RSSA Few Theses
A few theses following up my last post to provoke discussion:
1. Secular observers like Alan Wolfe and Harold Bloom are correct when they suggest, contra theocracy fear mongers like Damon Linker and others, that the liberal soul has nearly completed its march through American Christianity such that the American church is no longer an existential threat to the dominant liberal, secular order.
2. These observers are wrong when they argue that this is a good thing.
3. They are wrong from the perspective of one who loves America because the assimilation of Christianity has the effect of collapsing the tension between the otherworldly order of the church and the mundane order of the Hobbsian world of scarcity, competition, and death.
4. This tension is necessary to civilization in the current age.
5. They are wrong, also from the perspective of one who loves the church because the otherworldly order of the church is called to be a constant threat and pressure on the mundane order of the powers of men, whether it take the form of liberalism or something else.
6. Those within the church who seek by various means to eliminate the Hobbsian pole of this tension are likewise wrong.
7. The church must therefore figure out how to both resist the march of the liberal soul through its ranks and resist dreaming up ways to escape the Hobbsian contingency of life in this age.
D Hart
May 29th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
What discussion? Where do I sign?
Okay, one word of qualification. Am I a whoos for thinking that an articulate, courageous, and outspoken Calvinist like Machen was no threat to the liberal political order because said order did not require Machen to deny any of his beliefs or practices? In other words, if liberalism allows us to worship, rear children, practice discipline and pursue vocations to the glory of God, even allowing us the possibility of forming Calvinist ghettos, where is the explicit threat?
Caleb Stegall
May 29th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
What is a whoos … like the inhabitants of Whoville?
There are more ways to threaten than pitchforks at the gate, no?
Are you asking where the explicit threat is from liberalism to the church, or from the church to liberalism? Christianity undermines liberalism’s account of man and thereby its account of society. This is a good thing, because a fully realised liberalism is unsustainable and extremely vulnerable.
W.H. Chellis
May 29th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
I know what a whoos is but I did not know that was how you spelled it. I am always learning new things from my man DGH!
D Hart
May 29th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
I tried to spell it wuss, but that didn’t look right.
Okay, I’m back to defending liberalism and may reveal to Caleb my modernist self. In its early forms, liberalism is fairly sensible way to try to overcome religious warfare. It allows a religiously diverse society to just get along. Over time it tries to enforce diversity in the name of making everyone tolerant. I like it in its early form even if I agree its account of human nature and society is thin. As they say in golf, “thin to win.”
It is that thinness that I don’t find particularly threatening, and at its better moments useful for all sorts of different folks to arrive at procedures for co-existence. Ideally, those different peoples would form platoons where they would enforce and nurture the thick bonds of membership and love.
So it is the vulnerability of liberalism that makes me think a Calvinist can simply live his life without needing to challenge liberalism (at least in its earliest variety). I see the real problem as being how to sustain a liberal order. Its thinness won’t allow it to perservere. But I won’t use both hands to clap for its demise.
Is it possible to be a conservative liberal?
W.H. Chellis
May 30th, 2007 at 7:00 am
I think so. I think that is exactly what Protestant conservatism must be… conservative liberalism. This is why we celebrate Edmund Burke and not Joseph de Maistre.
Daniel Mahoney refers to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as a conservative liberal in First Things:
“Solzhenitsyn is, in truth, a conservative liberal who wants to temper the one-sided modern preoccupation with individual freedom with a salutary reminder of the moral ends that ought to inform responsible human choice. Like the best classical and Christian thinkers of the past, he believes that human beings should not “neglect their spiritual essence†or “show an exaggerated concern for man’s material needs.†Thus, while he displays a rich appreciation of the limits of politics, he also recognizes that “a Christian must … actively endeavor to improve the holders of power and the state system.†And when Solzhenitsyn addresses specifically political questions he does so as a principled advocate of political moderation. His portrait in August 1914 of Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin’s efforts to establish a constitutional order that would be consistent with Russia’s spiritual traditions and that would keep Russia from falling into the revolutionary abyss contains some of the wisest pages ever written about statesmanship.”
Caleb Stegall
May 30th, 2007 at 7:21 am
Oh, you mean a wus. Here I was thinking you were refering to those Suessian curly-headed creatures with an extra ‘o’ thrown in to avoid an Imus-like misunderstanding.
Mahoney is full of Bologna. There’s that FT theme of “restraining individual freedom” with “moral ends.” Complete rot of course.
