Not with physical acts but merely by rejecting the lie, by refusing to participate personally in the lie. Everyone must stop cooperating with the lie absolutely everywhere that he sees it himself: whether they are trying to force him to speak, write, quote or sign, or simply to vote or even to read. In our country the lie has become not just a moral category, but a pillar of the state. In recoiling from the lie we are performing a moral act, not a political act; and not one that can be punished by criminal law, but an act that would have an immediate effect on our whole life.
–Solzhenitsyn
Reject the Lie
143 responses to “Reject the Lie”
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Yep.
Simply refusing to vote.
This seems to be becoming more and more likely.
AMDG -
I’m far from the point of refusing to vote on principle. In general, I’ll still vote for what I think is the least worst alternative, because although I certainly don’t think politics can fix our deepest problems it can do a lot of harm. However, if Donald Trump gets the Republican nomination–which I think is very unlikely–I probably won’t vote in the presidential election. I don’t know if you or others here read much of the conservative press, but serious conservatives are completely appalled by the Trump phenomenon and worried that his bubble hasn’t burst already.
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The presidential election with Trump as a candidate was what I meant. I’m absolutely horrified that he’s taken seriously by so many people. By the time I get to vote in the primary, the candidate will likely have been chosen already. This really it’s me.
AMDG -
As corrupt as both parties are I think we always find ourselves voting for the lesser of two evils. As Tony Esolen said, we’ve basically got the Wallet Party and the Zipper Party.
And as of late, there’s always a condom in that wallet.
To my mind, the only two GOP candidates really work a look are Rubio and Kasich, and only the former has much of a chance. But it’s still early. You never can tell what will happen. -
I think that last sentence was supposed to say, “That really irks me,” but my old autocorrect friend didn’t think so.
AMDG -
I would vote for any of the Republicans, except Trump, against Hillary. In answer to your question “is there a lesser?”, Janet, I think so, inasmuch as the Democratic party is effectively an anti-Christian party at this point–I mean consciously, not just in effect. But nobody on either side should have any illusions that picking the right president is going to somehow fix things.
One of the theories about Trump’s continuing support is that a lot of right-wingers are totally disgusted with the Republicans and are enjoying flinging this bomb into their midst. That’s about the only line of reasoning for supporting him that makes any sense at all to me, and it’s obviously self-defeating. -
I suspect RM Kaus and Glenn Reynolds are right that Trump’s appeal is derived from his willingness to speak in plain language about the immigration issue, something the other candidates avoid because they’re at odds with public opinion, or they do not know what they think and do not interact much with ordinary voters, or they’re doing what they’re donors want. I’d wager its also derived from Trump’s successful habit of refusing to pay any heed to minding the bogus p’s and q’s laid down by the news media and the educational apparat. The other candidates should take the hint and each issue a serious white paper on immigration policy and immigration enforcement and learn to use their middle-finger with the world’s pecksniffs.
I took an interest in Govs. Jindal, Walker, Huckabee, and Perry. Maybe I’m just not reading the newspapers carefully enough, but I have not seen them respond to Trump’s challenges with vigor. They need to do that. -
To my mind, the only two GOP candidates really work a look are Rubio and Kasich,
Rubio is a rank and file lawyer, nothing more. He’s demonstrated some skill at building relationships in legislative bodies but has absolutely no history in executive positions. He was snookered by Charles Schumer’s staff regarding immigration legislation, then lied repeatedly and publicly about the legislation and his role in drafting it. He’s also rather young for the job. He’s just about the least suitable candidate for it. The only one worse is the repellent George Pataki.
As for Kasich, he’s jonesing for Jon Huntsman’s constituency. Worked out real well the last time. -
I would vote for any of the Republicans, except Trump, against Hillary.
George Pataki’s running. You do not want to go there. -
So, is there anyone that any of you absolutely like?
AMDG -
The sad thing was that betwixt and between some inappropriate candidacies and the irritation of the latest Bush scion, they had a good bench in their four better candidates (with Mrs. Fiorina adding some interesting spice). The Trump phenomena has taken all the oxygen out of the room and they’re not fighting it. It’s all very depressing.
One explanation offered by one columnist for the whole mess was this: Trump is ‘unfiltered’, and the other candidates have been listening to political consultants for so long that they haven’t a clue as to how to respond.
As for what it all means, what we’re looking at seems a variant on comedic / dystopian popular entertainment ca. 1976. This is Network meets the Kentucky Fried Movie meets Rollerball, or perhaps just Network alone. -
So, is there anyone that any of you absolutely like?
Absolutely? That cannot be, because politicians have their idiosyncracies and their constituencies and their antecedent commitments. They’ll always disappoint you in some respects. Gov. Walker is perhaps the least troublesome of the candidates, though I’d prefer someone more vigorous on social questions (Huckabee, Jindal) someone with more g (Jindal, Fiorina), and someone older (Huckabee, Perry, Fiorina). The rest either lack the necessary executive background (Santorum, Cruz), are too young (Cruz, especially), will sell you down the river (Pataki, Christie, Kasich), or have a combination of these flaws (Graham, Rubio). -
Walker was foolish to run this time. He should have stayed as governor for a few more years to get more experience and to show that he can really build something positive, not just survive a vicious recall election.
I live in Wisconsin. -
I don’t mean are they absolutely perfect candidates, I mean, do you really like any of them as opposed to just thinking they are the least bad.
I might have to write in Stephen Colbert. 🙂
AMDG -
He should have stayed as governor for a few more years to get more experience and to show that he can really build something positive,
He’s already accomplished more than most governors do, though perhaps less than Gov. Thompson. In New York, it’s never not business as usual, no matter who is in the Governor’s chair. And it was not just the recall election, it was the okupier nonsense and the years of lawfare. Very few politicians ever manifest the cojones to face that sort of challenge down.
The ‘least bad’? That’s an appellation I’d use with the competing Democratic candidates, or really unsuitable Republican candidates like Lindsey Graham. The four or five I’ve named are not ‘bad’, but, like any flesh and blood candidate, they have their deficiencies. -
But “rejecting the lie” is not really about voting is it? I think perhaps it’s about not giving in to popular and erroneous and evil lies, most especially as we encounter them socially. And of course, when dealing with the Bureaucracy.
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Right. It was just one of the things he mentioned. But I think it’s more about living the truth while we are surrounded by the lie–even if we don’t confront it in any public way.
AMDG -
But I think it’s more about living the truth while we are surrounded by the lie–even if we don’t confront it in any public way.
Agreed. Someone employed by Martin Peretz once did a brief critique of a set of New York Times articles, noting how each one was a conduit for a blatantly false statement. That was in 1983, and, they noted “The Times should be praised for its versimilitude. It has captured the mendacity of our political world quite well”. Still, at that time, artifice, not lies, was more the order of the day. Now, the lies are pervasive, and they have the enthusiastic participation of the news media and academe. Some swaths of the Catholic chatterati are not much better. -
One of the theories about Trump’s continuing support is that a lot of right-wingers are totally disgusted with the Republicans and are enjoying flinging this bomb into their midst.
Well, the Republican Party is currently led by a trio of useless Capitol Hill gamesmen, and that describes about 1/2 the Senate Republican caucus; of course people who are not on the payroll are disgusted. -
I think Walker has nerves of steel, which is very good for a president. I know what he went through. I was here.
I think he needs to spend time and energy focusing on getting his reforms to bear fruit in a renaissance of Wisconsin. There are signs this is starting. We have good stats on hiring, for instance.
