Three approaches to modern conservatism

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has a helpful rundown on the three orientations of modern conservatism, breaking it into three different camps. Read it here. The rundown basically identifies three types of modern conservative:

• Individualist 
• Fusionist 
• Traditionalist

Give it a read for a quick overview of the variety of conservative thought out there. The rundown does a pretty good job describing the three different perspectives that inform much of modern conservative thought, although it fails to point out the deep roots that each approach shares in common within the American experience, drawing on the Whig tradition of skepticism to centralized power that developed prior to the American Revolution. While there are deep differences among the different camps within modern conservatism, and at times outright hostility, they are united by a common Whigish understanding of politics and the proper role of government. 

This is true even of the traditionalist conservatives, folks who like Russell Kirk often identify most strongly with the Tory approach to government and public life. But even devout followers of Kirk acknowledge an indebtedness to the Whig tradition -- Kirk's guiding star for approaches to public policy was, after all, the English statesman Edmund Burke, a man who was no Tory in his politics but was a member of the Whig party.

Burke, Lincoln & the Whig idea of reform

Greg Weiner has an essay posted over at The Imaginative Conservative exploring the link in the thought between the two great Whig statesmen: Edmund Burke, Abraham Lincoln and the Problem of Greatness. Both Burke and Lincoln were men of conservative temperament who believed in reform through, as Weiner notes, the Whig concepts of gradual improvement and sound morality. "These are," as he puts it, "the essence of prudence." Lincoln and Burke are models of the reforming statesman, who look not to the disruption of ambition and distinction but rather to another path for excellence in reform: "prudence itself as a form of excellence worth celebrating too." As Russell Kirk was fond of pointing out, one of the key frames through which a conservative politician & statements views politics is the virtue of prudence, a virtue that enables the right deployment of the other virtues in both person and public life. And in politics, one of the key principles of prudential reform is continuity.

Nowhere is Lincoln's vision of continuity & reform more on display than in the Gettysburg Address, delivered by the man who led the battle to save the Union in the face of those who would destroy the country in order to propagate the institution of chattel slavery:

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Amen to that, Mr. President. Amen to that.