American conservatism and Southern conservatism are different. This statement may seem a little confusing since the South is part of America and, besides a brief period in the 1860s, has never existed separately from the United States. However, the society which developed south of Mason and Dixon’s line has a history and tradition stretching far back into the colonial days and it is distinct from the culture which developed in the North. While the North, specifically New England, was settled by the Puritans with visions of creating a “City Upon a Hill,” the South was populated primarily by disaffected cavaliers fleeing Puritan rule in the 1640s and then by the Scots Irish who populated the Appalachian regions and the Backcountry.[1] Southerners sought preservation of their society as opposed to creating a new and, almost, utopian society like the Puritans desired.
The intellectual Russell Kirk identified six “canons” of conservatism in his 1953 magnum opus, The Conservative Mind. His canons included respect for established order and hierarchy, protecting private property, belief in a “transcendent being,” and opposition to “sophistors” and intellectuals who advocate social experimentation. For Kirk, the conservative believes in “prescription” and preservation of the “permanent things” of society.[2] According to contemporary Southern thinkers like Richard M. Weaver and M. E. Bradford, the South represented the most conservative section of the United States. Weaver, a native of North Carolina and former Trotskyist, described it as “the last nonmaterialist civilization one earth” and that the region retained features of European society that the North jettisoned. He writes, “the South, as compared to the North, has a European culture.” He admits that it is not “highly developed,” but is more European in comparison to other regions of the United States. The North was born out of the enlightenment while the South was born of a long tradition reaching far back into Western civilization.[3] Bradford, a native of Oklahoma who lived and worked in Texas, agreed and argued the South emerged “from a historical continuum” and developed a unique conservative philosophy from its own experiences and circumstances.[4] The South accepted nature as something given by providence while the North turned towards ideology to manipulate nature for its’ own ends.
The conservatism of the South focused on preservation, prescription, and humility toward nature and providence. Bradford notes the political philosophy of the South was both “localistic and legalistic.” Southerners acknowledge that governments are natural and required for civilization, but they must be organically created and grown by the people for the purpose of “preservation of a culture and of life grown out of its beginnings.” Bradford described Southern conservatism as “rooted in memory, experience, and prescription” as opposed to “goals or abstract principles.”[5] This point is one of the most important distinctions between the conservatism of the South compared “the generic American variety.” Many contemporary American conservatives believe there is a goal which America, as a nation, must attain. Influenced by the work of Leo Strauss and Harry Jaffa, American conservatives believe the United States was founded by the Declaration of Independence with a proposition that “all men are created equal” and the American government has a mission to fulfill this proposition. During the 1970s, Bradford led the charge against this ideology of equality when he responded to an article by Jaffa written in the Loyola Law Review.
The debate between the two scholars began in 1975 when Jaffa published a review of Willmoore Kendall and George Carey’s The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition. Jaffa criticizes the two fellow conservative authors for attacking Lincoln and downplaying the significance of Equality in American history. Jaffa argues that the American Revolution, contra contemporary historians, was a radical endeavor. He writes, “American Conservatism is then rooted in a Founding which is, in turn, rooted in revolution.” He continues describing the revolution as “the most radical break with tradition… that the world had seen.” While he concedes some minor credit to the English legal tradition, specifically the “Whig Revolution of 1689” and the British Constitution, he argues the government that was created by the founders was “a liberal regime.” Compared to revolutions of the twentieth century, the American Revolution appears mild, but Jaffa still contends “it nonetheless embodied the greatest attempt at innovation that human history had recorded.”[6]
The primary principle of this radical revolution, and the American regime, was Equality. The Declaration of Independence is the central document of the American political tradition, and it is through its statement about Equality (first sentence of the second paragraph) through which the document must be understood. He asserts Equality is “the key to understanding the morality of ‘the laws of nature and of nature’s God.’” Without such doctrine is, according to Jaffa, to abandon the morality of the constitution.[7] Jaffa goes on to criticize Kendall and Carey for their view of Lincoln as changing the meaning of the Declaration in his Gettysburg Address. For Jaffa, Lincoln did not pull some “rhetorical trick,” but rather understood the “American principles” far better than either John C. Calhoun or even Thomas Jefferson himself.[8] This is the key to understanding Jaffa’s philosophy, he firmly believed in the interpretation of the Declaration of Independence which Lincoln pushed at Gettysburg. Working backwards, Jaffa reads into the Declaration and the Constitution Lincoln’s proposition that “all men are created equal” and that the United States was a singular nation dedicated to carrying out that proposition.
