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Tristan J. Rogers, "Conservatism, Past and Present: A Philosophical Introduction" (Routledge, 2025)
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Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of New Books Network. This is your host, Marta Zahaji Zadeh. Today I'm honored to be speaking with Dr. Tristan J. Rogers about his most recent book, which was published by Routledge Press in 2025. The book we're going to discuss is called Conservatism Past and a philosophical introduction. Dr. Tristan J. Rogers teaches logic and Latin at Dunham Day Classical Academy at San Francisco, California. He has also taught philosophy at Santa Clara University, the University of Colorado, the University of California, Davis, and he's also the author of a previous book called the Authority of Virtue, Institutions and Character in Good Society. Tristan, welcome to New Books Network.
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Thank you very much for having me.
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Before we start, can you just very briefly introduce yourself, your field of expertise and tell us how you became interested in this field and more importantly, how did the idea of this book come to you?
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Yeah, so I'm a philosopher by training and a political philosopher, I guess by specialization. I also have interests in ethics, especially virtue ethics, history of philosophy, especially ancient philosophy, Plato, Aristotle, that kind of thing, and also some interest in the philosophy of law. The book itself kind of had two genesis points, I suppose. The first was my work in virtue ethics, or what I call virtue politics, which is an approach to political philosophy that takes virtue and human flourishing as central, much in the way that virtue ethics takes virtue as central to ethics, virtue politics takes virtue as central to political philosophy. And that's what I did my doctoral work in at The University of Arizona in 2017. And my first book, the Authority of Virtue, was based on that dissertation, which was titled Virtue Politics. So the book kind of came about. I've developed this virtue politics framework, and I was trying to kind of fit it into a broadly liberal approach to politics. I would say, kind of a small L liberal approach to politics. And in graduate school, I was, I guess you could say, like a classical liberal or a right liberal, something like that. And the more I worked on the framework, the more I kind of sensed that it was moving in a more rightward direction, in a more genuinely conservative direction, specifically with the focus on virtue. And if, of course, there's a certain way of reading Plato and Aristotle and Cicero and so on in a conservative way. And I certainly do that in the book. So the first part was this kind of natural outgrowth of my work in virtue politics. The second aspect of the book, or the second genesis of the book, was the fact that my own views had kind of moved in a rightward direction. And this was, I would say, in the sort of Latter Half of the 2010s, 2015 through 2016, and all the stuff that happened in America at that time. And I noticed I was a graduate student, I was trying to find a job in philosophy, and I was like, wow, there's no. There's really no conservatives in my field. And being a conservative is kind of a hindrance to getting an academic job. And of course, it's hard to get an academic job, even if you're not a conservative. And I kind of thought, well, maybe I should try to develop the conservative point of view and try to make a case for it in philosophy and just kind of see where the chips fall. So that's what I set out to do. And the book. I started writing the book and 2021, sort of the end of the Trump first term, and wrote it while he was out of office. And then the book came out last January when he came back into office. So it all sort of seemed like good timing that the conservative movement hadn't completely died out. And in the book, I was trying to kind of connect the conservative movement of the present to the conservative ideas that I find in the history of philosophy. So that was the motivation for the book.
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And I guess it's the philosophical aspect of it, because there are a few, not a lot, but there are a few books on conservatism, the definition of what it means today, but not from a purely philosophical standpoint, which is, I guess, what you have undertaken in this project. And before we start, let's come up with a definition. Philosophical conservatism. How do you define philosophical conservatism in your project?
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Yeah, so the view I develop is called philosophical conservatism. And the core of philosophical conservatism is this idea that philosophy is about the search for wisdom. And the search for wisdom concerns, in part, searching for the conditions under which human beings can live good lives, can live flourishing lives. So the social. Social and political conditions. So I see the purpose of philosophical conservatism as conserving and promoting the human good within two important constraints. One, within the constraints of condition, or sorry, not condition, tradition, and two, subject to limits of human nature. So it's not exactly a definition. I would call it a kind of a conception of conservatism. And I see it as a synthesis of the various other approaches to conservatism have been developed in the last, say, 100 years or so.
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And what are some of the. Because you talk about. There are several. I don't know if the condition is the right word, but as you mentioned, it's philosophical conservatives subject to the limits of human nature from within traditions. And that tradition is an important aspect of your formulation of conservatism. Can you tell us in contemporary society, what are some of those contemporary institutions that maybe best exemplify this idea of philosophical conservatism?
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Yeah. So I take it that part of the motivation to develop this view is that there really are very few contemporary institutions that exemplify or embody the spirit of what I would call philosophical conservatism. I think the. The spirit of the age has been very much against this idea of philosophical conservatism, although there's some evidence things are starting to shift, maybe. And that was part of the motivation for writing the book, was to kind of articulate this kind of movement that was happening in the cultures of Western democratic societies. And this is a general problem, I would say, for conservatives. And my view in particular, which is that when you have a society, many of which, or maybe even all of which, the institutions have drifted so far away from tradition and are bent on a kind of utopian attempt at perfection, it's very hard to reform those institutions and to get them back on the right path to sort of reconnect the fabric or stitch the fabric back together, so to speak. So I'm rather pessimistic when it comes to coming up with examples that exemplify the view I call philosophical conservatism. I think there's some good indications in various institutions in the United States. So conservatives will generally be in favor of the kind of rightward turn of the Supreme Court over the last, I don't know, 10 years, I guess you could say, which of course, is wholly a consequence of the appointments that the President has made in his. Made in his first term. And that was maybe best exemplified by the overturning of Roe vs Wade, which is a kind of attempt to shift things back toward a traditional legal point of view. And it did so in a careful kind of way that I think philosophical conservatism would support, which is a kind of not an attempt to ban something, but an attempt to have the Court recede from the area and to sort of allow. Allow differences among the states and that kind of thing. And the Court has had all sorts of other opportunities to kind of turn the tide back on various bits of what I would call liberal overreach. And it's been, I would say, mixed results on those. But it certainly seems like things are heading in the right direction. Although I would add that, you know, philosophical conservatism really prioritizes the reform of culture and the return of tradition and culture. And so, you know, even if we get all these wins of the Supreme Court, you know, without the cultural momentum to, to support those, those reforms, it's not worth very much because, of course, the laws can be changed by whoever, whoever ends up in power after. But I think generally the, the Court has, the Court seems to kind of follow public opinion to some extent. And so I think there's reason to believe that the Court is not just sort of legislating from the bench, but it actually does reflect a genuine kind of shift in, in public attitudes, more kind of traditional point of view. That's the best kind of optimistic take I could give on it.