Darryl at least gives the argument a historical cushion, talking about “early” forms of liberalism, which I can more readily appreciate. My response to that is, I suppose, that “early liberalism” was a historical anomaly driven by momentary suspension of the law of scarcity (the new world), momentary exhaustion with religious wars (Westphalia), and momentary appreciation for the politics of the noble lie (Burke, founders).
I think that is exactly what Protestant conservatism must be… conservative liberalism
This is why protestant conservatism is shuffling its way off this mortal coil.
W.H. Chellis
May 30th, 2007 at 8:23 am
If this were so, our only option would be a return to Rome… and not the Rome of Aquinas and Suarez… but the Rome of de Maistre and Charles Stuart. Not the Rome of subsidiarty but the Rome of absolutism.
At it foundation liberalism is (was?) a defense of human liberty. While political liberty is not the focus of the WCF’s declarations about liberty of conscience and freedom in Christ, it certainly hard to keep it from bubbling up. Nor would I want to try to do so as long as our liberty was checked by a culture that enforced Christian morality through community expectations, neighboorhood gossip, and discipline, and the power of social stigma.
Nor am I sure that protestant conservatism is “shufling its way off this moral coil.”
Wise men know what evil is written upon the sky”, so Chesterton poked fun at mystical pronouncments about God’s future providences. I do not know what the future holds. Maybe God will see fit to send Reformation and revival leading to a new age of theological orthodoxy and political/social/economic liberty. But, at the end of the day, the hidden things belong to God alone. Providence is inscrutable.
Caleb Stegall
May 30th, 2007 at 8:35 am
Rome is not the only option. You could be a protestant liberal. You could be a protestant anti-liberal.
At it foundation liberalism is (was?) a defense of human liberty.
How is this relevant? What if the defense is profoundly disordered? It might be best to talk about specific cannonical and foundational texts. Locke? Mill? Westphalia? Jefferson? Take your pick.
Of course I agree that providence is inscrutable and anything is possible. I am not trying to be a prophet so much as making a rather run-of-the-mill observation. By any measure you care to use, protestant conservatism IS on its way out. I don’t see any point in stubbornly insisting that it is not. Or, if you do so insist, I at least expect some argument on the point beyond the inscrutability of providence.
Caleb Stegall
May 30th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Here is the problem. As Alisdair McIntyre puts it, all of the debate in America today is between conservative liberalism, liberal liberalism, and radical liberalism. The conservative liberal wing of the argument amount to a project to offer a benign version of liberalism that is compatible with, or even harmonizes with, Christianity and/or any “deeper” metaphysical basis for politics and culture. It takes a whiggish view of history and is best represented popularly by the First Things crowd and its step-child, the Books and Culture crowd. There are numerous problems with this approach, not the least of which is that it misunderstands and underestimates the ontological force and priorities of the liberal/whiggish project. This force is manifest in liberalisms profound antipathy to any kind of metaphysical accounting of man, society, culture, and politics. The mantra of “embed” and “restrain” just seems silly, or worse, self-deceptive, in the face of this locomotive of history. Once we realize this, the examples from contemporary discourse become clear and can be seen everywhere. A large part of our project at TNP was simply to point out these examples of cognative dissonance within the conservative liberal camp. I noticed once again that the latest FT has a lengthy piece by Jody Bottom once again struggling to pin liberalism to some kind, ANY kind, of metaphysical basis. The effort would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. Or consider evangelicalism and the ways that the “religious right” is fundamentally liberal, whiggish, and anti-traditional. Or consider just Darryl’s references to “car culture” and his seeming powerlessness in the face of it. People have choices, what can you do?
See http://www.newpantagruel.com/issues/1.1/lets_roll_over.php?page=all:
We could, at this point, merely add to the abundance of Christian hand-wringing over what counts as proper cultural engagement. However, such wrangling rarely gets past debating standards of propriety or “taste.†And the threat to authentic, socially engaged faith is much stronger and much more serious than might be supposed from a discussion over mere style. To us, the root of the problem, and the threat, lies in the fact that in a deeply liberal environment, the only important questions are questions of style. In fact, it is one of the primary functions of our open society to reduce the public sphere, as much as possible, to choices of taste and style. Very few people are willing to kill you because they don’t like the clothes you wear.
By providing a nexus between identity politics and niche marketing, liberal democracies give each “faction†what they appear to want in exchange for the tacit admission that what they want is, in public at least, only a “choice†or “style,†and not inherently better than whatever it is that other factions want. “‘Let’s roll,’†as Lisa Beamer/Ken Abraham explains in Let’s Roll “is not a slogan, a book or a song; it’s a lifestyle.†Who or what is included or excluded from that lifestyle? Success in the mainstream rests on leaving that question unanswered.
