The late great Donald Westlake signed letters (and emails) “Onward.” This wonderfully opaque valediction leaves altogether unclear the writer’s own sentiments toward the addressee or the character of his relationship to the correspondent. What does “Onward” really mean? Presumably we all go onward whether we wish to or not. We move onward in whatever direction fate or providence takes us, whatever our plans and preferences.
Still, doesn’t “Onward” convey some sense of hope? Doesn’t it seem to suggest an openness to the future, tending even towards a guarded optimism, though combined perhaps with a touch of cheerful fatalism about one’s ability really to shape it?
This isn’t a bad stance for conservatives in the face of an incoming Trump administration. “Onward” implies resisting the temptation to indulge in a warm bath of nostalgia for the past. It implies resisting the temptation to indulge in lamentations or recriminations or mindless affirmations in the present. It implies resisting the temptation to indulge in the odd attraction of fatalistic surrender to a dark future.
We are conservatives—American conservatives, which means we are classical liberals with both a respect for the wisdom of the past and an openness to the lessons of the present. We are neither progressives with a faith in History nor populists with a faith in Vox Populi. If conservatives today have an orthogonal relationship with the main tendencies in American politics—well, that means the insights of American conservatism are more necessary than ever.
Among those insights is an awareness of the contingencies that shape history and of the challenges and opportunities that characterize democratic politics. We know America has no manifest destiny. We know America does not face manifest doom. We know we do have a manifest duty to our predecessors, our contemporaries, and our posterity. We know America remains an experiment in liberty and self-government that can succeed, and that can fail.
Allan Bloom wrote at the end of The Closing of the American Mind,
What is not in doubt is that our stewardship will be judged. What is not in doubt is that it would be terrible if we were weighed, and found wanting.
Onward.