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There was a question I wanted to ask it towards the end because I want to be more focused on the book. But I guess now you have mentioned the President. I'm keen to ask you now if you consider the more recent political trends in the United States. Mainly I'm discussing with Trump. J.D. vance, some people don't consider it to be true conservatism. Do you believe or do you think that it's a continuation of that conservative tradition or if it's a departure from that conservative tradition? Because some American scholars of conservatism. I'm mainly thinking of George Nash, I guess he was against. He believed that the recent trends is a departure from conservatism that he was advocating or he was writing about. But I'm Keen to know your thoughts.
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Yeah, that's a really good question. And that's a big part of the book is to identify to what extent the new. What I think of as a kind of a nationalist populist conservatism. To what extent is that continuous with the history of conservatism? And I would tend to say that it generally is continuous, even though it's not an intellectual movement primarily. But I think most conservative political movements are not intellectual, and I think proper conservative political philosophy would actually approve of that rather than disapprove of it. And, you know, to say that the president is a. Is an ideological conservative is not really to. To speak very much sense at all. Although his vice president, J.D. vance, I think, is a. Is a more ideological. And has, you know, read a lot of the. The things that intellectual conservatives are reading and has associations with various people like Patrick Deneen. Patrick Deneen and these other figures. Yeah. Who are very influential. And so I think the spirit of the movement, I think, is a conservative movement. It just doesn't fit into a kind of ideological point of view. But I think that's kind of how it ought to be, I think. And I think the intellectual side of conservatism, I think, is always going to be in the background, sort of try to make sense of what I would call a kind of spirit that's animating the age. And there's a chapter in the book, chapter four, which is called the Spirit of Conservatism, and it's ostensibly about conservatism in the 19th century. And I think that's really the core of conservatism is this kind of spirit that exists and kind of goes in different directions and it has to be very carefully managed and all this kind of thing. And so that's kind of what I see as happening lately, although it's a very uncomfortable position to be in, because as an intellectual, everybody wants to sort of tar you with all the kind of excesses of the movement that's happening. And it's like, hey, man, I'm just a philosopher. Don't ask me to justify this or that policy or whatever. I mean, I guess I could, but it's not really. I think conservatives have a certain idea of what the role of the intellectual is and what the political philosopher is. It's rather different from what a liberal point of view would say, which, as a conservative intellectual, it's a difficult place to be in because you kind of want to have more influence and more of a more kind of status and power and all of that. And it's like, hey, why didn't anybody, you know, consult me about this? I wrote a book on conservatism. It's like, yeah, you know, Michael Oakshott calls it the politics of the Book. And conservatives are really not about the politics of the book. And so there's a certain irony in writing a conservative political philosophy book is not really the kind of thing that we should be focused on. But I do think the ideas are important, and I wouldn't discount the intellectual work because I think a lot of people who are dispositionally conservative, you know, ordinary people, people who are not intellectuals, who are. Who are maybe not even particularly interested in politics, they have a kind of, you know, innate sense of what's politically just and what's politically unjust. I think it's helpful to try to articulate that in an intellectual way where people can, you know, consume media or read a book or something and go, oh, yeah, right. This is what I think, you know, So I guess that's what I'm trying to do.
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You actually raised some important points that I do want to pick up, but I might do that towards the end of the interview. So I'm going to come back to the book. I'm really interested in the section that you wrote. I think it's in chapter two, when you wrote about Christian sources, the Limits, because it's called Christian Sources, the Limits of Philosophy. And that's where you talk about Aquinas, Saint Ancronus, and he. You write that he says human law must fit the condition of the people. And to me, it reads like it needs to be a little bit. We need to be a little bit sensitive towards the context. But I understand that from a liberal point of view, that might be okay, but I guess from a conservative point of view, that might open the floodgates to relativism. Interested to know from a conservative perspective, that context sensitivity, where do conservatives draw the line between tradition and, let's say, relativism and things which might not fit within that tradition?