I just think he is turning away too soon. -
Most of the turn to Trump is for a bad reason — nativism. It’s an ugly concept that needs someone willing to say very ugly things, and he fits the bill.
The thought that I may have to vote for Hillary to stop him is almost as troubling as his rise. -
I cannot imagine a plausible circumstance in which I would vote for Hillary. The closest I could come, as I said earlier, would be not to vote against her.
Right, Louise, I wasn’t thinking about voting in particular–in fact I’d still argue that it’s better to vote than not to vote. But as Janet says that is one of the things AS mentions. I had more in mind a refusal to pretend to accept certain falsehoods.
Re Art’s anecdote about the NYT: when people denounce conservative talk radio, Fox News, et.al. I always point out the responsibility of the old media for creating the audience for them. -
“But I think it’s more about living the truth while we are surrounded by the lie–even if we don’t confront it in any public way.”
I agree. Part of the difficulty is just not getting sucked into it. It’s very difficult at times. It is gas-lighting:
“Gaslighting or gas-lighting is a form of mental abuse in which information is twisted or spun, selectively omitted to favor the abuser, or false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity.” -
Re: voting.
If I were still in Oz, I would now be refusing to cast a ballot. Thankfully I don’t have to bother, being here. -
An interesting remark from Peter Hitchens today. The whole thing is worth reading, I think. Am interested in what you all think:
“More credit should be given to my late brother, Christopher, for correctly identifying the modern USA as the most revolutionary power on the planet, opposed to crabby conservative concepts such as national sovereignty, sweeping away the tedious restraints of migration controls and protective tariffs. It’s this economic liberalism – allied with the personal liberalism of ‘Nobody can tell me what to do with my own body’ which has somehow become identified with the British Conservative Party and the American Republicans, even though it’s not in the least bit conservative.”
I assume that PH thinks this is bad, but that CH thought it was good. I could be wrong on that of course. -
Re Art’s anecdote about the NYT: when people denounce conservative talk radio, Fox News, et.al. I always point out the responsibility of the old media for creating the audience for them.
The critic in question was referring to straight reporting. It was the content provided by those The Times was reporting on which he was ultimately critiquing.
I stopped looking at The Times about 15 years ago when I’d concluded that their professionalism had fallen below a certain threshold, something you could say of the AP by about 2004. Camille Paglia’s remark at the time was that The Times self-understanding as ‘the paper of record’ was “twenty years out of date”. That particular phenomenon midwived talk radio, I do not doubt, but that’s not to what the commenter was referring.
Public television and public radio have generally been subtler, favoring instead framing issues and alternatives in tendentious ways.
To some extent, I suspect that’s done without thinking much about it, which is a comment on the qualities of the social nexus in those institutions. When Newsweek tried to re-invent itself as an opinion magazine five or six years back, what was astounding about the effort was (in contrast to other opinion purveyors) how dull and complacent were their staff in their expressed views. Perfect Pauline-Kael bubble all those years.
At the same time, George McGovern’s campaign manager ran NPR for eight years, and their star reporter was the wife of a Democratic Senator. That sort of thing has grown so common among Washington media that no one notices anymore, but then it was atypical. Every once in a while you discover from some set of public remarks that someone in major media is a serious sectary. Eason Jordan, who was a wheel at CNN for twenty years, is one. Ken Burns is another. -
It’s this economic liberalism – allied with the personal liberalism of ‘Nobody can tell me what to do with my own body’ which has somehow become identified with the British Conservative Party and the American Republicans, even though it’s not in the least bit conservative.”
I do not think Peter Hitchens has much of a handle on American political discourse, past or present. -
I think there is something to what P Hitchens says. It isn’t the whole story by any means, but something. The thing is, people (including popes) have been saying that for a long time, and having the debates that follow, and I don’t have the heart for it anymore. However you analyze it, western civ has driven off a cliff.
I misinterpreted the Peretz story, Art. Reading too hastily. But I think it was true even then that when it came to their favorite issues the media were less than honest, though perhaps less consciously so–if that makes sense–I mean I think there’s a functional dishonesty that’s born of inability to see certain things, and then there’s a deliberate decision not to be very concerned with truth. Cf. the disgrace of “Journolist”. -
Peter Hitchens might be describing the sort of libertarianism associated with the Reason Foundation, but that’s a starboard strand with very little in the was of a popular base, though it garners more among the intelligentsia and contributors like Koch Industries.
I do not think you can discuss starboard thought in the United States without some reference to localism, federalism, legal positivism, the constitution-as-icon, agrarian systems and agrarian imagery, and, in a high culture vein, the inheritance of the common law, the British Civil War, Locke, Montesquieu, and the bevy of 18th century politicians who also wrote. Gottfried Dietze was steeped in this material and George Liska (while not a theoretician) understood some of the key distinctions (though tended to favor Continental thought). -
Or, put another way, when Wm. Voegli recites some twee political controversy from the 1790s, or someone recites that inane sermonette about Davy Crockett (‘not yours to give’), they’re not advancing the notion that freedom means the freedom to masturbate like a wild monkey while watching internet porn. I cannot figure how Peter Hitchens got that idea. Take two popular figures: Ronald Reagan and Rose Wilder Lane. One was a propagandist in defense of the small town society he’d grown up in ca. 1920. the other of the pioneer and agrarian society her parents and grandparents had lived in, 1885 +/- 50 years. Neither would have ever advanced the ethic to which Hitches refers. (Lane in particular thought sexual perversion a vice of people who did not care for ‘hard work’).
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“I do not think you can discuss starboard thought in the United States without some reference to localism…”
True enough. Unfortunately the vast majority of mainstream conservatives know nothing of the American Right’s variegated history. Their collective memory goes way back to 1980. To many of them conservatism amounts to pro-corporate anti-statism with some social traditionalism icing on top.
A friend attended a big Heritage Foundation fundraiser here in Pittsburgh a few days ago. He reports that nary a word was said about social issues, with the exception of one dart against Planned Parenthood. The rest was all economic, with the catchword being “opportunity.”
This is Heritage, not Reason, AEI or Cato. Libertarian rot runs pretty deep in the GOP substructure. -
“However you analyze it, western civ has driven off a cliff.”
Indeed it has. I commented on PH’s post that all I really know is that none of the parties, politicians etc with any clout care about the family, which means they are all wrong, IMO.
I don’t know if you read the whole article, Art, but PH was saying that Left and Right are not what they used to be. I think we’ve probably had that discussion here haven’t we, Maclin? -
It’s the economy, stupid.
AMDG -
Unfortunately the vast majority of mainstream conservatives know nothing of the American Right’s variegated history. Their collective memory goes way back to 1980. To many of them conservatism amounts to pro-corporate anti-statism with some social traditionalism icing on top.
We’ve had this discussion before. Your remarks of this nature do not grow anymore valid or less pretentious from repetition. -
Heh.
Did you intend to include a link, Louise? I don’t see one. And yes, we have had that discussion.
It’s not altogether relevant to discuss what Hitchens says purely in the light of explicit ideas, especially of ideas held by intellectuals and discussed among them. What’s more significant is widespread popular sentiment, not really rising to the level of “idea”. And at that level there is certainly an idea of across-the-board personal freedom which does exhibit what Hitchens describes.
A symbolic example which has remained in my mind since I heard it in the 1980s: a local radio talk show was discussing the picketing of an abortion clinic. One caller, clearly in a white heat of fury, condemned the picketers because “They’re interfering with a business.”