How did Jaffa come to believe in this American proposition? Jaffa was a student of German émigré Leo Strauss and firmly believed in Strauss’ views of society and Western philosophy. Historian George H. Nash explains in his seminal book that Jaffa, and fellow intellectuals Walter Berns and Martin Diamond, all held similar views about the need for a strong central government and that the Declaration of Independence and Constitution created a singular American nation. Nash points out that it was “more than coincidence” that all these men were students of the same professor. He explains Straussian political philosophy believed that ancient/classical political theory was superior to those of the Enlightenment and modern theorists. Nash writes, “Straussian, or classical political philosophy… was logically congenial with energetic government designed to improve the polis, inculcate virtue, and help man attain his ‘natural’ end.”[9] In other words, Straussianism supported a strong centralized state that had the power to force its own will on others. Since Straussians believed in the necessity of a strong state, it was natural for them to support a “nationalistic idea of Union and of a powerful government determined to implement a ‘proposition.’”[10] The proposition of Equality found in the opening paragraphs of the Declaration. Such views naturally led to Jaffa’s enthusiasm for Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the war against Southern secession, and the eradication of slavery.
Kendall passed away in 1967 long before this review appeared. In Kendall’s place, Bradford took up the task of responding to Jaffa’s diatribe and challenge the centrality of Equality to the American tradition. Bradford left few stones unturned in his own scathing response to Jaffa entitled “The Heresy of Equality,” and asserted that Equality, “with a capital ‘E’” was completely foreign to conservatism and is the destructive force of all conservative beliefs. Bradford started his essay with a broadside against Jaffa, saying “Let us have no foolishness indeed. Equality as a moral or political imperative, pursued as an end itself… is the antonym to every legitimate conservative principle.” Bradford was not fooled by Jaffa’s distinction of “equality of outcome” and “equality of opportunity,” for “it is nothing less than sophistry” to make that distinction.[11] Bradford concedes equality before the law and in the eyes of God exist, but he reproves Jaffa for promoting a form of equality which “belongs to the post-Renaissance world of ideology.”[12] The basis of Jaffa’s equality is envy, which leads to the breakdown of natural society and the creation of an “omnicompetent leviathan.” The proliferation of this dangerous ideology, in conjunction with “arrant individualism” breaks down any kind of amity between different orders of men in organic, unequal, society. According to Bradford, Jaffa may call himself conservative but is pushing ideas which cause the destruction of organic society and completely negates conservative preferences for hierarchy, tradition, and private property.[13]
Bradford disparages Jaffa’s interpretation of the Declaration of Independence and steers his readers toward a more historical and accurate reading of the document. He views the Declaration as “not very revolutionary at all” and it must be understood as a “document produced out of the mores marjoram… and not a piece of reasoning or systematic truth.”[14] Like any good conservative, Bradford looks back to the “precious Anglo-American continuity” and southern “veneration of the British constitution” which he argues all southern conservatives value.[15] The Declaration was not born in a vacuum or out of ideology like Jaffa argues. Jaffa gives a little credit to the English legal tradition, but not enough for his intellectual adversary. Bradford saw the Declaration as entirely born out of the English legal tradition and it is strictly a “lawyer’s answer to lawyers, a counterplea to the English government’s explanation cum apologia of its American policy.”[16] It is pleading a legal case to the British king for failing to uphold their rights as English citizens and therefore justifying their independence. Jaffa sees the spirit of the American war for Independence as descended from the same spirit of the French and Russian Revolutions. Bradford warns against “the tendency to thrust familiar contemporary pseudo-religious notions back into the texts where they are unlikely to appear.” He explains between the American War for Independence and the time he is writing there have been many revolutions and the proliferation of liberal and radical thought. The American revolution had no connection or relevance to these schools of radicalism and Jaffa is making a historical fallacy in projecting those later values into the Declaration and the minds of eighteenth-century American statesmen.
