Conservatism: A Rediscovery

by Yoram Hazony

The idea that American conservatism is identical to "classical" liberalism—widely held since the 1960s—is seriously mistaken.

The award-winning political theorist Yoram Hazony argues that the best hope for Western democracy is a return to the empiricist, religious, and nationalist traditions of America and Britain—the conservative traditions that brought greatness to the English-speaking nations and became the model for national freedom for the entire world.

Conservatism: A Rediscovery explains how Anglo-American conservatism became a distinctive alternative to divine-right monarchy, Puritan theocracy, and liberal revolution. After tracing the tradition from the Wars of the Roses to Burke and across the Atlantic to the American Federalists and Lincoln, Hazony describes the rise and fall of Enlightenment liberalism after World War II and the present-day debates between neoconservatives and national conservatives over how to respond to liberalism and the woke left.

Going where no political thinker has gone in decades, Hazony provides a fresh theoretical foundation for conservatism. Rejecting the liberalism of Hayek, Strauss, and the "fusionists" of the 1960s, and drawing on decades of personal experience in the conservative movement, he argues that a revival of authentic Anglo-American conservatism is possible in the twenty-first century.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, History, Cultural, American History, Audiobook

445 pages, Hardcover

First published May 17, 2022

About the author

Yoram Hazony is an Israeli philosopher, Bible scholar, and political theorist. He is president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem and serves as the chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation. His books include The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, The Virtue of Nationalism, and Conservatism: A Rediscovery.

Reviews

[Xenophon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conservatism is becoming the most widely-read book in conservative circles this year. As such, it's an essential read to understand the forefront of discourse.

Hazony begins his work defining conservatism historically and philosophically, he then moves to strict philosophy, compares the philosophy of conservatism with its emergent competitors, critiques the Post-War conservative movement, and gets personal about rediscovering the conservative way of life in college. Some say the end is unnecessary fat. I think it could have easily gone that direction, but Hazony does a man's job at explaining application to a generation of men and women without fathers and father figures. He doesn't over-burden the account with details either and it's one of the reasons why this book is so unique.

For this reason, I'll get a little personal. I'm a Reformed Christian who often looks at the broader denomination and wonders why it didn't last politically though it left behind a tremendously positive influence (hot take: you don't have the best of America without the Calvinism). What would have made the Bay Colony Puritans more enduring aristocracy instead of a bloodless, WASP oligarchy?

Hazony's unalloyed answer is as follows: Enlightenment liberalism with its basis in rational abstraction and anti-historical hypotheticals misses empirical, time-tested and locally tailored realities. It can't tell you how to live a good life and build a family. For that reason, it misses or attempts to ride roughshod over important aspects of human behavior when civilizations scale up. It even lacks the vocabulary to take these things into account.

This book is at its strongest when it expounds on these core concepts. The passages on mutual loyalty and honor are worth the price of the entire book.

Hazony is not without his weaknesses however.

For one, he confuses and concrete/abstract dichotomy with universal/particular dichotomy. You could put these two and their qualities on a Venn diagram together, but crossing the streams so to speak leads to odd conclusions such as stoicism being the forerunner to Enlightenment liberalism with its emphasis on universality and truths discovered via the discipline of meditation. (Enjoy the hemlock, Socrates). Similar blind spots are all over his historical analysis from early British Toryism to the American Founding and beyond.

His critique of the broad conservative movement is pretty spot on, but makes odd judgments that seem to cross with his own historical empiricism. Russell Kirk gets hammered for his hard localism and sympathy to Southern Partisans, but you don't really have an American conservatism without its now most conservative region.

While this book is good at explaining core points, it doesn't do quite as well in combating core objections perhaps because Hazony engages in philosophical warfare while denying the full implications of certain universals. I also found myself agreeing with Hayek and Strauss when they demarcate the limits of Hazonian empiricism.

While Yoram Hazony may not rise to the level of his dead interlocutors, his broader argument is sound and persuasive. The best fruits of our society come from an Anglo-American twig on a European branch of a Biblical tree, and conservatism at its best nurtures our understanding of that tree AND regulates our behavior via family, tribe, and tradition. The things people die for at Tarawa.

Whatever histography we may use to identify the best of that tree is a secondary albeit important matter. Hazony does what so many conservative writers fail to do- invite the reader to go deeper than being a good conservative- be a man of The Book. Marry, build your family, leave something behind. That is the only way to truly combat the greatest evils of our times.

But I cannot in good conscience end this review without presenting the Gospel to those unconverted conservatives: you may have found the means to live a fulfilling life and mitigating the impact of sin on this mortal coil, but we're vapors with eternal destinations. Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. None come to the Father but by Him.

Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where to begin... This book is phenomenally powerful. I pray that it is read widely. Because we feel so politically and culturally out to sea, I metaphorize it as a lighthouse. This book beckons us to the safe harbor of ancient and timeless wisdom. This book retrofits the towering prosperity we enjoy with the friction dampers needed to withstand the cultural quakes and political aftershocks of generations of mistakes and badness.

Perhaps that reads hyperbolic. It is not. I am moved by the profundity and compassionate sincerity of the book and by the breadth and depth of familiarity with our civilization's canon, evidenced by the interiority of the lines of argument across the fronts engaged.

If you wonder why, for 70 years, so many self-proclaimed Conservatives have managed to conserve so little, read this book. If you wonder why the Democrat party has listed left, read this book. If you wonder why conservatism has been half or more of the political spectrum across global history, read this book. If you simply wonder what conservatism really is, read this book. If you wonder, what vines of principle might we grasp to extract us from the quicksand, read this book. If you are simply an earnest, thinking person, read this book.

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hazony, Yoram. Conservatism: A Rediscovery. Regnery Gateway, 2022.

Russell Kirk saved conservatism for our fathers and grandfathers. Yoram Hazony introduced it for us. While Kirk’s The Conservative Mind is probably the number one text for conservative studies still, Hazony’s Conservatism: A Rediscovery has surpassed it in every way. Whereas Kirk focused on recent figures, at least going back to the time of Burke, Hazony draws from even deeper wells. Conservatism, to speak anachronistically, does not begin with liberal ideas of universal reason and our “common humanity.” Those things might exist, but that is not how we experience reality. Rather, we know and reason within a tradition that has been passed down. This brings Hazony’s argument very close to historicism and relativism, though he is quick to assure us this is not the case. I will offer my own analysis of that claim at the end of the review.

Foundations

At one level the foundation of Anglo-American conservatism is the Old Testament, one must do more than simply announce one’s view as biblical and call it the conservative position. Fortunately, Hazony illustrates this claim from a number of English thinkers, beginning with Sir John Fortescue, whose laws put English legal reflection on a more systematic basis. He drew heavily from the Old Testament, yet knew that forcing the current English state into the parameters of Old Testament Israel was counter-productive.

The most important conservative thinker in early English history is quite obviously Richard Hooker. He provided a theoretical framework for the new English state. Hazony argues that for Hooker “almost any order is better than no order at all, and the burden of proof is on those who wish to abandon existing custom.” Indeed, “To endure a minor sore is better than to attempt a dangerous remedy.” To be sure, though, the English church was something of a daring attempt in comparison with medieval church.

Hooker’s conservatism is best illustrated in his Laws, seeing laws as instruments to rule by, and instruments must take account of general purpose and immediate context. A law may be permanent, but the means of applying it may change.

Hooker claimed we cannot always have absolute certainty in laws and customs. Each nation, then, is allowed to look to the past and to its own history and character. As a result, to force England to embrace the customs of Geneva is to commit to as rigid internationalism as that of the Catholics. In other words, “The laws and customs suitable to one nation might not be appropriate to another” (Hazony). A single international church, finding that one of the churches disagreed with its neighbors, must now be accused of disobeying God. It is that which Hooker rejected.

Challenges

From the 1600s onward, English conservatives had to respond to the triple threat of Absolutism, Radicalism, and Rationalism. Against the Stuart monarchs, they resisted the claim that the monarch’s word was law. Against the Puritan radicals, they allowed that different people could have different polities. Against the rationalists, they denied that we should begin with and be ruled by Abstract Reason.

We begin with John Locke. For all of Locke’s empiricism, his Second Treatise is a rationalist, even deductive document. He makes claims about the state of nature and “Reason” that he cannot prove and which are not open to empirical analysis. Locke, though, remained enough of a Christian to keep his philosophy from working too much mischief.

It is primarily against Locke, not Paine, that God raised up Edmund Burke. Burke’s argument against abstract principles: they have never been tested, so one can never know what to do or what to expect. As he states, “The principles that are adopted should never be too big for their object.” This cuts across “the Universal Rights of Man.”