You also have the new breed of tycoon, impeccably liberal in social views but as greedy as ever. The American Dream has always been as much as anything else a dream of wealth. -
I don’t know if you read the whole article, Art, but PH was saying that Left and Right are not what they used to be. I think we’ve probably had that discussion here haven’t we, Maclin?
The bulk of it concerns the British scene, though there are points of intersection with American problems (and, really, the problems faced by any occidental country). Some of it is dubious (for those of us who can recall bits and pieces of the conflics within the British Labour Party after 1979). The man also cannot tell the difference between public works and state-owned enterprise, or between competitive enterprise and natural monopoly; the discussion of ‘nationalization’ is rubbish. The phrase “Neoconservatism’s Trotskyist origins aren’t accidental. It’s a revolutionary project,” is utter tommyrot.
There really is no discussion of American political tendencies, past or present, and how they intersect with mundane discourse party politics & c., nor how these differ from British tendencies (the British Conservatives having long been resistant to erecting provincial governments, for example).
Sorry, not much value there. -
“Your remarks of this nature do not grow anymore valid or less pretentious from repetition.”
I’m speaking from experience. I have many of this sort of conservative among family and friends. Furthermore, I once was one myself, and was quite attentive to the “movement.”
It’s pretty much lite libertarianism with some trad-con frippery. -
The American Dream has always been as much as anything else a dream of wealth.
I thought it was a godawful one-act play by Edward Albee.
If the term was ever used non-ironically and non-mordantly in my lifetime, I’ve forgotten it, and I’m past 50. Who dreams about ‘wealth’? Few people are all that ambitious. They’re satisficers, not optimizers, and they want security and perhaps opportunity for recreation. The studies Stanley Rothman was undertaking of occupational elites many years ago would also require qualifying that. The corporation executives he studied were achievement motivated more than anything else. You find people who are acquisitive, who are exhibitionistic, who are profligate. I cannot figure how such people are considered common enough to be the defining cultural type. -
It’s the economy, stupid.
What the reptilian James Carville had to say to his staff. What does this have to say about discussion in any other venue? -
OK, Rob G, I will repeat the point from previous discussions. You want highbrow, read highbrow. The flavors are in the library. You want middlebrow, read that. You want lowbrow, read that. What’s inane is for you to read lowbrow and then complain that that’s all there is because you’re too indolent to bother with anything else. It’s also foolish to expect large swaths of people to read literary criticism or political theory. That’s an academic discourse.
The portside denizens nearest me have nothing to say of any sophistication, not because they’re intellectually incapable, but because they’re more opinionated (or sentimental) than erudite on these topics and they put their heads to work in other venues. One’s a psychiatrist with 17 years worth of higher education and vocational training under his belt; he also likes Jim Hightower. Another’s a lapsed systems administrator with a Phi Beta Kappa key somewhere in her jewelry box. She likes Joe Bageant. That’s just the way it is with most people. -
It was in response to this:
He reports that nary a word was said about social issues, with the exception of one dart against Planned Parenthood. The rest was all economic, with the catchword being “opportunity.”
The implication being that nothing has changed in that regard since the Clinton (Bill) campaign–and that’s on both sides of the aisle.
But it occurs to me that that’s not necessarily true because what has happened is that the social agenda has moved to the left. The goals having been turned on their heads.
AMDG -
sorry, I did intend to include a link.
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/09/why-owen-jones-has-got-it-all-backwards.html -
“What’s inane is for you to read lowbrow and then complain that that’s all there is because you’re too indolent to bother with anything else.”
It’s not a highbrow vs. lowbrow thing at all. The unsophisticated can “get it” if it’s presented to them. Thing is, it isn’t. All they get is pap from the GOP mouthpieces. -
To put it another way, if all you ever hear is “THIS is what conservatism is!” why would you think otherwise?
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“What’s more significant is widespread popular sentiment, not really rising to the level of “idea”. And at that level there is certainly an idea of across-the-board personal freedom which does exhibit what Hitchens describes.”
Yes, thanks, Maclin. That’s helpful.
I fundamentally like this group of people and appreciate what you all have to say, so thanks for contributing to my thought processes. -
The implication being that nothing has changed in that regard since the Clinton (Bill) campaign–and that’s on both sides of the aisle.
I bet if you go to sales meetings, they do not talk about Planned Parenthood either. Ditto gun club meetings.
Heritage is an agency which has a number of hats, but one thing they do is produce statistical analyses of public policy concepts and legislative proposals. Social questions are inherently less amenable to that sort of treatment (though sociological studies to rebut contentions of the gay lobby can be helpful, they would never influence Anthony Kennedy).
And the event was a fund-raiser. I’m not surprised they devoted most of their discussion to economic and business topics. There’s what you favor and then there’s your primary motor for undertaking some activity in the civic sphere. William Kristol is quite friendly to social conservatives, but that’s not the usual fare at The Weekly Standard. You might wish the businessmen ponying up for the Heritage Foundation had a different rank-ordering of concerns, but it’s rather sectarian to accuse them of ‘Libertarian rot’. (My complaint about Heritage would be that in their efforts to maintain relationships with Congressional offices, they get lost in the weeds of whatever’s on the Capitol Hill agenda, a great deal of which is trivia).
You do have an element within the Capitol Hill nexus who are just insufferable, but their motors are not libertarian either. Careerist, crony-capitalist, bourgeoiscocktailpartyist, yes. Libertarian, no. You have a bevy of opinion journalists who are trouble as well, but the worst of them are not people who have a concise set of theoretical principles. -
It’s not a highbrow vs. lowbrow thing at all. T
Oh, yes it is Rob, and you cannot even read your own words. Your whole beef is that Sean Hannity is not like Russell Kirk. He’s a popular television commentator, not a lapsed English professor, and he concerns himself with topical questions, not ghost stories or family histories. He has a different audience. If people seek out more rarefied material, they can find it. You might wish to complain about popular taste (not that that would be at all original), but there’s no aspect of this that’s local to political discourse, much less discourse along the lines of a particular thread. -
Art, you’ve set yourself a hopeless task of denying fairly obvious facts “on the ground”, as they say. As you said “It’s also foolish to expect large swaths of people to read literary criticism or political theory.” Indeed. The original point is that a false idea of personal freedom is widespread and crosses the political divide. It’s not a matter of a consciously held “concise set of theoretical principles.”
This surprised me: “If the term [American Dream] was ever used non-ironically and non-mordantly in my lifetime, I’ve forgotten it, and I’m past 50.” I couldn’t begin to count the number of times I’ve heard it used quite seriously. And when I say it involved “wealth” I don’t necessarily mean vast riches, just a certain level of affluence.
Anyway, I have things to do and am out of this discussion; as I said earlier, I think it’s a very tired subject. -
“Art, you’ve set yourself a hopeless task of denying fairly obvious facts “on the ground”, as they say. ”
Which ones? -
Indeed. The original point is that a false idea of personal freedom is widespread and crosses the political divide. I
And I’m not referring to false ideas about political freedom, but to Rob G’s tiresome complaints about other people’s reading material, which have been repeated in precisely the same terms again and again in this forum. -
“Which ones?”
Exercise for the reader. 😉 -
“Your whole beef is that Sean Hannity is not like Russell Kirk.”
Hmmm, once again, I can’t tell if you really just don’t get it, or you’re being willfully dense. The point’s about the content, not the presentation.
