The Irony of Modern Conservatism

Abstract

Under scrutiny, modern conservatism often dissolves into a form of liberalism. This paradox appears, instructively, even in conservative thought at its best, in the political teachings of Michael Oakeshott and Leo Strauss. Both thinkers advance the claim that modern man faces a choice between Hobbesian liberalism and some form of mass democracy or totalitarianism. In this sense, both Oakeshott's traditionalism and Strauss's classicism are paradoxical or ironical. Conservatism is thus limited to preventing the decomposition of early, liberal modernity into later, radical modernity. Yet the success of the early modern project has produced a deracinated political culture in need of the qualities downplayed by modern conservatism: authority, community, a sense of place and of duty. The irony of modern conservatism suggests a reexamination of the conservative vocation in our times.