The Intra-Conservative Quarrel Over Universal Principles | RealClearPolitics
So much do universal principles inform the West that in August, a group of 29 distinguished conservatives from Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. took to the pages of The European Conservative in response to National Conservatism: A Statement of Principles, which appeared in the magazine in June of this year. The authors of An Open Letter Responding to the NatCon Statement of Principles called on the national conservatives to recognize that universal principles form an indispensable component of the morality, politics, and faith the NatCons champion. Although we welcome its timely critique of destructive globalisation and sympathise with its call for the renewal of national culture and traditions, we find ourselves unable to agree with its assault on universalist ideologies, wrote the open letter s authors. What after all has underpinned the Western, European and Christian civilisation that National Conservatism claims to defend and uphold if not a universalist ethical, spiritual and, yes, political vision?
The original June 2022 NatCon Statement of Principles signed by some 75 intellectuals and opinion shapers from Europe, the Middle East, and North America confused matters by expressly attacking universalism while implicitly embracing it. We emphasize the idea of the nation because we see a world of independent nations each pursuing its own national interests and upholding national traditions that are its own as the only genuine alternative to universalist ideologies now seeking to impose a homogenizing, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe. This formulation mischaracterizes a genuine problem, which is not universal principles but a particular progressive interpretation of their substance and reach.