“Rob G’s tiresome complaints about other people’s reading material”
LOL. Like they used to say in the 90s, “As if.”
“The original point is that a false idea of personal freedom is widespread and crosses the political divide. It’s not a matter of a consciously held ‘concise set of theoretical principles.’”
Exactly. -
I agree with Art Deco. It sounds very moral to lump all conservatives together but it is a mistake
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“It sounds very moral to lump all conservatives together but it is a mistake.”
Grumpy, I most definitely do not lump all conservatives together. Precisely the opposite. Note that my qualifications specifically include “mainstream” conservatives, and the further qualifiers “many” and “most.”
My contention is that most mainstream conservatism in the U.S. is a mixture of a sort of light libertarianism with varying elements of social conservatism and/or traditionalism. It tends to equate being pro-business/pro-corporate with “freedom” in a fiscal and anti-statist sense. In so doing it reflects a false idea of personal freedom, namely the notion that one has complete and autonomous control over one’s money and possessions. This is the flip-side of the mainstream Left’s error, the notion that one has complete and autonomous control over one’s body and sexuality. -
Hayek always said you cannot have freedom without the rule of law. No mainstream conservative says that e.g. economics or finance could work without the rule of law
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Maybe I’m just dense, but it seems to me that maybe you two are talking at cross purposes, and I wonder if when you say “mainstream conservatives” you mean the same people.
AMDG -
Honestly, this whole thread is confusing the heck out of me.
I like the Solzhenitsyn quote, though. 🙂 -
Don’t get so confused that you can’t write about Chaim Potok.
AMDG -
Janet, I thought to myself earlier when I read Grumpy’s Hayek comment “They’re talking at cross purposes.” I’m not up to trying to straighten it out, though.
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Yes, I think we are too.
I’m not saying that the conservatives of whom I speak are economic anarchists (just like modern leftists are generally not sexual anarchists). They believe in the rule of law. But they are in many ways a sort of fiscal libertine, operating under the assumption that barring illegal and demonstrably immoral activity their money and property are theirs to do with whatever they wish in an autonomous sense. In my view this is a right-wing manifestation of what Mac called “a false view of personal freedom.” -
Said I wasn’t going to get into this but…
I think the vast majority of free-marketers, at both the popular and intellectual levels, agree with Hayek on that point. But it’s a rules-of-the-game kind of view–these are the rules you have to follow if you want the game to work. Where they run into trouble (philosophically speaking) is the point where the market goes in a direction that is ok by the rules of the game but not by an ethical standard outside of the market. Hence free-marketers collectively have been at best ineffective against pornography as a business. Founded in philosophical liberalism, free-market views have difficulty saying “That’s wrong”. -
I guess I’m not a free marketer. I can say “It’s wrong.”
It’s wrong. -
And to follow up on what Mac wrote, my point is that you will seldom hear an argument of that sort within the mainstream right, even if it comes from someone with otherwise solid conservative bona fides.
Huckabee tried something along those lines in his 2008 campaign (a pitch for a more “communitarian” conservatism) and was told he was a liberal. I distinctly remember Limbaugh at the time saying, “I like Mike, he’s a good guy, but he’s not a conservative.” -
I’ve heard the same expulsion pronounced more than once on conservatives who deviated on free-market economics.
Robert, many or most free-marketers would say “It’s wrong” in their Personal Opinion. But will they take that into the public sphere in some way, with, for instance, the fervor with which they might oppose raising the minimum wage? Not many.
Thought experiment: would a politician who held views that would pass muster with Limbaugh, but owned a chain of motels that offered porno movies on the in-room tv network, be similarly labelled “not a conservative”? -
Republican combox denizens are commonly unfair to Huckabee and that extends in a more attenuated way to radio commentators, in part, I think, because they tend to have two quite different sets of motors and perspectives. Huckabee is a lapsed Governor who had day to day responsibility for a public apparat which had ongoing institutional missions incorporated in Arkansas law and the state budget. He also had to co-operate with a legislature controlled by the opposition his entire time in office. His critics know little of that.
An aspect of starboard discourse is what you might call ‘point-and-laugh’ or ‘point-and-bitch’. If your self-concept is that you’re an industrious and independent chap put upon by incompetents and grifters and layabouts, it’s appealing. The thing is, while the state may be hypertrophied, large swaths of the state perform functions that the private sector does not and cannot. Point-and-laugh and point-and-bitch are do bupkis about improving institutional performance. Also, Huckabee’s priorities are such that he does not send social signals to the combox denizen that he endorses their self-understanding.
I had a most disagreeable exchange with a Republican campaign volunteer from Arkansas in which she was spitting mad when it was pointed out that the ratio of state expenditure to Arkansas’ domestic product did not vary during Huckabee’s term of office and that he had to work with a Democratic legislature the whole time. She had a right to be angry with this man. She was also spitting mad about state welfare expenditure, which she rendered as Huckabee ‘confusing his role as pastor with his role as governor’. The trouble was, welfare expenditure as she conceived of it amounted to ‘what the other guy gets’. Public schools and state colleges are welfare expenditure too, as they are subsidized services that the private market is perfectly capable of producing, something a woman complaining that the wrong people were getting in-state tuition just does not register.
All of which brings you to some problems with popular discourse, which is that it tends to default to vulgar Randianism, romantic piffle about Davy Crockett, or complaining about the other guy’s stuff. However, radio babblers and combox denizens are not Republican primary voters and Republican primary voters are not the general election base, and office-holders who have to make real decisions differ from voters as well, who are seldom called upon to reconcile contradictory positions.
Libertarians of the Reason Foundation variety are not at pains to draw distinctions between discrete markets and do not care to do so. They like pornography and drugs and sodomy (or prefer to be thought of as people who do not condemn them). That does not describe ordinary Republican voters, who do not live in libertarian thought experiments. It does not describe the combox blowhards, either, who are more animated by a nexus of associations which suggest that people like themselves should have more status and other sorts of people less status.
You’re not prevented from shutting down strip joints in your town by libertarians. They have no influence. You’re being prevented by the legal profession, and by the chronic ineffectuality broad swaths of the public and the political class manifest when they’re being pushed around by lawyers. You’re also being prevented by strands of popular preference. Those wretched establishments do have a market, and a less embarrassed market than used to be the case. To the extent that this is translated into the language of social theory, it’s more likely to be manosphere babble or sociobiology humbug (the two are aligned) than libertarian chatter. -
I do not think there is a misunderstanding. I think Rob G is equating regular conservatives with what Decks calls ‘vulgar randism”. And I think Rob is wrong to do so. That is what I mean by lumping all conservatives together. In this discussion I think Deco is right to point to the nuances
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“I’ve heard the same expulsion pronounced more than once on conservatives who deviated on free-market economics.”
Which is what I’m getting at. Mainstream conservatism no more tolerates deviation on free-market economics than mainstream liberal/leftism tolerates deviation on so-called sexual liberation. Each is the noli me tangere of its respective party, and each is a manifestation of philosophical liberalism with its faulty understanding of human freedom. -
Thought experiment: would a politician who held views that would pass muster with Limbaugh, but owned a chain of motels that offered porno movies on the in-room tv network, be similarly labelled “not a conservative”?
