Keeping Your Room Clean: A Vision for Proactive Conservatism

Historically, conservatism has often started out on the back foot. Cato the Elder did not exhort a simpler and more disciplined lifestyle for its own sake, but in reaction to the Hellenic decadence that had come to define Roman high society in his time. Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France proposes the basic tenets of modern conservatism in reaction to a raging revolution of terror. Similarly, Sir Roger Scruton, the sage of many a modern young conservative, describes the student protests of May 1968, which happened below his attic window in Paris, as the catalyst that helped him to “discover his vocation.” Finally, Dr. Jordan Peterson, a bulwark of the current conservative revival, rose to fame on the back of his reaction to forced pronouns in his native Canada. 

Conservatism seems at a first glance to be predestined to a reactionary mindset, always at its strongest only after some destructive idea has already penetrated the hearts and minds of the masses. This is problematic because the permanent reactionary is only defending his original position from the onset. If a war of ideas is understood like a traditional war, then the destructive idea is an invader. The reactionary, whose land has been invaded, believes that simply regaining his original territory is a glorious victory, when in fact it is only a reaffirmation of the status quo before the invasion. In most cases, the reactionary is doomed to settle somewhere between the original border and the deepest point of invasion. While the reactionary naively believes the new border to be representation of durable peace, those who wish to destroy him simply see it as a new target. For them, the territory that has been gained is progress, not victory. 

There is nothing inherently necessary about this state of affairs, wherein conservatives are constantly ceding territory but never achieving peace from ideological invasion. It is possible to imagine a conservatism that is truly proactive rather than merely reactive. By taking and maintaining those responsibilities that accompany their everyday lives, conservatives and conservative families can be proactive, and can prevent destructive ideologies from storming the gates of their civilisation and laying siege to the citadels of their faith. 

Proactive conservatism

‘Wokeism,’ the current battering ram at the door of conservative values, might have arisen from elite schools and universities in prosperous countries, but this does not explain why it spread with the ferocity that it clearly did. For generations, parents, many conservatives among them, had delegated their responsibilities to institutions that they erroneously believed to be on their side. The universally accepted course of action was to entrust one’s child to professors and teachers, to hand over more than half of a child’s waking hours to these so-called pillars of civilization. We now know, of course, that this amounted to the hollowing out of parents’ agency, the abdication of the basic responsibility that they as parents had for the education of their child, and the outsourcing of this agency to experts and professionals. Parenting and family governance, like so many other things, had become one less thing to worry about, one less thing to take an active responsibility for. 

In reaction to the current overreaches of cultural criticism, such as the proliferation of bias, the sexualisation of children, and various other assaults on the foundations of civilization, parents correctly blame schools and universities. But although some blame should indeed fall on the creators of such educational content, this tua culpa unjustly absolves parents from their rightful share of this blame. While they did not create the monster, they fed it, watered it, and let it grow strong. Parents who now rush their children to some new institution just to delegate their responsibilities to other educated people are not solving anything—in fact, they are perpetuating the problem. Simply blaming one institution and moving to another institution does not solve the problem which has fattened ‘woke’ ideology, and more importantly, doomed conservatism to its reactionary status time and again. 

There is a great irony in the fact that the very institutions that are the capitols of ‘woke’ thought were created by puritans and reformers who crossed the Atlantic Ocean with the very goal of creating a welcoming environment for their ideals and their. If Einstein was correct in stating that insanity consists in trying the same thing over and over while expecting a different result, then parents, families, and societies that rush to build new institutions to whom they can outsource their responsibilities are surely insane. Why would it work this time around if it didn’t work last time? This is the key. It won’t work in perpetuity, it never will. 

If mankind is inherently flawed, sinful, or even just imperfect, it can never create a perfect institution. Any institution, however pure and true it might seem, will take a wrong turn from time to time. As pessimistic as this sounds, this truth sets conservatives free, and becomes the key by which conservatism retains the proactivity that it often discovers only while it is battling some contemporary iteration of destructive ideology, such as ‘wokeism.’ To be sure, there can be no doubt that conservatives are obliged to build new institutions to replace corrupt ones; yet no institution should ever assume full responsibility for the education of children. Only once conservatives acknowledge this truth can they claim to uphold an ethic of genuine responsibility.  

Practically speaking, this means that no parent may ever hand over complete control over the education of his children to a third party. While educational institutions have played a key part in all functional societies, they cannot be a final, unchecked authority over the education of children. When schools, universities, or any of the institutions through which a healthy society grasps and expresses its political freedom, are placed above reprieve and scrutiny, then the seeds of destruction are sown. When they are kept above reprieve, these seeds are watered.

An ethic of hands-on responsibility is the only realistic way to avoid the cyclical war for agency and the constant ceding of ideological territory. Families who take responsibility for the spiritual education of their young, who take an active interest in the flow of their investments, and who unceasingly check up on the politicians who they have elected, are the only foundation upon which proactive conservatism can be built.