Yoram Hazony provides a useful example of the importance of the unwritten texts by which we read an author. On paper, there is much that I agree with Hazony. We are both traditionally observant Jews, who have been heavily influenced by Christian thought and therefore greatly respect serious Christians. We believe that religion of some sort will inevitably form the background of any political system and that any claims to be able to completely separate Church and State will prove unworkable or a cynical ploy to bring someone's preferred religion through the backdoor under a different name. (It is important to keep in mind that the various forms of leftism that have evolved since the Enlightenment down to modern Wokism are religions with their own metaphysics and a metanarrative about the interplay of good and evil throughout history and should be held to the same First Amendment standards as any traditional religion.) Both of us wish to protect small traditional communities from the larger forces of modernity.
One difference between us is that Hazony is clearly more willing to use the power of government against corporations that choose to pursue a leftist agenda. Even here my opposition is somewhat muted. I am torn as to how conservatives should respond to a left that no longer accepts traditional classical liberal norms. If leftists are willing to use government when they win elections to reshape culture in their image, it is only fair that conservatives respond in kind.
It is the issue of classical liberalism, though, that highlights the key problem I have with Hazony. His recent book, Conservatism: A Rediscovery, is an attack on fusionist conservatives like me who presuppose a commitment to a classical liberal unwritten constitution. Hazony blames the mainstream American conservative movement as embodied by William F. Buckley and Frank Meyer for not being willing to take a harder line in defense of religious values, having already conceded to the left the premise that religion was a private matter with no role in the public sphere. This turned the culture wars into a decades-long negotiated surrender where only the timeline for the secularization of society was ever in question. If conservatism is about preserving something, it would seem that the only thing conservatives have been able to conserve is the power of big business. This might have been a reasonable strategy at a time when it could be assumed that businessmen could be counted upon to support a socially conservative agenda in return for conservatives voting for free-market policies. Today, this is clearly no longer the case as it is corporate America that is the main force pushing for Woke policies.
To respond to Hazony, it is important to state why a classical liberal framework is necessary particularly for conservatives. For better or worse, we live in a pluralistic society, full of decent people who have a right to live and vote in this country but are far from being conservatives even by the standards of National Review let alone Hazony. Assuming that we are not planning secession (a solution that I would support but Hazony would not) or civil war (which I hope that Hazony would not support), it is necessary to convince such people to vote for the Republican Party or at least not object too strongly when the Republican Party wins an election or a Supreme Court vote. Conservatives need to be able to offer such people certain guarantees that they will be able to live their non-conservative lives in peace. To operate within the classical liberal unwritten constitution is to have a set of values ingrained into you to such a degree that violating the legitimate rights of your opponents becomes unthinkable.
Rod Dreher provides a good example of this sort of thinking when he challenges Catholic Integralists with what might be called the Edgardo Mortara question. If Integralists, somehow, were to take power, what, in their philosophy, would make it unthinkable for something like the Mortara case to ever happen? For those unfamiliar, Edgardo Mortara was a Jewish kid kidnapped by the Vatican in the 1850s because he had been baptized by a maid. This is a scenario that fills me with fear coming from the left. If you are on the left and you cannot explain to me why it is inconceivable that police will come to my house tonight or in five years to take my boys away because one of them told a teacher that they felt like they were really a girl but I refused to let them wear a dress then you can assume that political cooperation is off. Consistency demands that I respect the right of leftists to think along the same lines. If a political party animated by Hazony's ideals ever came to power what guarantees could he make to homosexuals that police will not come in the night and seize their children?
Democracies are inherently plagued with a variation of the prisoner's dilemma every time a new party wins an election. If Republicans win in November 2024, what is to stop Joe Biden from declaring the election a fraud and having Republicans shot before they can take power in January? This could even be declared a "defense of democracy" on the assumption that the Republicans would do the same thing if they lost in 2028. For democracy to work, not only is it necessary that all major factions respect the results of elections, it needs to be inconceivable to both sides that their opponents, whom they honestly dislike and think are bad for the country, would ever stoop so low as to overthrow an election. (Because of the events of January 6, this assumption can no longer be made about the United States.)
The same logic applies to Supreme Court decisions. Will leftists, in response to the overturning of Roe, content themselves with mouthing off, marching, and trying to turn out voters for November or will they, instead, send out execution squads with proscription lists against conservatives? Make no mistake; this is the only reasonable option for anyone who truly believes that this country is in imminent danger of turning into the Handmaiden's Tale. Leftists have a plausible incentive to do so now that they can still rely on the protection of the Biden administration as opposed to a Republican administration that might come to power in 2025. What if the Court were to overturn Obergefell?
It is the responsibility of conservatives like me to talk to the decent liberals in my life like my mother and mother-in-law to convince them that, contrary to what they might be hearing on NPR or MSNBC, there is no plot to establish a Christian theocracy. For good reason, they might not like conservative policies but that is the price of living in a country that has the GOP. For this to work, I need to be able to argue that there are certain lines that would be inconceivable for conservatives to cross.
Here is where classical liberalism becomes important. It provides a collection of assumed red lines that can be built into the collective political consciousness of a society to never cross even at the cost of some short-term gain. Some hack writer is producing smut. That is their right. It does not matter if it has no social redeeming importance and may even be harmful. By tolerating indefensible junk, I signal to my opponents that I have no intention of coming after them even when they write books attacking me.
As Hazony recognizes, part of being a conservative is the acceptance of norms, the most important ones being unwritten, that govern a society. One does not attempt to refashion society with a gun in one hand and a philosophy book in the other. In the United States, a central part of our political norms is classical liberalism. This is an advantage of American conservativism. As Hayek argued, to be a conservative in America still means to be a supporter of liberty. The United States has no living tradition of crown and altar conservatism. Thankfully, the closest American equivalent, the slavocracy tradition of John C. Calhoun, lost all political plausibility in the 1960s with the defeat of George Wallace. When Hazony talks about the Anglo-American conservative tradition, he means Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and Marshall. Even as Hazony denounces the "Puritan theocrats" of the English Civil War, he never suggests that Americans should return to absolute monarchy along the lines of Charles I.
The United States is a large and complicated country, one that I personally think should be broken up. If I, somehow, was ever elected president here would be my message to my mother, mother-in-law, and all the decent liberals out there who profoundly disagree with me. There will be no more pride flags on federal buildings but the police will not be charging into homes to arrest adults engaged in consensual activities. I may be willing to allow states to ban abortion but I will protect abortion in those states where it is legal. As a guarantee of my sincerity, I will respect the right of every individual property owner to secede from the United States to create LGBTQ/abortion sanctuaries as they wish.
As a classical liberal, I am willing to make serious good-faith guarantees to my liberal opponents. What can Hazony promise? What lines will he not cross even though it will cost him the chance to build his conservative society?