Evola and the Alternative Right

Richard Spencer, formerly of Takimag, has started his own e-zine, called the Alternative Right.  I’m always a little skeptical of anything labeled “alternative,” but so far this seems more tradtionalist and intellectual in its leanings than the old Taki Mag.  I particularly enjoyed this brief review of Julius Evola’s interesting and very unique philosophical musings by E. Christian Kopf (who should be familiar to readers of Chronicles Magazine).  I think he captures the way Evola effectively challenges the dominant, pro-capitalist direction of contemporary conservatives and challenges them to rethink first principles and the way that modernity in all its manifestations is the opponent of a decent, well-ordered and sustainable society:

Evola rejected the Enlightenment Project lock, stock, and barrel, and had little use for the Renaissance and the Reformation. For Evola those really opposed to the leftist regime, the true Right, are not embarrassed to describe themselves as reactionary and counterrevolutionary. If you are afraid of these words, you do not have the courage to revolt against the modern world. Evola also countenances the German expression, Conservative Revolution, if properly understood. Revolution is acceptable if and only if it is true re-volution, a turning back to origins. Conservatism is valid only when it preserves the true Tradition. Loyalty to the bourgeois order is a false conservatism, because on the level of principle, the bourgeoisie is an economic class, not a true aristocracy.

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Much Ado About Nothing

One of the worst aspects of conservative “activism” is (a) the dominance of beltway pundits and their utter disconnect from the “tea party” crowd, and in particular the beltway’s contempt for the latter’s untutored and more tribal and culture-focused conservatism and (b) the right’s divisions and internal enmity, which prevents practical coalition building against a common enemy:  liberalism, its welfare state, and its numerous toxic cultural organs.

Conservatism is a simple and widely held view, which need not be philosophical, strictly speaking.  It takes nothing more than a recognition that life used to be more orderly and civilized, where such awareness comes from living memory and things easily discovered in books and conversation, coupled with contempt and hostility to those who seek more, similar changes.

Our forbears who opposed Soviet Communism had a similar problem, which is at once encouraging and sobering, when we take account of the longevity of the Soviet regime.  Consider this passage from the Age of Delirium, which chronicled the later years of the Soviet Union:

[T]here was moral political unity in the Soviet Union but not behind Marxism-Leninism.  The unity existed behind the desire to live according to an idea and to force all others to do likewise.  It was the drive towards unanimity that explained some of the negative characteristics of the dissident milieu, which was permeated with rumor-mongering and intrigues and divided by intolerance and sectarianism. . . .

The ideological atmosphere of Soviet society was reflected in relations between people who concerned themselves in any way with politics.  Among such people–and this category included the majority of the unofficial intelligentsia–friendship almost always had connotations of comradeship and its demands for uncritical idealization.  The intensity fo these friendships was evident among dissents who formed an extended family on political grounds, virtually living at each other’s houses, exhibiting photographs of each other, and interesting themselves deeply in each other’s personal affairs.  It went without saying that this type of friendship became insupportable if there was the slightest change in the political outlook of the parties.  Under those circumstances, a disagreement between friends was understood as a betrayal, and the closest friendship could turn into the most unforgiving enmity, with people suddenly waking up to and expatiating at length about the repulsive and despicable personality traits they had overlooked for years when the object of such an attacks was a close and valued friend.

What can we learn from this?  First, we should not indulge in foolish and petty infighting, particularly with those such as libertarians who have no constituency, natural or otherwise.  Yes, we should disassociate from those who would raise a false flag, such as neoconservatives, who have to some extent undermined real conservatism from within and diverted it to unnatural ends like endless Mideast Wars or conflict with Russia or open borders.  But we should spend more of our time and energy where the utterly disreputable politics of the far left is ascendent and also unpopular, such as immigration and health care.

Let’s learn from the relative success of our ideological adversaries at home.  How did they proceed?  Most notably, the Left advanced for many years on many fronts, slowly chipping away at the status quo with the lever of common American principles, such as equality and due process.  But they always have upped the ante upon success.  Consider the dramatic change in sexual mores and the rules regarding the same.  First, they argued for a constitutional right for birth control for the married.  Then the unmarried.  Then abortion.  And now we are seriously debating gay “marriage.”  This is a slow motion cultural revolution.

Under the successful leftist campaign, the newspapers, media, universities, political fundraising, and public schools all have been put to work to discredit our past, expose (and distort) its alleged flaws, replace our former authorities, destroy our economic independence, take away our guns, distract us with sensation and materialism and a lack of tribal unity, and generally move step by step towards their goals. (By contrast, the right has won back the right to bear arms through a similar strategy in reverse, focusing activism and money state-by-state.)

In other words, the left’s biggest triumphs have not been through symbolic violence by extremists far in front of the cultural mainstream–like the work of the Wobblies or Haymarket Square bombers–but rather the drumbeat of Gloria Steinem, Boasian anthropology, Freudian psychology, Keynesian economics, the haggiography of MLK, and the leaderless ideology of diversity and multiculturalism.  And the culmination:  a culture defined by the values of Hollywood, the crony capitalism of Wall Street, and the Manchurian presidency of Barack Hussein Obama.