While it is easy for conservatives to use Rousseau as their whipping boy, and that is something we should do, Burke was not primarily fighting Rousseau, but English liberals who followed Grotius and Locke. Contrary to universal rights of humanity, the true conservative will hold to the following:

Principles of Anglo-American Conservatism

Historical Empiricism: constitutional traditions known from the long experience of a nation. This entails a degree of skepticism regarding divine right of ruler, universal reason of man, and abstract values.
Nationalism: human beings form national collectives. The diversity of national experiences entails a diversity of constitutions. National history takes account of common law, religious practices, and cultural forms.
Religion: God and the Bible have a primary place.
Individual rights

The “American English”

Jefferson’s “republicanism” became imperialism when he wanted France to invade Britain. This seems hard to square with Jefferson’s views on the small government farmer. And perhaps Jefferson was simply inconsistent on this point. Concerning his view of man and the French Revolution, however, he was quite consistent. Against Jefferson, Hazony views Alexander Hamilton, a conservative nationalist, as the true American hero. I am not enough of a Hamiltonian scholar to know whether Hazony’s analysis is correct. We can all agree that Hamilton was a nationalist, but to say he was conservative might be stretching it.

Modern Conservatism

While we are grateful for the efforts of William F. Buckley to stay the tide of communism, and his “conservative fusionism,” for all of his faults, faults which probably destroyed that brand of conservatism in the end, was probably the only real intellectual alternative to the Soviet Union at the time. National Review repositioned conservatism on the intellectual stage as an option to both liberalism and Marxism. Those glory days are long passed. We can even pinpoint the moment they died: George W. Bush’s presidency. (Hazony does not make that claim).

Conclusion and Evaluation

I do have some criticisms. While I can appreciate Hazony’s reluctance to base political theories off of deductions from Universal Reason, I am not persuaded we need to adopt David Hume’s epistemology. Yes, Hume was a Tory and a conservative; for that we are grateful. But empiricism is too high a price to pay, nor is it really necessary. There are a number of alternatives, perhaps not sufficiently explored, that allow for political ideas that do not require a priori reasoning. I can think of two: phenomenology and something like Charles Sanders Peirce’s pragmatism. Both approach the world as it is “given” in experience. Neither one requires anything like abstract reason. To be sure, I do not know what such a view will look like, nor have phenomenological approaches always been conservative in the past.

These criticisms aside, I highly recommend this book. It is the new gold standard in conservative studies, easily surpassing Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

For anyone looking for a systematic statement of contemporary, and especially American conservatism, there’s probably no better book than this. If I’d read it earlier I would probably have included it in my upcoming course.

However, as a classical liberal, I do of course have serious reservations. The critique of “enlightenment rationalism” seems much too broad to capture most of what’s important and interesting in liberal thought. Matt McManus did a nice job discussing this in his review of the book: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/a-con....

Also, the oft-repeated claim that liberal democracy has failed strikes me as odd. Judging by revealed preferences, an awful lot of people seem to want very badly to live in liberal democracies. And they report themselves as being pretty happy. Is this “false consciousness”?

I’m also curious about what the alternative model is. If liberal democrats are pointing to, say, Denmark as their model, to where does Hazony point? What’s the closest example we have of a real world “conservative democracy”?

Finally, I’d like to hear much more about the idea of “historical empiricism.” One of the most plausible conservative claims, IMO, is that existing institutions and practices deserve some deference even when we don’t fully understand the reason for their success. We can learn more about the world by observing what works than we can by trying to dream up an ideal system de novo. But, here’s the problem - what does it mean to “work”? Is it mere survival over time? Or does “working” mean something more substantial? If we have a standard of value in time, then we can learn what “works” empirically. But empirical observation by itself can’t provide us with a normative standard by which to judge that which we observe. That means historical empiricism, by itself, will never be enough.

[Oscar Martinez II · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is truly a fantastic work. Hazony does an excellent job of clarifying and explaining what he calls the Anglo-American Conservative tradition. That being said, I highly recommend people read this book whether they are conservative or not. For the conservatives, it will help make clear the underlying philosophy beneath many mainstream policy stances that one may hold but not necessarily completely understand in a deeper sense than whatever the mainstream talking point is. It may also help you identify where you still have liberal sentiments and the issues that come from the Enlightenment Liberal philosophy that became the main philosophy of the country following the two world wars. For the non-conservatives, this book will provide you with an explanation of conservative viewpoints that aren't the straw men featured on social media or the main stream new outlets. Rather, it provides well thought out and established philosophical and logical arguments for the conservative position. Even if you aren't convinced, hopefully you can walk away after reading this book a bit more understanding of why some people, such as myself, believe the things they do and hold the stances that they have. Unfortunately this review cannot do justice to how good I think this book is (there were so many parts where I was going "YES!" or "That makes a lot of sense!") it also can't do justice to how important I think this book is, especially for our current political climate. Please consider reading if possible!

[Josh S · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up wanting to better understand our current historical moment in the USA and clear up how exactly liberal and conservative are defined both now and in the past.

It was really helpful for me to understand the link between liberalism <--> philosophical rationalism and conservatism <--> philosophical empiricism. According to Hazony, liberalism would say that unaided and unhindered reason can access all truth, and tradition is mostly a hindrance. Conservativism would say, conversely, that human reason is too often weak and corrupt and that each culture is a "historical experiment" to stumble towards the truth. Hence, conservatives hold tradition to be incredibly important because it preserves much of what a culture has discovered to "work" through an evolutionary process. (Hazony, an Orthodox Jew, sidesteps the criticism that conservatism leads to moral relativism by grounding his conservatism entirely on the Bible; he argues explicitly that monotheistic religion is necessary for human thriving and civilizational health.)

His analysis of the history of conservatism vs liberalism starts out great then starts to feel overfit as it approaches the current day ("Black Lives Matter is really just Marxism! Which is the inevitable end-product of liberalism!"). Also, the last section on "being a conservative person" was both compelling and a little odd; he's basically making an argument for the social benefits of converting to orthodox Judaism or Christianity, without reference to anything specific or distinctive about, say, the life, authority, or resurrection of Jesus.

All of that said, his biting critiques of hyper-progressivism feel spot on to me as someone living in Seattle watching that political approach play itself out. Hazony's version of conservatism feels far more realistic.. yet it is still quite limited since it makes no reference to the core, essential truths revealed in Christ "who upholds the Universe by the word of his power".

If nothing else, this book made me want to call my parents more often.

P.S. Some more thoughts after a night:
My problem with Hazony's view is that trying to achieve virtue through focused effort feels like it will lead inevitably to a type of stringent, Pharisaical moralism. We can have principles galore, but we do not have the power to actually live them out. This is the central problem of humanity, clearly laid out in Scripture. In fact, by striving very hard to be "good", we might achieve some outward success but simply end up growing in pride, bitterness, and resentment against those who aren't doing as well as we are. Think the older brother in the prodigal son parable. It's not that Judeo-Christian values aren't a great basis for civilization- they absolutely are lightyears ahead of what we've got going right now. The far greater issue is that we need the grace, mercy, and help of God to actually live out the standard of holiness that God requires. God's standard is not "be the best version of yourself that's realistic" or "transmit good cultural heritage as well as you can", but literally: "be holy as I am holy". Aiming for a moralistic life without God's grace puts the cart before the horse. Jesus came for those who know they are hopeless, not those who think they are well.

[Jim Becker · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
Very very good! Made me rethink why I call myself a conservative.

[Clint Lum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really a fantastic book. I highly recommend anyone interested in political theory to read this work. Here are a few of my takeaways:

1) Conservatism is not the philosophy of the Republican party which is a derivation of liberalism

2) Libertarianism is not conservatism though many libertarians and conservatives seems to find themselves on similar sides of debates

3) Nationalism is assumed in historic conservatism

4) In terms of policy, conservatism is less concerned with specific, abstract prescriptions (e.g. lowering taxes, or limiting government) than it is with allowing those prescriptions to manifest over long periods of peoples attempting to apprehend truth. This means, hypothetically, two distinct nations may be equally conservative yet still quite distinct from one another as it relates to specific policies

5) Hierarchy is good and natural

6) "Because we've always done it this way" is actually a valid epistemological claim

7) Government ought to govern for the good of the people. This is different than the axiom of Enlightenment liberalism that government only exists to make room for individuals to enable individuals to make use of the freedoms that is theirs by nature

8) American conservatives are not typically conservative. Rather, they are Enlightenment liberals (i.e. a form of individualistic, patriotic libertines) with more conservative morals (though this is rapidly deteriorating)

9) The Enlightenment really is the headwaters of many of the modern pathologies and ailments

[Cody Justice · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is mostly solid from an historical and philosophical standpoint, especially if you force it through a distinctly Christian lens. But Hazony still holds some dominant liberal positions, mainly on modern taboos, and is strangely silent on the rabidly liberal revolutionary nature of his own people in society and history. Nevertheless, I recommend the work, with a call to be shrewd in parsing through the material, and reticent on accepting Hazony as a political ally. Real, conservative Christianity has no interest in a Judeo-Christian anything.

[Markus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This man lives and breathes conservatism, it's very personal for him and I love that. The books is a clinical dissection of the history of liberalism and conservatism, the level of writing and analysis is beyond anything I've read before about this topic. He goes deep, pushes through the dense forest of European and American history and arrives at clear practical principles to differentiate these ideologies.

The central core of the book seems to be this: conservatism is an empirical ideology while liberalism is an ideology that stands on the assumption that man is a reasonable being and thus needs only to consult reason to arrive at the best form of government.

