The Success of the American Revolution

How can American conservatism be reconciled with a revolutionary founding?

The American Revolution began 250 years ago. Although independence from Britain wouldn’t be declared until 1776, the first shot of the war, “the shot heard round the world”, was fired at Lexington and Concord in 1775.

America was born of a revolution, and revolutions ever since have easily captured the popular imagination. Americans love revolution. New social movements, populist uprisings, Silicon Valley disruptors, avant-garde art and cinema, giant leaps and bounds in science and technology. The language and ideal of total transformation is everywhere in America. Tear it all down. Rebuild from scratch. Innovate or die. New, new, new.

What are American conservatives to make of all this? William F. Buckley’s famous description of conservatives standing athwart history and yelling “Stop!” seems to conflict with the nation’s revolutionary founding. Had the conservatives won the day 250 years ago, would we still be speaking the King’s English? How can we reconcile American conservatism with the nation’s revolutionary past?

It’s an interesting question. 50 years ago around the time of the 200^th anniversary of the founding, American conservatives were grappling with the same question. In his 1972 essay, The American Revolution as a Successful Revolution, Irving Kristol pointed out that, unlike the French, Russian, or Chinese revolutions, America’s revolution didn’t try to perfect humanity or create a utopian society. It aimed instead to secure rights the colonists had long claimed as their own, rooted in English tradition.

In that sense, Kristol argued, the American Revolution was conservative as well as revolutionary. It was about preserving self-government, preserving the rule of law, and preserving liberty. It was specifically not about rewriting human nature or creating a perfect society. Modest aims rooted in a desire to preserve. That’s why it worked.

Another giant of 20^th century conservatism, Russell Kirk, agreed. Kirk famously saw the American Revolution as more of a restoration than a rupture. For Kirk, the founders weren’t unleashing a radical social experiment; they were reaffirming the inherited rights of Englishmen. They wanted to protect ordered liberty by balancing freedom from arbitrary authority with the continuation of social stability.

Kristol and Kirk, in their different voices, were making essentially the same point – the American Revolution succeeded because it didn’t get carried away. It had limited goals, grounded in respect for tradition. It prioritized continuity over utopian dreams. And because it was modest in scope, it delivered durable results.

Contrast that with the revolutions Kristol warned against. The French Revolution started with grand rhetoric about liberty and equality, but quickly descended into the Terror, mass executions, purges, descent into military dictatorship, endless continent-spanning wars, and ultimately the restoration of the monarchy.

The Russian Revolution likewise aimed to build a classless paradise but ended in the purges, gulags, and paranoia of Stalinism. The Chinese Revolution dreamed of erasing old hierarchies and unleashing perfect revolutionary virtue, only to collapse into the state-sponsored starvation of Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the millions killed during the Cultural Revolution.

All of these movements believed they could transform human beings, purify society, and uproot and replace tradition full stop. All of them descended into what can only be called, in the most literal sense, evil.

Today, we are living through another moment of ideological mania, with movements across the spectrum treating politics as an existential crusade. On the populist right, trust in government and institutions are at all time-lows. The ascendant post-liberals denigrate historically conservative points of pride like the founders and the Constitution. On the progressive left, you see much more pervasive demands to tear down supposedly irredeemable structures. Police, schools, the entire economic order, private property rights, the electoral college, and the list goes on. Both sides have revolutionary impulses, and the support for political violence has alarmingly risen across the political spectrum as well. Both left and right seem to be convinced that salvation can only come through a revolutionary break with the past.

But history suggests that is precisely how revolutions go off the rails. Our politics today is allergic to incrementalism. Our culture wars treat compromise as betrayal. Our policy debates get wrapped up in apocalyptic struggles of good vs. evil. Historically speaking, this approach couldn’t be more dangerous.

The founders, as Kristol and Kirk both understood, were pragmatists. They were suspicious of moral absolutism. They recognized that real progress usually comes through defending hard-won freedoms, refining institutions, and working with the grain of human nature rather than reinventing it.

The founders changed the world precisely because they didn’t try to change everything about the world. That’s why their revolution lasted.

For conservatives today, there’s much to learn from the success of the American revolution. Modesty. Restraint. A preference for preserving liberty and tradition rather than imposing virtue. Conservatism is essentially a disposition that lends itself to political projects based in moderation and incrementalism. The moderation and preservation-minded aims of the American Revolution fit into this conservative framework, especially when compared to the subsequent totalizing revolutions in France, Russia, and China.

Kristol and Kirk remind us that the conservative qualities of the American Revolution make it a model for success amidst a sea of other revolutions that led to nothing but horror. Against the backdrop of America’s current polarized political insanity, some reflection on the American Revolution and the reasons for its success could go a long way.