Paleo right and natural right.

CHARLES KESLER'S review ["All against All," Aug. 181 is a not very subtle attack on the whole conservative tradition that derives from Burke, as set forth by Russell Kirk in The Conservative Mind and elaborated by many writers since then. Kesler's main purpose is to dismiss traditional conservatism, centered in its principles and values in the Judaeo-Christian religious order of Western civilization, to deny its paramount place in the mainstream of American life, and to replace it with the essentially secular and rationalist political philosophy of Leo Strauss.

Kesler's entire essay is on such a high level of abstraction that it may obscure for some readers the virulence of his attack on traditional conservatism. Kesler deals wholly in generalized categories, which he then treats as though they were facts of history or possessed philosophical reality. In forty years of teaching humanities and political philosophy, I have had to flunk many undergraduates for this crude technique.

Kesler distinguishes political thinkers in terms of their "state of mind," or by geographical areas (Eastern and Western Straussians). Unlike Edmund Burke, who refuted wholesale and indiscriminate British criticism of the American Colonies ("I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people"), Kesler does not hesitate to pass adverse judgments against whole populations in large regions. He labels political thinkers south of the Mason-Dixon line as "partisans of the Confederate cause," and makes preposterous statements on the politics of John C. Calhoun, Willmoore Kendall, and M. E. Bradford, picturing them as starry-eyed adolescents "in favor of a romantic appreciation of passion, the

grandeur of the past, personal and national idiosyncrasy." He ignores their serious case for constitutional government and civilized society.

Even on the level of diction, he strings together a series of abstract words to justify his strictures against traditional conservatives. The following sentence is a good example:

When reason, equality, and natural rights ... are contemned in the name of a monolithic and unrestrained tradition,' the ground for evil has been prepared." To illustrate what is wrong with Kesler's thinking, I shall examine each word in its sequence.

In Western philosophy there are at least half a dozen distinct traditions of rational thought, several of which contradict each other, and it is possible to believe in one kind of "reason" while rejecting another. In political philosophy it is possible to accept normative reason while rejecting discursive reason and logic; the same applies to corporate reason as distinct from individual reason. Aristotle's treatment of reason differs radically from Cartesian rationalism. Kesler's failure to specify what kind of "reason" is "contemned" by traditionalists makes his criticism of them utterly pointless.

The same objection applies to " equality." Keslers own egahtarianism, which derives from his belief that American society is based on the Declaration of Independence rather than on the principles of the Constitution, is itself subject to criticism: egalitarianism is destructive of individual freedom, standards of excellence, and basic justice between citizens in American society. His egalitarianism would reduce America to its lowest common denominator in education and every other aspect of social life.

And what is the meaning of " natural rights" as he uses the term? Are they the innate or inherent "rights" common to all men by virtue of their humanity, the "natural rights" derived from the moral natural law

which itself derives from God, and which in civil society are the legally prescriptive safeguards to life, liberty, and property? No traditional conservative ever "contemned" these natural rights. Or is the term "natural rights" a mere political slogan, as it was to the French revolutionists, who in the name of "the rights of man" massacred whole populations, imprisoned thousands of innocent people, and confiscated corporate and private property? Burke vehemently contemned these "natural rights" or "rights of man," and so have traditional conservatives ever since 1790. Burke said: "Far am I from denying in theory, full as far is my heart from withholding in practice . . . the real rights of men. In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. stroy."

Kesler's next abstract phrase, " a monolithic and unrestrained 'tradi- tion,"' is a figment of his imagination, a fiction attributed to traditional conservatives in order to make them appear narrow-minded, dogmatic, mindlessly anchored to a dead past, and therefore opposed to "reason, equality, and natural rights." This is precisely the line of argument so often taken by Marxists, social democrats, liberals, and ideologues of " progress" against conservatives.

Kesler's final pointless abstraction, the word "evil," is presented stark naked and isolated. He includes no code of ethics or normative principle by which to judge what is good or evil, but all traditional conservatives are clearly "evil" in his argument. On the practical level he fails to consider that one man's meat is another man's poison, or that one man's church is another man's prison.

VARIATIONS ON meaningless abstractions contained in this sentence are found throughout Kesler's essay. An article at least as long as his would be required to identify and analyze all the errors of fact and judgment in his essay. But his feeble attempt to displace the traditional Judaeo-Christian-oriented conservatives in American polities with the rationalism of the Straussians and the materialism and utilitarian epicureanism of the so-called "neocons" simply won't wash.