Something like this in reverse is the answer, and, like the Left’s successes, will depend on some luck, circumstances, public relations and intellectual efforts nationally, and a certain degree of organizing locally.  The stated goals of the left must be exposed, as must their bad faith.  While there are many obstacles, there is much to work with for conservatives seeking national renewal, not least the dissatisfaction with Obama’s fiscal profligacy, his (and the neoconservatives’) open borders extremism, the Democrats’ excessive concern for America’s black minority, their contempt for our economic independence and historical freedoms, their lack of patriotism and their lack of hatred for our enemies, their hostility to Christians and rural Americans, their dominance  by unrepresentative and hostile minority factions, and much else. In other words, we need to hack away at the Left on those fronts where there is a majority, or at least strong plurality of support, rather than indulging in silly fantasies of revolutionary violence, the creation of a new pagan or quasi-scientific right wing that is anti-Christian (i.e., against 80% of the country), or the Rockefeller Republican strategy of compromise with our enemies, who will only respond by asking for more next time around.

That all said, arguing with crazies or getting caught up in distractions like the cult of Charles Johnson (the erstwhile militant neocon at LGF) or crackpots on the neo-nazi movement is a big waste of time.  Let’s instead speak to normal people on those areas where we agree and cooperate today, even if we must part ways and have smaller, more manageable disagreements about finer points of policy and strategy, tomorrow.

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“Contempt of Cop”

After realizing the racism charge had no real merit, critics of Officer Crowley have now shifted their argument:  the cop was supposedly an ego-maniac who made an unlawful arrest of his social superior, a great black “scholar,” for the made-up charge of “contempt of cop.”  Isn’t this bad enough?  After all the prosecutor dropped the charges?  Let’s pause for a moment.  Isn’t it a strange state of affairs that someone can refuse to give an officer his ID, shout when that officer gives him his name, refuse to go outside when ordered during an investigation, and scream crude remarks about his mother at the top of his lungs?

This is a product of the 1960s, which occasioned the breakdown of traditional laws related to good order on vagrancy and public disturbances and ushered in a more general skepticism of police by radical federal judges contemptuous of local “oppression.”  The chief thread running through that entire disruptive era was a “counter-culture” that spread great contempt for all forms of traditional authority, whether in the arena of politics, the military, culture, music, manners, education, and everything else.

The “Man” was the problem. The solution was the liberation of the individual from archaic rules.  Police were just people like anyone else, worse even, “Pigs.” They were not like educated judges (who can lock people up for contempt without much public concern) nor general surrogates for the community like respected, elected politicians.  Cops deserved no respect and were entitled to none by the laws.  This, even though prosecutions are still brought in many locales in the name of the “People” and cops are the most visible symbol of our elected governments’ authority.   Cops could now be abused at or cursed at or given the finger. Yet somehow we’re all still supposed to know not to resist them when they’re putting us in cuffs, nor try to outrun them in a high speed chase. It’s all very logical you see. Free at last!

In the name of freedom from oppression, however, we got more crime and disorder.  The 1970s was the era of the barricaded front door, deserted streets after dark, occasional urban riots, skyrocketing crime, disorder, and the increased use of force in arrests for a very obvious reason:  criminals became unused to submitting to authority after a lifetime of disobedience coupled with mixed messages from teachers, the media, and the culture.  Force had to supply what once could be commanded by stern words and police presence alone. The cultural radicals mostly isolated themselves from the consequences of their teachings in gated communities, Upper East Side Co-ops, or some Ivory Tower.  The working class people grew uncomfortable, and this discomfort culminated in the Nixon victory and the Reagan Revolution. They never bought the liberal line on law and order, not least because they had to pay a dear price for this “liberation.”

A culture of widespread respect for police guarantees greater public safety and allows the police to use less force. They use less force in such a milieu because suspects are habituated to to submit, know that the community would side with the police, and those troublemakers who are willful and disorderly can be detained before things get out of hand. This both teaches them a lesson and serves to pour encourger les autres. This is the world that prevailed before the 1960s.  It was a safer world with less violence.  Police in those days were unironically praised, respected, honored, and given the benefit of the doubt.  This culture of respect paid countless dividends, dividends given short shrift by the courts, the media, and now the President of the United States.

I have a feeling this comes down to who watches Cops versus who listens to NPR. Methinks there’s not too much overlap. As any episode of Cops will demonstrate, police live in a world of unruly, dangerous, and often violent people.  Their instinct, born of necessity, is to be in control of their encounters with citizens.  It is too much to ask them to shut this off when investigating “scholars.” Scholars don’t get a free pass; cops do not know who they are dealing with in the initial moments of an encounter and cannot be expected to change their entire manner and routine in dealing with white collar types who have a chip on their shoulder . . . even when they’re black and even when they’re buddy-buddy with the president.  Long established habits needed to make it home safely every night have a persuasive logic all their own.

Edmund Burke perceived this consequence of liberalism in 1789.  In the name of reason and fairness and consistency, France did away with all of the official regard for rank that had characterized its political and social order for many hundreds of years.  After the Revolution, all were “citizens,” whether soldier or king or bishop or man or woman.  In the name of equality and liberty, France soon endured terrors and regicides and the massacres of the Vendee.  His analysis of the undoing of the French nobility and monarchy bears many parallels with our own society’s undoing of the very modest respect once formally and informally due to law enforcement:

Without force or opposition, it subdued the fierceness of pride and power, it obliged sovereigns to submit to the soft collar of social esteem, compelled stern authority to submit to elegance, and gave a domination, vanquisher of laws, to be subdued by manners.

