The November 3rd general elections are weeks away. One question which voters ask about a candidate is whether she or he is conservative or something else.

A conservative is one who plows anew the furrows which his ancestors first broke open, unless he finds a compelling reason not to. There is one good reason to be politically conservative. There was something in the past which was uniquely, unbelievably great, something worth dying to conserve. That something, by its obvious pre-eminence, is so powerful that it blows away all of today’s warring alternatives.

When America needed them, there were giants among our political ancestors. For we descend from men like Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Marshall. Of Abraham Lincoln it has been said that 

“as a general principle, he thought it best to preserve the work of the past, at least until some men could be found whose understanding was superior to that of the founding fathers.” 

Many were the conservatives among the North American colonial leaders who revolted against Great Britain in the 1770s. Thomas Jefferson caught their conservative spirit when he wrote in the Declaration of Independence: “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

Nonetheless, the Americans in fact refused to remain subordinate to Great Britain.They rejected a Parliament to which they had elected no representatives. For to Americans Parliament was seen to be overturning ancient colonial charters and liberties, especially the hard won independence of the North American legislatures. When conservatives among the American leaders revolted, they did so because they sensed that they were truest of all Englishmen to English history. They had outthought the other English. Americans had devised even better, more truly British, institutions than the  English, Irish, Scots or Welsh enjoyed in the home country. Americans were ever widening a New World quality gap dividing them from wrong-headed British distortions and institutions. William Pitt and other enlightened Britons who defended colonial rights, failed to persuade King and Parliament that the Americans indeed had created a more excellent intellectual, political and moral way.

There is no better moral basis today for choosing to be an American conservative than that 

(1) the founders of America crafted a demonstrably superior political system 
and 
(2) no one today has their level of understanding and is proposing something radically better. 

America’s creators sowed seeds and institutions which are destined to grow until they make all men free. Therefore, until demonstrably greater men and women come along with new ideas which are superior to those of Hamilton, Mason and Franklin, today's American conservatives will keep on occupying  the moral and political high ground.

A few hundred years before Christ, the philosopher Aristotle wrote at length about forms of government known to him around the Mediterranean basin. He weighed the strengths and weaknesses of Persian despotism, of Greek tyranny, monarchy, oligarchy, democracy and of a mixed constitution balancing competing interests. A democracy, to take one example, must have a constitution which somehow makes it safe for men of less than divine ability to wield stable, enduring power over their fellow citizens. Short terms of office and frequent changes of incumbents are prudent safeguards of democracy.

Aristotle saw only one, extremely improbable and infrequent situation in which it might make sense to select one citizen to rule all other citizens for life. Perhaps he had his pupil Alexander of Macedon (“the Great”) in mind. Still, Aristotle made only one exception: if some one citizen in a commonwealth is so obviously, vastly and uniquely superior in talent, in virtue, justice and wisdom to his fellows, then and only then does an epochal opportunity  present itself. Aristotle put it this way:
 

"When some individual happens to be so pre-eminent in virtue that he should be supreme over all, or that this one citizen should be king of the whole nation...then mankind should obey him, not in turn (i.e., through rotating short stays in office) but always.”

(POLITICS: 1288a 15-18; 29)

Aristotle, just after that text, also wrote that only in the best state can the best citizens, the greatest humans, emerge. Education helps produce great and good people. The finest education inevitably prepares every citizen to be as much like  a great and virtuous king as possible. It may be doubted that Senator Huey Long of Louisiana read much of Aristotle. But Long caught some of Aristotle’s spirit through his 20th Century vision of “Every man a king!” 

The American conservative looks about and sees the most prominent politicians of the day: William Jefferson Clinton, Robert Dole, Albert Gore, Jr, Newton Gingrich, Richard Gephardt. He acknowledges their various talents. He also sees them multiplying and lavishing personal, group and ethnic entitlements upon America’s citizens. But then a conservative casts an eye back to our nation’s beginnings. He finds a generation of giants “pre-eminent in virtue.” He compares today’s best politicians with Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Mason, Marshall and other founders. After this comparison, today’s best do not compel a conservative’s obedience--unless they are disciples of the founders. 

Today’s American conservative therefore elects to stay with the founders. She does not divinize Washington or idolize Hamilton. But she does admit to a stronger Aristotelian tug to be true to the founders and to work for their ideals than she does for successors who come across as comparative pygmies.

Like Lincoln, today’s conservative keeps an open mind and is willing to look about with hope for present day leaders who are better than or even almost as powerful in understanding as the founders. Should he find them, he will heed them. Not finding them, however, an American conservative is content to keep on plowing the ancient furrows. As for entitlements, he believes that all Americans, indeed, all men everywhere, have only one abiding entitlement: to be free. 

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