Likely no, because you’re mixing a discussion of his viewpoints with details of how his business is run. There are three or four reasons he might offer porn channels. One is that he is not bothered by it. Another is that something about the price structure renders with-porn more cost-effective than without-porn. Another is that he’s anxious about loss of business. Another is that he’s not anxious and just wants the extra revenue. Another is that that’s a decision which was made by a subordinate and he hasn’t registered it. Some of these implicate his stated views, others suggest hypocrisy or hypocrisy under pressure, and other suggest merely negligence. (I do not know what you’d call Paul Johnson other than ‘conservative’, even though he was a chronic adulterer). I doubt Limbaugh would tell you that his domestic life (childless, thrice divorced) is how you should live.
As for how Limbaugh sets priorities re the proverbial ‘three-legged-stool’, I do not listen to the man, but I would wager they are the priorities most congruent with asserting and sustaining the status of a certain social type. How that works out in practice would be a mess of partisan discourse, point-and-laugh, and point-and-bitch. That’s quite distant from the chuffering over at Front Porch Republic, most of which seems to be thrift-shop markdown Wendell Berry, and quite distant from that of (say) Heather MacDonald, who is very policy-oriented. -
All of this from what I would take to be a pretty throwaway line from Hitchens (and I suspect a garbled one at that – what I’ve seen of his blog does not suggest careful editing, and I’m inclined to think he meant “the economic lberalism that has become identified with conservatives, plus the personal liberalism of the sexual revolution, make America a very unconservative place”, and not, contrary to the syntax, that the personal liberalism was identified with conservative politics, because it simply isn’t, at least not with the British Conservative Party or the American Republicans, the two groups he mentions). If it isn’t garbled it’s an attempt at paradox that falls flat.
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Mainstream conservatism no more tolerates deviation on free-market economics
The complaints re Huckabee come from the usual sorts who blanch at social conservatism and evangelical idiom and from a parallel corps who complain about public expenditure NOS and/or his notions for reforming the welfare state. I doubt you’d find 1 in 50 who ever parsed Huckabee’s views on aspects of the regulatory state. -
Grumpy, yes, there certainly are nuances, and a lot of variation, and it doesn’t do to ignore them completely. But generalizations are often illuminating as well. Rob has always qualified what he’s saying with words like “many” and “mainstream”, and with those provisos, I think the generalization is valid enough.
Re the politician/hotelier who provides porn, Art said: “Likely no, because you’re mixing a discussion of his viewpoints with details of how his business is run.”
Precisely. You’re making my point for me, except that you fault me for mixing and I fault him for separating. -
Precisely. You’re making my point for me, except that you fault me for mixing and I fault him for separating.
I am making no point for you. I’m pointing out that the business is not the person, and that there are a number of possible vectors in why his business might be run that way. -
Precisely. And among those is not fear of being thrown out of the conservative movement, supposing he was part of it to start with. You’re accepting the view that the decision to offer pornography is widely accepted as a purely business decision.
But your response is in fact somewhat to one side of the point I was making, and in that respect does not make my point, which is not about why he would or would not do it but about whether he would or would not be accepted as a conservative by most of the mainstream conservative movement. Some would not care, some would fret a bit, but few would give him the treatment Limbaugh gave Huckabee. -
The guy who sells porn is a weak and flawed person. Knowing this is what makes him a conservative
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As a conservative myself I would like to think that’s characteristic of the breed, but it doesn’t match my observations.
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“the decision to offer pornography is widely accepted as a purely business decision.”
Robert George and another Catholic scholar of libertarian bent (I forget his name) had a debate about this very issue awhile back. The other scholar made the case that if the hotel chain was publicly held, and that providing pornography was proven to increase profits, the chain would be obligated to provide it because the purpose of a publicly held corporation is to generate profits for the shareholders. Since porn is legal the moral question doesn’t enter into it.
This is, I think, what Mac meant when he wrote about a “rules-of-the-game” view of the thing, and it is not a strictly libertarian one. -
Yes, that’s exactly what I meant. The big point here is one that has been pointed out many many times: both the mainstream left and the mainstream right in American politics are rooted in classical liberalism. And classical liberalism is seriously deficient in the realm of first principles. This is not just some quirky idea that Rob and I came up with–it’s pretty widely recognized and in many quarters praised–I mean not the deficiency as such, but the roots. I’ve been a little shocked any number of times to hear conservatives equate Western civilization with the Enlightenment.
Oh, by the way, I meant to mention Paul’s explication of Hitchens: I thought what he meant was that neither American nor British conservatism is really conservative in some important respects. -
both the mainstream left and the mainstream right in American politics are rooted in classical liberalism.
There is no strand of American political discussion which is derived from de Maistre or Hobbes. This is a problem just why? -
“All of this from what I would take to be a pretty throwaway line from Hitchens”
Yes. Sorry about that. I won’t do it again in a hurry. -
But since we’re here…
“the economic lberalism that has become identified with conservatives, plus the personal liberalism of the sexual revolution, make America a very unconservative place”
might indeed be what he meant. But my reading of it is more that there is really nothing very conservative about the conservative parties either in England or the US. That is true, I think, in Australia. The conservative parties in the West have really done nothing to halt the slaughter of innocents and the destruction of the family that I can see. -
“Robert George and another Catholic scholar of libertarian bent (I forget his name) had a debate about this very issue awhile back. The other scholar made the case that if the hotel chain was publicly held, and that providing pornography was proven to increase profits, the chain would be obligated to provide it because the purpose of a publicly held corporation is to generate profits for the shareholders. Since porn is legal the moral question doesn’t enter into it.”
That is hilarious! It’s not like the chain can’t generate a profit without the porn! And morally, it doesn’t need to increase the profits at all. It just needs to create some reasonable profit. -
“And classical liberalism is seriously deficient in the realm of first principles. This is not just some quirky idea that Rob and I came up with–it’s pretty widely recognized and in many quarters praised–I mean not the deficiency as such, but the roots. I’ve been a little shocked any number of times to hear conservatives equate Western civilization with the Enlightenment.”
I agree. -
neither American nor British conservatism is really conservative in some important respects
Yes, that’s certainly true of British conservatism. But I don’t think he meant that conservatives hold to “personal liberalism” in sexual matters; I think that’s just poor syntax and bad editing. -
Nobody said anything to make me change my mind, not that it was obligatory …
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“There is no strand of American political discussion which is derived from de Maistre or Hobbes. This is a problem just why?”
That’s not the problem. The problem could be said to be too much Locke and Rousseau. -
Paul, I thought some of the Tories favour such things as same sex marriage.
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I missed something, Grumpy. Change your mind about what?
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Some certainly do, Louise, but it isn’t something the party could be said to be identified with.
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Well, it’s possible I got my wires crossed with that.
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The problem could be said to be too much Locke and Rousseau.
Rousseau? You’ve confused the United States with France. If I’m not mistaken, the largest influence on late 18th century politicians in this country was Montesquieu. -
“Rousseau?”
Yes. Not so much politically, but philosophically. His ideas about man helped lay the groundwork for liberalism’s faulty anthropology. -
Yes. Not so much politically, but philosophically. His ideas about man helped lay the groundwork for liberalism’s faulty anthropology.
‘Philosophically’? Where? Academic philosophy departments I think commonly have a specialist in political philosophy, but the most influential figure therein is John Rawls. Political science departments usually have a couple of slots given over to political theoreticians, but they’re more intellectual historians than anything else (and I think you’d find Rousseau admirers therein). As for politicians, you do not find common allusions derived from Rouseeau. There are pre-political conceptions in common with Rousseau, but these and the implications from them are pretty severely contested. -
“find few Rousseau admirers”
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That is hilarious! It’s not like the chain can’t generate a profit without the porn! And morally, it doesn’t need to increase the profits at all. It just needs to create some reasonable profit.
