The intra-conservative quarrel over universal principles

NatCons rightly stress the connection between the conservative spirit and the national spirit, but they tend to downplay or overlook the connection between the conservative spirit in America and universal principles. Transnational abstractions such as “the idea of the nation” and “the principle of national independence” cannot alone capture the American experiment in ordered liberty. “Unique national traditions,” moreover, contain conflicting elements and differ from one another. They have been known “to bind a people together” to their detriment and to others’ sorrow. Duly elected officials, despots, and mobs have summoned distinctive national beliefs, practices, and institutions to sanctify oppression of minorities at home; to energize violent conquest abroad; and to vindicate authoritarian rule on behalf of a singular race, religion, or party.

Because the U.S. is a rights-respecting and constitutional democracy, “the past and future” of American conservatism are also “inextricably tied” to certain universal principles, ones that the Declaration of Independence holds to be self-evident truths. Among these universal principles are that all human beings are by nature free and equally endowed with unalienable rights, that government’s chief purpose is to secure basic rights and fundamental freedoms, and that just government power derives from the consent of the governed. …

The signatories of the open letter to the NatCons see Christian faith and practice as instructing the national spirit rather than as instruments or objects of public policy. Christian teaching, for example, highlights vital associations that operate below and above the national plane: “As critics of contemporary liberalism from both Left and Right, we believe that the just nation must take account of the principle of subsidiarity – that power should be devolved to the lowest appropriate level.” This requires caring for those institutions of civil society – family, community, religion – that cultivate individual character. It also impels the formation of partnerships and alliances among nation-states, including international organizations, to deal with “tasks which are beyond the scope of any one nation.”

The conservative critics also fault NatCons for obscuring the disadvantages of unchecked nation-state power. For instance, nation-states, in the critics’ estimation, have not been an innocent victim of globalization. Rather, they enabled it “by the wiping out of local cultures, and the centralisation of power away from both local governments and civil society – notably churches, guilds, and other associations.” Moreover, “[b]y implicitly asserting the supremacy of nations over culture and communities,” the NatCon advocacy of nationalism “subordinates both the universal and the particular to the national, as if national interests and national traditions were necessarily good and anything exceeding nations must therefore be evil.”