The first one takes into account the different forms of natural hierarchies that we already have besides the government, i.e. families, churches, communities, clans and so on and where people's loyalties really lie, which is in their families. close communities and religions. All this is taken into account building the institutions that govern our lives. The ideology is driven to conserve what works and is good for families and communities based on empirical experience.

This is in contrast with liberalism which is built around grand assumptions about human nature, equality and everyone being willing and able to consult reason to go about our lives. it sounds good and it is easy to be for "equality" and such but essentially it is flawed to the core. One of the bigger flaws of liberalism is its proclivity to be hijacked by more toxic ideologies such as Marxism or other similar downright psychopathic doctrines. This flaw stems from the core tenet of liberalism which is taking grand theories and collectively stamping them on all of humanity: no empirical evidence is taken into account that could resist these toxic theories and thus any psychopathic ideologue could don the mask of liberalism if his ideas sound good enough on the surface.

There are intricacies to these and flaws on both sides though. For example, the author talking about conservative government conflates the authority in a family with the authority of a government which is really sad and I wonder if he really strives to be a father who behaves like a government. Furthermore he talks a lot about religion and its necessity to form our morals which is a far cry from actual philosophy.

Furthermore, the grand values touted by liberalism might actually work if people would be able to associate in free markets and societies without gigantic intrusions, taxes and restrictions by massive governments. The author mistakenly lumps in John Locke with degenerates like Rousseau, who lived on his mistresses' money and abandoned his 5 children to orphanages. John Locke was perhaps the first influential philosopher who claimed people are inherently free and don't need governments to give them these freedoms. He is considered the father of liberalism but I think we all stand on his shoulders, regardless of our ideologies, considering his influence on furthering reason and individual freedom in the west and I wouldn't consider him the father of today's mutated chimera of liberalism. Furthermore I find it hard to reconcile how his ideas still stand today with our massive, intrusive governments, although I must admit, things could be a lot worse.

The book provides a lot of quality, original thoughts on this political divide that we have and I'm thankful to the author for having written the book as I think I'm a smarter, better person for having read it.

[Stephen Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A needed reorientation from the current morass on the right. It's a serious book that actually offers a positive vision rather than endless complaints about liberalism or current affairs (though there's plenty of that). Though his account of Anglo-American conservatism is a bit whiggish, his passion for this robust political and philosophical tradition is invigorating, especially since he actually puts his money where his mouth is in how he actually lives his life. His defense of family, honor, and empiricism against bare and abstract rationalist theories predicated on so-called self-evident libertarian assumptions is a helpful corrective to some popular political discussion, though I doubt in reality his portrayal of liberalism is actually as simple as it seems. In any event, conservatives need to regroup after some of the disasters of the past few decades and wake up to the current challenges they face. Hopefully this book will be a service to that end, though I can't say I'm very confident in it, given how steep the opposition is to any religiously informed political movement right now, especially in the halls of power. But, if conservatism is actually going to conserve anything, it needs to have some fixed norms and principles, and this book is offering a historically-informed political framework to fill the need. And, if anyone could make this argument, it would probably have to be Dr. Hazony, given that maybe only an Orthodox Jew could make a convincing case to other religious groups that an emphasis on Protestant Christianity is the right path forward in this country.

Perhaps my greatest skepticism about the ideas in this book actually working is that it doesn't do enough to include the many Black Americans who will be very suspicious about a return to these older ways of thinking. It would have been helpful to include more details about how empiricism and Anglo-American conservative principles can help Black Americans to be included in a thriving American future. Their legitimate concerns must receive more due attention. It's simply insufficient to say that "we aren't those conservatives". The status quo is not working, and until Black Americans believe that their concerns are properly heard and constructively acted upon, I doubt the long-term success of movements described by books such as these.

[Josh Yerkes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly, my expectations for this book were not high. I grow bored of every pundit and modern politico writing about the last 300 years and where we should go. This book is unique! The history and substance is much deeper than 95% of what you will read being pushed as right wing, conservative. Yoram has done a great job differentiating conservatism of the past and the federalists versus the fusionism of the last few decades.

[Ryan Ahlenius · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a man who didn’t get much education on the Christian heritage of Britain and America, this was an extremely informative and useful read to me. The first 4 chapters are worth the price of the book alone!

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two-thirds of this book are a needed contribution to the war of ideas: an explanation of the superiority of an epistemological approach and social model based in tradition. The last third is a personal testimonial to the superiority of living a life of community and inter-generational transmission over just presenting arguments into the vapid, ethereal war of ideas, an explanation of why and how the former is both more important and more meaningful than the latter.

TESTIMONIAL

Let me start with the second, even if Hazony doesn’t. Hazony includes, almost as an afterthought, this personal story of how, when, and why he chose to live a conservative life (rather than to just espouse conservative ideas). That is by far the best portion of the work, it’s most persuasive, most interesting, most relatable part. Its brief digression on what’s wrong with young, intellectual conservatives declining to live the life they preach (also, indirectly, a commentary on Hazony’s elders who did the same) is much more than shouting “hypocrite!” It’s a trenchant, cutting rebuke of the kind that can only be delivered by an elder out of love. After both, his payoff-line arrives, with a force it draws from what came before.

I’ll quote it, but you’ll miss the force without the buildup: “You see, a conservative understands that it is not disbelief that plagues us but dishonor: our accursed inability to give honor where it is due a conservative knows — or at least suspects — that if he were to give honor where it is due, then knowledge of God, and of many other things, would eventually follow from this.”

Like Michael from Season 2 of the Good Place, I’ll just have to assure you that it’s devastating.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE WAR OF IDEAS: HIGHLIGHTS

And the earlier 2/3? Hitting the high points:

Chapter 1 presents a history of the English side of the Anglo-American conservative tradition, with a heroes list of Fortescue, Hooker, Coke, Selden, Hyde, Hale, Blackstone, Josiah Tucker, Burke, Hume, and Adam Smith. Fair enough and well done. I’ll need to read more about some of them (especially Selden). But this introduction serves as a great teaser and an effective summary to build off of in the rest of the book. Chapter 2 then adds the American side, with due respect for the Federalists and their nation-building project. Again, a hero list, this time of: George Washington, Jay, Adams, Morris, and Alexander Hamilton.

Chapter 3 hones in on the centrality of honor/kavod and self-constraint to functioning human societies (and specifically their centrality to THIS human society, when it functioned according to tradition). It addresses the team-ball tribalism of almost all “critical” thinking. It offers an explanation both for why the potent solvents of unchecked criticism and unfettered reason can’t be trusted to yield truth, and for why they yield — over time — not the permanent libertinism feared 5 decades ago, but boredom, annui, self-harm, and addiction. It correctly warns of the dangers inherent in the idolatry of relabeling your own perspective a universal truth as would be seen by God. It argues that epistemic humility is parallel to fear of God.

And he’s got a great synopsis of Hayek, Strauss, Frank Meyer, and Fusionism, too. I could nit-pick that part and would love to do so over a meal sometime, but won’t belabor the point here. Suffice it to say that I’m far more forgiving of Fusionism than is Hazony and far more willing to blame its failures on the implicit rebuke from the testimonial than on the coalition building project itself. Refusing to live one’s principals far more damages them than does working with others who reason themselves to the same policies differently than one does. Still, there’s lots to be learned from comparing and contrasting especially Hayek and Strauss and he does so well, if not always entirely fairly.

NITS

With that said, there are a few nits I will pick from across the book as a whole. I think Hazony misreads Hobbes, Locke, and the stoics. I think he misclassifies Marxists. And that a combination of these missteps leads him to assign a centrality to God that is traditional and understandable, but not entirely necessary.

NITS: MISREADING HOBBES & LOCKE

Start with Hobbes and Locke. I think he misunderstands the method of argument they use as their motivation/point. In the process, Hazony wrongly classifies them as enemies of the Tradition, rather than (as I think is more appropriate) as rationalist-defenders of that Tradition.

He reads Hobbes as a theorist of absolute monarchy and therefore the anti-Selden. The timeline belies this. The main action of the English Civil War spanned 1642-1649 (when Cromwell has Charles beheaded on the scaffold); Hobbes fled Stewart England in 1641, though, before any organized challenge to the absolutist Stewarts arose. If he WAS an absolutist, why leave then? While in Paris, he was the tutor of the Stewart Crown Prince (eventually to be Charles II) in 1647-1648. True. And he had that job as he wrote Leviathan (finished in 1650, published in 1651). Yes.

If it were the encomium of absolutism Hazony makes it out to be, that should have won him points with the remaining Stewarts. It didn’t. They noticed what Hazony does not: that it justifies fighting back against a Leviathan that becomes a danger and instructs the English population that after a successful revolution, all should support the new authorities, not pine for reversal. The Stewart Court in Exile so hated that take, that Hobbes understood them to have become a threat to his life — he sought and obtained asylum from the Commonwealth.

None of this squares with a picture of Hobbes as an absolutist. That he used a different tool to argue for those who defended English Tradition against the absolutist onslaught doesn’t make him an absolutist himself. He’s better understood as a pragmatist, who watched civil society tear itself to shreds and came to understand (like Russell Kirk centuries later) how high the threshold for revolution must be, given that any order, even an evil order, is almost always better than none.

