exemplified by Russell Kirk, John H. Hallowell and Richard M. Weaver.
History 18th century In terms of "classical conservatism", the Federalists had no connection with European-style aristocracy, monarchy or established religion. Historian John P. Diggins has said: Thanks to the framers, American conservatism began on a genuinely lofty plane. James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, John Jay, James Wilson, and, above all, John Adams aspired to create a republic in which the values so precious to conservatives might flourish: harmony, stability, virtue, reverence, veneration, loyalty, self-discipline, and moderation. This was classical conservatism in its most authentic expression.
Something akin to Burkean traditionalism was transported to the American colonies through the policies and principles of the Federalist Party and its leadership as embodied by John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. Federalists strongly opposed the excesses and instability of the French Revolution, defended traditional Christian morality and supported a new "natural aristocracy" based on "property, education, family status, and sense of ethical responsibility".Viereck, p. 89
John Adams was one of the earliest defenders of a traditional social order in Revolutionary America. In his Defence of the Constitution (1787), Adams attacked the ideas of radicals like Thomas Paine, who advocated for a unicameral legislature (Adams deemed it too democratic). His translation of Discourses on Davila (1790), which also contained his own commentary, was an examination of "human motivation in politics". Adams believed that human motivation inevitably led to dangerous impulses where the government would need to sometimes intervene.Patrick Allitt, The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History (Yale University Press, 2009) p. 12
The leader of the Federalist Party was Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury and co-author of The Federalist Papers (1787–1788) which was then and to this day remains a major interpretation of the new 1789 Constitution. Hamilton was critical of both Jeffersonian classical liberalism and the radical ideas coming out of the French Revolution. He rejected laissez-faire economics and favored a strong central government.Frohnen, pp. 369–70.
19th century In the era after the Revolutionary Generation, the Whig Party had an approach that resembled Burkean conservatism, although Whigs rarely cited Burke. Whig statesmen led the charge for tradition and custom against the prevailing democratic ethos of the Jacksonian Era. Standing for hierarchy and organic society, in many ways their concepts of the Union paralleled Benjamin Disraeli's "One Nation Conservatism".
Along with Henry Clay, the most noteworthy Whig statesman was Boston's Daniel Webster. A firm Unionist, his most famous speech was his "Second Reply to Hayne" (1829) where he criticized the argument from Southerners such as John C. Calhoun that the states had a right to nullify federal laws they deemed unconstitutional.Frohnen, pp. 906–08. Webster rarely mentioned Burke but he occasionally followed similar lines of thought.
Webster's intellectual and political heir was Rufus Choate, who admired Burke. Choate was a part of the emerging legal culture in New England, centered on the newly formed Harvard Law School. He believed that lawyers were preservers and conservers of the Constitution and that it was the duty of the educated to govern political institutions. Choate's most famous address was "The Position and Functions of the American Bar, as an Element of Conservatism in the State" (1845).Muller, Jerry Z., ed. Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present (Princeton University, 1997) pp. 152–66.
Two figures in the Northern antebellum period were what Emory University professor Patrick Allitt referred to as the "Guardians of Civilization": George Ticknor and Edward Everett.
George Ticknor, a Dartmouth-educated academic at Harvard, was the chief purveyor of humane learning in the Boston area. A founder of the Boston Public Library and the scion of an old Federalist family, Ticknor educated his students in Romance languages and the works of Dante and Cervantes at home while promoting America abroad to his many international friends, including Lord Byron and Talleyrand.Allitt, Patrick. (2009) The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 62–63.
Like Ticknor, Edward Everett was educated at the same German university (Goettigen) and advocated for the U.S. to follow same virtues as the ancient Greeks and eventually went into politics as a Whig. A firm Unionist (like his friend Daniel Webster), Everett deplored the Jacksonian Democracy that swept the nation. A famed orator in his own right, he supported Lincoln against Southern secession.Allitt, Patrick. (2009) The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 63–64.
American Catholic journalist and political theorist (and former political and religious radical) Orestes Brownson is best known for writing The American Republic, an 1865 treatise examining how America fulfills Catholic tradition and Western Civilization. Brownson was critical of both the Northern abolitionists and the Southern secessionists and was himself a solid Unionist.Allitt, Patrick. (2009) The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 83–86.
