As I have said, I am unmoved by his speechmaking. Having been a talker for a living most of my life, I am well aware of how to say nothing well. He often does. As I have said before, were he not half-black, he would not be where he is.
I became a conservative several years ago, after a lifetime as a liberal. I looked for some kind of intellectual framework for my (even to me, startling) conversion and found the most helpful and congenial one in the work of American philosopher John Kekes.
I have not read him completely nor would I say that I am anything at all like an expert in his thought. But what I have read over the years, I have mostly liked.I have especially appreciated his critical reading of the American Marx (my words, not Kekes'), John Rawls, who powerful influence has helped make American liberalism the dangerous animal that it has become.
In a nutshell, Kekes says:
"Moderate skepticism about general theories in politics; pluralism about traditions, values, and conceptions of a good life; traditionalism; and pessimism about human perfectibility and the eradication of evil jointly define the version of conservatism that is the best alternative to its chief contemporary rivals: liberalism and socialism."
This from a very short piece outlining what conservatism is, according to Dr. Kekes, who has written quite a lot about political and moral philosophy. He takes the ineradicable existence of evil very seriously, holds a traditional and non-utopian view of justice, thinks that history is a far better source of wisdom about political arrangements than is rational or religious ideology, and has played out the problems with and the bad outcomes of the egalitarian fantasies that lie at the heart of modern liberalism.
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