But while convincing someone that they are wrong is tacky (and possibly grounds for having one’s citizenship in the pluralistic state revoked), convincing people that without the right choices they are not “cool†or “with it†or “in style†is encouraged; in fact, required. Appealing to the widest possible market is the prime directive of advertising in a market society. It is also the stated goal of most Christian commercial entities which see broad appeal as a missiological as well as an entrepreneurial calling.
Of course, aiming for the widest audience is tantamount to trying to please everyone and offend no one. This is what keeps Stone Phillips’ plastic smile firmly intact when people like Lisa Beamer talk about the importance of their faith on Dateline NBC. As long as they don’t start out-and-out proselytizing—a word that embarrasses more and more Evangelicals—they’re fine. Just another viewpoint among many under one liberal pluralist state. As the iconoclastic Stanley Fish has written in First Things, a Christian may sit at “liberalism’s table, … but it will still be liberalism’s table … and the etiquette of the conversation will still be hers.â€
Similarly, you can make an “Evangelical†or “Christian†labeled product, but it will just be another product in a market full of products. In a consumer economy, the product, like “the message,†in Marshall McLuhan’s famous saying, cannot transcend its medium–the structures that direct its construction, packaging, delivery and reception or consumption. In this view, Christian products in the form of books, clothes, music, etc., are ultimately nothing more than the artifacts of a niche market in the contemporary cultural scene, and like all the other artifacts, they bear the stamp Liberalism. Even when the niche market seems to be making exclusive claims or cohere around a relatively exclusive identity, this is just business as usual in the game of identity politics.
Look at it this way. There is Country Club Barbie, and Secretary Barbie, and Doctor Barbie, and Lawyer Barbie. There is also Black Barbie, Asian Barbie, and Hispanic Barbie. So why not Evangelical Barbie? Everyone gets to have their kind of Barbie and think it is the best. This pride is not just indulged, it is encouraged, because it is the bait required to exact the price liberal democracy requires. Exclusivist claims and preferences for one thing over all other things are neutered once packaged. You can proclaim the superiority of Evangelical Barbie all you want, but at the end of the day, people have choices, and Neopagan Barbie is moving off the shelves pretty fast. The mistake Christians often make in this deeply liberal environment is to exchange critical engagement with the world’s structures for a spot at liberalism’s table, preferably a spot in the limelight. Now it’s Evangelical Barbie ahead by a nose—clearly God’s work. Vox populi, vox dei.
And http://www.newpantagruel.com/issues/1.1/a_continuing_survey_of_the_far.php?page=all:
Certainly the proliferation of all manner of journals of opinion (such as this one) addressing themselves in some manner to the “crisis of this age†is evidence of a need for hope in something. The perception has been growing for some time that the order of Western Civilization is more vulnerable now than at any time since the Protestant Reformation: threats from without coinciding with threats from within seem, at times, to portend coming disaster. Enlightenment liberalism—the new consensus of “public truth†which emerged from the Reformation—is widely viewed by orthodox Christians (though not only orthodox Christians) as diseased: the principle of the autonomous individual having resulted in the widespread western sins of sexual licentiousness, abortion on demand, gross materialist consumerism, and the denigration of any serious effort towards religious faith. At the same time, the liberal western order is beset from without by increasingly aggressive competing ideologies, most notably, radical Islam.
This situation puts religious conservatives in a difficult quandary. On the one hand, continued criticism of the liberal order feels like an act of disloyalty to the entire western tradition, which is still, after all, the tradition that Christianity built. Moreover, liberalism remains the only viable “public truth,†and so continued dissent becomes a self-imposed exile into the wilderness of public irrelevance. But on the other hand, strengthening and restoring the liberal order feels, for the orthodox Christian, like giving aid and comfort to the enemy, for that is what liberalism has often become to the traditional Christian conception of what is good, true, and beautiful. It is this situation that Neuhaus has described as “the divided soul of American liberalism.â€
J. Bottum, a friend of Neuhaus’s and former editor at First Things recently put the problem this way:
[As] liberalism’s triumph worked itself out over the last two centuries, certain people have felt the desire to get off the boat. For some in America, for instance, the impetus was the disaster of socialist economics. For others it was an inability to stomach abortion. For others it was crime rates. For others it was euthanasia. For a few recent converts it is biotechnology and cloning. But, for all of them, a point is reached where they decide, “This is where I say, ‘Enough.’ This is a good place to stop.â€
The problem with this approach, according to Bottum, is that “each disembarking group proves to have been seeking not to undo modernity but to freeze it at a particular moment—a moment when certain vestigial elements left over from the premodern world kept at bay the worst effects of modern times. And yet, lacking a coherent unmodern philosophy, we can offer no compelling reasons for modernity to stop where we wish it to.†Thus, the argument goes, once the liberal motor of individual autonomy and choice is started, its momentum is too powerful to stop with merely passive “freezing†strategies; a stronger, opposing, premodern force must be brought to bear.
