Ted Honderich's "Conservatism" is what it says: it seeks to work out what conservatism is, both in theory and practice. To this end, Honderich looks at definitions of conservatism offered up by self-proclaimed conservatives and compares and contrasts them, trying to find what they have in common.



This is not an easy task, since conservatism is a somewhat protean phenomenon. It seems to be pretty whatever its adherents want it to be. After going through the history of conservatism from Burke to Blair, Honderich's conclusion will not come as a pleasant one to most idealistic young conservatives - assuming that there are idealistic young conservatives out there (let's be generous and assume that there are some).



Honderich argues that conservatism amounts to nothing but self-interest by another name. The common factor that unites all conservatives is that they will do and say pretty much anything if it will protect their own interests: in other words, they are not prepared to sacrifice their own interests and privileges in the name of any impersonal principle such as "altruism", "mercy", "the greater good", "the revolution", "freedom", "charity" or whatever. Conservatives have historically talked up a good line in rhetoric in an attempt to disguise the fact that their philosophy is a rather threadbare defence of selfishness, but - says Honderich - that's nevertheless what conservatism is.



It has to be said that Honderich's definition does work well in practice. For example, it is highly doubtful that your typical neo-conservative pundit would argue in favour of preventive war if he or she were likely to be called up to fight such a thing. Conservatism has had such a success in making itself look like a higher principle that many American voters are eager to vote directly against their own economic and political interests, simply because they have been persuaded that to do otherwise would be anti-American (or anti-religion, or pro-gay, or pro-Islam, or pro-socialist). Identifying conservative interests with the American flag is one of the neatest stunts that American conservatives have ever pulled off, and it took an administration as grossly incompetent and as flagrantly corrupt as the Bush administration to break the spell, at least in the minds of some people. It's hard to fool people that you're patriotic when you are burning the U.S. Constitution and making piles of money out of a foreign war.