Several large chains have removed the pornography channels from their hotel offerings, so someone figures its not a bad business decision. One of the chains is based in Sweden.
Robert George is commonly resistant to debate and exchange formats (though not team-taught classes) so I wonder just with whom he was having this discussion. (As it’s an issue he’s addressed repeatedly in non-adversarial commentary).
And classical liberalism is seriously deficient in the realm of first principles. This is not just some quirky idea that Rob and I came up with–it’s pretty widely recognized
I realize that’s a complaint of people fond of academic discussions. Whether it has a fixed meaning outside a circumscribed academic bubble, I cannot say. Political culture and political practice may be influenced by such discussions in some way. The thing is, that has to compete with institutional and popular inertia, interests which might derive from economic factors or cultural factors, status competition between social sectors, &c.
For all the complaint about ‘liberalism’ herein, I’m not seeing allusions to any identified strand of non-liberal thought. Amitai Etzioni (who certainly was familiar with the body of social and political) attempted to propagate an alternative to non-specialists. I actually subscribed to his publication for a while, but it seemed pretty thin broth. You have votaries of Edmund Burke. I do not think Burke is someone you should be all that ready to invoke if being ‘deficient in 1st principles’ is a concern of yours. Burkeanism is more a disposition or a bias than a body of principles (and can be readily applied to defend rent-seeking). You can rustle up the social encyclicals, but these have terrible challenges of implementation.
The complaint that ‘right’ and ‘left’ are both ‘liberal’ is a bit of linguistic sleight of hand. At some stratospheric level, ‘left’ and ‘right’ assent to the residue of institutional inertia and a deficit of practical alternatives in many realms. You’re not going to see public debates over the utility of command economies any more. ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ are manifestations of different classes and subcultures and actually do have a selection of irreconcilable viewpoints and irreconcilable dispositions You’d be better off reading Thomas Sowell or Alvin Gouldner to understand our political predicament than undertaking comparative readings of Jeremy Bentham and John Locke and the social encyclicals and the translated works of Portuguese integralism. -
“‘Philosophically’? Where?”
Primarily in his rejection of the idea of original sin, and the associated notions that man was basically good and all men thus equal in the state of nature. This influenced the French Revolutionaries and through them, subsequently the West in general. -
plus the personal liberalism of the sexual revolution, make America a very unconservative place”
And he fancies that ‘personal liberalism’ in this vein is an American signature? It has not been universal here (or was not up until about 15 years ago). Some places in the occidental world put up some resistance to it (Quebec up until 1960, Spain until 1970, Greece (in certain meausre) at least as late as 1990, Ireland until 1990. Malta may be the lone holdout). There are dimensions of this ‘personal liberalism’ for which there is really only one resisting party, and that’s the country in which you live. Compare elite and popular opinion on matters of criminal justice and see where the latter has more sway.
As for ‘economic liberalism’, discussions of this nature often turn on caricatures of starboard discourse and the Republican Party (as well as mistaking the implications of investing discretion in the apparatus of state). -
“Several large chains have removed the pornography channels from their hotel offerings, so someone figures its not a bad business decision.”
Everyone can now get 24/7 free access to porn on their “devices.” Charging for it is no longer profitable. -
Everyone can now get 24/7 free access to porn on their “devices.” Charging for it is no longer profitable.
I do not own such a ‘device’, so it’s ‘everyone’ less one. Now explain to me why the rest of the channels were not removed. Some of us have been around long enough to recall when cable service in hotel rooms was a novelty. -
Primarily in his rejection of the idea of original sin, and the associated notions that man was basically good and all men thus equal in the state of nature.
Which is certainly a severely contested notion today, so much so that I do not think you’d find too many people who would adhere to it explicitly (though it may be implied in what they advocate). I doubt you’d ever find a period in American history where it was not. -
~~~I do not own such a ‘device’, so it’s ‘everyone’ less one.~~~
Neither do I, the point being that everyone who does own one can.
Oh wait! I forgot the 1/40th of 1% of owners who are minors and whose parents have put some sort of filtering/blocking mechanism on their devices. So really it’s not positively literally every single owner/user (also realizing, of course, that the user may in fact not be the owner) that can access it. Sorry for the misleading overgeneralization.
“Now explain to me why the rest of the channels were not removed.”
Uh, because unlike porn, not all TV shows, sporting events, and movies are instantly available for streaming or download, maybe??? -
“Political culture and political practice may be influenced by such discussions in some way. The thing is, that has to compete with institutional and popular inertia, interests which might derive from economic factors or cultural factors, status competition between social sectors, &c.”
Which I don’t think anyone here would deny, but which also doesn’t negate the influence of such ideas and discussions.
“The complaint that ‘right’ and ‘left’ are both ‘liberal’ is a bit of linguistic sleight of hand.”
Not if understood correctly it isn’t. Read some Deneen or the ‘Communio’ writers.
“Which is certainly a severely contested notion today, so much so that I do not think you’d find too many people who would adhere to it explicitly (though it may be implied in what they advocate).”
Which notion — the denial of original sin, etc., the notion that Rousseau taught it, or the notion that it had broad influence? -
“There are dimensions of this ‘personal liberalism’ for which there is really only one resisting party, and that’s the country in which you live.”
It’s hardly comforting to know that because the Sexual Revolution got a bit of a late start here we’re a little less further down the road towards Sodom.
“As for ‘economic liberalism’, discussions of this nature often turn on caricatures of starboard discourse and the Republican Party.”
Please. Thoughtful critiques of this sort have been going on for decades, by those on both left and right. It’s a bit daft to put it all down to caricature. -
Please. Thoughtful critiques of this sort have been going on for decades, by those on both left and right. It’s a bit daft to put it all down to caricature.
Thoughtful critiques of what? -
It’s hardly comforting to know that because the Sexual Revolution got a bit of a late start here we’re a little less further down the road towards Sodom.
I do not know that it got any sort of ‘late start’ here and that’s irrelevant to my point. I was referring to conceptions of personal responsibility as manifested (for example) in criminal justice. -
Which notion — the denial of original sin, etc., the notion that Rousseau taught it, or the notion that it had broad influence?
Explicit contention that man is born free but everywhere in chains is not characteristic of contemporary political discussion and has never not been contested. A critic of Corey Robin maintains he holds to this. That’s about all. -
Not if understood correctly it isn’t. Read some Deneen or the ‘Communio’ writers.
The very thought of a repeat effort is soporific in and of itself. -
“Thoughtful critiques of what?”
The relationship between modern capitalism and Enlightenment liberalism.
“Explicit contention that man is born free but everywhere in chains is not characteristic of contemporary political discussion and has never not been contested.”
True enough. Yet modern liberal-progressivism proceeds under the assumption of man’s basic goodness nonetheless.
“The very thought of a repeat effort is soporific in and of itself.”
Well, that’s undoubtedly a matter of taste, although I admit the Communio guys can occasionally be tedious. I’ve not found that the case with Deneen, however, and anyways, it’s irrelevant to the question. It’s not simply semantics to say that contemporary conservatism is largely a form of right-liberalism. We’re just not used to hearing it put in those terms. -
Unless we’ve spent a fair amount of time over the years listening to Catholic distributist types, among whom it’s become a somewhat tired truism producing a tendency to write off contemporary political life altogether.
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When used as a rhetorical barb it’s probably not all that effective — it claims too much and explains too little. The actual concept takes some thinking through.