Healing the Divided Soul
Neuhaus and First Things are in the vanguard of a powerful movement to reconcile the disparate halves of this divided American soul, but, perhaps surprisingly, not on the grounds of a “coherent unmodern philosophy.†Rather, Neuhaus founds his restoration project on the ground of liberalism itself. Importantly to Neuhaus, this project is not conceived as a “freezing†strategy; he doesn’t want to either get off of the boat or stop it altogether, but rather to steer it safely back to calmer waters. Liberalism is, for Neuhaus, the wayward child of Christendom, in stern need of discipline to be sure, but still loved; still of “our†bloodline.
Perhaps the most compelling and theoretically coherent voice from the forefront of this movement is that of David Walsh, a professor of politics at The Catholic University of America. Walsh’s central argument, most notably in The Growth of the Liberal Soul, is that the liberal order bequeathed to the west by the Reformation and the Enlightenment after the break up of old Christendom contains within it sufficient resources to mount a successful resistance to liberalism’s own excesses. According to Neuhaus, of “particular note is [Walsh’s] intelligently hopeful understanding of the liberal democratic tradition and the ways in which modernity, after a century of catastrophically wrong turns, may be fulfilling its aspiration toward transcendence.â€
Walsh contends that liberalism’s huge success in creating the modern world comes from its deep convictions about its own destiny and place as the only legitimate public truth; the only truth compelling enough to bind disparate factions which might otherwise make war into a unified society living at peace with itself. This “liberal construction†has functioned so fruitfully “because it embodies an authoritative moral truth that resonates with the deepest intimations of who we are.†And chief among these “intimations,†according to Walsh, is the notion that we are individuals with dignity, and that dignity demands liberty. Thus, in the political realm, liberal democracy is “the most appropriate form of government for human beings [because it is] … the form of order that speaks to our human dignity as rational, self-governing beings.â€
For Walsh, the universal truth which liberalism proclaimed about the individual necessarily implies an intimation of transcendent good. In fact, without an intimation of transcendence, liberalism’s belief in the universal dignity of the individual is undermined. So, Walsh writes, the order of liberty is an “order that, not being something that can be maintained indifferently by every human type, depends for its flourishing on the capacity to evoke those qualities in its citizens that are its living foundation.†And, according to Walsh, the principle “quality†that is the living foundation of the liberal order is an openness to transcendent good, and an intentional directing of liberty towards that end.
This is the notion of “ordered liberty,†and it stands in contrast to the current understanding of liberty as unlimited license to do as one pleases. For Walsh, recent developments in the notion of liberty leave it “stripped of all intimations of direction.†The individual is thus governed by nothing but its own appetite, and then, perhaps, by the appetites of others. Walsh’s primary goal is to demonstrate that the liberal order was never intended to exist apart from openness to transcendent good and liberty ordered towards that end. For Walsh, there is hope that the liberal order itself will provide the necessary fortifications against the increasing disorder of the current western crisis. Importantly, this solution purports to resolve the dilemma of the “divided soul†because it permits one to keep one foot firmly planted in Christian orthodoxy and the other in a legitimate boosterism of liberalism over and against its non-western enemies.
Particularly since September 11, these questions have taken on added urgency. If Walsh and Neuhaus are correct and liberalism does have within it the resources to resist the slide towards dehumanization and disorder, then the self-stated goal of the Bush Administration to export liberal democracy around the world (on the strength of a muscular global economy and a muscular American military) can be viewed as a reasonable, even laudable thing. However, if the mature sins of western liberal democracies are the irresistible end point of the march of liberalism, then our policies, seen in that light, are nothing less that the sowing of future disorder and disease around the world.
Interestingly, Neuhaus and other prominently conservative Catholic intellectuals have been out front with Protestant Evangelicals in vigorous support of George Bush’s neoconservative vision of “classical liberalism†spread around the world. In this, Neuhaus and his First Things cohorts have placed themselves at odds with their own Pope.