Similarly, Hazony reads Locke as a proto-Rousseauvian, a hater of all traditions, conspiring to shred all conventions. The calendar has something to say here, too. Locke published his Treatises on government in 1689 and 1690. The Glorious Revolution — with its almost bloodless restoration of the English Tradition ending the second chapter of the Stewart threat to traditional order — unfolded in 1688 and 1689. Again, Locke used dogmatic reason to make his argument. Sure. But the argument he made was for the Justice and rightness not of overthrowing governments generally (not really), but of specifically the (unidentified) Glorious Revolution. Locke was a crank eccentric presenting additional Cartesian arguments in favor of the Conservative Revolution (or, again as Kirk might have described it, for the Parliament’s armed prevention of the imposition of an absolutist British Revolution by the Crown).

In both cases, the authors — properly understood — argued for the Tradition, differently, rather than against it. They may later have been used by enemies of tradition like Jefferson as fodder, but that tells us more about Jefferson than it does about them or their works. And just as we don’t abandon the Bible because of what Jefferson did to it, we needn’t and shouldn’t abandon Hobbes and Locke based on Jefferson’s misuse of them. That’s a good thing — if we abandoned everything Jefferson misused, we wouldn’t have much left in our intellectual toolbox.

NITS: MISREADING THE STOICS

On the stoics, the problem is a different one. Basically, Hazony presents stoicism as a pagan/atheist ideology deifying nature or reason (and so ourselves). I don’t see it that way, if admittedly, I need to review and deepen my reading of the great stoics to be sure that I’m right. With that grain of salt, as I remember stoicism, it’s a rationalist coping mechanism for humans dealing with the caprice and injustice of nature and nature’s (pagan) gods. Far from the self-deification of a Caesar, belonging in the camp of Rousseau and the Marxists, I’d argue they’re more fairly classified as a different (non-biblical), Western intellectual tradition, thousands of years old, which has been (or could be) adjusted at the margins in a conservative fashion exactly as Hazony and his heroes list encourages all to do with their traditions. My sense is that they are far more Aristotelian/empirical than Platonic/dogmatic. They’re a historical partner of Tradition, not an enemy of it.

NITS: MISCLASSIFICATION

Given these nits, it may make sense why I disagree with Hazony’s taxonomy of asserting that there are only three options available as intellectual models after the modernist revolution: conservatives, liberal-or-marxist followers of reason, and niezcheans who see only power dynamics.

The error is putting stoics and liberals in the same category as Marxists, on the one hand, and in keeping Marxists out of the category with Niezcheans, on the other. Marxists are power worshippers, not followers of even deified reason. They belong with Nietzsche and other worshippers of the Will to Power. Gulag builders might use axiomatic arguments in taking over institutions (and Hazony’s take on the “dance” of liberals and Marxists is truly damning in its accuracy), but they don’t mean them. Their heart is in power-dynamics, just like the Nietzcheans.

NITS: CENTRALITY OF GOD

Finally, we’ve got the potential error of Hazony assigning centrality to the presence of God in any conservative society. In the war of ideas part of the book, this seems to mostly follow from logical non-sequitors.

For example Hazony observes that epistemic humility can serve as a parallel to the fear of God. He then contends that a conservative approach REQUIRES God’s incorporation to function. But specifically because epistemic humility can play the same role as the fear of the Lord, that isn’t true. Self-doubt will get you there.

Take another: Hazony quotes Grotius’s observation that his system would work “even if there is no God” as an argument that the system wouldn’t work if there is. But that’s sophistry — saying I could go to the beach without you doesn’t mean that I couldn’t also go there with you. B simply doesn’t follow from A.

WHY THE NITS DON’T MATTER

At the end of the day, though, to finish where I started, these are nits and they’re nits that don’t really undermine the book as a whole, which works and which I recommend. Why?

Specifically because of the closing section. The only way to restore a society is to live a life of restoration in a community dedicated to giving honor/kavod to the honorable and building self-restraint. And the only places that’s functionally possible are traditionalist religious communities. So it doesn’t really matter if one could imagine a traditionalist community of stoics. Until someone builds that community it’s a debating point without any real-world relevance to how and where and why to live a Conservative life. Functionally, the empirical observation works, even if the dogmatic assertion that it must always be accurate is nonsensical.

There’s something to learn from a really good work, by a brilliant man, dedicated to the superiority of the former and to calling out the destructive applications of the kind of argument of the latter nonetheless incorporating the same mistake made by Hobbes, Locke, and Hayek. It’s a traditional mistake, which defenders of tradition — like everyone else — are prone to make.

Notice it. Strive to avoid repeating it. But, finally, give the work the honor/kavod it deserves despite it. Conservatism belongs in the canon of the Anglo-American Tradition it extols. And Yoram Hazony is to be thanked for contributing it.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yoram Hazony’s Conservatism, a masterful work, is the book Patrick Deneen’s Regime Change should have been. Hazony explains how we got here, who our enemies are, why they are our enemies, and what we should do. He offers no preemptive apologies and he does not bow to the idols of the age. He shows why the Left is always only one thing with many heads, with which there can be no compromise. Conservatism, despite its anodyne title, moves beyond all the tired and profitless “conservative” babbling of the past six decades, offering a strong intellectual foundation for the future exercise of power by the Right, after the Left is gone forever from our nation (whatever that nation may then be called).

A few years ago Hazony coined the term “national conservatism,” as the moniker for his program for the Right. He has been instrumental in hosting a series of high-profile conferences organized around that rubric (none of which I have attended, but friends of mine have). The resulting furious attacks from the Left, aghast that someone on the Right is allowed to actually try to build political power, demonstrate he is over the target. As his term suggests, Hazony’s political analysis revolves around, and is based on the crucial importance of, the nation—meaning the people of a place, not the government. For him, the nation, and the layered mutual loyalties and loves which comprise it, most of them unchosen, is the basis of politics. The very mention of the nation, however, is forbidden by the Left, which views America as a mere random assemblage of atomized men and women who choose, on an ongoing basis, for no particular reason, to live in proximity. At best, America is “propositional,” with propositions that change as the Left dictates. For the Left, and for much of what passes for the Right, America can never be what a nation always was before the rise of the Left—a group of men and women held together by unbreakable unchosen bonds.

To be sure, nationalism is in the air. Of late, we have heard much talk of Christian nationalism, mostly from those who hate both, and fear the obvious power of combining two powerful and successful principles. Its more-approved counterpart, Jewish nationalism, is also in the news, due to the current Jewish wars against their Middle Eastern enemies. No doubt Hazony can say more in defiance of the Left than could an American academic, because he is Jewish and because he lives in Israel (presumably a dual American-Israeli citizen). True, this opens Hazony to the charge that he cares about justifying nationalism because he cares about Israel more than America. Probably his being Jewish, and being Israeli, is part of his focus on the importance of the nation (for what nation is more a nation, or at least a people, than the Jews?), but that does not change the importance of his analysis and recommendations for Americans, which are politically wholly unrelated to Israel. Moreover, he has nine children, and thus is necessarily concretely invested in the future of the entire West (in contrast to men or women without children, who should generally have their public policy views deprecated, or be entirely forbidden from participating in the making of public policy).

So let’s get to it. What is “conservatism”? It “refers to a standpoint that regards the recovery, restoration, elaboration, and repair of national and religious traditions as the key to maintaining a nation and strengthening it through time.” In the context of America, national conservatism, a term Hazony says originated with Daniel Webster, means “Anglo-American conservatism where it has placed an especial emphasis on national independence and on the loyalties that bind the nation’s constitutive factions to one another.” National conservatism “seeks to return the national interest, or the common good of the nation, to the center of political discourse, after decades in which the freedom of the individual became the overriding principle in all spheres of life.”

The core of this book is the existential, crucial distinction between “Enlightenment liberalism,” what I simply call the Left, birthed in the Enlightenment and reified in 1789, and “conservatism.” Hazony defines the former as “devoted entirely to freedom, and in particular to freedom from the past. . . . In other words, liberalism is an ideology that promises to liberate us from precisely one thing, and that thing is conservatism.” By contrast, a conservative is “a traditionalist, a person who works to recover, restore, and build up the traditions of his forefathers and to pass them on to future generations.” This is a helpful set of definitions; I define Right simply as “not Left,” but I don’t disagree with Hazony’s general description of the main philosophy, at least in the West, that automatically fills that negative space.

As his references to forefathers and nations make clear, conservatism is not a “universal theory,” as is true of Left ideology. In its specifics, it differs greatly across time and place. What is conservatism in Thailand, or even Spain, is different than that in America. For Hazony, the time and place which matters is England and America, in the past five hundred years. Understanding the conservatism of that tradition “is the key to understanding what made these nations powerful and successful.” (The assumption that the goal of a nation is to be powerful and successful, to the benefit of its citizens, rather than to “lift up marginalized voices” and hand out gibs to loafers, invaders, and parasites, is another sin against the Left Hazony commits throughout this book.)