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Yeah, that's a great question. So part of the challenge of developing a conservatism is to make it kind of wide enough to account for different cultures and different peoples and of course, in different time periods, but not so wide as to be kind of meaningless or to drift into relativism, which, of course, conservatives would be the first to decry moral relativism, cultural relativism, whatever. And so it would be quite a bad thing if conservatism ended up being another form of relativism. In that way, although I do think this Aquinas point that you mentioned is key to understanding the distinction. So, so Aquinas says the law must fit the condition of the people. And the virtue that's operative there in the background, I think, is prudence. Right? We don't just come up with the just laws and then kind of impose them on people willy nilly. We have to prepare the people for the law and the people have to be fit for the law. And this is why all the ancient philosophers talk about the character of the people has to reflect the regime. You need a democratic people to have a democratic regime and so on. And if we just impose laws on people without caring for their condition, whether they're prepared for the law or not, it's going to go very badly and probably be counterproductive. Now, I think the key here to avoid falling into relativism is to distinguish, as Aquinas does, between human law or positive law, the natural law, which is known through human reason alone, and divine law, which of course comes from God. And so it seems like the degree to which we should accept context sensitivity would be to the extent that is consistent with the natural law. And I would say that context sensitivity falls into relativism where we just ignore the natural law and ignore the divine law and have no particular concern that, you know, the customs of a particular people are completely out of step with the natural law and say, well, human law has nothing to say here. I don't think that is appropriate. And I think that's reflected, I think, in contemporary people's understanding of human rights. I think that's all kind of of a piece, although the details are importantly different. I would say now in practice, this is really a practical question because, you know, we can know the natural law through reason and we can know the divine law through revelation. And so suppose we have the, we think that we have the truth in this regard, and then we have to craft some human laws to reflect these laws or to implement these laws. The question in practice, I think the line has to be drawn using practical wisdom, when is it appropriate to enact a certain species of the natural law in human law on a particular people at a particular time. And I think you could go back to the, the abortion issue that I raised earlier. So if abortion violates the natural law, which I think most conservatives believe that it does, then it would be unjust to have national laws that permitted abortions, and it would be just to have national laws that banned abortions outright in the same way that there are Laws at the nationwide level that ban homicide. Right. Those would be equivalent from a pro life point of view. But if we take into account Aquinas's point about the condition of the people, it might not be prudent to implement a ban in that way, a certain kind of blanket ban. And here I think you can see the wisdom of the Supreme Court in the ruling that it gave to overturn Roe, that it, it's, I suppose it opened the door to a ban in the future, but it didn't, it didn't begin there. So does that fall into relativism? I don't know. I mean, there's people today. There's actually the march for life in the United States where people march in opposition to abortion. Should we say, should we not celebrate the changes in the law that have happened because abortions are still permitted in some American states? I don't know. It seems like some progress has been made. And so long as one maintains clarity about the moral judgment involved, I don't think it's relativistic to say that, oh, well, you know, the character of the people, the condition of the people is not ready for an abortion ban yet. So I guess we'll just forget about. Seems like the justice has to be balanced against prudence, in other words. And in the book, I say many times that prudence is really the first virtue of conservative political philosophy. It's not actually justice. John Rawls, of course, the liberal political philosopher, said that justice is the first virtue of social institutions. And I think conservatives would agree with that in principle. But prudence has to take precedence at the level of implementation.
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And I don't live in America, so I mean, I may be wrong, feel free to correct me. I'm happy to stand corrected. I guess people, the liberals or people like me, when they might disagree with this ban is when there are people who argue for a blanket ban on abortion regardless of the situation. Am I correct or do you think conservatives would? Because given the prudence that you just highlighted, I guess it does allow for some cases of abortion based on the circumstances where this has happened.
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Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, most, most doctrinaire conservatives, I think would, would probably be considered rather hard line on abortion because the argument is that if life begins from conception, then there is no kind of logical point where you could say, well, abortions is, you know, wrong after this point. But okay, before this point seems kind of arbitrary now when it comes to prudence and laws that go for compromise rather than outright bans, I think there can be room for negotiation and compromise maybe there. And I think even in the very pro life American states, they've taken a kind of incrementalist approach to this. So they began with so called heartbeat bills that banned abortions after a certain number of weeks. And then the weeks sort of got earlier and earlier. And I think the last week that they sort of decided upon was like a 15 week ban. And then I think maybe a couple of states has got, have gone for outright bans after that. So I don't know. I wouldn't pronounce any kind of judgment on that. You know, the nice thing about America is that people can move. So if you find yourself in one of those states, you can go to another state. And I guess like from a principal point of view you'd say, well that's bad because then, you know, people can get abortions when abortions are wrong and unjust. But from the point of view of working out a kind of a political compromise or a little bit more in the direction of justice without too much acrimony and increased polarization, that seems like a reasonably happy medium. I would say
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let's move to chapter four. And I was really interested in this chapter because you talk the spirit of conservatism, Freedom through authority. And in this chapter you talk about a number of different thinkers. But the title was really interesting to me. Freedom through Authority. Some people might find it a little bit, they might feel that there's an oxymoron here. Freedom through authority. Do you believe that or what do you think about the fact that, do you think liberty requires more or less authoritative institutions? And if, and if so, which contemporary institutions do you think most credibly can deliver that idea of freedom without drifting into illiberal domains?
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Yeah. So chapter four, the Freedom through Authority. There's this kind of antinomy, I guess you could say, between freedom and authority. The more freedom you have, the less authority there is, and the more authority there is, the less freedom there is. And the conservative point of view, I think is to reject that antennae and to say that no, actually true freedom, what conservatives would call ordered liberty, is actually freedom only exists within kind of authoritative social institutions. Now that's not to say that, you know, true freedom lies in obedience to authority or something like that. There are some people who kind of ridicule the, the Hegelian conception of rational freedom in that, in that sense. Actually there's a funny, there's a very funny video by the socialist philosopher Jerry Cohen, G.A. cohen, where he, he mocks the Hegelian idea, you know, freedom is, you know, submitting to an evil despot. Basically, that's the highest, the highest form of freedom. No, I think that's wrong. I think the sense of order, liberty is this idea of submitting yourself to an institution. And if the institution is a good institution, it actually makes you free because it teaches you how to use your liberty and it teaches you to be virtuous, which is really what liberty is good for. And conservatives, for example, they differ from libertarians in the sense that they don't think that liberty is good for its own sake or has any kind of innate value. Liberty is good to the. Liberty is good to the extent that it allows us to achieve the human good. And we think that the human good is achieved by pursuing the virtues. And so freedom is what allows you to pursue virtue, which is what allows you to attain the good life. So that's the justification. Now the question is, can this go too far or can we go too far on the side of authority? And I think, of course things can go too far. And the antinomy between liberty and authority is real to the extent that we really can be in circumstances where there is way too much authority and the authority is not at all sensitive to the particulars of the situation and doesn't allow mechanisms for reform and really doesn't value the conscience of the individual and is just wholly devoted to the well being of the group. I think that's a genuine danger that you find in genuinely authoritarian or totalitarian state. And of course, on the other side of the extreme, it's certainly true that you can have too much liberty, you can have too much freedom in the sense that there are no limits on your behavior and there's nothing that's, there's nothing that's orienting you or guiding you toward the good. And you really are kind of at sea. And I think that can happen at the personal level, at the cultural level, and certainly at the political level. So there's a kind of, there's a kind of mean state, I would say, in Aristotle's sense. And I think the conservative sense of freedom finds a kind of mean between the authority that's necessary for social order and the liberty that's required for individuals to flourish within that social order. And you know, whether we need to go in one direction or the other, again, I think is context sensitive to some extent. And I think recently I think we've gone too far in the liberal direction. And so I think in your question you had asked about illiberal Drift. When do things drift too far in the illiberal direction? I think we've drifted way too far on the liberal side. And so we have a need to revitalize and revivify some of these institutions of authority. And you could talk about Hegel's three institutions of civic society, the family, civil society, the markets, and so on in the state. And it seems to me that all of these are in various states of disrepair. I think civil society is maybe in the best shape if you think about people's abilities to form associations and pursue their interests and engage in the marketplace. And the modern world gives us a lot of opportunities to associate. Now, granted, a lot of these forms of association are digital and not really embodied in the way that we might want them to be, but seems like we have a lot of choice in that domain. The family, I think, is not in very good shape, and of course, the political state is not in very good shape either. And conservatives, as I argue in the book, they think that the family is the most important social institution. And so if the family is in bad shape, everything else will be in bad shape too. And I think. I think it was John Paul II who made a comment to that extent. So, so goes the family, so goes the. The whole world in which we live. And I think that's. That's basically the conservative point of view.
