Is there such a thing as a Dutch Conservative? Well, blow me down if there is!

Most people who have an interest in things political are likely to be of the opinion that Dutch people are liberal in the main. Not only are there constant references to the liberal or progressive policies of the Netherlands in the world’s media, the Dutch themselves are keen to boast of their liberalism. They have never seemed reluctant, whether in a private or public capacity, to put themselves forward as the very model of where a country should be going in terms of homosexual rights, abortion, euthanasia – you know, all those issues that feature in the bulging canon of the politically correct. Only the Dutch would set up an ‘abortion ship’ and full of indignation sail it over to Ireland to rescue those poor Irish women oppressed by that country’s backward laws on abortion. It is a very serious matter to correct the unenlightened policies of foreign countries. One of Holland’s great political satirist, Wim Kan, said famously about the socialist government of Prime Minister Den Uyl that his government was tardy in domestic reform because they first had to reform the rest of the world (an accurate but non-literal translation of what he said).

It is fair to say that I am perhaps more qualified than most people to make a judgment about the political mentality of the Dutch. Although a sixth generation Australian from mostly English ancestry with a bit of Irish and Scottish blood flavouring the mix, I came into contact with Holland and the Dutch forty years ago (1968). That contact has remained close ever since. Not only in a casual manner but also in a formal manner.

I lived in Amsterdam for two and half years (1971-73) and when I returned to Australia and resumed university studies, I was able to complete a major in Dutch language and literature at Melbourne University which happened to be the only university in Australia to have a fully-fledged Dutch Department. At a certain point, I transferred to La Trobe University where I studied through to a Masters degree in philosophy, my thesis being on Edmund Burke’s Natural Law conservatism. Through the years I have visited Holland around every three years. Thus the two main points of my background pertinent to the comments here and which would normally lead one to think that one was competent to judge on the matter.

Experiencing liberal society in Holland

As I say, the Dutch boast of their ‘liberal, tolerant society', they and their admirers situating them at the vanguard of social progress in our liberal democracies. I have always put it a little differently, as the reader may have gathered by this. I remember commenting years ago that Holland was a place where liberalism had run amok, that Dutch liberalism was eating away at the foundations of their traditional Dutch society, and that the normally sober-minded Dutch would turn into a drooling incoherence when it came to political and social matters. The sort of English conservatism, in the style of Edmund Burke, was nowhere to be found in Holland, I said always with much feeling and emphasis. And if ever it surfaced from some subterranean bog-like hole in the swampy fields in the most deserted spot, it would be immediately detected and escorted under close political guard direct to the ferry at Hoek van Holland or Vlissingen and sent straight back to where it belonged among the Lords and Ladies, country manors and fox hunts! For years I had been claiming loudly that there was no such animal as a Dutch Conservative. It seems that I was wrong.

Some months ago I received a short email from a young friend of Dutch background. It read: ‘So you thought there was no such thing as a Dutch Conservative…’ and he attached the following website: http://www.burkestichting.nl/nl/welkom/index.html It is the website for The Edmund Burke Stichting. In English it's The Edmund Burke Foundation. The site, as one would expect of the Dutch, has an English section: http://www.burkestichting.nl/en/index.html

‘Stichting’ is the Dutch word for ‘foundation’. In certain contexts, English speakers would use the word ‘society', thus The Edmund Burke Society. Indeed there is such a society in America: http://www.kirkcenter.org/burke/.

So there I sat staring stupefied at the conjunction of the two words I would never have thought would occur in Dutch. for some minutes trying to digest the meaning of the conjunction. I then went to the website and had to undergo the uncomfortable feeling one has when one is proved comprehensibly wrong in a long held opinion.

In brief, the Edmund Burke Stichting is a true conservative group. I say ‘true conservative’ because most people, led by the liberal/left media, use the word ‘conservative’ pejoratively, as a sneer and a put-down, to describe people who irrationally resist change. Others associate ‘conservatism’ only with economic rationalism when true conservative thought rejects any theory that is unconnected with actual circumstances and free of moral supervision. Philosophical conservatism has a pedigree that runs back to Plato and Aristotle. It was Edmund Burke, Irishman and member of the British House of Parliament, who in an unparalleled way drew on that heritage to enunciate through more than thirty years of life as a politician principles and attitudes that mark the modern Conservative. In other words, conservatism entails a particular vision of life. Now rather than summarising the mission statement of the Edmund Burke Stichting to make the point, I will include here a few paragraphs from their website [as in 2002. There is has since been an updating].

Welcome to the Edmund Burke Foundation (or Stichting, in Dutch), the first and only explicitly conservative organization in The Netherlands. The Edmund Burke Foundation was formed at the end of 2000 as a non-partisan public policy platform to promote conservatism in The Netherlands. The Burke Foundation seeks to promote conservative philosophy, develop policy proposals, bring together those interested in conservatism in The Netherlands and to change public opinion in our notoriously 'progressive' country.

This website provides a brief overview of who we are, what our mission is, and what we have accomplished thus far.

Why Burke?

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) has been chosen as the namesake of the Foundation because of his crucial influence both on conservatism as a political philosophy and on Dutch conservative political thought in particular. In The Netherlands, Burke was particularly influential in the 19th century, when his writings shaped politicians like G. K. Hogendorp, who restored the Dutch monarchy after the downfall of Napoleon and authored the first Dutch constitution, and G. Groen van Prinsterer (1801-1876), who prepared the way for the Anti-Revolutionary Party, formed in 1878 by Abraham Kuyper. Groen van Prinsterer was the author of the Burkean tract Ongeloof en Revolutie (1847, Unbelief and Revolution), a classic of Christian conservatism.