Hazony traces the birth of this tradition, though it had precursors, to John Fortescue, during the Wars of the Roses, in the fifteenth century, when he wrote In Praise of the Laws of England. Fortescue distinguished between the English tradition of limited monarchy and the Continental tradition of more absolute monarchy. He also discussed other matters central to what made England England, such as due process, private property, and the character of the nation’s people. Richard Hooker, after Henry VIII abandoned the Church, thereby increasing the independence of Great Britain from Continental systems, wrote Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, in eight volumes around 1600. Hooker disparaged revolutionary change, and any change based on the abstract thought of those who imagined they had reasoned out the answers to all of life’s problems, or which offered universally valid knowledge. But he did not reject all change, which was sometimes necessary, in the course of human events.

Then Hazony turns to “perhaps the most important figure in Anglo-American conservatism,” John Selden, one of the drafters of the 1628 Petition of Right, a Parliamentary attack on the perceived excessive absolutism of Charles I. In the Petition of Right are stated most or all of what we regard as the ancient rights of Englishmen, largely embodied in our own Bill of Rights. Selden wrote extensively, often in defense of what Hazony dubs “historical empiricism”—that “reasoning in political and legal matters should be based upon inherited national tradition.” As with Hooker, this did not mean blindly following the past, but realizing that “the inherited tradition . . . preserves a multiplicity of perspectives from different times and circumstances, as well as a record of the consequences for the nation when the law has been interpreted one way or another.” Changes may be necessary, but “new theories” should not be the basis for them. Finally (after discussion of several others), Hazony notes Edmund Burke, too often regarded today as both the originator and final form of English conservatism, but also the only one of these men who faced the direct challenges of what is now, and was then, the Left—not only the French Revolution, but “classical liberals” such as John Locke, who are also, as we will discuss, men of the Left. While Burke is typically and facilely thought of as a gradualist, crucially, “Where an institution has already fallen into ruin, Burke has no interest in repairing it only in a gradual manner. Rather, he argues that it should be reconstructed in accordance with models and patterns that have proved themselves.”

Hazony boils down this lengthy discussion into five principles of Anglo-American conservatism: historical empiricism; nationalism; religion; limited executive power; and individual freedoms. He explains, expands on, and justifies each one. It is hard to find any fault in his exposition. And, again, he distinguishes Anglo-American conservatism from “Enlightenment liberalism,” which believes that unaided human reason from first principles will reveal the one final universal form of government (although, to be fair, many of the first men of the Left, contemporaneous with Burke, held that limited executive power and a type of individual freedom should be part of that universal form of government—but contrary to the Left’s modern claims, both aspirations long pre-dated the Enlightenment).

Next, Hazony traces the evolution, and only partial survival, of these principles in the new American nation. He distinguishes among the Founding Fathers, between those who, following Selden, wished to restore what they regarded as a system that had fallen off the track, and the radicals, such as Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, who “despised England” and endorsed the view of the Enlightenment Left, and who were the cause of not all of Anglo-American conservatism surviving into the new American republic (though because of the deep virtue of the American nation, in particular of its ruling classes, it would take decades for most of the resulting injection of poison to surface). Hazony goes into depth; this is well-covered ground which I will not repeat, but his exposition is again excellent.

The author’s ongoing emphasis on the nation also dominates the next section of his book, political philosophy. “A conservative political theory begins with the understanding that individuals are born into families, tribes, and nations to which they are bound by mutual loyalty.” By contrast, “the liberal paradigm is blind to the nation.” Rather, it is focused on the individual, his relationship to the state (which is never the nation), and the freedom of the individual to avoid state interference. The latter is simplistic and therefore attractive. But it is destructive; the conservative paradigm has proven vastly more effective at actually generating human flourishing. And the core of the conservative paradigm is mutual loyalty, which “is the primary force that establishes political order and holds its constituent parts in place.” The Left, children of the Enlightenment, have always been embarrassed by mutual loyalty. Instead, they exalt individual choice, to be bound or not to be bound at the whim of the individual, and they have wrongly predicted for centuries that loyalty of men to nations and tribes would soon disappear.

Mutual loyalty is the basis of all societies. But other central elements of political conservatism include competition for honor, importance, and influence (limited by mutual loyalty); hierarchy; cohesion (the result of mutual loyalty); deference to traditional institutions (such as language, law, and religion of a nation); political obligation flowing from membership in loyalty groups; constraint as the balance to, and superior of, untethered freedom; and tradition, informed by historical empiricism, as the key indicator of truth. As to honor, Hazony notes that the Ten Commandments require honoring one’s parents. In Hebrew (Hazony’s main occupation is Old Testament scholar), this means “give weight” to them, recognize them as important. This is a universal human desire, to be important in the eyes of others, and it is a key part of mutual loyalty. As to hierarchy, the importance of a member of any hierarchy is the degree he is honored within that hierarchy. Deference to traditional institutions is enforced, in part, by honoring those who uphold such institutions (not those who seek “truth” through “critical reasoning,” as the Enlightenment Left would have it). Political obligation flows not from consent, but from unchosen bonds of loyalty—which may be broken, as they were in the American Revolution, but only in extreme circumstances. Constraint, in any successful society, is primarily self-constraint, which implies that, contrary to the forced egalitarian ideology of the Enlightenment Left, inequality rather than equality will always result, because those more worthy are honored by society at large as superior to those less worthy, along many axes.

We take a long, and interesting, detour into how “God, Scripture, family, and congregation” “gave Jewish and Christian societies their particular form.” Hazony notes that the American idea that conservatism must operate within a liberal framework, which sets its boundaries and allowed ideas and practices, is purely a post-World War II phenomenon—but one which we have absorbed as natural, despite its obvious destructiveness. Then we turn to the purposes of government. Now we are getting to what our future government should be, though Hazony does not herald that as his focus (unlike Deneen, he does not tout his book as a book about regime change, even though that’s what it is). Hazony lists eight purposes, coherent with Anglo-American conservatism, and taken from such closely-agreeing sources such as the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States and Edmund Burke’s analysis of the English constitution. These are (i) a more perfect union; (ii) justice; (iii) domestic peace; (iv) the common defense against foreign enemies; (v) the general welfare; (vi) individual liberty; (vii) national liberty; and (viii) permanence and stability through the ages.

All these (which are always in some condition of tension and balance) are the opposite of viewing the nation as an arbitrary collection of individuals who choose, for now, to be joined, the standard view of the Left. They view the nation as a whole. The mutual loyalties which bind a family or tribe, and which form the governance structures of both, cannot be precisely scaled to a national government, so some translation must take place. The nation, and therefore the government, is not, however, composed of atomized individuals, but is an agglomeration of smaller loyalty groups. It can fracture, though. “[W]hen a nation is undergoing dissolution, it is because the bonds of loyalty between the tribes or parties of the nation have weakened or have ceased to exist entirely, so that when they are faced with a common hardship, adversity, or enemy, they waste their energies blaming one another and fighting one another. Then no unified front can be established, and no unified power projected.” “The state and government are traditional institutions of certain societies. Their continued existence therefore depends entirely on the cultivation of bonds of mutual loyalty among the rival tribes that constitute the nation; and these bonds, in turn, depend on the conservation and transmission of particular traditions of speech and behavior that allow rival tribes and parties to compete, while at the same time honoring one another.” One only need look around, for example at the current Texas border crisis, to see that we have reached the “You are here” moment on Hazony’s map.

The Left, of course, rejects all of this, believing that the “the state is brought into being by the force of universal reason, which is independent of any given society. . . . The state is imagined as imposing law and order on society by force, while society itself is passive.” Hazony, again, doesn’t refer to the Left, but to “Enlightenment-rationalist” thought. But they are the same thing—the political ideology that has as its two premises total emancipation from all unchosen bonds, and total forced egalitarianism, all in the service of creating heaven on earth. In their vision, the state advances by violence, if necessary, policies based on Left demands, and society thereby achieves perfection in the here and now.

In the book’s third part, we return to history, of post-World War II conservatism. We are given a very good survey, of Frank Meyer’s fusionism (which, Hazony notes, is not a fusion at all, merely a reclothed Enlightenment liberalism), and of William F. Buckley and the cloud of luminaries who surrounded his movement, from Russell Kirk to Ronald Reagan. But all we need to take away is: “In retrospect, we can see that the politics which emerged from the end of the Cold War in America, Britain, and other countries was devoted almost exclusively to the advancement of liberalism.” I couldn’t have put it more pithily myself, although I would have hurled various epithets at the Judases who led us to this pass. Hazony also notes that before the war, all Americans were “Christian nationalists”; the idea that is somehow undesirable is bizarre, and just means the Left fears Christian nationalism. Even Franklin Roosevelt, he points out, overtly espoused Christian nationalism. The Left fears it today because it fears any rollback in its advances, in the increase of its power, the wholesale evisceration they accomplished of the American constitutional order, not because there is something wrong with Christian nationalism, America’s original philosophy.

Hazony falters a little bit when he tries to distinguish Marxism . . . [Review completes as first comment.]

