Here Come The Red Tories
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Blogging is still going to be very light over the next day or two. In the meantime, take a look at Prof. Fox on Red Toryism, John Schwenkler on the Linker-Bacevich debate, and Linker’s response to Prof. Deneen. My comment on the debate today is to note that Linker is correct that a society where freedom is rightly understood in terms of obedience would not be a liberal society, which is rather the whole point of conservatives’ critiquing the problems and failings of liberal society. Speaking for myself, it would be pointless to pretend that my understanding of freedom as obedience is not derived directly from Christian doctrine and specifically from Orthodox tradition. Whether this is strictly necessary or not in order to understand freedom in this way, its connection to traditional Christianity is hardly something that needs to be concealed or denied. In the end, this is what worries Linker about Bacevich and Deneen and the rest of us “radicals.” It is not that, as he claimed before, that we are hostile to “the human condition itself,” but rather to the disordered state of fallen human nature that a certain sort of liberalism celebrates as normal.
There is also Linker’s accusation that Bacevich and Deneen don’t really reject the “culture of choice,” but simply object to certain kinds of choices, which is a common refrain I have heard countless times in the often futile debates over “crunchy” conservatism. “You are just imposing your own preferences on us,” the criticism goes, which is what you would expect to hear from people who cannot grasp or do not accept that there is a natural order that is not concerned with whether you would prefer to live a certain way or not. There are limits built into our nature and into the nature of things that point to the cultivation of virtue as the sane course, but as long as we believe it to be in our power to manipulate and control nature we will delude ourselves into believing that these limits can be stretched indefinitely without consequences. Acting contrary to nature will bring its own costs, regardless of what one does or does not prefer.
Of course, there will have to be someone or some body enforcing discipline to a degree, and if Linker wants to water down and redefine authoritarianism enough to classify this as authoritarian I suppose he can do so. It is a measure of how limited and poor our understanding of politics is nowadays that the only thing Linker envisions as an alternative to laissez-faire morality is legalistic intrusion into personal behavior by the government. This fails to take into account the possibility of social regulation through customs and concepts of honor mediated through natural and religious institutions. Social stigma, reputation, protecting the family name–these are decidedly not part of the “culture of choice,” according to which none of these things has any real importance, but they are effective means of conditioning behavior without recourse to coercion or an appeal to the law.
Filed under: politics
How could such “natural and religious” institutions function in a post-modern era? Or put another way, how can such institutions function, if large groups of people do not share the foundational beliefs of said institutions?
There was a time when I believed that the WASP morality that many modern conservatives fantasize about actually existed.
After observing conservatives for four decades, and speaking with many from the Greatest Generation (and them talking about their elders in the 20’s), I realized conservatives complaints really aren’t about liberal’s permissiveness. It’s that too many now enjoy the kinds of liberties that they exclusively held. The liberal masses spoiled their party when they too got the option to embrace the nasty bits of Classical Liberalism.
I can agree that there might be a few conservatives (literally, I’ve met no more than a handful my entire life) like Bacevich who may actually live what they preach.
Not only is social stigma just another form of coercion (conform or become a pariah), it has a tendancy to end up enshrined in law as well. Anti-contraceptive laws, anti-sodomy laws, etc. etc. It does indeed come down to, “you are just imposing your own preferences on us,” at least as far as imposing on people’s private lives goes.
Personally I never really understood this viewpoint from religious types. Choosing virtue has no meaning if the choice was already made for you by society. Not to mention that in the rose-tinged olden days, society wasn’t any more moral. People were just more duplicitous and there was more private suffering (you had to protect the family reputation, after all). You can enforce politeness, but you can’t force people to betray their nature without it harming someone down the road.
It is impossible to act contrary to nature. It’s an incoherent notion.
So roughly all of pre-modern Western philosophy is incoherent in your view? Interesting.
How exactly is one to ressurrect or create a cultural mechanism to enforce “natural” morality, if people choose not to accept your notion of what is natural, without creating an authoritative body to require this of such people? How is social stigma to be attached to “immorality” if the culture itself doesn’t agree that the particular behaviors you might consider immoral are actually immoral? How shall these people be “educated” in the proper mode of thought and behavior. If you really do eschew authoritative systems of governmental coercion, aren’t you just dreaming of a world that might exist in a history book, or a science-fiction post-apocalyptic future world, but which simply has no reality in our present world?
I can understand why conservatives might eschew authoritarianism, seeing it as an even worse moral course than liberal “chaos”. But I can also understand why conservatives who want to live in a world as you describe are willing to use an authoritarian state as the vehicle to bring it about, because frankly, there’s no other way for it to occur in anyone’s lifetime.Of course, I’d rather live in a world of paleocon dreamers than paleocon realists. But I live in this world, and I can’t see how this kind of “world” can be created except in the small sense of simply choosing to participate in a smaller society of like-minded individuals within the greater context of the modern world, just as ultra orthodox Jews do in some parts of New York, or the Amish do in Pennsylvania, or various evangelicals do in certain parts of the south, or Mormons in Utah, etc. These groups do indeed function in the manner you describe, but willingly submitting themselves to communal authority. But they of course have no chance of becoming the dominant culture in this country, and can only exist because of the extreme liberalism of the surrounding culture, which allows them the luxury of being illiberal within their own set of choices, all of which is protected by the liberal state they claim to eschew.