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Yet modern liberal-progressivism proceeds under the assumption of man’s basic goodness nonetheless.
1. They have opponents.
2. Which ones? A critique of John Rawls (say, by Robert Nozick or Robert Bork) is not going to take that tack because it’s not baked in the cake of the Original Position. Bork, hardly a populist sentimentalists, took Rawls to task for what he regarded as an unwarranted (nay absurd) equalitarianism. You could argue that the Original Position (and some of what Rawls derives from it) reflect a truncated understanding of human nature, but that’s distinct from regarding human beings as naturally congenial. -
The relationship between modern capitalism and Enlightenment liberalism.
‘Modern capitalism’ is a set of social practices wherein finance, ownership, management, and production work incorporate distinct social roles. It’s a function of technology and process innovation, not a function of social doctrine. -
By the way, Rob, I wasn’t suggesting that you’re being tiresome. Truisms are true, after all.
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“You could argue that the Original Position (and some of what Rawls derives from it) reflect a truncated understanding of human nature, but that’s distinct from regarding human beings as naturally congenial.”
The truncation of which you speak generally includes a repudiation of anything like original sin or fallenness. But this need not necessarily imply an inherent human congeniality.
Also, consider that many moderns reject the idea that man has an inherent unchangeable human nature at all.
“It’s a function of technology and process innovation, not a function of social doctrine.”
But if that’s the case, why does it produce problems in the social realm that cannot be solved merely by application of more “technology and process innovation”? -
“By the way, Rob, I wasn’t suggesting that you’re being tiresome. Truisms are true, after all.”
Understood. My point was that the average conservative is not likely to have heard the “classical liberalism is still liberalism” argument, and would probably find it puzzling without some unpacking. -
In fact, the average conservative might not know what the term “classical liberalism” means. He might think you were referring to FDR or JFK.
The Catholic traditionalist/distributist view I sometimes gripe about could be parodied as: “American politics is just right-liberalism vs left-liberalism. The Church condemns liberalism. Therefore I sneer at both sides and put my energy into designing a Catholic confessional state.”
There’s a great deal of truth in that statement of the conditions. But it seems a mistake to me to then write off the whole thing. After all, it’s the society we live in, and the fact that things are fundamentally flawed (when are they not?) doesn’t mean they can’t get worse or better. Look at the damage Obama has done. -
I wish I could think that we could push back any of the damage that this administration has done. It seems to me that the best we could do is to build a dam to confine it and then that dam will burst from the pressure of some future administration.
Not that I’m pessimistic or anything.
AMDG -
The Catholic traditionalist/distributist view I sometimes gripe about could be parodied as: “American politics is just right-liberalism vs left-liberalism. The Church condemns liberalism. Therefore I sneer at both sides and put my energy into designing a Catholic confessional state.”
Yes, I’ve run across that from time to time and find it bothersome as well. -
Not that that Catholic confessional state isn’t looking better as the liberal order continues to fall apart.
The kinds of things Obama has done just don’t get rolled back, it seems. Temporarily, maybe, but with the academy, the judiciary, most of the media, and most of the entrenched non-elected government pushing them, not permanently. -
The truncation of which you speak generally includes a repudiation of anything like original sin or fallenness.
He does not meditate on that. He assumes self-interestedness. -
I wouldn’t say that the Catholic confessional state is a bad alternative to the current liberal order, but I do have problems with the notion that it’s the only possible alternative. One can believe that there is a certain taint in everything that came out of Enlightenment liberalism without believing that everything is therefore equally tainted.
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why does it produce problems in the social realm that cannot be solved merely by application of more “technology and process innovation”?
Because the ‘problems in the social realm’ you refer to are a function of the original sin you keep harping on. -
“He does not meditate on that. He assumes self-interestedness.”
It doesn’t have to be mentioned and rejected specifically if the upshot’s the same. Baptize self-interest and you reject original sin in the process. Or resort to the Fable of the Bees. Neither one reflects a Christian understanding of the thing.
“Because the ‘problems in the social realm’ you refer to are a function of the original sin you keep harping on.”
I agree with you if you mean in particular the sin of avarice, which we’ve transmuted into that very self-interest and removed from the list of the Seven Deadly.
Otherwise, the “original sin” thing is a red herring. -
It doesn’t have to be mentioned and rejected specifically if the upshot’s the same. Baptize self-interest and you reject original sin in the process.
He does not ‘baptize self-interest’. He constructs a thought experiment which assumes people are self-interested. -
which we’ve transmuted into that very self-interest and removed from the list of the Seven Deadly.
Which we? And in what does such a ‘removal’ consist? -
This is just a general remark.
How can we ever evaluate an economy or a society if we don’t know what the ideal is? How can we ever know what things might make life better or worse if we don’t know the general direction we’re supposed to be headed? That is the value of the Church’s social teaching, IMO. Of course we have to work with what we’ve got – that’s the proper job of the laity. But it makes no sense to do that at all if we don’t even know what the basic principles are, or should be.
Our system might involve usury, but that doesn’t mean I have to personally commit usurious acts.
More broadly, and getting back to the original blog post, knowing Church teaching well helps us to reject the lie whenever we encounter it. -
“How can we ever evaluate…”
That’s a good point. -
Louise, no one has changed my opinion that the most intelligent contributions to this conversation have come from Art Deco.
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Thanks, Grumpy
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I hear a conversation in which Art is talking about trees and Rob (and I to the extent I’m involved) is talking about a forest.
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I’d never heard of Jim Hightower, so I googled. He’s funny.
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“I hear a conversation in which Art is talking about trees and Rob (and I to the extent I’m involved) is talking about a forest.”
That’s about right, I’d say. And I don’t know how to bridge that divide with Mr. D, so I’ll leave it at that.
For further reading in forestry I’ll suggest Hirschman’s The Passions and the Interests, Skidelsky’s “The Emancipation of Avarice” (First Things) and How Much is Enough?, and the pertinent chapter in Brad Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation. -
Oh, and re: our discussion about the terms “liberal” and “conservative,” I saw this over the weekend and found it interesting. It’s a piece by P. Deneen on the 50th Anniversary reprinting of Burnham’s Suicide of the West. One of the things he discusses is the change that’s occurred on both right and left in the 50 years since Burnham wrote the book.
http://www.libertylawsite.org/book-review/adaptation-or-abandonment/ -
Before I even read that, I’m going to say that I read the Burnham book recently and have been planning to do a blog post about it. Short version: though dated in some ways its analysis of liberalism (in the everyday sense) remains brilliant and essential for understanding what’s going on.
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Specifically, the subtitle. The analysis of Western liberal guilt and resultant tendency to cultural suicide is spot on, the best I’ve seen, and is illustrated in the news every day.
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I had a copy of it years ago but never read it, and at this point I have no idea where it got to. I’ll have to get a new one — I’d like to read the new intros anyways.
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Much of the Deneen article is just air, and it’s not going to be the least bit cogent to anyone not steeped in and assenting to a set of clue concepts. That aside, the money quote is here, in his operative definition of ‘liberalism’”:
1) a proclivity to change and innovation; 2) egalitarianism; 3) wealth-redistribution and welfare; 4) internationalism; 5) humanitarianism (or “cosmopolitanism”) and hostility toward more local organizations; and 6) peace as the highest social value.