But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions which made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the super-added ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns and the understanding ratifies as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.

Regicide, and parricide, and sacrilege are but fictions of superstition, corrupting jurisprudence by destroying its simplicity. The murder of a king, or a queen, or a bishop, or a father are only common homicide; and if the people are by any chance or in any way gainers by it, a sort of homicide much the most pardonable, and into which we ought not to make too severe a scrutiny.

On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be supported only by their own terrors and by the concern which each individual may find in them from his own private speculations or can spare to them from his own private interests. In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows. Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of the commonwealth. On the principles of this mechanic philosophy, our institutions can never be embodied, if I may use the expression, in persons, so as to create in us love, veneration, admiration, or attachment. But that sort of reason which banishes the affections is incapable of filling their place. These public affections, combined with manners, are required sometimes as supplements, sometimes as correctives, always as aids to law. The precept given by a wise man, as well as a great critic, for the construction of poems is equally true as to states: — Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto. There ought to be a system of manners in every nation which a well-informed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

But power, of some kind or other, will survive the shock in which manners and opinions perish; and it will find other and worse means for its support. The usurpation which, in order to subvert ancient institutions, has destroyed ancient principles will hold power by arts similar to those by which it has acquired it. When the old feudal and chivalrous spirit of fealty, which, by freeing kings from fear, freed both kings and subjects from the precautions of tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds of men, plots and assassinations will be anticipated by preventive murder and preventive confiscation, and that long roll of grim and bloody maxims which form the political code of all power not standing on its own honor and the honor of those who are to obey it.

Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle.

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Conservatism by Jim Kalb

Jim Kalb is an excellent writer and his new book is on my list of things to read.  Online, he has been a presence for some time, and his Conservatism FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) is quite useful to those who are looking to deepen their understanding of politics.  I like that he is willing to engage practical issues and not simply talk about conservatism “philosophically” in a way that is ethereal and abstract or, worse, attempts to justify conservatism using liberal measures of the good.  I also think his short serious of questions and answers is a useful antidote to certain imposter conservatisms, such as Andrew Sullivan’s Conservatism of Doubt or the ideology of Democratic Capitalism promoted by the neoconservatives.

I particularly liked the way he fleshed out the often vague appeals by conservatives to “family values”:

3.1 What are family values and what is so great about them?

They are habits and attitudes that maintain a society in which people’s most basic loyalties, and the relationships upon which they rely most fundamentally, are relationships to particular persons rather than to the state.

Family values are basic to moral life because it is primarily in relationships with particular persons that are taken with the utmost seriousness that we find the degree of concrete knowledge and mutual responsibility that is necessary for our obligations to others to become realities for us. In addition, the knowledge and habits necessary for the good life mostly have to do with the day-to-day activities of ordinary men. Such things lose coherence if everyday personal relations are unstable and unreliable, as they will be if law, habits and attitudes do not support stable and functional family life.

Family values are rejected to the extent the necessity of practical reliance on particular persons is viewed as something oppressive and unequal that the state should remedy. Conservatives oppose that rejection. They view tyranny as the likely outcome of weakening family values, since reducing personal and local responsibilities is likely to make state power unbalanced and overly predominant.

3.2 Why can’t conservatives just accept that people’s personal values differ?

Liberals, conservatives and others all recognize limits on the degree to which differing personal values can be accommodated. One reason such limits arise is that personal values can be realized only by establishing particular sorts of relations with other people, and no society can favor all relationships equally. No society, for example, can favor equally a woman who primarily wants to have a career and one who primarily wants to be a mother and homemaker. If public attitudes presume that it is the man who is primarily responsible for family support they favor the latter at the expense of the former; if not, they do the reverse.

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The Spirit of 1994

Bill Clinton was a polarizing figure, in spite of his popularity. For both friends and enemies, he was the true torch-bearer of the 60s and the Baby Boomers: idealistic, flabby, occasionally elitist, urban, self-indulgent, draft-dodging, and all the rest. His lifestyle fed into stereotypes held by Reagan Democrats and blue collar Americans about liberal elites, and his gun control measures and perceived hostility to religious people–not least in the Waco Massacre–did much to fuel an anti-government paranoia among conservatives during that time. In its more mainstream manifestation, this included measures like the Contract With America and the attempted alliance of paleoconservatives and certain libertarians in venues like Chronicles magazine and the John Randolph Club. The most extreme variant included the militia movement and the Timothy McVeigh bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. Much of this feeling dissipated after 9/11 and the 2000 election. Many conservatives channeled their feelings of alienation and fear at Islamic terrorists. Bush’s perceived moral clarity was welcome, and a new kind of bellicose populism became prominent in the movement, even if the democracy-spreading stuff was dismissed as necessary window dressing. This turned out not to be so.

Bush, who was frequently called “more conservative than his father” behind closed doors in Republican circles in 2000, turned out to be quite a bit more idealistic and more liberal than his father. His foreign policy was less steeped in realism. His embrace of Hispanics, including illegal immigrants, as the future of the Republican Party did much to alienate social conservatives and Reagan Democrats, who became more concerned about mass immigration in recent years.

