Standing Athwart Despair: The Case for Cheerful Conservatism

For some years, I have kept a folder marked “Conservative Gloominess.” It is full of articles and animadversions by various hands: dire prognostications about who the next occupant of the White House will be; harrowing descriptions of disarray among conservatives; despairing portraits of U.S. or European society. What’s odd, or at least uncharacteristic, about these bulletins from the abyss is not their substance—to be candid, I have written plenty of items that could justly be filed there—but their tone and what we might call their existential orientation.

From time immemorial, conservatives have delighted in writing works with titles like Leviathan, The Decline of the West, The Waste Land. Nevertheless, by habit and disposition, conservatives tend, as a species, to be less gloomy than—than what? What shall we call those who occupy a position opposite that of conservatives? Not liberals, surely, since they are so often conspicuously illiberal—that is, opposed to freedom and all its works. Indeed, when it comes to the word “liberal,” Russell Kirk came close to the truth when he observed that he was conservative because he was a liberal. In any event, whatever the opposite of conservatives should be called—perhaps John Fonte’s marvelous coinage “transnational progressives” is best—they tend to be gloomy, partly, I suspect, because of disappointed utopian ambitions.

Conservatives also tend to enjoy a more active and enabling sense of humor. The English essayist Walter Bagehot once observed that “the essence of Toryism is enjoyment.” What he meant, I think, was summed up by the author of Genesis when that sage observed that “God made the world and saw that it was good.” Conservatives differ from progressives in many ways, but one important difference is the degree of cheerfulness and humor they deploy. Not that their assessment of their fellows is more sanguine. On the contrary. Conservatives tend to be cheerful because they do not regard imperfection as a personal moral affront. Being realistic about mankind’s susceptibility to improvement, they are as suspicious of utopian schemes as they are appreciative of present blessings. This is why the miasmic gloominess emanating from many conservative circles today is so dispiriting. It goes against the grain of what it means to be conservative. It is dampening, and I, for one, hope it will prove to be a quickly passing phenomenon. Among other things, this recent bout of personal gloominess makes the practice of professional gloominess—the robust deployment of satire, ridicule, and so on—much more difficult and much less satisfying. As a laborer in that vineyard, I speak feelingly on the subject.