He’s describing contemporary social-worker ideology which emerged around the turn of the century in the Anglosphere (and, in some measure, Continental Europe, which was more infected by Marxism). “Liberalism” as in “classical liberalism” or the “old Whig” perspective that animated much of 19th century political life is not captured in this definition (and he even invokes Hayek). There are aspects of this incorporated into contempoary starboard discourse, but you cannot equate portside and starboard discourse on these matters without folding, spindling, and mutilating the latter. -
The folding, spindling, and mutilating he does in the penultimate paragraph and the two immediately proceeding.
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I think the Deneen piece is excellent. I would emphasize different things about the book but what he says is valid. I particularly liked this:
“Conservatism’s capacity to change and adjust ironically makes it susceptible to becoming more liberal as liberalism itself advances.”
This is part of the reason why I’ve never taken my position as a conservative as any sort of fixed thing. My fixed thing is Christianity. Conservatism not the same species. It’s descriptive, not prescriptive.
Art, the six points are from Burnham, and he is talking about liberalism as we commonly speak of it, not classical liberalism. Though I think he devotes a page or two to considering how the latter became the former. -
Art, the six points are from Burnham
He’s quoting it because he subscribes to it.
For instance, it is mainly conservatives (along with libertarians) who ardently defend “academic freedom” on college campuses today in the face of an advancing and intolerant liberal ideology. But Burnham categorizes a commitment to “academic freedom” as a fundamentally liberal doctrine, one that leads to “epistemic relativism” and, from the standpoint of conservatism, “the loosening of social cohesion and the decay of standards, [condoning] the erosion of social order.” Burnham’s greater sensitivity to cultural norms leads him to connect the advance of academic freedom with the tendency to corrode such norms. However, in the wake of the complete evisceration of these norms, today’s conservatives now occupy the space once abandoned by liberals, and find themselves defending “academic freedom” as a gambit for defending the few conservative voices that remain on campuses against an aggressive and alternative set of liberal “norms.” Conservatism’s capacity to change and adjust ironically makes it susceptible to becoming more liberal as liberalism itself advances.
This is stunningly obtuse of Deneen. About 70% of higher education enrollments are in public institutions and the people he’s criticizing have immediate practical problems in their working environment. Anyone concerned with the welfare of higher education is going to concern themselves with promoting in state legislatures practical measures to contain the gangrene therein. This sort of thing reminds me of some numbnutz in The Remnant yammering about seeking the Social Reign of Christ the King because anything else is heretical ‘Americanism’. Messers. Deneen and Droleskey do not live in a Catholic confessional state, they’re never going to live in such a state, the state Universities will never be the sort you might have in such a state, freed from the accursed ‘epistemic relativism’. The whole exercise they’re engaged in is just twee.
Economic liberalism is now considered the essence of “conservatism,”
Deneen has evidently never witnessed an exchange of brickbats between an annoyed social conservative and an annoying business Republican.
leading to a situation in which “conservative” economic commitments as a practical matter mirror four of the six liberal devotions (not egalitarianism or wealth-redistribution/welfare).
By which he means:
1) a proclivity to change and innovation; 4) internationalism; 5) humanitarianism (or “cosmopolitanism”) and hostility toward more local organizations; and 6) peace as the highest social value.
His contentions with regard to number 6 are tommyrot unless he’s referring to alt-right motormouths like Daniel Larison. Those regarding number 5 require a bogus and spin-doctored interpretation of the last 15 years (also favored by alt-right motormouths). Number 4 uses a piece of terminology which is nonsensical except in the context of mid-20th century disputes over topical questions. Is Deneen really holding up inter-war isolationism, which was a characteristic of a very particular set of conditions, as some sort of sine qua non of ‘conservatism’? (As, yes, alt-right motormouths fixated on Charles Lindbergh and Robert Taft tend to do). With regard to number 1, he’s conflating people’s assessment of product and process innovation (which is not without trouble) with people assessments of innovations of all sorts.
Economic liberalism has been the most powerful agent of “change and innovation” in our world today,
The Professor undertakes a segue to a different usage here without remarking on it, not impressed. That aside, it has not. ‘Economic liberalism’, which is cleanly implemented precisely nowhere, is a regulatory regime. It disrupts nothing. Technological innovation can be sorely disruptive, but Dennen has to do some serious thinking about prudent application of regulatory architectures and the costs and benefits of attempting to contain technological applications before he goes on whinges about ‘economic liberalism’. Alternatives to economic liberalism tend to devolve into crooked mercantilism (for which ‘liberalism’ has to take the rap too. Cute).
and the demand for global markets and porous economic borders has been the most potent spur to liberal globalization and cosmopolitanism than any policy that “liberalism” might have achieved.
This sentence is simply nonsensical. What is ‘liberal globalization’? Do we have a clue of the sense of ‘liberal’ he’s employing here? That aside, ‘globalization’ is a dippy buzzword. Long distance trade is not a contemporary novelty and it is not driven by ‘liberalism’ but by declining transportation costs. The implosion of command economies and the decline of tariff barriers has provided a conduit for more trade (even as trade agreements have grown hopelessly complex). What’s Deneen’s alternative? High tariffs for the hell of it? Maintaining command economies as museum pieces so he doesn’t feel like the Last Man?
And if you’ve got a ‘potent spur’ to ‘cosmopolitanism’, it’s likely communications technology, not ‘liberalism’ in any sense of the term or long distance trade in computer components. Again, what is he proposing anyone advocate or do about that, confiscate everyone’s phone?
And we have seen conservatism at its most “liberal” in recent years with an effort to spread liberal democracy as a matter of foreign policy, an ambition articulated with particular and even religious fervency in the second inaugural address of George W. Bush.
Isn’t it cute when Steve Sailer says ‘invade the world, invite the world, in hock to the world’. Except we did not ‘invade the world’, we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, two problem countries we occupied for raison d’etat, and we promoted electoral institutions in both loci faux de mieux.
Does anyone ever ask Deneen just what his alternative is to all this, or is it jejune to expect political theoreticians to actually get down to brass tacks? -
“He’s quoting it because he subscribes to it.”
Of course he does, but the point is that you are misreading Burnham via Deneen. You take exception to the six points on the grounds that ‘Liberalism” as in “classical liberalism” or the “old Whig” perspective that animated much of 19th century political life is not captured in this definition’. Indeed it isn’t, because that’s not what Burnham is talking about. He is in fact defining what you say the points define, “contemporary social-worker ideology which emerged around the turn of the century”. -
“the point is that you are misreading Burnham via Deneen.”
And misreading Deneen on top of it.
“Does anyone ever ask Deneen just what his alternative is to all this, or is it jejune to expect political theoreticians to actually get down to brass tacks?”
At this stage in the game Deneen and other writers of his sort are acting as diagnosticians. One doesn’t propose a treatment plan until there is agreement on the diagnosis.
The vehemence (one could call it rage) with which many defenders of modern finance capitalism respond to even the mildest of critiques demonstrates that we ain’t quite there yet. -
Not misreading Deneen at all.
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The vehemence (one could call it rage) with which many defenders of modern finance capitalism respond to even the mildest of critiques demonstrates that we ain’t quite there yet.
There is no indication from that article that Deneen knows ‘modern finance capitalism’ from tiddlywinks. My irritation with the man is that a professor putatively specializing in political theory is passing off this sloppy mess on his readership, refusing to offer any counterpoint of his own to this so inadequate ‘liberalism’. There is not any there there in that article and it’s not as if there’s much excuse for Deneen of all people. The man’s a vocational academic in his fifties, he’s had time to work something out.
Light On Dark Water 
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