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When. When you say the family is not in a good shape, what do you mean exactly? Can you elaborate on that?
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Well, I mean, you could look at various statistics, I suppose. Yeah, you could look at, you know, marriage rates and whether people are having children and whether people are not only getting married, but staying married, whether people have, I don't know, healthy family dynamics, whether they're, you know, not casting out family members for having different political beliefs. And this is a very common thing, especially these days. And of course, there's all kinds of pressures, family, that have nothing to do with. With political ideology. I think, you know, one of the biggest threats to families, just the. The kind of digitization of life and the constant social media screens and this kind of thing. And there's not the same amount of quality time, and people are overworked in various ways, and the schools aren't in very good shape, in my opinion. So it's kind of a mess. I think now it's easy to kind of. It's a sense, I think. I mean, you can look for statistics, but, you know, the statistics just kind of confirm what is already there. There's also maybe a class dimension, which I think I talk about in the. In the family chapter, which is to the extent that family norms have been maintained, they've been maintained mostly at the. At the upper. At the upper reaches of society among the. Among the upper, upper middle and upper classes, whereas the family is in worse shape among the lower classes and the middle classes. So that's definitely a big problem. Is something Rob Henderson talks about what he calls luxury beliefs, which are beliefs that give status to the upper class members of society and impose costs on the lower class. So this kind of elite attitude that marriage is kind of outdated makes people feel good about themselves. But of course they probably still will get married. But it sort of signals and it projects to other people that it's not a very important thing. And seems to me that's been very disruptive, I would say, of, of society in general.
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I live in Australia myself and every now and then. Well, it's not every now and then it's becoming more common that you get headlines that Australian birth rate is dropping and they're sounding the alarms part of it. I'm keen to know your thoughts, of course, but I guess a lot of people also agree that part of the reason, as you rightly mentioned, it's more an issue maybe among people who are not that much economically affluent, is mainly economics because nowadays both parents or man and woman both have to work hard to be able to make a living. And having kids is becoming more and more expensive. People used to my parents, I had four siblings. One of them passed away when I was young. But anyway, we had four siblings. But more or less families are having. Choosing to have only one or two kids at most. And one of the major causes of that is the economic considerations, which is more of a concern among those classes of society that you have rightly mentioned. I'm not sure if the case. If that's the case in the US or not. That economy is a driving factor near.
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A
I think it's the same pretty much across all Western countries by and large where I think the left and the right actually kind of overlap to some extent because the idea that the economic conditions are what's causing people to have fewer children is kind of a reason to move more toward the left on economic issues. And the populist right has done that by and large, led by people like the vice president whose wife is now pregnant with their fourth child. So he's definitely leading by example in that respect. But yeah, there are all these birth rate questions. I don't know. And there is this kind of attitude that oh well, it's just a financial thing, and we can't possibly have a third kid because we can't afford it. I think people generally overestimate the expense of children because, I mean, it's very obvious if you look at history, people had way more kids with way fewer resources. So it's certainly. Certainly possible now maybe it's not comfortable. And I think a lot of what holds people back is that they get very attached to their. To their lifestyles and they want the. They want the kids kind of. They want the kids to kind of fit their lifestyle rather than the other way around. Right. I think people in the past would tailor the lifestyle to see the kids that they had. But of course, with birth control and being able to control these things a lot more, having kids has become a kind of preference, become a kind of lifestyle preference rather than a reality of life. And so it's a very difficult thing, I would say, to try to revitalize this idea that actually having children is part of your calling as a human being. And even though you have a choice in the matter, probably it's something you could. You should just accept. And this is a core conservative sentiment, I think, which is that we should. We should accept the good in life that is there and we should embrace it and not try to exert control over it. A friend of mine, David McPherson, has this view he calls existential conservatism, which I think I reference in the book a couple of times. And that's the idea that we should embrace the good that is in the world and not try to exert our control over it. And so the attitude of having more children is definitely encouraged by that attitude. And then the question is just how to kind of win people over to that view. And I think it's going to help. I think having having someone in the White House whose wife is having a fourth kid, because I think that's the kind of thing that people will respond to, who knows, really, in the long term. I guess there are parts of your
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B
argument I agree with. I've recently become a father myself. My kid is only eight months now. It's my first kid. I don't think I'm gonna have any more kids because I'm not at that. I'm 43 years old and my wife is not that keen either. But I do agree that, I guess people are not willing to give up their conveniences that they're used to. At least that was the case with me. I first resisted, but then I decided, yeah, okay, let's have a kid. And I don't regret that at all because having a kid has enriched my life. It's been only an eight months, but it's really, really enriched my life. Found it extremely rewarding. But I do agree with you, I guess, and I might be wrong again, but I guess it's a more or less a city thing. A lot of people in urban areas who are more used to those amenities or that kind of lifestyle to travel overseas once or twice a year. Having a kid might pose some limitations and that there might be some resistance towards that. We have more resources, but I guess it's the new lifestyle that also has exerted more cost on the life. And they believe that having a kid might be an economic barrier. But anyway, that's a different issue. We've been talking about family and the role of economics. I'm really, really keen to know our thoughts about neoliberalism and mainly that Hayek and his idea of liberalism. A lot of people identify that as conservatism. Although Hayek himself didn't like to be called conservative. He wrote a whole chapter why he's not a conservative. And I guess in many other parts of the world. I'm not talking about the US here. In other parts of the world where conservatism is not that British or American tradition, their ideal brand of conservatism is neoliberal Austrian economics, where they ask for a smaller government, free market. Free market is freedom, and that's the basis of their brand of conservatism. But where do you draw the line between that Hayekian liberalism and also Roger Scruton's idea of traditionalism, especially where, you know, free market or economic freedom doesn't really provide enough for the vast majority of the people and only benefits a few people on top, the elite. Where do you draw the line? Do you think that idea of new liberal market oriented economics is? He's conservative.
