Poetry and the Politics of Aspirational Conservatism
Populism, at the moment, is riding high in the saddle. Young people on the left and right alike feel that liberalism has somehow failed and are now reaching for what some have called the “strong gods” of ideology. It is perhaps unsurprising that the socialist vanguard rejects the American Constitution in favor of utopian dreams; the newer and perhaps more troubling trend among those on the right is a nationalism that seems to have little admiration for the principles of this nation’s founding. Rather than respecting the careful limits our Constitution imposes on power, the new ideologues of the right seek to seize as much of it as they can to fight and, they hope, defeat their enemies.
As I have written elsewhere, this attitude is quite understandable in some ways—although destined for failure. Aside from a number of important wins at the Supreme Court, social conservatism seems to be in near-terminal decline. Even the present Republican administration, supposedly put in office by the energy of the New Right, seems incapable of doing much to reverse the damage done by liberalism. Indeed, many of its policies seem to be making social ills such as pornography, addictive drugs, and even abortion far more pervasive. The lesson ought to be clear: one faction seizing power cannot lead to social renewal.
What is most needed, then, is not reactionary rage but what John Wilsey aptly describes as “aspirational conservatism” in his book Religious Freedom: A Conservative Primer. More than the squabbles of party politics, conservatives ought to be concerned with defending our civilization’s way of life and the ordered liberty that sustains it. Looking back to another great crisis in Western history—World War II—the example of two poets, Peter Viereck and T. S. Eliot, can better illustrate the meaning of an aspirational conservatism than the slogans of politicians.
Viereck is a somewhat neglected figure among conservatives today. Wilsey has done a great service by recovering his voice and vision. Born in 1916 to George Sylvester Viereck—who later was convicted as a Nazi spy—the poet and historian became all too well-acquainted with the dangers of reactionary ideology through his father’s poisonous extremism and mania for Adolf Hitler. As Wilsey put it, this “profound knowledge of authoritarian rightism from study and experience” was what “sets Viereck apart from his contemporaries.” While many conservative minds (especially those in the National Review circle) in the middle of the twentieth century focused on the fight against ideologies of the left, Viereck chose to challenge totalitarianism wherever he found it.
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