In response to Bottum’s forebodings, Neuhaus wrote: “On days when I am tempted to resign myself to the inexorable triumph of the modernism/liberalism nexus that Bottum describes, I wonder if it might not take a catastrophic wreck, after which, with heroic labor, a chastened world repairs the damage and lays tracks in a different direction. On better days, I hold to the promise of the ever ancient, ever new, and only coherent truth that the human project cannot fail, not finally. And that because the Word became us, and by his victory we already participate in the life of the One who, by definition, cannot fail. Our circumstance is too hopeless for any lesser hope.†This sounds commendable enough, and Neuhaus is careful to hum all the correct religious notes. But his clever nonengaging-engagement with Bottum’s argument conceals a failure to distinguish carefully enough between the one who cannot fail and the “modernism/liberalism nexus.†Neuhaus’s formulation of the matter tends to exclude the possibility that the fulfillment of our one great hope in the Word may not be delivered to us through the liberal order. Thus, when Neuhaus writes of his hope in the human project that cannot fail, the returning echo is heard as hope in a liberalism which must not be allowed to fail.
For example, when President Bush said, during his New York City September 11 anniversary speech that “ours is the cause of human dignity: freedom guided by conscience, and guarded by peace. This ideal of America is the hope of all mankind. That hope drew millions to this harbor. That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness will not overcome it,†Neuhaus commented—while simultaneously recognizing and dismissing the danger that Bush might be confusing America with Christ—that “[Bush] understands, as many public figures have not and do not, that American virtues such as tolerance and resolve are grounded in religious, and mainly Christian, commitments.â€
Here, then, is the central question: is enlightenment liberalism a legitimate reconstruction of what are essentially Christian principles of order for a pluralistic, “modern†age? or, is liberalism a deformation of those principles, destined by its internal logic of choice to slide into disorder and chaos?
Culture of Choice vs. Culture of Heredity
At this point, it might be suggested that purveyors of Christian journals of opinion and propagators of “irrepressible hope†pause to take counsel from T.S. Eliot, who cautioned us to “Wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing.†For both Walsh and Neuhaus, hope is all too often hope in liberalism itself, hope in “freedom guided by conscience;†specifically, hope in what Walsh has called a “robust debate†and what Neuhaus calls the “Public Square.â€
This hope proceeds along two tracks. First is the explicit project of forcing open the access door to the public square so that everyone is admitted, regardless of their faith commitments. This track can proceed on the strictly liberal basis of neutrality: liberalism’s prime directive to recognize the dignity of every individual requires that every person be given equal access to the public square—to the “marketplace of ideasâ€â€”regardless of their convictions, so long as they comply with the procedural safeguards of civility and tolerance. Therefore, Christians who take their faith commitments seriously must be entertained within the square. The second, and far more problematic track is the implicit hope that when (and if) Christians (as such) are admitted back into the public square, they will, by dint of argument and power of persuasion, be able to expand the field of “public truth†laterally and backwards in time to include an intimation of transcendent good and the ordering of liberty towards that end.
Both Neuhaus and Walsh have clearly adopted this strategy. Walsh explains, taking the issue of abortion as a prime example, that when the transcendental openness of early liberalism is allowed back into the “robust debate,†the pro-life camp will be able to argue, in sympathy with those who are pro-choice, that they too are concerned primarily with individual liberty. Abortion is bad, then, because treating a fetus as a thing which may be sacrificed for the convenience of another undermines the transcendental sanctity of all individuals which is the necessary foundation for liberty.
Last September, Neuhaus likewise gave voice to his hope that out of the intellectual confusion and contradiction of the pluralistic public square could come “a culturally potent understanding of self and community that will modify the stark antimony between freedom as the freedom to do what one ought and freedom as the freedom to do what one wants.†This understanding is made possible, Neuhaus believes, by “the prospect of individuality realized by an act of decision in obedience to a communal gift of grace.†However, this prospect “depends in very large part upon thinkers, writers, and public exemplars who persuasively propose a more compelling ideal of freedom.â€
In other words, Neuhaus and Walsh are pinning a great deal of hope on the ability of Christian marketers of “a more compelling ideal of freedom†to sell their product to people who neither want nor (in their view) need it. One is tempted to say that Neuhaus wants to preserve the Protestant genie “Choice†in the Catholic lamp “Obedience.†For Neuhaus, at least, this is almost an autobiographical statement.
