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Family in the 1960s: What's Conservative Today?
Photo: Werner Otto / United Archives / picture alliance
Something is happening in the conservative and economically liberal circles of the CDU.
Tilman Kuban, 33, the chairman of the Junge Union, followed up on the idea he had expressed at the beginning of February to interpret conservatism in a modern way.
Together with Carsten Linnemann, the 43-year-old boss of the influential SME and Economic Union, he recently laid the foundations in a guest article in “Welt am Sonntag”.
It contains reflections on »high-tech and home«, »freedom and pluralism« and »security and cohesion«.
The last synthesis in particular is groundbreaking.
Because the exercise of common sense in a protective, strong state is what makes a conservative citizen not only in the corona crisis, even if the two politicians' adherence to Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer's idea of a compulsory year of service contradicts the idea of voluntary work.
With Kuban and Linnemann, the CDU's younger guard set out to gain the authority to define a contemporary conservatism.
That is also urgently needed.
After all, even the green Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg, Winfried Kretschmann, contributed verve to the debate in 2018 with a clever primer called "What we want to rely on - for a new idea of the conservative".
To the author
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Liane Bednarz
is a publicist and holds a doctorate in law.
She looks at current affairs from a liberal-conservative perspective.
In particular, she deals with the New Right, populism and religious movements.
In spring 2018, Droemer-Verlag published her last book "The fearful preachers - How right-wing Christians infiltrate society and churches".
Liane Bednarz lives in Hamburg.
The CDU conservatism has been grappling with from the right for a long time.
AfDlers and völkisch right-wing thinkers are too happy to label and play down themselves as »conservative«.
In doing so, they definitely attract former CDU voters, for whom the party moved too far into the middle during the Merkel era.
Unfortunately, conservative CDU members have made far too little clear why the western-influenced Union conservatism differs diametrically from the right-wing triad of anti-pluralism, anti-liberalism and ethnopluralism.
In East Germany, this substantive vacuum falls on the party's feet.
It is not enough to prohibit cooperation with the AfD.
You also have to explain why.
Kuban and Linnemann are also preparing to do this with a clear commitment to an "open society" and the rejection of "reactionary fantasies of isolation".
And they show a clear commitment to solidarity in the European Union, but with a view to the vaccination disaster, they rightly write this in the register that "credible politics must honestly admit mistakes".
It is not enough to prohibit cooperation with the AfD.
You also have to explain why.
Within the party, conservatives also feel constrained in the CDU.
After all, the CDU traditionally sees itself as a party which, in addition to the “commitment to the Christian image of man”, nourishes itself from “three roots”: the Christian-social, the liberal and the conservative.
In particular, the current party chairman, Armin Laschet, caused displeasure at the beginning of 2018 when he announced that “the core brand” of the CDU was “not the conservative”.
Rather, "the Christian image of man stands above everything".
For many, this looked as if Laschet wanted to chop off the conservative roots from the party tribe.
In fact, in his role as Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, he has proven to be someone who actively integrates various currents.
Especially in the form of his interior minister Herbert Reul, who was tough on clans, it shows how precisely Laschet also supplies the conservative party roots with nutrients.
That should reassure all those who are still grieving because Friedrich Merz is defeated in the fight for the CDU chairmanship.
Either way: If the Union wants to remain a people's party and keep its conservatives, neglected in the Merkel era, at stake, it has to outline what this wing of the party should stand for in the future.
This is the background against which Kuban and Linnemann determine their position.
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But isn't it an oxymoron to speak of "modern" or "progressive conservatism"?
Doesn't being conservative per se mean having outdated ideas?
No.
It never did.
Edmund Burke, in a sense the ancestor of the conservatives of western style, summed up the essence of conservatism in 1790: "A tendency to maintain and an ability to improve together make up the great statesman in my opinion." Such an attitude distinguishes one Conservatives both from a reactionary who wants to go back to some glorified past, and from a traditionalist who wants to freeze a certain status quo.
All the basic attitudes of the conservatives are derived from Burke's statement: They do not want to hold up progress, but rather to moderate it in order to make it "acceptable to all".
