The Future of Conservatism

Trinity College, Dublin

Gold Medal for Honorary Patronage Ceremony

September 20, 2019

It is my honor to be here with you at Trinity College Dublin — although I must say that I was somewhat surprised by your invitation. I had assumed that you might have heard quite enough from America lately.

To be here at this storied university, an institution of higher learning truly worthy of that moniker is a highlight for this kid, raised the fifth of eleven children on a dry dusty cattle ranch in Snowflake Arizona.

But it wasn’t my modest upbringing that makes my appearance here today improbable. It was my youthful incuriosity to all things academic, a void filled by sports and myriad pursuits more satisfying to me than anything involving pen and paper.

After a church mission that took me overseas to southern Africa, it surprised no one that I ended up on a college campus that borders Hukilau Beach on Hawaii’s north shore. My first day of college found me not in class but on that beach trying to win the attention of a beautiful California girl — the same girl who sits with us in the audience today.

Time passed, and Cheryl and I found ourselves on the exact spot on the beach where we met nearly a decade before. We reminisced on the sand before taking a stroll on the adjacent campus. This place has sure changed, I suggested, that’s a new building on the right. No,Cheryl insisted, that’s the library, and it was here when we were.Well, it was new to me.

I should note that I became marginally more serious about school after leaving the beach — just not quite serious enough to avoid a career in politics.

Despite my meager academic credentials — or perhaps because of them — Trinity College, Dublin is something of a pilgrimage for me, this being the place that shaped the great mind of Edmund Burke, the father of modern conservatism. I am hoping, in some small measure, just by virtue of walking through these hallowed halls, some of his intellect will rub off.

A statesman’s chief virtue, according to Burke, was prudence. Oh, what Burke would make of the hash we have made of conservatism. Or the hash that professed conservatives have made of governance, discourse, and basic human decency. It pains me that some of the loudest voices call themselves conservative. Whatever the course, mean-spirited, nativist politics that has taken hold of my party in the United States is, it is not conservative. It is miles away, kilometers even, from the measured, dignified, restrained, Burkean model of conservatism.

Which is why — if you’ll forgive me — I found your extraordinary invitation to be here today all the more puzzling. Perhaps you confused me with someone else, because I have spent the better part of my adult life trying to advance a coherent conservative philosophy of government in America. Mission accomplished, wouldn’t you say? Yes, judging from our current politics, a rousing success. Let’s give Mr. Flake an award.

Needless to say, there is much work to do.

I’ve thought quite a bit lately about how future generations will view ours. In a thousand years, when the date arrives to open up our time capsule, what will they make of this moment, a moment when we should have had everything going our way?

Humankind had somehow emerged with its head held high out of the 20thcentury — the bloodiest yet most astonishingly creative period in history. It seemed that we had come to some broad consensus as to how an enlightened and civilized society should look, and how civilized people should treat each other.

We had figured some basic things out: We were living longer, with a better quality of life. Prosperity and political freedom were more widely distributed than ever. After the terrible world wars of the century just past we were actually as peaceful as we had ever been.

History, it was said, was over — liberal democracy and the values of free people and free elections had won, forever and always. And in the bargain, with the economic largesse of the rich countries of the West, some very smart people told us that the end of extreme poverty was not only possible, but was in sight.

And so, then what did we do? Why at this moment, given all of those things I just mentioned, American conservatives opted to turn on ourselves, to find enemies among our own countrymen and women, to tell degrading falsehoods about immigrants and refugees, to assume the worst of our allies.

And conversely, even to begin to emulate the movements and speech patterns — to “fall in love,” one might say — with some of the most brutal dictators ever conceived, and to decide that the institutions and norms, documents and ideals that had held us stable, peaceful and prosperous during a tumultuous time, well, those things were actually now the problem — and they would have to go.

This is the moment that we American conservatives decided to do all that — which makes this quite an auspicious and perilous moment indeed. History has woken up, tribalism is again in vogue, the Cold War isn’t as over as we once thought. And at the White House, we have someone who isn’t sure who the good guys and bad guys are, and has instead spent a great deal of his time in office waging a war against objective reality, thrusting an accusing finger at the “enemies of the people.” Just for old time’s sake.

All over the world the authoritarian impulse is resurgent, the bad guys are flexing their muscle, and they are being given encouragement by the leader of the free world. Duterte is doing a “great job,” says our President. He gives Erdogan “very high marks.” Putin is “a strong leader for his people.” And Kim Jong Un, whose country is itself a prison, is, according to our president, a guy with “a great personality” who “loves his people.” If as Edmond Burke observed, all that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, what would he make of this dictatorship fan club that has been assembled?

Why have we American conservatives given in to our worst impulses? And why have we rewarded figures who profit from dividing us? Do we have some perverse biological need to see how close to ruin we can push things, just to see what it is like? Have we learned nothing from history? When our descendants open that time capsule to make some sense of this moment, they will ask, mystified: What were they thinking?

From here today, let’s answer that question for them: We weren’tthinking. We are notthinking. In fact, we have a decided bias toward unthinkingat this moment in history.

So erratic has been America’s conduct of foreign policy, so subject to the flattery of strongmen and “beautiful letters” from tyrants, so untended have been our most enduring and crucial alliances, and so hostile and unsteady has been the tenor of our discourse with, well, just about everyone, that you might say that once this detour into destructive politics is over, once some semblance of order is restored to the American government, we will have no choice but to reconstitute our relationships with the world.

