Authority
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Andrew Bacevich has a short post on a future conservatism, and Patrick Deneen has a long and very interesting related response to Damon Linker at the main blog. I want to discuss this debate at greater length, but I am probably going to be too busy for most of the rest of this week to give it the attention it deserves. Briefly and not surprisingly, I agree with Bacevich’s prescription:
When it comes to the culture, conservatives should promote an awareness of the costs of unchecked individual autonomy, while challenging conceptions of freedom that deny the need for self-restraint and self-denial. When it comes to economics, they should emphasize the virtue and necessity of Americans, collectively as well as individually, learning to live within their means. When it comes to foreign policy, they should advocate a restoration of realism, which will necessarily entail abandoning expectations of remaking the world in America’s own image.
Certainly, there is a degree of radicalism in this. It is correct to say that self-restraint has to be governed by deference to authority. Deference and the unquestioning, unthinking servility Linker tries to link to it are, of course, entirely different things, and one thing that I think that paleoconservatives, or simply radical conservatives, have shown over the past several decades is a respect for lawful authority that requires resistance and criticism of abuses of authority. In practice, this means that those who defer to lawful authority are less inclined to embrace what one would recognize as authoritarian practices of the state or any other institution, because they do not judge those in positions of authority merely according to their possession of office and power but also according to their right use of these things.
Individual autonomy, based in pride, is the root of our fallen condition. Indeed, it is the cause of the Fall. That is precisely why it has to be restrained and governed. If we do not cultivate restraint and self-government within ourselves, it will eventually be imposed from without. This is why the culture of choice is so antithetical to genuine freedom, and why deferring to lawful authority is the surest protection against tyrannical abuses by all those who hold positions of authority. Prof. Deneen says this more elegantly than I have:
Again, the irony is that self-rule is the means of preventing and thwarting the expansion of the military-industrial State. It is, in fact, the greatest avenue of preventing the likelihood of an all-encompassing Leviathan. Such an alternative conception of liberty is deeply premised upon the very anthropology that Linker claims it to be uncognizant of – our propensity to “depravity,” including self-deception, pride, greed, self-aggrandizement and a willingness to reduce good to those things reducible to the monadic body. A culture that would seek to reign in our propensity to depravity would not rest either on private liberation nor “authoritarianism,” but the inculcation of the faculties and abilities of self-government. Only one who seeks private liberty in all respects would regard such cultivation of self-government as oppressive, and would ultimately have to face the reality that such thoroughgoing private liberty is purchased by means of the expansion of public power and a truly frightening prospect of authoritarianism. Already we can see that much of the American public would be willing to sacrifice liberties in the name of sustaining a growth economy that encourages near-infinite, but never fulfilled, personal satiation. This, however, is not liberty.
It is time to think differently and beyond this reigning paradigm: to think of liberty in terms of self-government; to consider that freedom is best preserved when institutions are smaller and less concentrated with destructive power; to live within the means that nature affords, without seeking its pillage or mutilation; to act with stewardship and responsibility in the world and toward our neighbors and future generations.
Daniel,
It occurred to me further in looking both at Linker’s response to Prof. Bacevich and Mr. Deenan’s further response, that liberals like Linker don’t actually understand what the “authority” being deferred to in self-restraint is. Perhaps it is their secularism, but it is as though they cannot conceive of deference to authority that does not required restrain by the State. But the authority (as I think you imply) deferred to is, in fact, the divine authority both in Revelation and natural law that counsels us on the need to deny ourselves in order to truly be free. (No hair shirts, required, of course, less Mr. Linker dredge up again his Legionaries example.)
It is also as though that liberals like Linker cannot conceive of liberty except as the pursuit of appetite and the absence of restraint (whether spiritual or temporal.) And they cannot conceive of such restraint except through the State. I suppose given how we have become so fully individualistic and consumerist, that the informal (that is, nonstate) forms of authority are rapidly disappearing. “Movement conservatives” have certainly aided that breakdown, which is substantially the result of their market, consumerist policies.
My conclusion, in the end, is that Linker really has no idea what Prof. Bacevich (or you as well) are even talking about when your refer to self-restraint, authority and appetite. Perhaps I’m wrong in that conclusion.
I would agree with Bacevich, and you, that freedom requires self-restraint and self-denial. But there’s a sort of central paradox at work in every aspect of this. You write, “individual automomy, based in pride, is the root of our fallen condition.” Absolutely, but it is not also the root of our progress over the years, our prosperity? At what point does one draw the line? That is what Tanenhaus is trying to get at in his original essay.
But I also think it incorrect to say, as WRW does, that deference to authority requires a belief in divine authority. That authority might be civil society; as an agnostic, the implication that without a belief in God I am incapable of self-restraint rankles. As a husband, father and homeowner, however, I absolutely see the need for self-restraint, for responsible behavior. That’s the key in all of this, and it’s a multi-faceted thing. I don’t see where ending the “culture of choice” actually fosters better behavior. And who shall end the culture of choice, and what specific restrictions upon sexual behavior – to take one example – shall we impose upon the public?
