Argument 2: Tradition and Continuity

Tradition is reason with a root. Our ancestors did not randomly associate in political arrangements. Our parliamentary system, our moral and legal codes are the result of thousands of years of distilled experience.

The Civil Sphere: The Crown is a living link between past and present and a symbol of the eternal. As our anchor, it is one of The Permanent Things.
Related Concepts: Tradition, History, Rootedness, Gravitas, Connection, Experience
Previous Posts: Why Monarchy? Why Tradition?; The proper role of tradition in Civil Society

TRADITION IS REASON WITH A ROOT. "The mark of insanity", wrote Chesterton, "is reason without a root, reason in a void." Rootedness in turn is the basis for gravitas and long organic experience, our standing ground against transient ideological fashion and a present-tense culture in which individualism and relativism hold sway. To turn a phrase on Paine, the churlish and persistent calls to "grow up" and dismantle the monarchy, to wilfully abandon our heritage and the institutions built by our ancestors, to overturn decades of distilled experience as if we somehow know better than the sum of generations past, is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.

And for what? Is it really possible to suppose that whatever republican system of government might be chosen; could possibly be better for us, than what we have evolved for ourselves over the course of a thousand years? Why this feckless urge to risk it all away, to trash our ancient Crown, to turn the page and begin anew? By driving out a "foreign" Queen, we gain what exactly, a foreign presidency and a foreign system of government?

As one of our scribes wrote here some years back:

"Our ancestors did not randomly associate in political arrangements. Our parliamentary system, our moral and legal codes are the result of thousands of years of distilled experience. Our institutions are organically grown from the trials, tribulations and experiments of our ancestors. They were not imposed from above to recognise created rights, but grew from below as recognitions of rights already existing. The right of trial by jury was created because our ancestors saw that a man could not impartially judge his own cause. The Petition of Right of 1688 and the Act of Settlement of 1701 state, “Whereas experience hath shewn”, and go on to recognise the fundamental rights of British subjects, rights which form the basis of our legal system. Institutions like Parliament, the law, the freedoms of religion and so on are thus all recognised not only by law but developed by tradition, rooted firmly in the village green. It is these traditions which progressivism as a philosophy seeks to challenge, not on the grounds of reason, but of ideology. The Privy Council, for instance, is “anachronistic” in the present government’s view, not because it fails to deliver a high standard of impartial justice but because it is a symbol of our dependence on the United Kingdom, which the government rejects as “infantile”. Progressivism hates the institutions of organic tradition because, as C.S. Lewis puts it, “they give the individual a standing ground against the state.”

Progress and tradition are often seen to be opposed, but they are not. T. S. Eliot responded to the claim that “We know more than our ancestors did” with the answer “and they are that which we know.” That is, tradition is and ought to be living. Progress comes from what Eliot called “the historical sense”, an awareness that “We are not the owners of the earth, but are trustees with life-renewing lease.” Tradition thus can only be renovated when it is understood."

When we lose sight of the concept of true progress, when we try to go after an unrealisable utopian ideal, we risk a great deal. Turning ourselves into a republic would probably not be catastrophic, there is a tradition of republicanism in this world we could awkwardly graft onto our own institutions, but we would gain precisely nothing by going through with it. Republicanism, after all, is not our tradition, not our roots. When it comes to embracing our good traditions, of availing ourselves of the capital of nations and ages, it is wise to stick with what we know, with what we are. "Yes there is a justification for tradition on the grounds of tradition alone; thus it is, and ever thus it has been, and ne'er has a soul come to harm becuase of it!"