But to be honest, these conditions to varying degrees afflict all of us — whether we be in Dublin, in London, in Washington, or Ouagadougou. We are witnessing an incremental withdrawal from a commitment to the idea of liberal democracy. We witness ourselves being further broken apart from each other — as global alliances who have kept the peace for the better part of a century; as continental unions who have enjoyed and promoted economic stability and growth; and as communities and neighborhoods.

All of those subdivisions of humanity, from the largest to the smallest, from here in this glorious, ancient setting to my hometown of Snowflake, Arizona, and everywhere in between, we have all felt the effects of our recent turn to tribalism and coarseness, mistrust and misanthropy.

In this globalized society of ours, the only real alternative we have to getting along with each other is to be alone, completely alone. Let me tell you, I’ve tested that alternative, and it’s no picnic.

Ten years ago, I clicked on google earth and located a bunch of small uninhabited islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Determined to live out a strange dream I’ve had since my childhood on that dry, dusty ranch, I decided to maroon myself on one these remote islands for a week with no food or water and with minimal tools, just to see if I could survive.

Just to give you an idea how alone I was, and how lonely I was, after a few days on the island I picked up one of the hermit crabs that wandered through my camp and, with a sharpie pen that inexplicably made it into my meager survival kit, I wrote “number one” on his shell. I thought that this crab might just be doing laps around my camp. I wondered if I would see him again.

A while later, I picked up another hermit crab and wrote “number two” on his shell. By the end of the week, I had 126 numbered friends. I grew quite fond of number 72, with whom I often shared scraps of coconut. I was not so fond of 47, who pinched my big toe.

It has been said that no man is an Island. That I can confirm. When I find it difficult to be civil or decent to those with whom I disagree, when I am inclined to ignore the better angels of my nature, and give into my baser instincts, I think back on the lonely alternative.

As an aside, I’ve returned a few times to those lonely islands. In a bipartisan gesture a few years ago, New Mexico’s Democratic Senator, Martin Heinrich, and I went back to these Islands, were we survived for a week with virtually only one tool of survival, a machete, between us. Dangerous, I know, given the political climate.

Upon our return to civilization, Late night comic Steven Colbert quipped, “Flake and Heinrich proved once and for all that Republicans and Democrats can get along — when death is the only option!”

Politically, I am a conservative — that is not who I am, it is simply my view of the nature and function of government. In America, we would do well to understand that distinction again. The impulse to tribalism has clouded our judgment and blinded us to instances of when our tribe is dangerously wrong — or conversely, when our opponents are in the right.

In America, we seem to only allow ourselves two political parties — and I have a genuine respect for the other side. Some of the smartest people I know are in the other party. And what I love about our system is that by design it is meant to force compromise.

But compromise assumes good faith. And at the moment, the cynics and the moral vandals have stripped us of civic faith. The center is not holding. We are at war with ourselves. In Washington, Edmund Burke’s prudence has gone missing. And those who are meant to lead us are the ones driving us toward the brink.

I was until early this year a member of the United States Senate. I learned during my time in office that politics often makes us silent when we should speak, and silence is worthless in defense of democracy. In my view, silence equals complicity. I have children and grandchildren to answer to, and so, I decided at the beginning of the administration of our current president that I would not be silent.

And so I wrote a book in defense of the principles that I have long claimed to believe in, and I spoke out. Well, it turns out that defending principles that are under attack and maintaining a political career are opposite goals. But you know what? A political career doesn’t mean much if we use our office to undermine the values that define us. There are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles.

And so, for the time being, I gave up that political career, because my role as a citizen was more important than my role as a politician. I made some powerful political enemies — well, one in particular — but that’s okay. One day both of us will be gone from the scene. The principles will remain. But only if we are willing to fight for them.

The prescription for what ails us is as simple as it is hard: Those who hold to the traditional view of conservatism in my country need to stand up, and speak up — for the record and for history.

For those running for office — don’t share the campaign stage with someone who taunts, derides and utters falsehoods about your colleagues and your countrymen and women. If you find yourself there on that stage, don’t join in, clap along, or simply look at the floor when the audience chants “Lock Her Up,” or “Send Them Back.” Push back. Step off the stage if you have to. This is not what you signed up for. Forget the political consequences. Trust me, you can go elsewhere for a job, but you cannot go elsewhere for a soul.

One thing is certain, we in America have a lot to learn from some of the conservatives next door in the United Kingdom, who have not been afraid to come to the defense of principle and country over party and position.

In a thousand years, what will they make of our time? Was this the fulcrum moment when self-government faltered and vanished, when diverse democratic systems broke apart? Or will we have turned back the vandals, and, having glimpsed the abyss, recommitted ourselves to these extraordinary experiments in democracy?

There is only one choice, really.

In the sweep of history, we Americans, after fighting our war of independence, survived a war between ourselves and managed to create a more perfect union. We ensured universal suffrage and ended up on the right side of the civil rights movement. It’s still not perfect union, but we always seem to be headed in the right direction. As Winston Churchill famously opined, Americans can be counted on to do the right thing after exhausting all alternatives.

It is my hope, and my belief that this fever of rancor and discord in my country will eventually break. That this unhappy sojourn into unfamiliar territory will be brief and anomalous. That we will return to ourselves once more, because good men and women ultimately heed the Burkean plea to stand and be counted. And the sooner the better.

Thank you for this privilege of Honorary Patronage, and thank you for having me here today.