I believe Obama has the capacity to have the Clinton effect, uniting conservatives who have now lost the distraction of a non-conservative president leading us into hopeless backwaters like “spreading democracy in the Middle East” or expanding home ownership to bad credit risks. After all, without the albatross of the first President Bush after 1992, conservatives united around a truly conservative set of themes and did much to scuttle Clinton’s dumbest ideas. As with Clinton, Obama’s big spending, dubious heritage, increasingly hackneyed rhetoric, and recent anti-gun noises will likely trigger the anti-government, anti-spending feeling that conservatives always seem to find again as soon as they’re out of power. I may be wrong; the demographics have changed considerably since 1994. Many millions of newcomers have arrived since then. And younger people are less likely to marry and have children–these milestones being major inducements to conservatism among not particularly political folks. We’re still here though. Obama has been fearless about confronting conservative on various hot button issues–criticizing the US in Turkey, mocking Christian beliefs in his stem cell decisions, kowtowing to Mexico on guns–and the intense backlash is brewing, along with that old time conservative anti-government rhetoric. While this message fell on deaf ears during the inflationary boom, there is always a group that views big government spending as profligate and short-sighted during hard economic times. Such views connect directly with those of our Founding Fathers and have even penetrated the once pro-New Deal Reagan Democrats as they have climbed the economic ladder. When combined with the more culturally-based opposition to amnesty, which Obama seems surprisingly poised to advocate, Obama may accomplish what Bush could not: uniting conservatives around a small government, neo-nationalist set of views.

The political disaster would be for some opportunist without a thorough understanding and ability to articulate these views to become the face of conservatism. This is why McCain, Huckabee, and Palin each present different risks to the party. None is a real conservative steeped in the nationalist and small government strains of thinking that have grown so robust under Bush’s pseuedo-conservatism, and each would become a lightning rod for conservatives, while in fact being a populist or militarist imposter.

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Rallying the Rich Won’t Save Conservatism

One sad thing about the CPAC Conference is that while the various speakers’ criticism of Obama’s “soak the rich” policies are true and persuasive, conservative leaders are missing out on an important recent development that renders much of the old strategy focused on growth, low taxes, and a rousing defense of capitalism less relevant than ever.

Once upon a time, conservatives were middle class, upwardly mobile people that worked hard, saved, made a few bucks, had kids, moved out to the suburbs, voted Republican, and contrasted their own happy and auspicious lives with those of the shiftless, undeserving poor, the “parasites” of the Democratic Party.  Working class people too hopped on board, though sometimes uneasily,  because they were disgusted with the excesses of the 1960s, jealous over their guns and their churches, and resentful of the simmering racial cold war harming their prospects on factory floors.

Today, however, the first group in that coalition–the group that cares a lot more about money and taxes and economic parasites than it does about flag-burning or abortion–is in economic shambles.  Their 401Ks are cut in half.  Their homes are upside down and increasingly being foreclosed upon.  Their self-confidence which depended upon the sharp contrast of their own lives with those of the idle poor has been undermined by the prospect of years and years of toil simply to get even.  Further, their sense that the rules are basically fair and that businesses (and people like them affiliated with businesses) succeed because they deserve to has created a kind of upper-middle-class populist reaction to the various Wall Street bailouts:  if their own small businesses must fail, and if their own portfolios get whacked, why does a subset of the economy, a subset that is not particularly notable for building or inventing anything other than impenetrably complex financial instruments, getting tax money and bailouts while the ordinary upper middle class gets the tab.  This tale of two groups of rich people is given further salience by the contrast of their own relatively straightforward success through thrift, focus, effort, hard work, and sobriety with the gambling-style activity and loose living of Wall Street in recent years.  I’m reminded of the largely middle class reaction against aristocratic decadence in France circa 1789.  Recall that it was a bourgeois revolution, not primarily a proletarian one.

Bill Clinton quite intelligently saw that the future of the Democratic Party and its big government ideology required expanding entitlements to the middle class, so that future elections became referenda on health care, scholarship funds, and the like.  Even so, his centerpiece health care proposal failed.  The middle class constituency I describe above mostly had health care because they were employed, and Republicans took over in 2000 after eight fat years of moderate rule.  What Clinton could not do by force of rhetoric, the economic crisis may allow.  Suddenly the old rules have left the middle class deeply in debt, immobile, and flirting with despair over the massive and seemingly unfair degradation of their wealth.  Further, the big giveaways to Wall Street, banks, and the most irresponsible homeowners have created among many a cynical “get while the getting’s good” view of things. After all, why be a sucker?  And, more important, why shouldn’t the rules be changed to help the good people just like them?

Rick Santelli’s impassioned Chicago Tea Party rant was surely enjoyable, but it would probably fall on deaf ears in places like Ft. Myers and Phoenix where people that did play by the rules and still see themselves as sensible and responsible are deeply underwater.  Suddenly, they’re poor too and more inclined than ever to take the handouts that they formerly thought would only slow them and their kind down.  It’s one thing to be against big government when you are a net loser under such a regime; it’s quite another to ask people to be against big government on principle.  For a long time, enough Americans saw the limited government policies of the founders echoed in the pro-capitalism direction of the Republican Party as a winning formula in accord with justice.  When that formula has left so many high and dry, the inexorable sprint towards big government solutions is harder to resist than ever, as too is a serious reevaluation of the values on which it was all based.