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 4 out of 5]

If the various post-Enlightenment political philosophies—liberalism, progressivism, socialism, Marxism, etc.—attempt to articulate a universal framework for political order applicable in all times, places, and cultural contexts based on principles derived from general axioms of reason, conservative traditions incline towards what Yoram Hazony terms historical empiricism: a defense of the given, the particular, the peculiar, the inherited; the positive, concrete socio-political forms that have flowered in diverse array across the human family over generations of collective experience without being rationally planned or consciously chosen. Political thinkers of a rationalist tendency, including many self-described conservatives, have struggled in vain to delineate a single “grand unified theory” of conservatism. “What are you conserving?” is both a genuine question and an accusation among the now-predominant forces on the American right that have consciously abandoned Burke’s epistemological modesty for an absolute nihilism that worships the violence of “friends” against “enemies,” having otherwise scrubbed itself clean of any moral or intellectual content. Conservatism resists any effort to regiment human life along the contours of any grand unified theory, even when the value of certain inherited cultural mores and practices, the rough edges and idiosyncrasies of any actually-existing society, elude concise explanation. It does not deny the existence of absolute, universal Truth—indeed, the Anglo-American conservative tradition, taking inspiration from biblical thought, tends to view the acceptance of first-order Reality as an indispensable guardrail against various forms of intellectual sophistry and political “idolatry”—but rather treats with great skepticism the notion that human beings, with all their physical, mental, and spiritual limitations, consulting only their own abstract powers of reason, can have unmediated access to it; as if any person in history, if he or she were truly rational and open-minded, would, if prompted to come up with the perfect social order, produce the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. To paraphrase the late conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, a conservative thinker is one who tries to articulate the reasons for not having reasons.



It follows from this that being conservative is not synonymous with being right-wing. If the Left values unity and equality while the Right values hierarchy and distinction, conservatism can defend the positive content of its cultural inheritance from the ideological excesses of both. A left-conservatism can defend inherited bonds of social solidarity and a traditional appraisal of the common good from the barbarism of a radical Right that would destroy them by imposing strict hierarchies of race, nationality, class, or religion—or, for that matter, IQ, which has become an obsession on the Right because it offers the prospect of assigning rigid, quantitative, and unappealable “ranks” to human beings. It can seek to conserve the planet from permanent degradation in the name of short-term profit. It can defend traditional forms of life from capitalism: the most objectifying, culturally-effacing, liquifying, abstracting, and socially disruptive phenomenon in human history. Indeed, a conservative can easily agree with the famous description of life in the “bourgeois epoch” given by Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto, according to which “All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away…All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned”; though whereas Marx sees this condition as a necessary stage of historical development, the conservative instinct is characterized by a simple appreciation for the solid. A left-conservatism can also, contrary to the thrust of Hazony’s own nationalist inclinations, defend the diversity of local and transnational cultures from the homogenizing logic of the nation-state, as well as the positive universal vision inherent in every traditional religion and philosophy from the negative universalism—the universalism of autonomy and separativity—offered by liberalism.

Conversely, a right-conservatism can resist the tendency of the Left—particularly the liberal Left—to weigh every aspect of concrete social life, with its concomitant inequities and hierarchies, against its own abstract standards of equality and fairness, to inevitably find it wanting, and to seek its abolition. It can uphold the positive value of a shared historical inheritance, shared traditions, and shared responsibilities to family, tribe, and nation against those who see in such unchosen obligations nothing but oppression and arbitrary claims to authority. Finally, it can challenge the mainstreams of both Right and Left on their alignment with liberalism, questioning whether a socialist economics can be paired with an antisocial culture, or vice versa.

Ironically, I have to this point written very abstractly about a philosophy that champions the concrete and particular. Since conservatives in every context are trying to conserve something unique, the cumulus of generations of experience, the question “What are you conserving?” can elicit a virtual infinitude of answers, none of which could possibly encapsulate the fullness of the tradition in question. A British conservative, for example, could only answer the question by comprehensively explaining every facet of the historical, constitutional, cultural, linguistic, religious, and intellectual legacy of Britishness; an impossible task for any limited mind. A conservative has to defend more than he knows; nobody fully understands what Britain is—or what America, Mexico, India, or Japan are. The meaning of these inheritances can only be approached empirically, seen in glimpses through ages of trial and error, of hard-won experiences and wisdoms; a shared enterprise in which the living and the dead participate together. Indeed, without an awareness of his epistemic limitations, a defender of tradition can fall into the same trap as a rationalist who wants to dispense with it in the interest of making society conform to his own ideological framework: mistaking one’s own appraisal of reality for the whole of reality itself. I don’t think this is a trap which Hazony and other National Conservatives fully avoid.



Hazony focuses on the Anglo-American conservative tradition, which he takes to be rooted in the ancient English/British constitution, with its balance between a strong monarchy and a parliament to keep executive power in check, its national religious establishment, and its thousand-year-old common law tradition, a vast reservoir of empirically determined law and custom. During the convulsions of the seventeenth century, conservative thinkers like Thomas Hooker, Sir Edward Coke, Sir Matthew Hale, and John Selden (“the greatest conservative”) offered defenses of the traditional constitution amid the three interrelated threats posed by the authoritarianism of James I and Charles I, the Puritan fundamentalism of Cromwell, and the nascent liberal contractarianism formulated by Hobbes and Locke. Their body of work influenced the restoration government of Charles II. In wake of the French Revolution, the conservative banner was taken up in Britain by Edmund Burke, who in his Reflections on the Revolution in France juxtaposed the positive and historically-contingent rights spelled out by the likes of Selden and Coke in the 1628 Petition of Right with the abstract and universal rights claimed by the French revolutionaries, arguing that the latter would create a free-for-all situation in which the common inheritance would be torn apart by competing assertions of right that, because of their arbitrariness, could only prevail through brute force; a conflict which would inevitably be won by the independently wealthy and powerful, or else by the demagogic:

“Selden and the other profoundly learned men who drew this Petition of Right were as well acquainted, at least, with all the general theories concerning the ‘rights of men.’. . . But, for reasons of that practical wisdom which superseded their theoretic science, they preferred this positive, recorded, hereditary title to all which can be dear to the man and the citizen, to that vague speculative right which exposed their sure inheritance to be scrambled for and torn to pieces by every wild, litigious spirit.”

Curiously, Hazony suggests that Enlightenment rationalism is the successor of ancient Stoicism, which conflated reason and nature. He contrasts this with the biblical worldview, which allegedly insists on the infinite discrepancy between the divine and human perspectives. But neither the Bible nor the outgrowths of Jewish and Christian tradition are so univocal. In the biblical books of Proverbs, Job, and some of the Psalms, as well as in later Jewish wisdom texts like the Wisdom of Solomon and the Wisdom of Sirach, both of which were taken into the scriptural canons of the Orthodox and Catholic churches, Wisdom (Chokmah or Sophia) is portrayed as at once God’s creative power (there’s Śakti again), the fabric of reality, and the qualitative locus of synergy or union with God on the part of human beings. Judeo-Christian tradition is much more open than Hazony suggests to the capacity of human beings to access the truly Real. Where Enlightenment rationalism errs is not in the suggestion that human beings can—or indeed ultimately must—participate in unmediated reality, but rather in locating the bridge between Man and God in our individual, instrumentalized cognitive capacities. The Wisdom of the Bible and the Logos of Christian and Stoic thought are not the logic of the rationalist, and still less that of the Redditor. Philosophy, in the classical world, is not about being intelligent and having profound ideas, but rather a way of life dedicated to living in harmony with the cosmic order, which requires a certain humility and emptiness of self, or “fear of the Lord.”



While Burke was opposing the revolutionary spirit in Britain, the American Federalists were donning their black cockades. Instrumental in the creation of the United States Constitution and a robust national government for the fledgling country, attracting the support of George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, John Marshall, and James Madison during those pivotal years when he was not under Jefferson’s thumb, the Federalist movement (and after 1791, the political party) was, for Hazony, the torchbearer of the Anglo-American tradition in the New World. The Federalists sought to emulate the British constitution to the greatest extent possible, they adopted English common law for the United States, and they promoted amicable diplomatic and commercial relations with Britain. They favored neutrality in international affairs, the development of native industry through strict protectionism, and a visible role for religion in public life. Most emphatically, they desired strong national institutions and sought to foster a pervasive sense of national—rather than state, local, or sectarian—identity. For them, America was not an alliance of states—Hamilton, in fact, wanted to get rid of the states altogether, and he was not alone in that opinion—nor was it a social contract between individuals. It was, rather, a people; one people, with a common heritage, customs, religion, and language. In line with this thinking, Federalists tended to adopt a hawkish stance on immigration, even though some were themselves relative newcomers: Hamilton was born in the West Indies and arrived in the Thirteen Colonies in 1772. People associated, like Hazony himself, with the National Conservatism movement are fond of quoting a passage from John Jay in Federalist 2 which lends some of the aura of the Founding Father to their contention that America is not, and should not be, a “creedal” nation, but rather one bound by the sinews of ethnicity and religion.

“Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.
This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.
Similar sentiments have hitherto prevailed among all orders and denominations of men among us. To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people, each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection. As a nation we have made peace and war; as a nation we have vanquished our common enemies; as a nation we have formed alliances, and made treaties, and entered into various compacts and conventions with foreign states.”