He continues his assault by blaming Lincoln and New England Puritanism for making the “all men are created equal” line the defining statement of the Declaration and putting Equality at the center of American politics. Bradford explains Lincoln was acting out of a “millenarian” view of history which the Puritans originally saw themselves part of. These men originally settled to create a “city upon a hill” and a model Christian republic in North America. The mood of purifying the world of corruption and seeking a divinely ordained end goal for their society was the theme which Lincoln played on in his Gettysburg Address.[17] Bradford humorously explained that Lincoln’s “millenarian infection” has its origins in the “‘other Israel’ around Boston” and he fearfully warns the end results of Lincoln’s institutionalizing this ideology is still not yet realized.[18] Lincoln was distorting the American tradition and using the language of religion to morally elevate his position above his opponents. Bradford described his political philosophy as “gnostic.” Following the model of Eric Vogelin, Lincoln was giving the central authority a mission to “immanentize the eschaton.” Or to create a Heaven on Earth.[19] Therefore, Lincoln remade the federal government and ordained it with a mission to achieve a new union “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”[20] Jaffa believed Lincoln and called Equality “conservative.” Bradford was not buying it and insisted Equality was the furthest thing from true conservatism.
The debate between Bradford and Jaffa exposes the central difference between Southern conservatism and the American variety. For, as Bradford makes clear, “American conservatism” is secularized New England Puritanism that believes in its own “spiritual arrogance without spiritual substance.”[21] They believe in their own self-righteousness so much they take it upon themselves to remake the world in their own image. Meanwhile, the Southern variety is simply a love of hearth, home, and tradition. Southern conservatives do not have an idealistic end goal for their society, but a love for home and the desire to conserve it simply because it is theirs. Politically, this means supporting federalism and the original constitution that created a limited federal government allowing for regional differences between the states. Bradford called it the “nomocratic” constitution which created a government with set procedures that allowed for differences between the states with limited common interests. The Northern Puritan constitution was “teleological” and sought to attain a certain type of society based on abstract principles, specifically Equality.[22]
Bradford stood against this intellectual offensive which sought to make conservatism an ideology based around equality. He was against giving the centralized state divinely ordained power to carry out special missions over the country, or the world. Bradford believed government was natural and must exist in a society, but it must be organic and preserve society and tradition and not to engage in social engineering. Contemporary conservatives are once again interested in looking home and taking care of our own communities first. While they may not know it, this is the most important feature of Southern conservatism, and if they wish to understand it fully then Bradford and his essays against Jaffa are great places to start. True conservatism is not bound up in ideology and abstraction, but in tradition, prescription, prudence, and, most importantly, hearth, home, and family.
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[1] See David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) and John Winthrop’s speech delivered on the Mayflower, “A Model of Christian Charity.”
[2] See Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind (Washington: Regnery, 1953), 5.[3] See Richard M. Weaver, “The Southern Tradition,” in The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver, ed. Geroge M. Curtis, III and James J. Thompson, Jr. (Carmel, Liberty Fund, 1987), 210-211.
[4] See M. E. Bradford, “Southern Conservatism,” Abbeville Institute, 2016. [5] Ibid.[6] Harry V. Jaffa, “Equality as a Conservative Principle,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 8, no. 2 (June 1975), 474.
[7] Ibid. 477.[8] Ibid., 475-476.
[9] George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2006), 230. [10] Ibid.[11] M. E. Bradford, “The Heresy of Equality,” in A Better Guide Than Reason, Bradford (New York: Routledge, 1994), 29.
[12] Ibid., 30. [13] Bradford described Jaffa’s conservatism as “Old Liberalism hidden under a Union battle flag.” See Ibid., 31.[14] Ibid., 34.
[15] Bradford, “Southern Conservatism.” [16] M. E. Bradford, “A Rhetoric for Continuing Revolution,” in Bradford a Better Guide Than Reason, 188.[17] For a more detailed exploration of Bradford’s views on New England Puritanism and how Lincoln’s beliefs are descended from them, see Ibid., 197.
[18] Bradford, “Heresy of Equality,” 42. [19] For more information about Vogelin’s “Gnosticism” see Nash, Conservative Intellectual Movement, 46-47 and Ibid., 44-45. [20] See the Gettysburg Address.[21] Bradford, “A Rhetoric for Continuing Revolution,” 196.
[22] Bradford believed the post-bellum Reconstruction Amendments effectively changed the constitution from a nomocratic government to a teleological state. See M. E. Bradford, “Changed only a little: The Reconstruction Amendments and the Nomocratic Constitution of 1787,” In Bradford, Original Intentions: On the Making and Ratification of the United States Constitution (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993), 103-131.
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