To accomplish anything of value, conservatism must change its rhetoric, focusing more on the cultural issues that still divide us from the Democrats and the likelihood that this productive class (even with a housing bail out) will become the permanent water-carrier for the big government future, exchanging, in effect, its future and that of its children for a few trinkets and Fool’s Gold.

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Focusing Conservatives

Lawrence Auster has a good piece on Obama that discusses the pros and cons of his election, which the chief positive being that he would focus conservatives and purify our beliefs, something I argued in May. I still believe this would happen, and it would happen in a particularly healthy way: his overreach, enabled by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, could revive our respect for limited government and the traditional criticisms of the welfare state, remind us of our latent wariness of foreign adventures, and hopefully degrade the health of political correctness and taboos on race and immigration. The latter is particularly important, and would depend upon his policies revealing themselves (as they have been his entire career) to be narrowly tribal and tinged with the rhetoric of class warfare rather than unifying in any normal sense of the term. Arguably, this radicalization was the effect of the Carter Administration, which functioned as a capstone of the craziness of the 1970s. Only after that long and dark decade could Reagan explicitly attack the pro-government, pro-welfare, anti-defense, and anti-American foundations of much of contemporary liberalism. In other words, the times created Reagan as much as he responded to the times; only really tough times made worse by Obama’s policies could revive a healthy conservative political voice in American life. Continuing with the faux conservatism of Bush or McCain, which is in fact populist militarism, would discredit conservatism on many fronts: this approach does not work, it is not responsible, it causes too many conservatives to compromise on their core principles, and such policies, by rejecting free markets and replacing them with managed corporate welfare, does not command the respect of the vast majority of natural conservatives among small businessmen, folks that take pride in self-sufficiency, and the “leave us alone” coalition in general.

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A Time for Action

Paul Gottfried notes that while the canon of post-war conservative thinkers are valuable in their own right, that simply reading them will not likely revive that more authentic strain of conservatism:

The movement that some of our readers would like to revive is now on a life-support system. And those who may eventually succeed in redirecting the conservative movement would not likely be students of a “canon.” They would be people of action often driven by outrage, but in all likelihood not those devoted to the aesthetics of Russell Kirk. It is also an unfortunate fact that most of our canon writers who were then around did little or nothing to prevent the straying of their movement. And most of those who in the 1980s ran to collaborate with the neoconservatives claimed to be loyal disciples of the “great thinkers” of postwar conservatism.

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Making It All Fit

One mark of ideological thinking is a strong strain of rigid consistency. All the facts must fit. The past must be re-written to reflect today’s goals. If the Catholic Church committed some evils in the priest scandal, it was evil back to the time of Christ. If the Iraq War is wrong, so was WWII, WWI, the Vietnam War, and even the War of 1812. Bad means in the pursuit of a noble goal, well-meaning mistakes, incompetence rather than malevolence,  and all forms of moral complexity and human error are consigned to either the realm of the elect and the damned.

A nasty strain of this has emerged among the anti-war right. The left, of course, has long had a large body of supporters whose criticisms of the western world and the United States are intemperate, because the philosophy is rooted in an anti-western fetishization of the Other.  But now the anti-war right, frustrated perhaps by the support received by Bush among a fairly large constituency, has undertaken to extremes of rhetoric, culminating in 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Lawrence Auster exposed this nonsensense quite trenchantly in a piece he wrote some time ago in Front Page Magazine where he wrote, inter alia, about the strange turn of Antiwar.com to anti-Americanism after its initial, powerful condemnation of the Kosovo campaign:

But then something very strange happened with Szamuely, and with Antiwar.com itself. Not content with merely opposing the U.S.-led war on Serbia, he began retrospectively attacking America’s entire effort in the Cold War against the former Soviet Union. He did this by denying that Communism had ever represented a threat that needed to be stopped. It was as though, once he had switched into an oppositional mode against what he saw as the unjustified use of American power in the case of Serbia, he was compelled by some mysterious dynamic to see any use of American power abroad as wrong or imperialistic, even when that power had been used for such a righteous and necessary cause as resisting the spread of Communism, and even though he himself had previously been an anti-Communist and a supporter of the Cold War.

This came as a shock to me. And the shock didn’t end there. I soon noticed a similar adversarial stance among other antiwar rightists, a wild denunciatory quality that did not confine itself to particular wrongs committed by the United States, but eagerly embraced any assertion against America, no matter how ridiculous.

I strongly recommend the article.  Auster correctly notes that significant numbers of the paleoconservative right, resentful perhaps over their lack of influence and professional success, have turned into nihilist haters of all things American.  It’s ridiculous, of course, and far out of kilter with what should be conservative instincts, particularly when natural patriotism and unease with the paranoia of the fringe left is why so many normal people remain encamped on the right side of the spectrum.

