David Brooks’ October 5, 2007 New York Times column ("The Republican Collapse") erroneously calls upon American conservatives to ensure "the ambition of [conservatism’s] creeds is restrained by the caution of its Burkean roots."

Brooks lays the success (and failure) of modern American conservatism in a Burkean conservative disposition and its interplay with the identified conservative "creeds" of free market conservatives, religious conservatives and neoconservatives. 

Brooks is right and wrong. Right in that conservatives, President Ronald Reagan through President George W. Bush, have read Russell Kirk’s Conservative Mind, embraced an Americanized version of Burkean conservatism and engaged in the intellectual interplay between Burkean prudence and the conservative creeds. Wrong in that these same conservatives who did so embedded a fatal political flaw in their late 20th Century democratic movement.

The 20th Century conservative movement collapsed because their patron saint Edmund Burke was an 18th Century British elitist whose philosophy was ill-suited to address democracy, the intergenerational transfer of values, mediocre modern bureaucracies and written constitutions.

Not surprisingly, the reason why Americans have recently rejected American conservatives at the ballot box is … how they have governed.

The first American problem with Burke is that he was a conservative elitist -- favoring the British Monarchy, the House of Lords and the landed gentry vis-à-vis a self-governing people. Burke led the elitists to defend their prerogatives and to prudently exercise their collective duty to the people.

Burke opposed truly democratic movements – even abroad. For example, Burke in 1790 opposed the democratic revolution against France’s monarchy – before it happened.

Unlike the British people and French people (in 1790), the American people from their beginnings in their United States Constitution have been entitled to govern themselves. So, from the get-go, Burke’s elitist philosophy is ill-suited for an American people that are entitled to democratically govern themselves.

Third, Burke's prudence is a political flaw for American conservatives because it suggests accommodating, not combating, mediocre modern bureaucracies.  Understandably, Burke never addressed huge modern bureaucracies because they were not a problem in the 18th Century.  However, another British philosopher John Stuart Mill in the late 19th Century pointed out that, even though bureaucracies are necessary for a "skilled" democracy, bureaucracies by their very nature tend toward rules, routines and therefore mediocrity. 

American conservatives still don’t understand that Americans, who see NASA space shuttles explode and Interstate bridges collapse, want politicians who will administer huge federal bureaucracies to something greater than the mediocrity to which they are doomed.

Fourth, American conservatives’ misplaced Burkean loyalty to the Written Word of the Constitutions stunts democratic change. Burke’s Britain had a so-called unwritten constitution which Burke was fond of. Similarly in deference to the status quo, American conservatives are overly fond of the text of America’s written Constitution. The Framers never intended the Constitution to be the final word; through preferably amendment and clarifying judicial interpretations, the Constitution was drafted to be adaptable to fit the people’s future needs and values.

American conservatives act like prudes, and contrary to the Framers’ intent, in using Burkean principles to oppose constitutional amendments and clarifying judicial interpretations.

Although Burke is to be much admired as a political philosopher, American conservatives’ adherence to Burkean "caution" has caused them to fail the people too often. These failures have led to more democratic defeats than successes for American conservatives.

American conservatives should, once and for all, abandon Burke as their patron saint.

Erick G. Kaardal

Attorney

Hamel, Minnesota

763-478-3583