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A
Yeah. So this is the subject of chapter five, which, which tries to articulate what, what conservatism was in the 20th century. And, and for most of the 20th century, conservatism was very closely allied, if not identified with what we would now call classical liberalism or perhaps even libertarianism. And Hayek, of course, was a major figure in that, in that movement. Now I think the reason for that was mostly because of the kind of geopolitical conditions of the 20th century where small l liberal orders were under threat from various threats, the Second World War and of course the Cold War and so on. And so there's a kind of natural alliance to be made there to preserve a kind of liberal order. And so I think liberals, modern liberals, let's say progressive liberals, even if, if you like, in some sense joined forces with, with classical liberals to preserve that kind of liberal, liberal order. And so conservatives were part of that, were part of that movement. And I think it's fair to say, and, and I make this, this case in chapter five as well, that part of conservatism in the 20th century was conserving some of the liberal reforms that took place in the 19th century. So conservatism always seems to have this way of absorbing within its tradition things that were previously seen as aberrations. So you can look at the conservatism of Burke, and he's arguing against universal suffrage and all these other things that, you know, relatively few conservatives today would, would approve of. And so it's like the question is, well, how does this, how do these ideas, liberal ideas, get absorbed into the conservative tradition? And, you know, there's kind of a long, maybe a long story about that, but the short story is that if the reforms work and that they function and that they actually do enable human flourishing, then conservatives have reason to adopt them. And I think the liberal reforms of the 20th century in the direction of market liberalism, I think were approved of by conservatives for that reason in the sense that they did seem necessary. But then there's this risk that these liberal reforms will threaten the kind of traditional inheritance that conservatives have traditionally defended. And so, again, as with many of these other issues that have come up, there's a kind of push and pull between two extremes, the extreme of, of free markets and limited government and trying to have the least amount of power as possible on the one hand, and on the other hand, a kind of concern to preserve and to maintain these structures of tradition which the market is generally corrosive towards. And this debate in the 20th century kind of reached ahead in the 80s, I would say, when the classical liberal or libertarian movement that really kind of got going in the 1970s seemed to have won real political power in the election of Ronald Reagan and of course, Thatcher in the uk. And that's right when Roger Scruton started writing. And a big motivation behind his first book on conservatism, the Meaning of Conservatism, which came out in 1980, was to oppose the kind of Thatcherite version of conservatism, to say that actually conservatism is not about freedom, but about order and authority. Now, I think Scruton was right about that debate from the point of view of the Ideas and conservatism as a philosophy. But that's not to say, and I don't think Scruton would disagree, that market reforms are not generally good and generally beneficial, but they have to be limited in various ways. So if you think about when Scrutin was writing in the early 80s about the dangers of market liberalism, I mean, market liberalism became popular because of the excesses of the 1970 and the general stagnation of the 1970s. So it would be hard to argue, I think, that market liberalism was the wrong response to the stagnation of the 70s. But by the same token, I think you'd be wrong to say that the market reforms of the 80s did not go too far and of course led to. It's a very long story to connect the dots, but led to the kind of recent turn toward economic populism, backlash against globalization, and all of these things that have hollowed out communities. And the charge against the erstwhile conservatives is that they purported to conserve things, but they actually didn't conserve anything. And Patrick Deneen makes this argument, argument that conservatives were trying to conserve, you know, traditional morality and they totally lost that they were trying to conserve traditional communities and that got sort of sold away to the market. And so the only thing that was really advanced in this alliance between conservatives and liberals was to kind of increase the, increase the range and scope and power of the market. And that kind of went hand in hand with a rise in social liberalism and individual freedom. Of course, the market caters to that form of liberalism. And so the conservatives really lost out. They didn't really get anything that they cared about. And I think that's a very big reason why there was a backlash to that kind of alliance and why it is now, it is now the so called fusionist alliance no longer seems viable. Although I heard a good talk by somebody recently in Oxford who thinks that no, actually fusionism still has a place. So to make a long story short, I think there's again, with many of these other things, there are trade offs to be made between prioritizing social inheritance and tradition and having a market that actually produces the things that people need. And it seems rational to me that we might trade off a little bit of economic growth for the maintenance of a social inheritance and tradition. But it doesn't seem irrational to me to occasionally trade some social inheritance and tradition for some economic growth. I think I think we have to be flexible. It's really a matter of prudence when one or the other is required. Although my sense is that Nowadays, my sense nowadays is that the market liberalism really has gone too far and will not cease. It will continue unabated without some kind of check that is informed by a more traditionalist point of view. And I think conservatives in this respect can maybe not joined forces, but can at least understand the kind of Marxist critique of capitalism, that capitalism is this kind of out of control force that will just sort of devour wherever it goes. And then the question is, well, what are we going to use to stop that force? And of course the Marxists want a kind of collectivist solution. The conservatives want to kind of cling to tradition. It's not clear that either of those could really can really be effective. But. But I would put myself on the side of tradition, I suppose.