“Measure and center” is the motto.
The burden of proof for its superiority over the tried and tested always bears the new.
Over the years, this has resulted in a phenomenon that the liberal-conservative contemporary historian Andreas Rödder aptly described: "Conservatives today defend what they fought against yesterday."
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However, conservatives also stand for certain substantive values, including home and patriotism.
And here it becomes difficult for "modern conservatism" in two respects.
On the one hand, it is important to fill in these values in such a way that they differ from what right and left or left-wing liberals understand by them.
With regard to rights, it must be clear that these values are not understood to be exclusive, so immigrants are also allowed to find a (new or second) home here.
At the same time, the demarcation from those green milieus in which the concept of home is no longer frowned upon must succeed.
Here the CDU must not lose its ties to its district associations, which are also influenced by the petty-bourgeois classes, in which traditional customs are still upheld, especially in rural areas.
It is correct that in times of rapid progress, "home" is, as Kuban and Linnemann emphasize, a "place to recharge your batteries".
It should be added that it is also and especially in an increasingly digitalized globalization.
Not only the SPD, but also the CDU should urgently take care of the appreciation of the "somewheres" who, unlike the "anywheres", can easily feel culturally left behind.
The green tendency towards bans can and should be criticized, but at the same time refrain from flat-rate clubs, otherwise one alienates urban and younger electoral circles.
In general, conservative CDU members have to gain their own access to environmental and climate protection, following the example of the new chief bee protector Markus Söder of the sister party CSU, which has now become dear again.
With a view to the C in the name, it is important to understand this topic as "preservation of creation" instead of railing against climate protection as in certain currents that are fraying to the right or cultivating the favorite enemy image of the green "prohibition party", which is richly coated with patina.
Certainly, a tendency towards prohibitions can and should be criticized, but at the same time refrain from flat-rate clubs, otherwise one alienates urban and younger electoral circles.
The Hamburg CDU chairman Christoph Ploß, who is also young at the age of 35, is particularly exaggerated in this respect. He talks about "bans, harassment and state tutelage" and has therefore only just strictly rejected a coalition with the Greens at federal level.
Jens Eckhoff, the deputy CDU chairman in Bremen, remarked on Twitter how happy he was that his regional association had "long since arrived in the big city."
Kuban and Linnemann cannot leave the concept of the “ban agenda” either, but with EU-wide emissions trading, which is to be supplemented by the transport and building sector, they are relying on their own market economy concept instead of working excessively on the Greens.
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However, and this will hopefully become important in a post-corona time, which is hopefully not too distant, conservatives need clarification on their stance on freedoms.
In a volume from the CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation entitled “Balancing act for the future - conservatism as an attitude” (2019), the linguist Walter Schmitz aptly speaks of the “unexplained coexistence” of “trust in the self-regulation of the market, completely contrary to the skeptical view of man that was once conservative «.
Particularly with a view to possible economic turbulence in the wake of the corona crisis, conservatives have to show that, unlike market radicals, they stand for “personal responsibility and solidarity”.
With this combination of terms, too, Kuban and Linnemann set the right accent.
As important as economic freedoms are for the functioning of markets, it is also conservative not to abandon individuals when they cannot help themselves.
The "Catholic social teaching" or the "principle of subsidiarity" calls itself well conservative.
Particularly with a view to possible economic turbulence in the wake of the corona crisis, conservatives have to show that, unlike market radicals, they stand for “personal responsibility and solidarity”.
Last but not least, conservatism, including and especially that in the associated CDU root, has to say goodbye to a life lie that has become more and more present in recent years.
In reference to vocabulary coming from the right, one likes to castigate other ideals than »moralism«, »hypermorality« or even »prohibition culture«.
But even those who talk like that often stick doggedly to their own social ideas and would prefer to abolish "marriage for all" and everything that somehow sounds like "gender".
Fortunately, a completely different insight has long since established itself among many conservatives: "What could be more conservative than the promise to be loyal to one another in love for a lifetime?"
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