The Federalists were, in a word, both nationalist and conservative, and as such the renascent American nationalism of our time wants to enlist them in the war against “globalists,” “criminal aliens” (the locution used by the ICE government website), and “lesbian agitators,” a term used by a right-wing YouTuber for a US citizen who was killed by a masked federal agent in Minneapolis and slandered as a terrorist by the Trump Administration and its media apparatus.

One problem with National Conservatism is that nationalism is not conservative. Neither, as it happens, is it universalist, nor is it a form of Enlightenment rationalism. It is a species of moral relativism, the political analogue of “paganism” as Hazony would define that term. Conservatism can appreciate the reality, significance, and even the rights of nations, but nationalism in its present-day form involves the imposition of a uniform concept of national identity within the hermetically-sealed borders of a nation-state. That is to say, it abandons the principles of historical empiricism and epistemological modesty for a form of fundamentalism, the enemy of healthy tradition. By imposing a single conception of, for instance, Americanness, it presumes the capacity and the authority to make a final judgment on what America is, to the exclusion of other possibilities, other trajectories, other schools of thought, other kinds of people. When the Department of Homeland Security speaks of deporting one third of the US population and one considers that two thirds of Americans are white, it is easy to see how narrow, superficial, and ultimately genocidal a concept of Americanism is being superimposed over the nation that actually exists. This is why imperial systems have often protected ethnic, cultural, and religious plurality better than nation-states have. It’s why most African and Native-Americans, whom John Jay certainly did not include in his “one united people” when he wrote the above-quoted passage, remained Loyalist during the American Revolution. It is why Turks, Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Jews, and Palestinians could coexist under the Ottoman Empire, but not under Turkish or Israeli nationalism.

Nations are themselves traditions, and robust traditions always have room for diversity, ambiguity, and growth. Hazony thinks of nations in an ironically liberal way: as discrete, autonomous units that usually exist in a state of conflict with one another. But nations, like other traditions, are evolving organisms, vast and perpetual accumulations of shared human experience, the spatial and temporal boundaries of which can never be strictly determined without doing immense violence to the actually-existing bonds of communal life which conservatism, at its best, seeks to protect and encourage. Like families, nations can join together, graft in new members—even those with different “manners and customs”—and embody a new oneness as diverse streams flow together.

That being said, Hazony is right to appreciate the biblical vision of a world of diverse nations ultimately coming to recognize one God; a God Who brings low the mighty and arrogant terrestrial powers that lose their “fear of the Lord”—in secularese, their respect for truth and justice—and try to oppress and dominate others with their limited will and understanding. The Jewish and Christian hope is ultimately for a positive, immanent universalism: that the rich multiplicity of nations and cultures, through the vagaries of history, will grow to embody in visible form what is eternally and transcendently true and good: that God will tabernacle with man.

[Vadim Polikov · Rating 5 out of 5]

The delineation between classical liberalism based on rationalism and conservatism based on empiricism was eye opening. I also thought the leftward ratchet he describes between Liberalism, which focuses on equality and modern day Marxism, which aims to tear down existing structures, could be a great lens to understand how the far left took over so many cultural institutions. Good insights from the author about what is wrong, but hard to agree with his assessment of what we should do about it.

[Drew Norwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conservatism: A Rediscovery is an ambitious, comprehensive book, and Hazony should be applauded for his effort at "rediscovery" of the conservative tradition. The introduction rightly identifies the need to distinguish conservative politics from classical liberalism; and the introduction also effectively highlights the reason that these two traditions, though they are often been fused together over the past 40-50 years, will need to be untangled for conservatives to move forward in a constructive way. In the course of the book, Hazony is great on several different topics, many of which are not usually addressed in modern political discourse. That said, I won't be recommending this book as *the* new standard, or the go-to book on conservatism. In my opinion, Russell Kirk is still the standard and is a much better, more articulate defender of the conservative tradition.

For those who are already familiar with the writings of conservative figures such as Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, and the like, Hazony will be a welcome addition. Hazony provides a good update on recent challenges and pressure points. Plus, he discusses not only Burke but also several other figures that are less known, such as John Fortescue, John Selden, and, to a lesser extent, Richard Hooker. Other points Hazony's book excels on are: his clarity and focus on the importance and necessity of religion to the state, the role between religion and state, the inevitability and importance of strong executive power, the importance of a cohesive social bond within a nation, immigration and assimilation (the nation is more than an economy), political obligations apart from consent, in his strong opposition to classical liberalism or what he terms "Enlightenment liberalism," and in his attention to the need to wed doctrine and life (to not just think as a conservative, but to *live* a conservative life).

On the other hand, I think Hazony misses the mark on important points too, such as his opposing the rational basis of liberalism with a conservative form of historical empiricism, his view of national economic policy, his opposing regionalism to nationalism, leaning too heavily on history, prudence, and tradition for norms or standards, and his misguided criticisms of Kirk. Plus, his writing style is another drawback. It's clear Hazony was philosophically trained. His laborious, overly technical writing style shouts it.

[John Weichel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part history, part political philosophy, part personal narrative, Conservatism: A Rediscovery is an absolute must read.

Hazony sets out by advocating a political tradition he defines as Anglo-American Conservatism. This is set opposed to liberalism and the children of liberalism such as marxism and the woke postmodern narratives of today. I found the sections of history particularly helpful as they explain the clash of political ideas through the development of the Anglo-American system of government. Additionally, this section of history helps explain how conservatism has played out and Hazony makes the case of where we have walked away from it in certain instances.

Some of the helpful ideas in this book are things like a traditional inheritance, the unreliability of true reason, the limits of a government based solely on consent, the limitations of a tradition that only prioritizes individual rights, the nature of family, congregation, and nation, and the prioritization of ideas that have been tried rather than a detachment from existing structures and institutions.

I found this book supremely helpful, wonderfully convincing, and altogether inspiring at the world conservative lives produce.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Provides a good history and defense of conservatism, and ends with a call for conservatives to live conservative lives. Worth reading again.

[Ahmad · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perfect book. If you’re into history, politics, law, or sociology then this is the perfect read. It’s so rare to read a book that tackles these subjects with humility and knowledge that man is limited in his abilities of reason, and that we must avoid universal absolutes and understand the value of tradition and experience. I loved it.

[Tiller Tomažin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book on political theory from a conservative perspective I've come across. I'd strongly recommend it to every conservative.

[Nathan Bozeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book! If you are a conservative, and you are wondering how to navigate through this current cultural climate, this is a MUST READ!

[Sam Poat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent!

[Brennan Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for modern conservatives and/or traditionalists. Particularly, for those in AngloAmerican countries. Incredible book.

[William Schrecengost · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yoram Hazony’s Conservatism was an interesting piece of political theory. I can’t say much about my thoughts or impressions of it, I’ll likely considering it more as I read more because of his interpretations and theories of various political movements. His insights seemed questionable at best, I’m just not well read in this field to properly judge it.

He presents political philosophies as being primarily liberal versus national, with liberalism being based in rationalism and nationalism in empiricism. Liberalism is inherently wrong because all men can reason themselves to all kinds of various political philosophies, so there's no way to tell which is better. Nationalism on the other hand is what our ancestors have past down over centuries of trial and error (specifically our Anglo-Christian ancestors) and has been proven by empirical observation. His empiricism is humorously self contradictory as he has to reason I'm order to decide which historical political theory is better. As well as prove the natural evolution of the best political theory being Anglo-Christian England because it best fits the Mosaic paradigm.

He tries to fit all enlightenment philosophers into this dichotomy of liberalism vs nationalism, rationalism vs empiricism. I am currently reading Rosenblatt's Lost History of Liberalism, in which she shows Burke as a liberal, perhaps not "as liberal" as Liberalism came to become as he criticized those who also claimed to be liberal. It seems like he's a good example as one who defies categorization. Hazony tries to fit everyone into these categories when it's not such a simple task.

He presents early American politics in a rather strange way. He sees the Federalists as the Nationalists while he sees the Anti-Federalists as the liberals. The main problem with this comes down to really the big problem with "American Nationalism" as a whole and the recent movement for such a thing. Nationalism as a philosophy (and Hazony states this and accepts this definition in this book) is the "nations right to rule itself and to seek it's own good" and a nation is "a body of people of a specific cultural heritage and unity". So Nationalism is actually less about a political body and more a cultural body. In America, it will be very difficult to have a nationalist political philosophy because of the variety of cultures that make up our people. Woodard's American Nations does an excellent job portraying these various cultures as "nations". So if America were to become nationalistic, one of the things Nationalists will have to decide is whether this means the states will become individually nationalistic, the interstate cultures will unite as nations, or the entirety of Federalism will be the "nation". Hazony portrays the later as nationalism. However, if we accept his definition of nationalism (as well as Benedict Anderson's of Imagined Communities and what I understand as the generally accepted definition of nationalism) then the Federalist Nationalism is actually a form of Imperialism over the "United" nations of America.

In conclusion, I doubt Hazony's scholarship. He tries to force history into a modern dichotomy, which is something a lot of people try to do and I've come to immediately suspect whenever I come across it. It seems like this causes him to skew his entire reading of political theory and consequently to misunderstand a lot of what he's trying to explain.

