The Importance of Being Grateful

To be conservative is to be grateful.

Welcome back to The Burnett Breakdown during one of the best weeks of the year. In the spirit of thankfulness, I would be immensely thankful to anyone who shared this with a friend or subscribed themselves. With gravy and political opinions overflowing, it’s the perfect time to slip in a mention of The Burnett Breakdown to a family member who loves giving their political opinion.

The Tempting of Progressives

In one of my favorite articles, entitled “Conservatism and Gratitude,” Yuval Levin writes, “To my mind, conservatism is gratitude. Conservatives tend to begin from gratitude for what is good and what works in our society and then strive to build on it, while liberals tend to begin from outrage at what is bad and broken and seek to uproot it.”

I think this is essentially right. Gratitude is fundamentally tied up with conservatism because one has to be grateful for something to want to conserve it in the first place.

This goes beyond politics. Any organization has “conservatives” who are less willing to move on from how things have been traditionally done because they appreciate how far the traditional methods have gotten them. “Pen and paper have worked great, so why should we change that for this computer thing?” - that sort of thing.

The heart of progressivism is to be discontent with the status quo and seek to make changes that will make things better. This is why progressives are constantly talking about the evils of America, usually without acknowledging the wonderful aspects, because they are looking at what America can be and, to some extent, should be.

This is why, in some sense, progressivism is necessary for any flourishing society. Levin takes note of this in the same piece, “You need both [conservatives and liberals], because some of what is good about our world is irreplaceable and has to be guarded, while some of what is bad is unacceptable and has to be changed.”

The problem with a lot of progressivism though is that it too frequently stumbles into utopianism. Progressives begin advocating not for what America (or any organization) can be but for what they want America to be with no regard for what is possible or what has to be done to achieve that end. There is also the metaphysical question that progressives never seem to wrestle with: how much can you change about something before it ceases to be that thing? How much can you change about America before it ceases to be America?

Thus, there is a temptation for progressives to long for a better future and lose gratitude for what they have at the moment. In the American context, this lack of present gratitude leaves them unequipped to do the things necessary to care for the America of today. They are like a parent who are so concerned with the person they want their child to be in the future that they don’t tend to their child’s needs today.

The Tempting of Conservatives

The problem with conservatism is that humans are prone to forget just how good we have it. This is not just an American problem, but a human problem, as the Roman poet Ovid attested to when he wrote before Christ, “the harvest is always richer in another man’s field” - a precursor to the English phrase “the grass is always greener on the other side.”

Conservatives are faced with the unenviable task of having to remind themselves, and everyone else, that what we presently have is actually really good and worth maintaining.

Because gratitude is part of the fabric of conservatism, you can always look at the health of conservatism by evaluating how quickly conservatives express thankfulness for what they are seeking to conserve. When conservatives are decrying how awful everything is right now, that should be an alarm bell that something is amiss.

I think this is why I found so much of Trump’s rhetoric to be anti-conservative. He is constantly talking about just how bad things are and what changes need to be made. Anyone who opposes him is an enemy seeking to destroy the country and not merely someone who disagrees with particular policies. Or, to say that in just four years, this country is “almost unrecognizable” from when he was last in office.

This is not to say that conservatives can never criticize what is happening in America, but there is a difference between identifying things that can be better and describing the current situation as “American carnage” as Trump said in his 2016 inaugural address.

At its root, this is the same ungratefulness that plagues progressivism.

We Have It Great

While I’ve certainly had my issues with America under Biden (inflation, immigration, student “loan forgiveness”, Afghanistan withdrawal, just to name a few), it is always worth remembering how much better we have it than the rest of the world.

For instance, Ukraine is currently fighting an unprovoked war with an aggressive neighbor in which approximately 60,000-100,000 men have died with approximately 400,000 injured, hundreds of women raped, and hundreds of children abducted. Not to mention, Ukrainians have faced a constant barrage of rockets and drones along with electrical blackouts to make survival in the freezing winter all the more difficult.

On the other side, Russia has suffered 600,000 casualties (dead and wounded), inflation is running rampant, interest rates are over 20%, and Russians have no ability to advocate changes that would improve their lives.

In the Middle East, Israel is in the midst of fighting a war that has taken the lives of over 800 of its soldiers after 1,200 of its citizens were killed and hundreds more taken captive in one day. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed in the war with over a million more displaced from their homes. Lebanon has seen thousands of its civilians killed as Israel has attempted to root out Hezbollah.

There is no shortage of misery on the African continent with Sudan raging in a years-long civil war. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, “Since the conflict began on April 15, 2023, almost 15,000 people have been killed, and more than 8.2 million have been displaced, giving rise to the worst displacement crisis in the world… more than 25 million need humanitarian assistance, and deteriorating food security risks are triggering the “world’s largest hunger crisis.”

In the Western hemisphere, Haiti is rife with gang violence in its capital city which has killed thousands of civilians, and approximately five million others face starvation. Venezuelans recently participated in an election that was a complete fraud with its current dictator declaring victory despite the mathematical implausibility based on released precinct data.

In Asia, Hong Kong, under the direction of Mainland China, just jailed 45 people for having the audacity to advocate for democracy, and Uyghurs in western China are being used as slave labor in internment camps.

You don’t have to just compare the US to the developing world to see stark differences, but it is also doing significantly better than other developed countries as well. Primarily, the United States is significantly more productive and richer than Europe. As Politico recently wrote, “In 1990, U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was 16 percent higher than the eurozone’s. By 2023, the difference had doubled, to more than 30 percent.”

This is essentially the same newsletter that I write every few months in which I say “Look around the world and see how great we have it.” That’s because, as I mentioned at the beginning, conservatism differs from progressivism in its capacity for gratitude. The essence of conservatism is gratitude for the present reality.

This Thanksgiving is an opportune time for conservatives to remember how great America is right now (yes, even under the Biden administration) compared to the rest of the world because, at the end of the day, an ungrateful conservative is not far removed from being a progressive.

God Bless,
Hunter Burnett