We invoke the spirit of Edmund Burke in the hope to make his timeless conservatism timely yet again in our country.

Principles

The core ideas of the Burke Foundation are the principles of a truly free society: the individual's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of the good life. We recognize that liberty without restraint is license. We therefore affirm that the only freedom worth pursuing respects the values and objective moral norms of the Judeo-Christian tradition of the West. We seek to uphold the rule of law, the sanctity of life and limited government. The Burke Foundation recognizes that worthwhile institutions -such as church, school, university, family, secure property- are hard to build, but easy to destroy, and that since a life without such institutions is seriously impoverished, they must be defended with vigor.

The English text of the website is limited. The Dutch text provides, of course, far more information. It is a pity that it is only accessible to Dutch speakers. There are two pieces that are of particular interest. B.J. Spruyt, chief political editor of Reformatorisch Dagblad, (Reformed Daily) wrote a short article for his magazine about Edmund Burke and his influence on The Netherlands. I must admit that this part of Dutch political and social history is unknown to me. One of the main figures in the tradition of Dutch conservatism was a lawyer, Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer (1801-1876), as mentioned above. Groen van Prinsterer was fulsome in his admiration of Burke’s thought and the influence Burke had on his own thinking. What struck me was the following passage in Spruyt’s article:

Groen van Prinsterer…called [Burke] ‘a mighty genius’ in whom ‘the warmth of conviction and the imaginative fervour was not cooled by the accuracy and penetration of his inquiry’.

(Groen van Prinsterer (1801-1876)…noemde hem „een machtig genie", in wie „de warmte der overtuiging en de gloed der verbeelding door nauwkeurigheid en diepzinnigheid van onderzoek niet bekoeld is.")

This appealed to me because it focuses on a crucial element in Burke’s thought that is missed by the utilitarian interpretation and mostly by the Natural Law interpreters. Groen van Prinsterer is demonstrating his own penetration of Burke’s thought by acknowledging the role of natural feeling in moral judgment. This is not the place to embark on an explanation of the epistemological content of Burke’s thought. I only bring it up to demonstrate the fidelity the Burke Stichting is showing towards Burke’s thinking.

The second piece is a long essay by Professor A.A.M. Kinneging entitled, Het Conservatisme: Kritiek van de Verlichting en de Moderniteit (Conservatism: Critique of the Enlightenment and Modernity). It runs to 33 pages printed out. It is not possible nor the intention to discuss such a substantial analysis of conservatism in this brief comment. However, it is interesting to note the thrust of the essay.

The fundamental doctrine of conservative thought according Kinneging is the essential fallibility of man. More than this: it is the propensity or inclination to evil that lies in the human breast. Kinneging states it thus:

The inclination to evil, the human person’s propensity to fall short morally, is for conservatism the most substantial dimension of the conditio humana, the denial of which [is] the source and origin of the greatest part of social and individual misery. Conservatism is only to be understood if one perceives that this is its fundamental doctrine – [if one perceives] especially what sort of a doctrine this is.

(De geneigdheid tot het kwade, het morele tekortschieten van de mens, is voor het conservatisme de meest wezenlijke dimensie van de conditio humana, de ontkenning ervan de bron en oorsprong van het grootste deel van maatschappelijke en individuele miserie. Het conservatisme valt alleen te begrijpen, als men inziet dat dit zijn meest fundamentale doctrine is, maar vooral ook wat dit voor een doctrine is.)

This leads into a long discussion of moral responsibility and the difference ways classical conservative thought and the Enlightenment thinkers dealt with it. Although there is nothing I would disagree with in the analysis, I am not wholly convinced that the doctrine as explained by Kinneging is the fundamental doctrine of classical conservatism. Certainly it is a crucially important part, but if I had been asked before reading this essay what the key elements of conservative thought were I would have said belief in God’s providential order in the world, the ability of the human person to recognize God’s moral law, the ability to choose to obey or reject that law, and man’s limited reasoning ability - all characteristic of Burke's thought. So much builds on these elements. I would have connected the inclination to evil with man’s moral reasoning powers.

It occurred to me later that perhaps Professor Kinneging is giving an account of conservatism from the direction of Protestantism, and I from the position of Catholic social thinking in which classical realist metaphysics and the Natural Law are fundamental. There is a Protestant natural law tradition, but that derives from Grotius and Pufendorf rather than from the Thomistic tradition. I refer to the work of Professor K. Haakonssen.

Holland at the vanguard of a conservative revival?

Whatever the case, this is not the place to pursue the matter. The point of this comment is to reveal to the outside world that there is such a thing as a Dutch conservative, that there is even a tradition of true conservatism in Holland and that an enthusiastic band of Dutch people seem to be entering as zealously into its propagation as the Dutch liberal/left did with their agenda forty years ago. Indeed, as I read the Dutch newspapers and commentaries on the web, I see that the swing to a moral and social conservatism is more pronounced in Holland than it is in Australia. Journalists and other commentators are taking up positions on a range of PC dogma that would appal the PC-class here. One Dutch newspaper, NRC Handelsblad, is running a series of impartial articles on conservatism and the swing to the right in Holland. One of the great ironies of the first years of the 21st century may be that Holland is leading a real conservative revival across our decaying Western society: a thought too astonishing to reconcile at the moment.

Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com