[Will O'kelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember being jealous during my undergrad of my friends who were taking political science classes from the great Peter Lawler. As someone who has an under-developed understanding of the history of political thought, this was a very helpful book. In it, Hazony traces the history of conservative thought, differentiating it from liberal ideology. I had several major takeaways from the book:

-The liberal movement is squarely built on the foundation of Enlightenment rationalism, which favors a priori judgments about human nature that are "self evident."
-Most people in today's Western world, including myself, are unconsciously but highly influenced by liberal thought (and thus influenced by Enlightenment rationalism).
-Though I would have called myself a conservative prior to reading this book, I realized that according to proper definitions, I was actually more of a libertarian in my thinking. I am now more firmly convinced of the conservative viewpoint and have pivoted in some of my thinking.
-The modern day conservative movement/Republican party (though these things can't always be conflated) is, in many ways, a departure from classical conservatism. Though there are similarities (e.g., Trump's MAGA slogan is an echo of Reagan's nationalism which is one of the hallmarks of conservatism) between modern day and classical conservatism, modern conservatism still seems captive to the ideology that the freedom of the individual is the highest good.
-Hazony writes of certain concepts that, although not new, were new to me within the context of politics: the ideas of loyalty, constraint, honor, and tradition. Contra the liberal idea that the free individual chooses their associations with others purely on the basis of consent, Hazony points out that a conservative framework recognizes that everyone is born into certain relationships of loyalty. These relationships are constantly growing or failing based upon how honor is given or received.
-Liberal ideology proposes that government can be created ex nihilo from "self evident" principles. Conservatism on the other hand adopts a position of epistemological humility in that it recognizes that no statesman, no matter how brilliant he may be, can foresee all of the changes that will occur from changing a system. Thus, Conservatism embraces historical Empiricism--the idea that government is a process that occurs through time and that involves the wisdom of ages past. This respect for the past leads to slow change in the present. It also means that different people groups need different forms of government that take into account their various pasts/traditions.
-Hazony does a good job of pointing out that Conservatism is not simply a blind acceptance of the past, nor does it break down into relativism. Rather, it is more of an application of certain truths to a particular people/nation over a period of time.
-In trying to denude politics of its inherent traditions, liberalism is blind to the traditions it has assumed. This is particularly evident in the liberal attempt to create a 'secular' space.
-Liberalism holds that freedom from tradition and the creation of a state that operates according to principles of universal reason will usher in a period of utopian flourishing. However, when this doesn't occur, it creates an unstable politic--one that is susceptible to more aggressive political philosophies like Fascism/Marxism.

I will be chewing on this book for a while.

[David Selsby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. This book is spectacular. Full disclosure: As recently as two years ago I called myself a Marxist, a socialist, etc. I have to admit that. After not paying close attention to “politics” for several years, I got inspired by the Bernie ‘20 candidacy. Long story very, very short: Bernie, BLM, identity politics, Adolph Reed Jr, following very interesting accounts on Twitter (one in particular), Patrick Deneen’s “Why Liberalism Failed,” a closer/new relationship with God/Christianity, and here I am thinking a book called “Conservatism: A Rediscovery” is a masterwork. It (my path) looks silly on the page. Perhaps one’s past is bound to look silly to others and even oneself when God arrives.

This book gave me my monthly reminder that concise, confident prose is all a writer needs to express the most profound truths. “A mile wide, an inch deep” also refers to prose. Conversely, Hazony writes an inch wide and a mile deep. Choose less words. The short description he provides at the end of the book about him and his wife meeting almost moved me to tears. Hazony is a man extremely confident in his beliefs and when one is confident in his beliefs he doesn't need extra words to make points. The effect on the reader is powerful. We see the truth he has discovered. We understand the words he uses to convey that truth. Nothing else needs to be said.

I have no idea if people who aren’t at least conservative-curious will enjoy this book. One of things I’ve noticed in the last, say, eight months, is the conservative writing that is most powerful is by men and women of deep belief: Hazony, Deneen, Gladden Pappin, Chad Pecknold, Rod Dreher, Sohrab Ahmari, Matthew Schmitz, Carmel Richardson, R.R. Reno, to name a few. Can one create prose that conveys deep conservative truths about human nature and society without being a believer? I don’t know. It sure helps, though.

Something I’ve thought about in the last year is one of the great tragedies of our current intellectual/cultural/academic moment (“moment” here being the last 6 years, at least) is more than ever liberals/leftists/progressives (most of whom are agnostic or atheist) believe being progressive and on the Left simultaneously declaims one’s intellectual heft. This is a sad, pathetic posture, of which I fully cop to having adopted in the past. A man of the Left is a “serious” thinker--one who has no need for superstition like organized religion. A man of the left is “open-minded” and “compassionate” and committed to “diversity” of thought. It’s all bull. Completely incorrect. There might be robust thinkers on the Left, now and in the past, but in no way are they superior to conservative thinkers. It’s a revelation to experience the depth and profundity of conservative and religious thought--mainly a revelation because liberal elite institutions (and here I mean “liberal” in the newer way: those affiliated with the Democratic Party) move heaven and earth in academia, cultural production, and broadcast and print journalism to concretize the notion there is no extant conservative thought besides that which is sympathetic to jackboots and burning torches.

So here are the revolutionary conclusions (yes, I’m being facetious) Hazony shares: Marriage is good, divorce is bed, drugs are bad, pornography is bad, believing in God is good, reading Scripture is good, having children is good, going to church or synagogue is good, maintaining traditions is good, honoring one’s parents is good.

Great lessons to live by from a great book.

[David Maywald · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s admirable to see people who recognise the benefits of traditional values, support for free enterprise, and are sceptical of change. Yoram Hazony’s book on Conservatism presents a compelling case for the enduring legacy of Conservative principles in Western society. He argues that tradition, religious faith, national identity, and strong family structures are essential foundations for a stable and flourishing civilisation.

Drawing on history, philosophy, and political theory, Hazony critiques the rise of liberal individualism and defends a Conservatism rooted in inherited wisdom and social cohesion. Hazony observes that both political and social Conservatism declined after WWII, and were in a weak state in the West:

“This shocking destruction of the Anglo-American cultural inheritance has involved the suppression or stigmatization of many of the most important ideas and institutions around which life in Britain and America had been built, including God and Scripture, nation and congregation, marriage and family, man and woman, honor and loyalty, the sabbath and the sacred, among others.”

The book is long at almost 400 pages. It contains much history, philosophy, reflections on contemporary circumstances, and some personal perspectives. He concludes that it’s essential for Conservatives to live out their values in their daily lives, or be accused of hypocrisy:

“Honor and constraint are the soil on which the possibility of conserving any worthy belief and action grows. Wielding these tools, we can begin the process of healing a ravaged family and community, tribe and nation, reviving norms of behavior and a common sense that had been given up for dead.”

The book is a powerful reminder that strong communities, moral responsibility, and respect for tradition are not outdated but necessary for the health of nations. Hazony’s insights make a persuasive argument for the revival of Conservative values as a guiding force in modern society. Highly recommended for those interested in the philosophical and practical benefits of Conservatism.

[Red Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoughtful and well laid out exploration of conservatism, or the desired future of "conservative democracy" as defined by Hazony, with a deep dive into the divide between politics based on precedent and respect for institutions that have stood the test of time, and politics based upon human reason.

- The conservatism of Burke (especially vs the enlightenment thoughts of Locke), and the insistence on the nation not as a "individual momentary aggregation" (as Burke thought of revolutionary France) but as an "idea of continuity." Hazony holds that it was the teachings of Burke that most impacted the conservative (Federalist) founders - Washington, Hamilton, Jay, Adams, Morris

- Principles of Anglo-American conservatism:
Historical Empiricism
Nationalism
Religion
Limited Executive Power
Individual Freedoms

- Hazony sees the American "revolution" as an attempt to "revolve," or return to the original place (prior to monarchical absolutism)

- Though the Federalists declined (Hazony claims due the death of Washington, disputes between Adams and Hamilton, then death of Hamilton), their court appointments lived to carry on the conservative tradition (and establish judicial review). These justices believed in the concept of the nation, and rejected the ideas of nullification that could easily split apart the nation.

- Jefferson was in Paris when the (conservative) Constitution was written - unclear how it would have turned out if had been in the US

- major divide Hazony sees between conservatives and liberals is the that while conservatives support reason, they are not "rationalists" in that they doubt man's ability to reason should be the compelling idea of governing

- the nation is only partly held together by consent of those in it, meaning that a citizen can't randomly say that they are no longer a part of the nation - they must prove (as did the Founders) grave abuse

- families, clans and tribes don't go away when the state is formed, they must just find ways to vie for power and respect within the structure of the state

- While praising Hayek, Hazony also criticizes him for trumpeting the supreme goal as the freedom of the individual (acknowledging that in the face of communist or fascist collectivism, it was understandable to fear the power of the state and defer to the freedom of the individual)

- claims Buckley was not a true conservative either, but rather expert at forming "a full-throttled emphasis on individual liberty, combined with a judicious measure of nationalism and religious tradition."

- Hazony's recent heroes are the conservatives who did not fully embrace the libertarian path - Russell Kirk, Reagan, George Will, Irving Kristol - believed in the value of religion, family, the nation