- [46:29]
B
I'm glad you mentioned that part. That point about Roger Scroots and he's a. When it comes to neoliberal economists, Austrian economists, he's one of their favorite figures and they use him in their tactics and Marxism and socialism, but they don't talk about that aspect of Roger Scrutin where he did criticize Margaret Thatcher. He did believe that even the people who are economically challenged need to be provided for someone. I think part of it came from that Christian tradition of charity that he believed in. But that side of his argument is not usually highlighted or completely ignored when he's I guess, co opted by more right wing, a market oriented fundamentalist. But I'm glad you mentioned that point here as well. Let me ask you about nationalism and again that's something you write about in the book and it's really difficult nowadays even to define nationalism. I guess depending who you ask, they come up with a different definition. But how do you define nationalism from a conservative, from a philosophical conservative perspective? And the second part of my question is that how does your account of a healthy nationalism which prioritizes its fellow citizens, how does it work when it comes to the, to the duties of those people towards minorities or those who are not really like refugees or stateless people or minorities in general? What is their civic duty towards those groups?
- [48:03]
A
Yeah. So chapter six, I think is on nationalism. And this was trying to give some kind of philosophical articulation of the America first slogan which has really defined the, the recent movements on the right. And there's a philosopher, recall his name, I think his name's Dan Bonavac who says that it's America first, not America only. So it's really a slogan about priority. And so for me a healthy nationalism is a simple priority claim that we put the interests of one's fellow citizens and the interests of the nation above the interests of people in other nations and above the interests of other nations. So it's very similar to a similar partiality claim that is often talked about in moral philosophy. So I have a kind of natural partiality toward my wife and children that I don't have towards strangers, and I prioritize their interests above the interests of others. And so I think nationalism is really just that priority claim writ large. And the boundary of it is the boundary of the nation, not the boundary of the family. Now, your question was whether this is inherent to conservatism. Nationalism, people think of as a modern ideology, that it comes out of the modern era. And of course, nations are a relative. Well, it depends on how you define them. But certainly the, the modern idea of a national identity is only a few hundred years old. So to the extent that nationalism is a quote unquote modern ideology, I don't think it's inherent to conservatism. But it does seem to be a relatively permanent feature of contemporary conservatism. And I think the reason for that is because conservatism is opposed to various movements on the left. But the most general kind of movement is the liberal cosmopolitan stance, which is by definition anti nationalist and says that we should draw no distinctions between members of different states and that we should care for human beings as such. Now, there's an obvious truth in that, especially from a. A Christian point of view, that every human being has inherent dignity and of course it doesn't depend on what their nationality is. So. But it's a nice sounding view, but it's had all these negative consequences, I would say, because it's not really applied properly. And if I just decide to become a crusader for social justice, let's say, and I leave my family and I neglect my family, then I don't know. That doesn't seem like the right thing to do. And so likewise, if we try to be good global citizens, but we neglect the citizens of our own nation, that seems like a dereliction of duty. There's a very nice passage in Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments that articulates this. I won't be able to quote it from memory, but I think it's quoted in the chapter. And Smith's point is basically, you don't become a good citizen of the world by neglecting the. The members of your own community, but rather we serve the world by first serving those closest to us. And there's a kind of stoic idea in the background of that, which I've written about in a different paper called stoic conservatism, if anybody wants to look at it. So what's nationalism, then? So nationalism, I think, is about partiality. I don't think it's about race or ethnicity. And I basically follow Scrutin in that idea. He has this idea that nationalism is really about territory. It's about this piece of land that we share together, which is, I guess you could say, to some extent arbitrary, because it depends on contingent lines that were drawn in history as the result of conquest and movements of people and all that. But however it came about, it's what we share, and it's what we share regardless of our other identities. And so that seems significant in the same way that I share a neighborhood with people. We're in this shared place that seems to give rise to certain kinds of obligations and so on. And it gives rise to the sense of membership, that we all belong to the nation. And that would seem to, I think, rule out the very extreme cases of. Of ethnic exclusion or mistreatment of minorities. And although there's a very big question, I think. And I think it's unexamined by many people of the extent to which nationalism requires a kind of assimilation and an attempt to. An attempt to reduce the extent to which there are minorities, let's say, by bringing everybody into the same sort of national family. You see this very clearly, I think. And this, I think, makes conservatives kind of nostalgic for the. For the old days when. When people really were united in their. In their religious affiliations. But so I. I go to. I go to a Catholic church and I go. And there's all these different people from all sorts of different backgrounds, speaking all different languages. But we're all there to worship, and we have this kind of. This kind of unity in what we would call the body of Christ. And I don't think nationalism can quite get to that level, although I think the extent to which it's healthy, it kind of does approach that level that we have this kind of shared. This shared fabric. And so if some part of the fabric is damaged or some part of the body is injured, then everybody feels the injury, I think this is very clear in cases of national tragedy or terrorist attacks or things like that. So that, I think, is the ideal. And again, it's a push and a pull, I think. So my definition of the nation is thin in the sense that it's based on, say, territory and membership. But then there are all these thick aspects that have to do with language and culture and history and maybe ethnicity in some sense. People who argue about this, we'll bring up examples like Japan, for example. Could Japan continue to be Japan without the Japanese people? We replaced all the Japanese people in Japan with some other peoples. Would it still be Japan? It seems that the answer to that is probably not. Now, America is very different because, of course, it's more racially diverse and was not founded as a country of a certain race of people. But I think a lot of these things are hard to avoid and maybe for the simple fact that human beings, we really are tribal. And that has a. That has a dark side, I think, but also I think it's part of reality. And so if you just ignore the tribal aspects, it doesn't actually work at the end of the day. And people really do like to be amongst people who are similar to them in one way or another. So we really can't ignore, I think, the thicker aspects. But I think it's a mistake to build that into the philosophical account of nationalism because it's. Well, it's very fuzzy and vague and also can get out of hand in various ways.
