A Radically Conservative Liberal

Liberal, Conservative, Progressive

I am coming out...I am actually a liberal! I confess!

Truly, I have always been. My last 50 years on the conservative side of the Culture War has been itself an expression of an underlying liberality, a defense of our freedom of religion, of the most powerless including the unborn, of the foundational holiness of sexuality-marriage-family.

I am thrilled that of late the cultural/political left has taken the moniker "progressive" leaving the honorable word "liberal" (free) to return to its true meaning. Conservative is opposed to progressive, not to liberal. 

"Progressive" is the religious belief that modernity, however defined, is essentially superior to what came before. Normally, there is a point in time when reason triumphed over superstition, ignorance, fear, and bigotry: the Enlightenment, The Revolution (American, French, Russian, Scientific, Industrial, Cultural/Sexual), ("Spirit of") Vatican II, the new synodal Church, etc. Progressivism is a contempt for the past as negative, oppressive, inferior. This can take the Darwinian form of evolutionary progress as advances in science/technology; or the Marxist overthrow of the oppressor (capitalist, male, white, hetero-cis-normative); or the Nietzchean will to power of the lonely Self; or some mix of the three.

Conservatism is a filial gratitude, reverence, reception, trust in a Gift given prior to some alleged "modernity." Genuine reform, for such, is not a renunciation of the past in condescension, but a pious listening ever-again to the sources of true liberation: the Scriptures, the saints/doctors/fathers, the Greek and Roman legacies, the martyrs/hermits/monks/missionaries, the Deposit of Faith. In this view, the changes in history, including the modern, are measured against a transcendent, handed down Revelation that happened in a specific place and time but is itself transcendent of time and space. 

"Liberal" properly understood is Freedom: of religion, speech, political activity, economic initiative in communion (with God) in the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. It is sexuality/gender as generous, generative, chaste, self-donative, abiding, serene, noble, heroic and delightful. It is the rule of law, the common good, the care for our most vulnerable and needy. It is friendship with each other in openness to the Transcendent and Eternal.

Faux Liberalisms

Disordered, decadent, vacuous, despairing "Progressivism" in its various forms has posed as a counterfeit liberalism:

Cultural Liberalism as the sexual chaos and violence unleashed by the contraceptive rupture of sexuality/gender from nuptial union, fidelity, chastity, and new life.

Neo-Liberal Economics as an individualism that isolates the person, subtly deconstructs family and community, privileges international corporations and the investor class with diminished government/tax, unregulated markets, and an underlying ethos of careerism, materialism, and consumerism.

Libertarianism as the isolation and exultation of the monadic Self unhinged from family, faith, community.

Political Liberalism, of the post-WWII Democratic Party, of FDR and JFK, with its forgetfulness of subsidiarity, exaggerated trust in Big Government, class resentment and vulnerability to the seductions of Cultural Liberalism and identity politics.

By contrast with these counterfeits, authentic conservative liberalism offers:

- Freedom from sexual fear, guilt and shame into an ethos of purity, gratuity, interior peace,  fruitfulness, and stability.

- A personalism that roots the person in nurturing, wholesome bonds with family, religion, tradition, the future and the eternal as well as communities and organizations that express and fortify these bonds.

- Freedom that fulfills and exceeds itself in donation and communion with others in the True-Good-Beautiful.

- A balance between a strong but limited state that protects the Common Good and the most vulnerable and an economics of agency and initiative founded upon the solidity of virtuous, happy family life.

So progressivism is illusion and idolatry, whether of science, class war, or the Imperial Self. It is contempt for the past and a disconnect with community, tradition, authority and the Eternal.

Conservatism is exultation, within community, in the Eternal...the True-Good-Beautiful...as graciously given. That ancient Visitation is not static, like a museum display, but Ever-Alive: effervescent, serendipitous, eventful, miraculous, surprising, creative, extravagant. To be grasped by this ancient-but-ever-new Mystery is to be liberated, gracious, serene, elated and pregnant with hope. The conservative and the liberal indwell each other; they are mutual, synergistic dimensions in the Act that is life, that is anticipation of and participation in Eternity.