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An Imaginary Edmund Burke

I have a long essay up at Takimag.com on Edmund Burke.  I criticize the modern tendency to invoke Burke for liberal causes, as if his concerns were chiefly procedural.  Burke’s philosophy is much more than a habitual disposition to gradualism and decentralization.  The content of political activity matters.  I write, among other things:

Burke’s latest fans, however, misunderstand something important about Burke and his philosophy by abstracting from his ouevre only the following two ideas:  (1) criticism of ideological fanaticism, particularly the concern with uniformity, and (2) Burke’s promotion of gradualism under the rubric of “organic change.” Burke had many more themes, all of which find echoes in conservative thinkers today.  For example, Burke also defended the necessity of social inequality, political authority over moral matters, organized religion (including state support of the same), sound money, chivalry and traditional sex roles, and traditional political institutions, most notably in the form of hereditary monarchy.  Burke was neither a libertarian, nor a Classical Liberal.  He famously sparred with Thomas Paine, who penned his obnoxious work, The Rights of Man, as a criticism of Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. 

Modern “Burkeans,” who defend such varied matters as universal healthcare and gay marriage in Burkean terms, effectively cut Burke’s philosophy in half, focusing exclusively on his concerns for procedure and the pace of political action, while distorting or ignoring Burke’s more controversial treatment of the substantive ends of politics.

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The Myth of a Neutral State

A commenter named Sage McLaughlin in had the following sage words in a discussion thread based on an entry of mine over at Takimag.com:

Even a fully libertarian system, were it possible to implement one, would require force to maintain, since libertarianism itself isn’t what significantly large communities of people have ever wanted for themselves.  So the promise of giving each person whatever he can get for himself is a hollow one, since one of the things people want is to live in a community that reflects their own desires and hierarchy of values, and invests those things with some authority.  Libertarianism says people shouldn’t want that, or at least that they aren’t justified in insisting upon it, which is a normative claim that must be proved philosophically, not empirically.  Either Larry Flynt or I can have the kind of society that we want, but not both, and to concede to him everything he claims about the good of society, while claiming to be neutral on the question, is to decide the issue in the most dishonest possible way.

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What Neoconservatism Is Not

One confusing development is the identification of any activist foreign policy or non-libertarian domestic policy with neoconservatism, as if pure libertarianism were the true standard of authentic conservatism. This is simply a misnomer. Gaullism is not neoconservatism. Rockefeller Republicans–who are more “libertarian” on issues like gay rights and abortion–is not neoconservatism. Nixonian authoritarian pragmatism is not neoconservatism. And libertarianism is certainly not conservatism. As is evident in the writings of Russell Kirk and older issues of National Review, libertarians have always been uneasy coalition partner with conservatives. The temporary unity of many paleoconservatives and libertarians on the undesireabiliy of the Iraq War should not be mistaken for a melding of the two groups and their views. Even without Bush and the Iraq War, conservatives still believe in ordered liberty, which is to say, an historical and inherited Anglo-American balance of state action and private life. This is traditionally translated as economic libertarianism and social conservatism. That is, while conservatives favor a relatively free economy and a small federal government, no principle tells them that local and state governments cannot engage in everything from traditional control of vice, the provision of public education, prohibitions of drugs, and modest welfare programs for the “deserving poor.”

For a time, particularly the early 1990s, paleoconservatives and libertarians joined forces in opposition to the burgeoning federal welfare state. Prior to this marriage, the Cold War created unity among conservatives of all stripes–including Rockefeller Republicans and neoconservatives–all of whom recognized the need for opposing Soviet Communism. Paleolibertarians existed as a species apart for the most part during this era, with Murray Rothbard infamously saluting Nikita Khruschev during his 1959 visit to the United States. Just as national defense in World War II was not a major point of debate among conservatives after Pearl Harbor, neither too was the need for protecting America, Europe, and various resource-rich corners of the Third World from an explicitly statist and expansionist threat in the form of Soviet Communism. In fact, the alliance with the Soviets against Hitler was itself a point of friction during WWII for many conservatives, otherwise disposed to defer to leaders of state during a national crisis.

The Soviet system also provided a useful symbol with which to contrast the American way of life. Everything from urban renewal, interference with freedom of contract (including the freedom to discriminate), and generous farm subsidies could be legitimately described as a kind of creeping socialism, rooted in the same egalitarian values and technocratic faith that reached its apotheosis in the Soviet Union.

At the end of the Cold War, conservatives were in a state of disunity and ferment intellectually. Neoconservatives demanded a continuation of the Cold War model of interventionist foreign policy and a rejection of the small government conservatism popular in the South and West, while many neo-nationalists, such as Pat Buchanan, demanded a turn inward and a dismantlement of much of the welfare state, while also advocating restrictions on immigration to reduce its largest and (more important) growing constituencies.

If the expanded government power of the Cold War was a necessary evil in the eyes of paleoconservatives, for neoconservatives this constituted America’s finest hour. Neoconservatives, it must be remembered, were liberal defectors from many Democrats’ turn to the New Left at the tail end of the Vietnam War. In the New Left, the neoconservatives saw nihilism, indifference to Soviet expansionism, solidarity with anti-Western (and anti-Israeli) movements for “national liberation,” and alienation from the consensus American position of the Cold War. As liberals with strong ties to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, neoconservatives saw themselves as natural moderates without the taint of racism that characterized the right, which largely opposed the social-engineering utopianism of the civil rights movement, while also avoiding the unpatriotic nihilism of the New Left.

