![]() Traditionalist European conservatives-Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, and Pio Nono-hated what we were. Third, we didn’t have a social order that looked like the ancien regime with its aristocratic privileges, noble titles, and laws upholding primogeniture. Instead we had a mixed constitution that was the result of enlightened reflection on liberal philosophers like Locke and republican thinkers like Montesquieu the resulting federated polity balanced both the primacy of the individual (seen in the liberalism of the Bill of Rights) and the primacy of civic virtue (seen in the republicanism of the Northwest Ordinance, Article III). Second, we didn’t have a feudal or absolutist monarchy. We had a modern free-market system that owed much to Adam Smith and the Enlightenment. In the first place, we didn’t have a feudal or mercantile economy. Since we were the first nation established in the modern age, our political economy was liberal from the start. Taking a deep breath I said: “There is truth in the claim of the political philosophers. ![]() In the company of the methodological gatekeepers in Michigan’s history department, it was best not to cite Kirk’s Roots since his thesis was considered out-of-date at best racist, sexist, classist, and elitest at worst. This presented problems for a graduate student. But since I was the one who had just teed up Kirk’s Roots, I had to run with it. The ideas in The Roots were once considered mainstream in the academy, and I had read the book with enthusiasm before moving to Ann Arbor. But in the 1980s it was hardly ever referenced much less taught in American and Western civilization surveys. I was taken aback when Tonsor suddenly lobbed the question back to me-it was unusual for him to do so. “Since you are taken with Russell Kirk’s argument, Mr. I said, “That longer perspective is what Russell Kirk achieved in The Roots of American Order.” Yet, taking in the longer perspective of Western civilization, we must ask: Were we conservative in any sense that is prior to and separate from liberalism? And the answer to that question is, yes, most definitely, if you consider our inheritance from the ancient world and Christendom.” From the viewpoint of the political philosophers who see the founding as the outcome of debate during the Enlightenment, we were liberal. It tries to make the founding an ‘either-or’ event: liberal or conservative? But the interpretive methods that characterize the humanities encourage us to think not in terms of ‘either-or’ but in terms of ‘both-and.’ Were we all liberals then? Were we all liberals in 17? That’s what you’re asking. Tonsor responded: “The question, as you ask it, is not well framed. Is it true that conservatism in America is just classical liberalism’s right wing and nothing more?” after its founding, what we call ‘conservative’ looks much different from conservatism in Europe. Since that old-world conservative tradition never existed in the U.S. American conservatives are thus not like European conservatives who, in reaction to the French Revolution, sought to restore the ancien regime with its monarchy, mercantilism, and three orders. According to this view, conservatism in America is just classical liberalism’s ‘right wing,’ pushing for freer markets in a free-market system and smaller government in a federal system. The political philosophers I’ve read say that America was the product of the Enlightenment, meaning that it was founded as a classical liberal nation. “Professor Tonsor, I am interested in how you think about the American founding. Seeing him emerge from the elevator in his Paddington Bear hat, I greeted him and after pleasantries put my subject before him: I had the proverbial “deep question” for him. ![]() Tonsor coming down from his office, then to accompany him on the walk across the Diag to class. Expecting snow at any moment, I sought shelter in Haven Hall. In the process of revitalizing Britain’s governing principles, the American founding also unleashed the ideas of liberty and equality to an unexpected degree.Ī heavy overcast settled over the Huron Valley.
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