More critically problematic, though, for Neuhaus’s program for the recovery of order is the assumption that obedience will not be changed in any fundamental or significant way when it is hung with the accoutrements and baubles of choice. This assumption seems little more than willful blindness in the service of unlimited cultural access. For, of course, any persuasive proposal for “a more compelling ideal of freedom†must be dressed up in the clothes of choice before it is admitted to the public square. That is the price exacted by the liberal order in exchange for a neutral sphere of public activity. So even if the committed religionist is admitted on liberal grounds to the public square, his arguments are admitted only as propositions which may be freely agreed or disagreed with. The criteria for choosing between propositions remains a subjective value system which, due to the autonomous principle of choice, cannot be “wrong.â€
Put simply, Neuhaus and Walsh overestimate the capacity of rational argument and propositional truth to sustain the structures of order. This overestimation is not surprising as it flows from what is a fundamentally liberal misunderstanding of the sources and character of order itself. For cultural order does not find its source principally in right judgments, but rather in a rightly ordered soul, or even better, in a community of rightly ordered souls. The rational argument of the liberal public square reinforces and entrenches a culture of choice. As such, it is a remarkably poor vehicle for communicating and passing on ordered liberty. Only an exceptional few can fashion an ordered soul from the aggregate of their choices. For most, order is something that must be received and nurtured to maturity, and passed on to those who repeat the process. This culture of heredity stands in stark contrast to the culture of choice, and the liberal public square itself has become one of the primary destroyers of the culture of heredity. In this situation it may make more sense for orthodox Christians to try to figure out ways to cultivate and support the accoutrements of heredity.
W.H. Chellis
May 30th, 2007 at 9:03 am
I will choose Burke. As I consider the names associated with Kirk’s Conservative Mind, John Adams, Walter Scott, Randolph of Roanock, John C. Calhoun, Macualay, Cooper, Tocqueville, ect., ect., I find few names who do not stand in the conservative tradjectory of a liberal tradition.
I could have chosen the Founding generation, and not just those of a Jeffersonian bent.
If you wish to push back farther, I would root my defense of liberalism in the humanism of Erasmus, Calvin, and Pascal. A tradition that should not be lightly abandoned.
As for my arguement that conservative Protestantism may not be in its death throws, I cite the authority of T.S. Eliot, “If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause, because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay be be the preface to our successors’ victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that it will triumph.”
Caleb Stegall
May 30th, 2007 at 9:25 am
You cannot choose Burke. He is, no doubt, a cannonical figure in the founding of conservative whiggery, but conservative whiggery is a gloss on whiggery itself, and as Dr. Johnson and Milton teach us, the Devil was the first whig. I think you need to deal with the foundational texts of liberalism itself, not later redactors.
Pre- and Early-Modern humanism is profoundly anti-liberal. And there is, indeed, much we can learn from it.
The Eliot citation does nothing to tell us about which causes are right and which ones are wrong. And I think you will find it very difficult to conscript Eliot to the cause of conservative whiggery.
I would be interested to hear your interaction with the extended quotes just posted above. While I profoundly disagree with you on this point, I do think it is the heart of the whole problem we face, and am very glad it has surfaced.
W.H. Chellis
May 30th, 2007 at 10:08 am
When I have opportunity I will wade into the deep water you have unleashed. Still, I dissent from your papal proclamation of which figures can be cited as representative of the conservative liberal tradition. Burke is the father of modern conservativism. Speaking of conservatism before him is anachronistic. We could cite Augustine, Calvin, and Pascal as “conservatives” but what would it mean?
You sight Dr. Johnson, a Tory liberal and John Milton, himself a revolutionary Whig whose wrote the Areopagitica, a foundational text for liberalism. Milton authored numberous political works defending republicanism.
Kirk writes of Johnson and Burke, “It may be perceived that the first principles of such a Tory as Johnson and such a Whig as Burke were very nearly identical. To both, the new politics of the dawning era, whether the notions of Rousseau or of Bentham, were abhorrent. Both Johnson and Burke recognized a transcendent moral order, subscribed to the wisdom of the species, were attached to custom and precedent, upheld the idea of the Christian magistrate, and adhered to the venerable concepts of Christian charity and community.”
As for Eliot… I would point to what he said of those who waged the English Civil War against each other: they, “Accept the constitution of silence.And are folded in a single party.” Kirk called it the party of order. This is magesterial Protestant conservatism.
More when I can react to your longer post.