In the early 90s, the burgeoning Welfare State with its invasive focus on the activities of private life and private businesses presented itself as a logical locus of unity among traditional conservatives uneasy with the compromises of the Cold War–compromises that could no longer be justified as necessary and temporary measures to oppose the Soviet Union. This anti-Welfare/Warfare State coalition included the self-described paleolibertarians. As the “emergency” needs of the Cold War ended, paleoconservatives urged a major reduction in America’s foreign policy commitments, just as they had continuously urged an end to the federal government’s involvement in the economy through the “emergency” programs of the New Deal and the Great Society. The divisions between traditionalist paleoconservatives with the neoconservatives–revealed with great drama in the derailment of Mel Bradford’ appointment to head the NEA–became manifest, as the neoconservatives advocated US interventionism for the sake of power, expanding democratic capitalism, protecting Israel, resisting a revanchist Russia, and generally preserving the exceptional US power of the post-war era.

Earlier friction on such varied issues as antidiscrimination laws, the meaning of the Civil War, and the existence and nature of “racism” provided continued fodder for friction. Since liberals, libertarians, and traditionalist conservatives all had various degrees of opposition to the War in Iraq–or developed opposition as WMDs did not materialize and the war’s idealist nature became manifest–pacifist libertarian ideas on foreign policy allowed paleoconservatism in some people’s eyes to be reduced to a single, small government principle. Like any authentic conservatism, paleoconservatism demands different treatments of different situations and peoples. If paleoconservatism is for small government at the federal and international level, it often embraces “republicanism” at the local level, a tradition that extols the idea of a small, self-governing society where the virtue of its members consists in part of the salutary act of considering the good, being an active citizen, and expressing that commitment politically.

Conservatism is defined above all else, in my view, by the instinct to defend a known way of life that is under threat. In the American context, that means the limited government traditions of the Founders, the tone and tenor of civil society provided by the WASP elite, and the rough-hewn unpretentiousness provided by the Scotch-Irish that exists today in America’s scorn for elitism and disdain for dependency. A “conservatism” that decries everything from 1789 onward is not conservatism, but is instead a kind of ideological romanticism. Like any ideology, it does not have to deal with compromise, results, facts, statistics, and lived experience. The past and the present both can be castigated as hopeless compromises. For romantics–including libertarians–the best is yest to come, and if we enact their a priori proposals the perfect society is just over the the next hill, like the Lost City of El Dorado.

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The Twilight of Modernism

Mark at Protestant Pontifications notes in a wide-ranging post that postmodernism is just the death gasp of modernity, and that, unlike the true anti-modernism of authentic conservatism, rails against the age without much in the way of alternative:

The notion that religion and politics are two separate spheres is an entirely modern one, post-enlightenment. This is not a defense of theocracy. Theocracy, in a real sense, doesn’t work in a democratic age. But neither does a political philosophy which makes no reference to the transcendent. Modernism is the product of this artificial separation. In the words of Makoto Fujimura, postmodernism isn’t a new phase, but rather the tail end of modernism. It is modernism’s natural conclusion.

What is postmodernism? A simplistic answer might be that it is the rejection of the enlightenment project. This project culminated in the boomer generation following WWII. It is said that bad ideas can only bear the weight of reality for so long, and the children of the boomers are evidence of this. Postmodernism screams a void. It decries failure. It paints emptiness in bold strokes. Secular humanism has failed; it has been tried and found wanting. Postmodernism stares into the Nietzchean abyss and refuses it. But it has nowhere to go.

We see this as an act of confusion, an attempt to make sense of the world that only concludes that failure has occurred but is unequipped to respond. So instead, it is left to merely pointing out our glaring hypocrisies. One can observe this easily in our movies. Films like No Country for Old Men and There Will be Blood don’t have a positive moral teaching. They are exhibitions of virtue in relief.

Our culture has been self-centered for so long, obsessed with the individual for so long, that by the time it realizes it cannot morally hold itself up by the bootstraps it has forgotten how to operate otherwise. We have glared too much into our own false light that we are blind to the glow of natural law.

Modern society stands at a crossroad. The echoes of emptiness bounce off every part of our community, but what or who will fill the void?

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Libertarian Culture

While no libertarian, I do have a pretty strong indifference to other people’s lifestyles.  This is common among American conservatives.  In other words, I strongly believe in aloofness to private vice and idiosyncrasy so long as it is undertaken in a way that is respectful of the community.  This is what distinguishes the Old America’s kooks and crazies from the “counter cultural America” that emerged after the 1960s.   The old kooks wanted to be left alone; the new ones want to “raise our consciousness.”

In spite of its reputation for conformity, people had a wide range of religious, ideological, and lifestyle freedom before the Left set out to “shake up the world.”  Snake handling churches, hippy communes, and people’s private opinions didn’t concern older generations of Americans nearly so much as similar “infractions” bother liberals today.  For liberty-loving conservatives, the personal is not political and shouldn’t be. This is a core commitment of a free people, and it’s something that needs to find support not only in the laws but also in people’s private attitudes, judgements, and concerns. Ideas have consequences, as do sentiments and judgments.  It’s hard to say something is the apotheosis of evil, but also say it should be legal.  Older libertarians and conservatives knew that people’s attitudes, offensive art, and private behavior simply weren’t that evil and weren’t that harmful compared to legal intervention to stop the same.

