The Push of the Progressive

A distinguishing difference between a progressive and a conservative is how each views change- particularly those types of novel alterations done on a societal level that compel a given generation to move in a new direction. Is change on such a large scale a thing to be accepted hesitantly or something to be applauded as a break from the traditional worldview of the past?

We are, as Bernard of Chartres put it in the 12th-century, "dwarves on the shoulders of giants." That is, we are in a sense quite small compared to the great mass of humanity that has preceded us. Therefore, any vision of the world around us is largely shaped by the views, insights, and wisdom of the past. A conservative's opinion of the giant upon which he stands is one of admiration and respect. It is an appreciative veneration that sees past peoples as generally wise and their authority worthy of our attention. To the conservative mind, any form of adapting the acquired knowledge of the past to the present must be done with utmost care lest the lessons learned in the yesterday of history be ignored in the today of the present.

President Abraham Lincoln articulated a conservative's relation to change when he spoke at his Cooper Union Address: "If we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so on evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand." The conservative does not deny the potential benefits of change, rather he argues that in order for change to be beneficial it must have solid ground more firm than the sands of contemporary common opinion.

Considerable weight must be given to the past consensus of peoples in areas such as morality, law, religion, and philosophy because their very consensus in these matters points to truths that overarch across the broad span of the centuries. Any person who believes in democracy recognizes that the majority vote always rests on the side with greater numbers. It just so happens that in the grand scheme of things the majority vote of humanity as a whole rests with the deceased. Chesterton's notion of the "democracy of the dead" calls for us, we who are among the living, we who are in the minority, to give ear to the majority and not audaciously silence the input of the dead (c.f. G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy). Because of this, a conservative does not typically seek novel change for his society unless it has veered so far away from the direction in which his forefathers had set it in.

Oftentimes the conservative will focus on bettering himself at the individual level by aiming to shape his living by the standard set by the determining voice of the virtuous who have gone before him. Since he is preoccupied with this, if any large-scale, conservative-driven change does occur in a society through his efforts it is an organic change that grows from the bottom up. It begins to sprout from within and thus has the stability and depth to survive indefinitely.

However, as a result of such sharp focus on change at the individual level (what we as Christians would call conversion), any form of conservative change in society will inevitably be slow. As individuals more and more become better themselves (which is no quick process), children will be shaped with an orientation to imitate the virtues of their parents and mentors. Families, as the foundation of a society, will then determine the trajectory in which a local community will go. Communities together will then help influence the wider society that develops when they come together to live and work. Indeed, it is a slow process, but one that lasts because it is rooted in imitating the wisdom and virtues of the those who have gone before us.

On the contrary, a progressive outlook ends up bringing about an artificial change that has no root because it is brought about not from within the individual who is inspired by the past but from without as the individual is suffocated by the mob of the moment. The progressive person attempts to skip over the hard work of individual reformation and instead legislates change from the top down. This is why a progressive type of change happens abruptly and frequently.

In a sense, the progressive has a very low opinion of man's ability to become better freely for he relies on the force of compulsion to bring about what progressivism perceives as necessary change. The problem with this is that it takes away man's liberty by submitting it to the majority of the present crowd. Any change that is affected this way will last only until the next shift in common opinion occurs. It is shallow, without depth, and often not backed by the same intellectual muscle with which Lincoln argued change ought to be introduced into society to begin with. It is a type of change that is susceptible to being continually overthrown by the everchanging spirit of the age. It may be implemented by force but it will also be ousted by force. "Fashion is during its brief reign omnipotent" (Hilaire Belloc, The Crisis of Civilization). For fashion is the bully that pushes others around, forcing others through its influence to bend the knee. No one can say or do anything contrary to the "fad of the day" even though the past would have thought the fad of today lamentable. Fortunately, its day is quick and will shortly be supplanted by another for there is always a bigger bully.

It is noticeable that a society that honors its dead tends to also be a society that values conservatism. The ancestor worship of the Orient, the mos maiorum of Rome, the communion of the saints of Christendom have all directed the living's attention in these cultures to those who have gone before. Correspondingly, these cultures have leaned towards conservativism as a result. Their veneration for the dead enables their ears to be opened to the voices of the past and to receive their wisdom.

On the other hand, it is typical of an atheistic society to see itself as the end-all-be-all of history and, as a result, it hunkers down into a narrow, myopic view of reality that is limited to the present moment. A society without God is a society without a story, hence it is also a society without history. Because of this, progressivism is applauded by the atheist because of the very fact that its change always leads away from what was into what is. Unfortunately, all the atheist has is what is, all that he has is the here and now. This is precisely why atheistic progressivism enacts such frequent and chaotic change at the societal level. It is not anchored by the story of the past, by the wisdom of our ancestors, by the great major consensus of humanity that has recognized objective truth, innate goodness, sound thinking and right action. In the progressive age these concepts are not accepted and, as a result, revolution has been made into a perpetual institution (c.f. Romano Guardini, The End of the Modern World) where society's link to the past, its link to stability is perennially rejected. For the atheistic progressive, all that is not liked by the present determining number can be burned to the ground and substituted with something else.

But the conservative does not have time to burn things to the ground. He does not have the energy to affect such frequent, chaotic societal change for others. He does not have time to virtue-signal. He is too busy trying to change the manner of his own life by avoiding vice and practicing virtue. He is too busy trying to care for his family and contribute to society by his work. He is too busy looking forward to joining that deceased majority of wise men and holy saints who have found God not by submitting to the zeitgeist of their age but to the law "written on their hearts" (Rm 2:15).

In the end, the progressive is the revolutionary against common humanity crying out for change as the vast majority of the past sit back and yawn at his hysterical cries, sharing the sentiment of Kierkegaard that "change is what all who are bored cry out for"( Soren Kierkegaard, Either/or).