Caleb Stegall
May 30th, 2007 at 10:29 am
I have always loved papal proclamations when I get to make them! But seriously, you have misunderstood me. I agree that Burke is certainly foundational for conservative whiggery. I just meant that we need to deal with the original texts of liberalism, not subsequent glosses on them.
You may also be interested to know that within the conservative liberal fold there is a burgeoning school which claims Kirk got Burke all wrong (motivated by a desire to deligitimate Kirk who, virtually all admit, is difficult to rope into a conservative whig suit) and that Burke was much closer to Rousseau. This is a side discussion, I know, but interesting as yet another example of the inadequacies of conservative whiggery.
And just to be argumentative, the “single party” they were folded into was death according to my reading of Little Gidding.
I was mostly making a joke about how Johnson/Milton teach us that the devil was the first whig. They did teach us that, however, and it is worth remembering.
It is also worth remembering Yeats’ epitaph of the Whig: “But what is Whiggery / A levelling, rancorous, rational sort of mind / That never looked out of the eye of a saint / Or out of a durnkard’s eye.” I prefer saints and drunkards over whigs any day of the week.
W.H. Chellis
May 30th, 2007 at 10:55 am
Indeed, but Burke was a different kind of Whig and so I also prefer a Tory understanding of loyalty, tadition, and duty based on social relationships. Yet, before we say that Kirk is difficult to rope into a conservative whig suit, I suggest you reread The American Cause. Having read nearly the whole of the Kirk corpus, I think that he remained a political Protestant until the end… Hooker and Burke remained Kirk’s Christian mentors.
Of coures, I do not wish to celebrate liberalism without caution. I am unconvinced that a liberal order cannot flourish if checked by historic Christian communitarianism and a high regard for the patrimony of Christendom.
Caleb Stegall
May 30th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Of course you can persist in an idiosyncratic reading of persons, texts, and events if you like. This is what Kirk’s conservative whig critics accuse him of doing. I am commenting less on the merits of that accusation than on its sociological fact. The tide is against you, even in your own party. This tells us something important about the internal logic of that party.
I am unconvinced that a liberal order cannot flourish if checked by historic Christian communitarianism and a high regard for the patrimony of Christendom.
This entirely sidesteps all of the important and difficult questions I am posing. Or rather, it assumes an answer to those questions which has been brought into serious doubt.
Caleb Stegall
May 30th, 2007 at 11:26 am
Re: the tide in your own party …
For evidence that Kirk is being moved out look at the nattering reception Kirkian writers like Rod Dreher get in central organs of conservative whiggery like National Review and First Things. Sure, they like to genuflect to the bust, but don’t let’s take all that tradition stuff toooo seriously.
We might also look at certain conservative whig fellow traveller organizations like Darryl’s own ISI in which all the young guns are more and more vocally disassociating themselves from the conservative whig party.
It is important to actually look at the world and see where these various currents are actually taking people (their lives, habits, and ideas).
W.H. Chellis
May 30th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Do you identify the “conservative whig” party with fusionism?
Caleb Stegall
May 30th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
No. In my mind fusionism describes the mid-century attempt to unite the conservative liberals and the libertarians into an effective, if pragmatic, political coalition.
Caleb Stegall
May 30th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Well now. I just saw this, which goes a ways towards making my point. Note the ISI slam!
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjQ3ZjJjMTViZDIxMDdlNjQ3MjE2OTVkMDVlMDY2MGY=
And a follow-up:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDgzZmM0ZmZhNTBmZjY4ZjE4ZjA2YTZjYjA1MDI0OGU=
The resurgence of the Kendall school is what I was referring to earlier, as represented by serious guys like Jeff Hart and Austin Bramwell.
To read a related exchange with Bramwell go to japery.newpantagruel.com and read the last three posts.
W.H. Chellis
May 30th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
I will take a look. One more question. Does Kirk’s The Roots of American Order betray a Whig interpretation of history (from your perspective)?
Caleb Stegall
May 30th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Bill, that’s a good question. My instinct on this, without going back to the sources for detailed support, is that Kirk’s project in general, and RoAO in particular, was designed to creatively reimagine the American founding in such a way that the dominant whiggish interpretation was, at the least, cordoned off and quarantined (Kirk likely wanted to kill it completely, but recognized that to do so would be to become more profoundly anti-american than he could handle).
W.H. Chellis
May 30th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
It would make your point of anyone seriously though NR was still a clearing house for “conservative” views.
More neo-conservativism than traditionalism floating about those hallowed halls, no?