- [55:37]
B
I like the example of those religious communities you mentioned. I'm not a religious person, but I do agree completely with you that. Because in those circles they seem to go beyond the idea of ethnicity, race or nationality, and there's this beautiful bond among them, and religion has enabled them to create that bond. And you're right that nationalism is usually a kind of a difficult question. I do agree probably partly with Roger Scruton's point that you mentioned. It's about territory, but again, it gets really complicated. I live in Australia, and tomorrow is Australian Day, 26th of January, which is a very controversial date. I guess more or less the same in the U.S. some people, I mean the indigenous communities, and some people who have sympathies with them but would call it Invasion Day because that's a day when first, you know, southern colonials arrived in Australia and all the history, dark history with the indigenous people here. But I'm an Australian citizen myself, but I wasn't born in Australia. Some people do consider me Australian, some people don't, because I speak with an accent, because I'm not today. I'm the marker of being an Australian. I'm talking about a small group. Of course, it's not a huge one, but. But those ultra nationalists are organizing a march for Australia Day rally tomorrow, and they do ask for immigrants to assimilate. But the tricky thing is that those very people would never have those immigrants assimilate because first of all, they're not white, they don't speak English as their first language. Despite the rhetoric, there's always this barrier. Now my son is born here. Again, some ultra nationalists wouldn't even consider him to be an Australian because again, his background is not from an English speaking country or from Europe or from America. But the funny thing is that those who come from, for example, England, Sweden, Belgium, despite the fact that the culture is a bit different, the language is different, but in the second generation, simply because they're white, they would be considered Australian. But those are the sticky points of nationalism. And you have addressed them in your comment, which is about that exclusionary politics. But question I have about this, what commitments or strategies do you think nationalism or nationalists should adopt to avoid sliding into racial hierarchy or those anti exclusionary practices?
- [58:13]
A
Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, I like that you made that biographical point there. Because I'm an American citizen as of a couple of years ago, I born in Canada, came to study, married an American woman, so on my kids were born here. And I think that's a nice example because I think that's maybe one way toward greater integration is really intermarriage and to have kind of intercultural families and to mix things in that way. And of course historically that really is the way that people's come together is through intermarriage. And it kind of lessens the brunt, I would say, of the kind of ethnic critique that you were putting forward, which is very difficult to shake, I think. I'm Canadian, but I'm an American citizen now. I don't have a history here. I mean, I have some history here, but relatively recently there are people in this country who talk about so called heritage Americans, which is to say Americans who can trace their ancestry back to the Mayflower, things like that. So it's like if you look at somebody like that and you look at me, by appearances we probably look the same. But this person has a inheritance in the country that goes back way longer than I have. So would you say that person's more American than I am? Well, I would admit that in one sense, yeah. That guy is more American than I am. Even though we both have the same passport and we're both equally citizens, we have the same rights and obligations. So there's kind of a. I think that that goes back to the thick sense of identity that I don't know, I suppose if it's kept within certain bounds, it's not such a bad Thing to have a kind of, you know, a class of people who can trace their ancestry back very far. And it has a certain kind of aristocratic element, I guess. And of course it can go too far. But I think that really gives a certain kind of character and identity to a country where if you don't have that, if we're just a collection of people who have been thrown together by circumstance, and usually the circumstance has to do with economics, it's not clear that that's very sustainable, at least in the long term. But intermarriage, I think, is a very good way of. Of mixing people together. So my wife is Asian American, and so my kids are half Asian, I guess, and half whatever. I am Canadian American. And so they'll have children. Depending on who they marry, they'll have children and they'll look. I don't know what they'll look like. So there's a kind of a diluting, I guess, of the racial question. And it seems to me that would be a good thing. And I mean, the part of the country I live in, California, that's actually kind of the majority. The majority of people are bicultural or mixed or of one race or another. You're almost in the majority if you're like that and you're in the minority if you look like I do in certain areas. But of course, if you go to the middle of the country, that's very unusual. And that's part of the problem with America is that the country is so large and diverse that it's difficult to have a kind of unified national character, national identity. But, yeah, so I would say intermarriage, that's the way forward.
- [61:39]
B
And I guess it's also the same for a country like Australia, which is even. I mean, modern Australia, of course, which is much even younger than the United States. And I originally come from Iran myself. And when. When I talk to some of my friends here, I mean Australian friends, and then when they talk about history, they constantly say, australia is a young country, which I kind of agree with. But then the presupposition is that that indigenous heritage and culture is completely ignored, despite the fact that they are even sympathetic, but they don't consider to be the part of that history. And it's more or less a very diverse country, again like the United States. Anyhow, let me move to the next question, which is about populism. I guess it has some overlap with the previous question that I asked. And I guess that's. I guess you agree. And here, I guess, where you and liberals Might both or the left have something in common that you blame the elites for the rise of populace populism in the United States or even everywhere in Europe nowadays? But what elite failures do you think warranted this populist wave? And could it be a good thing or a bad thing in terms of populism bringing back some of those conservative institutions that you embrace?