20th century In the 20th century, traditionalist conservatism on both sides of the Atlantic centered on two publications: The Bookman and its successor, The American Review. Owned and edited by the eccentric Seward Collins, these journals published the writings of the British Distributists, the New Humanists, the Southern Agrarians, T. S. Eliot, Christopher Dawson, et al. Eventually, Collins drifted towards support of fascism and as a result lost the support of many of his traditionalist backers. Despite the decline of the journal due to Collins' increasingly radical political views, The American Review left a profound mark on the history of traditionalist conservatism.Frohnen, Bruce, Jeremy Beer, and Jeffrey O. Nelson (2006) American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, pp. 76–77.
Another intellectual branch of early-20th-century traditionalist conservatism was known as the New Humanism. Led by Harvard University professor Irving Babbitt and Princeton University professor Paul Elmer More, the New Humanism was a literary and social criticism movement that opposed both romanticism and naturalism. Beginning in the late 19th century, the New Humanism defended artistic standards and "first principles" (Babbitt's phrase). Reaching an apogee in 1930, Babbitt and More published a variety of books including Babbitt's Literature and the American College (1908), Rousseau and Romanticism (1919) and Democracy and Leadership (1924) and More's Shelburne Essays (1904–1921).Frohnen, Bruce, Jeremy Beer, and Jeffrey O. Nelson (2006) American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, pp. 621–22.
One other group of traditionalist conservatives were the Southern Agrarians. Originally a group of Vanderbilt University poets and writers known as "the Fugitives", they included John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Donald Davidson and Robert Penn Warren. Adhering to strict literary standards (Warren and traditionalist scholar Cleanth Brooks later formulated a form of literary criticism known as the New Criticism), in 1930 some of the Fugitives joined other traditionalist Southern writers to publish I'll Take My Stand, which applied standards sympathetic to local particularism and the agrarian way of life to politics and economics. Condemning northern industrialism and commercialism, the "twelve southerners" who contributed to the book echoed earlier arguments made by the distributists. A few years after the publication of I'll Take My Stand, some of the Southern Agrarians were joined by Hilaire Belloc and Herbert Agar in the publication of a new collection of essays entitled Who Owns America: A New Declaration of Independence.
New conservatives After World War II, the first stirrings of a "traditionalist movement" took place and among those who launched this movement (and in effect the larger Conservative Movement in America) was University of Chicago professor Richard M. Weaver. Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences (1948) chronicled the steady erosion of Western cultural values since the Middle Ages.Nash, George H. (1976, 2006)The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, pp. 30–36. In 1949, another professor, Peter Viereck echoed the writings of Weaver with his Conservatism Revisited, which examined the conservative thought of Prince Klemens Metternich.
After Weaver and Viereck a flowering of conservative scholarship occurred starting with the publication of 1953's The New Science of Politics by Eric Voegelin, 1953's The Quest for Community by Robert A. Nisbet and 1955's Conservatism in America by Clinton Rossiter. However, the book that defined the traditionalist school was 1953's The Conservative Mind, written by Russell Kirk, which gave a detailed analysis of the intellectual pedigree of Anglo-American traditionalist conservatism.Dunn, Charles W. (2003)The Conservative Tradition in America, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, p. 10.
When these thinkers appeared on the academic scene they became known for rebuking the progressive worldview inherent in an America comfortable with New Deal economics, a burgeoning military–industrial complex and a consumerist and commercialized citizenry. These conservative scholars and writers garnered the attention of the popular press of the time and before long they were collectively referred to as "the New Conservatives". Among this group were not only Weaver, Viereck, Voegelin, Nisbet, Rossiter and Kirk, but other lesser known thinkers such as John Blum, Daniel Boorstin, McGeorge Bundy, Thomas Cook, Raymond English, John Hallowell, Anthony Harrigan, August Heckscher, Milton Hindus, Klemens von Klemperer, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Richard Leopold, S. A. Lukacs, Malcolm Moos, Eliseo Vivas, Geoffrey Wagner, Chad Walsh and Francis Wilson,Viereck, Peter (1956, 2006) Conservative Thinkers from John Adams to Winston Churchill. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishing, p. 107. as well as Arthur Bestor, Mel Bradford, C. P. Ives, Stanley Jaki, John Lukacs, Forrest McDonald, Thomas Molnar, Gerhard Neimeyer, James V. Schall, S.J., Peter J. Stanlis, Stephen J. Tonsor and Frederick Wilhelmsen.Nash, George H. (1976, 2006) The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, pp. 50–55, 68–73.