This lack of respect for other people’s right to make odd or even offensive choices is why the civil libertarian aspects of regular liberalism have been swallowed up by the deeper liberal concern for equality, undermining traditional power structures, and avoiding hurt feelings among preferred victim groups.

So it’s kind of funny to me that the newest generation of libertarians, like cop-hater Radley Balko, spend so much sincere energy on whether things are offensive, racist, or outside the bounds of politically correctness.  Do you think someone like Radley or anyone over at Reason knows why John Randolph wrote, “I love liberty; I hate equality?”  Can you imagine Ron Paul or Murray Rothbard or any of the old guard giving a crap if some old-fashioned item might be considered “racist”? No, these folks didn’t make a point of self-congratulatory inquiry into whether some kitschy item in an airport gift shop is offensive. 

The natural constituency of restoring historical American liberties can be found among the productive classes, men that are aware that the past wasn’t so bad and that also have a commitment to pulling their own weight. Everyone from country mechanics to Henry Ford and Charles Koch fit under this umbrella.  But guys like this don’t give a crap about whether Aunt Jemima statues are offensive, and so long as libertarianism fights a two front war against socialism and conservatives–with especial venom for cultural conservatives–it will have an even smaller constituency and less influence than it already does.  The one glimmer of hope (other than the Goldwater campaign) was during the early 1990s when an alliance of libertarians and paleoconservatives punished George Bush for his various transgressions against conservatism and good sense.  Needless to say, we didn’t worry about the Willie Horton ad or “code language” about school bussing back then; we just wanted the government to stay out of our lives, and we didn’t mind if some people were attracted to this philosophy because they had strong feelings about the disastrous social engineering experiments they and their kids endured, like school bussing, affirmative action, Title IX, and a soft-on-crime justice system.

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Condy Rice as VP: Another Indicator of McCain’s Liberalism

Apparently, John McCain is seriously considering Condy Rice to be his Vice President, and she wants the job. I can’t say I’m surprised, but I do think she will do little to help him with moderates, and such a choice will further alienate real conservatives.  This issue is unusually important because of McCain’s age and health; his vice-president stands a reasonably good chance of assuming the office.

First, I think he is likely to choose her because he’s expressed unease about attacking Obama.  He can’t muster the same passion against him that he could against an Edwards or Clinton.  (Could you imagine McCain firing a staffer for an anti-Hillary youtube video?)  For McCain, Obama’s race is like a shield, and McCain acts like any other guilty white liberal on race, as evidenced most dramatically by his embrace of America-destroying immigration policies.  Condy gives him a get out of jail free card and also allows him to further his own vanity, proving to himself and everyone how progressive he is on racial matters.  

Second, there is no daylight between McCain and Condy on the war. It’s true the war is unpopular, and McCain’s reprise of Bush’s ’04 electoral strategy appears less likely to be effective this time around, but it’s clearly something the two of them are very sincere about. Far from balancing the ticket, McCain seems disposed to pick a lackey type who will not challenge his oversized ego and unorthodox ideas.

Finally, Condy is a messianic liberal who, like Bush, is able to paint the imperial policing job in Iraq in the grandest of terms:  the installment of sacred democracy and the expiation of our national “birth defect” of slavery.  McCain likes this sort of talk; it elevates his merely instinctual “politics of duty” to grander historical purposes.  Rice frequently ties this back to her own life, equating slavery and Jim Crow with any recognition of group differences, including the conservative criticism that Iraqis cannot profitably handle democracy and self-government.

Rice has no apparent leadership qualities, is a weak public speaker, is totally out to lunch on the Palestinians (often comparing their treatment to black civil rights activists) and has accomplished literally nothing at all as Secretary of State.   She is a race-obsessed liberal and incompetent, but McCain may still pick her.  Her race, her minimal qualifications, and her hawkish views on Iraq are enough for him.

Consider her record.  She failed after 9/11 to be a voice of reason by not defending racial profiling of Middle Easterners and distinguishing this from the Jim Crow policies of America’s past.  She failed as National Security Advisor to pull Bush off the rails by saying, “If we’re to pursue this ambitious course, we need many more troops regardless of what Rumsfeld is saying.”  In works like Fiasco and Cobra II, she appears to have done very little in her role at the NSA, being bulldozed and parried by aggressive folks like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Perle, and Feith.  Since becoming Secretary of State, she has been tone deaf in our dealings with Serbia, Russia, Israel, China, and many other parties, the worst example of the “ugly American” we’ve ever seen in this role.  

Worst of all, when she is not insulting foreigners, she insults America and its past with half-educated bromides, usually dealing with slavery and discrimination.  Her habitual appeal to these examples show that she is far too traumatized and alienated by her youth in Alabama to be entrusted with stewardship over the country as a whole.  The United States is still a white majority country, where most of its people see much to admire in our history.  Most of us, particularly on the Republican side, view the Founding as a glorious chapter in our history, the exact opposite of a “birth defect.” 

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