- [63:02]
A
Yeah. So the populism chapter, which is chapter seven, I want to say there's a kind of place for populism within a conservative point of view, especially when the elites in a society have become corrupt or otherwise not beneficial to the social order. And that seems to be the case, I think, in America, certainly writ large. And so populism is a kind of reaction to that. But then, of course, the question is, well, once you have the populist revolt underway, what do you do? How do you right the ship? How do you put the. The virtuous elites back into place? And that's a very difficult question, I think. I think the. The institutional failures, you know, education is probably the most egregious example. Example, I would say, of. Of elite failure. I think the universities have done a terrible job of preserving their heritage and tradition. And, you know, I don't really have to give examples because it's in the news all the time. The public schools, I don't think, are very much better. One of the reasons why I work in classical education now. So the populists, I think, have been relatively successful in launching these counterattacks against education. And this has happened in the first year of the Trump administration in various ways. And the universities are trying to scramble to defend themselves or they've made little overtures here or there, or capitulations, I guess, if you're a critic. And then the question is whether they could capitulations are genuine or if they're just trying to save their research dollars. And it's probably the latter. So the big question is really, well, what do you put in their place? How do you return a kind of legitimate elite? And it seems very difficult because the methods and tactics of populism and the kind of people who generally lead populist movements are generally not. Not elites and don't have kind of elite tastes and so on. So it seems to me that we're in this period of disruption and experimentation out of which some genuine reforms and corrections might be born. But it's not at all clear how it's going to shake out. In the case of education, do the universities have to be completely destroyed? Do they have to completely collapse, whether of their own weight or as a result of legislation or other sort of hostile measures to diminish their standing. Is that necessary or can they be reformed from within? There's various movements in some public universities to fund these centers for Western civilization and various other kind of right leaning academic centers. And those seem to be pretty beneficial. There's one out of the University of Florida, the Hamilton School, which has recently attracted a historian from Harvard, James Hankins, has decided to go there. And when you have major people moving from Harvard to some public university in Florida, that seems like a pretty positive sign. But it really has to happen en masse for anything really significant to happen. I think a lot of this will maybe get shaken out when people retire. As people age, there's a whole generation of professors in the universities who are, you know, getting up there in age and probably their jobs won't be replaced for budgetary reasons. And then the question will just be who comes after them? It seems to me that the very ideological people who have been hired in the universities, especially in the last 15 years, those people are going to be even more radical than the people who are retiring. So maybe that will kind of accelerate things toward collapse. But it'd be nice if they didn't collapse. And I think conservative, I think, is mournful of the collapse of of once great institutions. I had the privilege of going to Oxford in December to participate in this workshop that was going on there. It was the first time I'd ever been there. I was just really impressed by the place. But also sort of sad that this once great institution and it's not been maintained in the right kind of way by the right people with the right kinds of priorities. And it's hard to go to those places and think that and come away thinking that something has really been preserved. And then you have other examples where people are building new alternative institutions. And that's a very kind of uneven business. I don't know how close you follow this, but there's a university in Texas called the University of Austin, which was started by various figures on the sort of dissident right, dissident left, you might say. And it's been some sort of uneven results, I would say. Was it a piece that came out in Politico that was sort of saying this whole business is kind of in shambles and it's all being driven by money and ideology and it's really not this kind of free speech bastion that it promised to be? And I have no idea actually, because I had not Visited there, but seems to me you're going to have a lot of uneven progress at the beginning. But that's not a reason to avoid trying to build genuine alternatives. And actually my hope really for myself is to end up at one of these sort of alternative academic institutions at some point. The, the movement has been slower, I would say, out west in California. It's been more prominent in other places where conservatives have more political power. So we need a new, we need a new elite. It's just a question of where they, where they come from. And of course, it'd be nice to be in that elite, but, you know, one can only pray for these things.
- [68:54]
B
You, you also recast conservatism as a journey home. What do you mean by that? And what kind of near term victories, institutional victories, would indicate that the conservatives are genuinely progressing towards that? And when you say journey home, I'm also keen to know if that home is inclusive of all the different multicultural societies that we live in these days.
- [69:18]
A
Yeah, the conservative view of this is that we're engaged in a journey and has this kind of narrative structure. And the journey is to journey home and it's to really understand where you are and where you came from and to kind of investigate the past. And that's kind of what the book was about, to investigate these ideas in the past, these philosophical ideas, to know where we are in a true sense, as if we know it for the very first time now, whether we're succeeding in this journey. It's not as if we're traveling on a map and we can say, all right, well, we're like two thirds of the way home. So I guess things are going pretty well. It's definitely a metaphorical home. And so there's a question of, well, what sort of signs would indicate that we're going in the right direction? And I guess here I would say the general resurgence in church attendance, traditional church attendance, which apparently has been increasing kind of the age of the new atheism is over, I guess, which I was very much a part of when it was going strong. And so church attendance is up, especially among younger people. I was at this March for Life Mass this morning, and there's a bunch of young people on the front row. And that was nice to see. Actually, one of them was a former student of mine at Santa Clara University. It was nice to see her there. So that would be, I think, the best sign that we're actually progressing home, because I do think religion is at the foundation of our culture and of the story that we could tell about ourselves. And so if we're going back to the beginnings of the story, that's a sign that we're going back in the, in the right direction. I'm fairly pessimistic, I would say, about the political wins. You know, the, the Trump administration's been doing all this stuff in the first year, and they've had a lot of successes and, you know, a lot of bad media attention and so on, especially with immigration. I don't know how permanent that stuff's going to be because, you know, somebody else is going to take over and probably just undo everything. So I think the really important stuff is the cultural change, because that will outstand and persist even with changes at the political level. So I hope I'm hopeful about those things.
- [71:37]
B
Dr. Tristan Rogers, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us about your book. The book we just discussed was called Conservatism Past and Present, A Philosophical Introduction, published by Routledge Press. Thank you very much for your time.
- [71:51]
A
Thank you very much for having me.