Gsmart,
I think you illustrate the same disconnect–that ending the “culture of choice” must be imposed by the State. I was referencing what I take to mean Daniel’s view on the source of authority to which men defer (and it is also mine) as being divine. But that doesn’t mean an unbeliever can’t engage in self-restraint; of course they can, for the benefit of family, neighbors, etc. But in either event the source of restraint isn’t the state, which was my point; and in neither even does the restraint raise the specter of “authoritarianism” for which Bacevich was criticized.
You’re correct that individualism and striving have created the prosperity we enjoy. Part of the difficult choice Bacevich poses is the recognition that self-restraint requires foregoing at least some of that prosperity.
Bacevich and other, in criticizing the culture of unrestrained appetite we have created, do not contend to “impose” restraint. Rather, they seek to uphold restraint and thereby persuade. That is why Bacevich stated that such position must be made in opposition, i.e,. outside the power of the state.
So your latter questions miss the point.
I’ll buy that, though the temptation is always going to be to impose what we might call the “culture of restraint.” Because men have failed, and will fail, to restrain themselves. Isn’t that the less on the fall, after all?
Quite true. The temptation to power represented in the State (and the abuse of that power) is indeed as much as matter of appetite and lack of restraint. And you are correct the Fall teaches us the failings of men and the temptation of men to pursue their appetites over true liberty.
There’s a real disconnect in Linker’s essay. How can our society of myriad thousands of regulations really be called a “culture of choice”? Because consumption and the sexual license are nearly unlimited?
And will a society of “doubt and skepticism” leave individual consent exempt from critical evaluation?
To state a simplification: while authoritarians have difficulty recognizing abuse of authority, anti-authoritarians have difficulty recognizing the exercise of authority.
Thus in an anti-authoritarian regime real authority is ignored or centralized out of sight.
Linker’s “culture of choice” resulted from the federal judiciary’s destruction of local authorities’ influence over their communities through morals legislation. The state also now claims the right to suppress discriminating moral codes and subjects recalcitrants to impoverishment via lawsuits.
This has resulted in Hollywood and Washington becoming the most powerful and the most negligent authorities of all.
Those who understand authority are best suited to challenge its abuse, not those who reject it only to let it in again through the back door.
Two thoughts:
1. Given that Bacevich is a dissenter from and critic of much of our culture and its institutions, it’s not entirely accurate to call him a conservative. In some sense, his position is either reactionary (wanting to return to the past at least in certain respects) or radical (though perhaps the radical change he seeks is to be had less through legislation or administration than through reforming character and mores). I don’t like the word “radical” for this purpose, but I can’t think of another.
2. Although the kind of self-discpline Bacevich longs for is, in our culture, generally rooted in monotheism, other cultures (early and middle Republican Rome, China in certain eras, for instance) prized self-discipline and restraint. Stoicism and Confucianism, among other schools, sought to imbue their followers, often of the upper classes, with discipline and sacrifice.
Perhaps Bacevich can be called an exponent of ‘virtue politics’ or a virtue politicist. The question of whether the name ‘conservative’ is still useful has been discussed before, but it is unlikely that those who are considered to be on the fringe will have much influence in determining a final answer.
TNR should be euthanized. Here’s Bacevich: “When it comes to economics, faux conservatives–Ronald Reagan in the vanguard–collaborated with liberals in abandoning even the pretense of prudent fiscal management.”
Sheesh. Liberals were doing just fine until the right made a clear, public and conscious choice to sh*t all over prudent fiscal management. Clinton was excoriated by the right for destroying the economy with tax increase – until the economy took off, when the right suddenly decided that the Reagan Era was still in effect.
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If everyone agreed on exactly the same God, or exactly the same set of authoritative moral standards, then there would be no problem to address. But because they do see very different Gods, and very different moral standards they wish to obey, in a huge range across the spectrum, I simply don’t see how this kind of literate solution does anything at all to resolve this problem. It seems merely to posit that each of us willingly submit ourselves to somone else’s notion of morality and responsibility and freedom, and the same one at that. Otherwise, how will we actually resolve the conflicts which arise?
It’s not that I think Bacevich is wrong, but that he is himself an example of the very thing he criticizes – someone who has chosen a certain set of values, and who expects others to agree that they are what we all should choose, for the sake of social order. But why isn’t he the one who should submit to someone else’s moral sense of certitude? Osama Bin Laden would certainly suggest he’s got it all wrong. And quite a few others as well, many of them true believing Christians.
Everyone values and expects self-discipline. But if they expect others to discipline themselves according to a standard chosen for them, rather than by them, they are in for a world of hurt. And if they allow everyone to choose their own standards of self-discipline, what exactly has been accomplished here? Many criminals and terrorists have their own prized sense of responsibility and ethics, so it’s really not possible to merely say we should all discipline ourselves and be responsible, without specifying what that means, and if we refrain from using the state to impose those values, what actually changes?
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