“How exactly is one to ressurrect or create a cultural mechanism to enforce “natural†morality, if people choose not to accept your notion of what is natural, without creating an authoritative body to require this of such people? How is social stigma to be attached to “immorality†if the culture itself doesn’t agree that the particular behaviors you might consider immoral are actually immoral?”
Since this conversation seems to circle around sex, here’s one simple proposal: repeal anti-discrimination laws which treat marital status as a protected category in private housing.
Landlords or even the little “dictators” of neighborhood associations can then decide whether or not they want to be “respectable” and keep out cohabiting unmarried couples, and people can decide whether or not they wish to live in such communities.
As it is now, the state actively supresses stigmatization through permitting lawsuits on such bases.
Eliminating some anti-discrimination laws based on religion could also have a similar effect, thus allowing people to self-segregate.
Liberalism thinks this self-segregation is an utterly horrible vice and, echoing Republican conservatism, argues that permitting it will automatically lead to intolerable strife and social disorder. This is because Liberalism views itself as the only way of salvation from a brutal state of nature.
In a Liberal order, individuals are free to do anything except live in a society.
kevinjones,
Why stop there? Why not repeal laws against racial discrimination? Why shouldn’t people be “free” to form self-segregating racial and ethnic communities?
Oh, I know. This pesky thing called “democracy”. The problem is that all these anti-discrimination laws are actually quite popular. For some reason, a large majority of people actually think that racial and religious discrimination in housing is “unnatural” and, and has no basis in our natural human life. They even think it has something to do with justice! What naivete.
The problem is, how are we going to convince the majority of people in this country who have been brainwashed to believe in equality and equal rights and other unnatural nonsense to change their minds and overturn all these anti-discrimination laws? It seems like we may just have get rid of the core problem, which is “democracy” itself. What do you think? Any ideas of how to do this?
I’m not sure I really understand “Red Toryism.” Everything I read about it (even its Wikipedia entry) seems to consist of lots of soaring rhetoric and very little on what a Red Tory program actually would consist of. It seems to be more of a philosophical or ethical movement than a political one – which is fine and maybe even better, except that it purports to be a political movement. Can anyone direct me to anything better?
In a Liberal order, individuals are free to do anything except live in a society.
“There is no such thing as ’society’” — Margaret Thatcher.
Mr. Kabala, have you read the piece by Phillip Blond?
Tedschan: I don’t have time to read it right now, but thanks for the link.
Daniel, I admire your work a lot – I think you’re one of the most perceptive cultural commentators around, and value your perspective. That said, I’ve come to the same conclusion as srv: “I’ve realized conservatives complaints really aren’t about liberal’s permissiveness. It’s that too many now enjoy the kinds of liberties that they exclusively held.” I hold the same caveat as srv: there are exceptions. Bacevich is no doubt one, and I am confident that you walk your talk as well.
I’m some kind of member of the genus Liberal – not sure exactly what species (an odd one, no doubt). Folks like me, who are sympathetic to both the ‘crunchy project’ and to the paleoconservatives (we are liberals who have read Lasch in between advocating surrender and of course, hating America), folks like me I think are deeply suspicious of the mainstream right. People who tend to be idealists (and liberals have that tendency) are also keen about detecting hypocrisy, and rigorous in unraveling the motivations for that hypocrisy. It’s a character trait of the genus.
Which is where Linker comes in. I’m not that sympathetic to a lot of his output; I think he’s written some obtuse things. And I deeply agree that his imagination is limited, that he can’t see an alternative between moral laissez-faire and state action. But it isn’t just that Linker is a symbol of the overall decline in our public discourse. Could it be that Linker is responding to the rhetorical environment? He, like other liberals, myself included, is suspicious in the way that srv is suspicious of conservative discourse on public mores. He uses the “authoritarianism” brush to paint in overly broad strokes because he doesn’t think anything good can come out of this line of inquiry, and so starts painting away, trying to cover it up. It’s not the most fruitful action, but it’s understandable, and it’s understandable because, well, I mean, look at what we’ve witnessed in the recent past: the William Bennett fiasco, for one, and well, the life and career of Bush, Junior makes a pretty damning exhibit B.
So it’s kind of what one is up against, if one is a paleoconservative exploring these questions with a liberal. I don’t know if it can be overcome, but it’s part of the reality.
Okay, I strongly doubt that anyone’s reading, but as a postscript to my rambling mess of a comment, let me underline the fact that I’m way more sympathetic to Bacevich’s argument than what Linker has to say.
My point, though, is that I’ve a hunch that what’s driving Linker is his distrust and contempt for (let’s call it) Bennetism. When he reads Bacevich taking inventory on the culture of choice, what Linker hears is the idea that we need a Culture Czar to clamp down on all this nonsense, and what he thinks is that we just exited the era of a Republican President who snorted cocaine, but now that there’s a Democrat who did same (with a darker skin colour to boot), now the party’s over?
Of course Linker’s blind spot, probably, is that guys like Bacevich have been saying this all along – that, and Bacevich is probably equally frustrated with whatever hypocrisy and double standards Linker sees.
[...] and so we can supposedly write it off just like that. This is now the term applied to most anyone who argues for ethical restraint, conservation, social solidarity, respect for and loyalty to place [...]