Tradition

Traditions represent the wisdom of previous generations and should test the desirability of all political and social innovations.

”The Individual Is Foolish, But The Species Is Wise”.

- Edmund Burke

Traditions are society’s anchor. They represent the accumulated wisdom of our ancestors and, when listened to, they prevent us from rushing off in a dangerously utopian direction.

G K Chesterton talked of “the democracy of the dead”. Russell Kirk wrote of “The considered opinions of the wise men and women who died before our time, the experience of the race. The conservative, in short, knows he was not born yesterday.”

Great inheritances

Today’s great traditions include Britain’s parliamentary tradition, the institution of marriage, the Church of England’s parochial system and the convention by which society respects the anonymity of a journalist’s sources:

• Parliament’s procedures for debate and its bicameral structure – both of which can seem antiquated to some – ensure that the government of the day cannot easily railroad bad ideas into law.
• For 1960s revolutionaries the institution of marriage appeared out-dated – even imprisoning. Only since huge numbers of people abandoned matrimony have we understood the important contribution that healthy marriages make to the welfare of children.
• The existence of a church in every parish provides every British citizen with access to a Christian minister in times of need.
• The convention that a journalist should not usually have to disclose his sources for a story means that the whole journalistic profession will continue to be fed stories that powerful companies and bureaucracies may not want aired. Many whistleblowers – who have exposed political scandal or corporate corruption – have relied on this tradition of anonymity.

Traditionalism isn’t reactionism

A respect for tradition can ossify into reactionary opposition to all change. Conservatives should not oppose all change – only unnecessary change. Burkean conservatives understand that “a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation”. Reactionaries who oppose any kind of change are storing up problems for themselves. It was John F Kennedy who rightly warned that those “who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”.

The Wesleyan Quadrilateral and how traditions can test the case for change

Tradition has played a particularly important role in church affairs. With reason, experience and scripture it makes up a ‘R.E.S.T.’ quartet of tests – entitled The Wesleyan Quadrilateral - by which all change should be assessed. Different groups of people, at different times, have tended to emphasise different elements of John Wesley’s Quadrilateral. Liberals have tended to rely upon reason; evangelicals on scripture; Anglo-Catholics on tradition; and charismatics on experience. Wesley's own views was that the Bible should be a Christian's starting point. [Wesley's Trilateral on money-making is outlined in the definition of greed].

Traditions remind conservatives to avoid devilish change

Conservative resistance to rapid change and to neophilia has many inspirations:

• An Arab proverb notes that “trees often transplanted seldom prosper”.
• Thomas Jefferson stated that delay was preferable to error.
• John Randolph of Roanoke warned that whilst providence moves slowly, the devil always hurries.
• Russell Kirk counselled: “Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery.”

Our media-driven society can often force actions to be taken that are not in society’s long-term interests:

• A rail crash forces politicians to impose tighter regulations on train travel – driving up the cost of such travel and forcing some passengers to undertake what is riskier road travel.
• ‘Emergency’ laws – like the infamous Dangerous Dogs Act - are passed that satisfy a hungry media pack but impose disproportionately harmful burdens on free citizens, business or voluntary organisations.

Traditionalism and progressive conservatism

John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, authors of 'The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America’, used a column in The Wall Street Journal to write about the profound impact that Ronald Reagan had on American conservatism:

“Traditional conservatism was based on six principles: a suspicion of the power of the state; a preference for liberty over equality; unashamed patriotism; a belief in established institutions and hierarchies; a pessimistic, backward-looking pragmatism; and elitism. This was the creed that Burke shaped into a philosophy in the 18th century--and that most famous conservatives, from Prince Metternich to Winston Churchill, understood in their bones. Mr. Reagan's conservatism exaggerated the first three of Burke's principles and contradicted the last three.”

The kind of tradition that this column has carefully described is caricatured in the above quote. The Reagan Revolution – its 'morning in America’ optimism - and the progressive form of conservatism associated with Giuliani and George W Bush does nonetheless challenge a more traditionalist and hesitant conservatism. Conservatives become ‘the progressives’ of politics when certain situations are so flawed that only radical change will serve the common good.