I am not sure you are damning anything that I am willing to bless. Yet, I have a deep and abiding love for constitutional government, ordered liberty, property rights, and a free economy checked the moral constraints of a Christian people. If I can love these things without giving some credit to liberalism, I am happy to do so. I am not sure it is possible. The Scottish Enlightenment did not seem to me an altogether bad thing (although not nearly so lovely as the Scottish Reformation)!
Caleb Stegall
May 30th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
It makes my point because those people–the “conservative liberals”–who make the arguments you are making with regard to: 1) the fundamental compatibility of liberalism and deeper metaphysical commitments; and 2) the need to “embed” liberalism in pre-political commitments: these are the same people who grow more and more uncomfortable with the work of a guy like Russell Kirk and/or his populizers.
Neuhaus and FT are a better example of this for our purposes because they are explicitly Christian. What do you think of the critique of the FT project offered above? If you find yourself both in sympathy to Russell Kirk and in sympathy to Fr. Nuehaus, McClay, and the rest of the FT school, then at some point you have to wonder why the FT school seems increasingly hostile to Kirk (as just one example).
Caleb Stegall
May 30th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
There is this by Jeremy Beer–an ISI guy–which actually showed up in FT in 2000:
“Kirk has more often than not been paid empty homage by the influential think tanks and magazines within the conservative movement. That is, while conservative leaders are only too happy to appropriate Kirk’s name for the purpose of gaining intellectual credibility, they just as quickly ignore the specifics of his cultural criticism.”
W.H. Chellis
May 30th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
You need not try to convince me that “conservatives” do not take Kirk seriously. My hope is in a revival of Kirkean sentiment amidst the smoking ashes of neo-conservative domination of the right.
I have read the long post above. I do not feel a strong sense of unity with the FT crowd (although I really do like McClay who I think is a more serious Kirk guy). In fact, I felt great sympathy with your conclusion about the culture of heredity against the culture of choice. Kirk would have approved.
Still, to damn all liberalism including Burke and the founding Fathers, while holding Kirk in suspicion for being inconsistent (for fear of being un-American) seems to me strong medicine. While a blue blooded Covenanter whose father’s were dissenters from the American system may not hesitate to drink such a tonic, its fumes burn my sinuses.
Caleb Stegall
May 30th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Whoa!
1) Yes, I damn liberalism, at least at the current historical moment. It might be more proper to say that I damn whiggery, which is earnest liberalism.
2) No, I don’t damn Burke, although I am sympathetic with those who argue that Kirk’s “creative” rereading doesn’t entirely hold water.
3) I don’t damn the founders. But neither am I willing to venerate their work as imperishable or flawless. At their best, the founders utilized liberalism as a noble lie and did so with great success.
4) I don’t hold Kirk in suspicion. Such inconsistency is a mark of political maturity so far as I’m concerned. You work with what you have. Kirk had America, and so do we.
W.H. Chellis
May 30th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
See that… we dont really disagree after all.
W.H. Chellis
May 30th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
But… I do think the discussion does raise the issues of Christ’s Mediatorial Kingship again. I will not play by liberalism rules or eat at its table… although I welcome it to recognize Christ’s rule and to eat of His table!
Caleb Stegall
May 30th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Good! I take it you are no longer a conservative liberal?
Caleb Stegall
May 30th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
although I welcome it to recognize Christ’s rule and to eat of His table!
Only people can do that.
More prosaically, I think it raises the question of what are the liberal habits which most of the church has embraced and which undermine the claims of Christ’s table?
W.H. Chellis
May 31st, 2007 at 7:18 am
Caleb, I appreciate what you are saying in these posts and heartily agree with most of it. I would never call myself a “conservative liberal” nor do I feel any great demand to associate myself with the cause of the Whigs. Still, I am a happy inheritor of a good deal of positive that has come down from the whig/liberal tradition. True Torys went to Canada or back to England during the War for Independence. Only a conservative whig could identify the American Revolution as a “revolution not made but prevented.”
Maybe I will have to wait for Kansas First! but I am unsure of how an American alternative to the conservative whig tradition can be throught through and applied without degrading into an ideology.
BTW where is Darryl on this?
Caleb Stegall
May 31st, 2007 at 8:43 am
Thanks Bill. I don’t identify as a Tory. I think the best of the alternative American tradition leaves the Tory/Whig divide behind. That Kirk did not leave it behind is, I think, a legitimate criticism (made most effectively by Willamore Kendall).
W.H. Chellis
May 31st, 2007 at 8:49 am
I need to read Kendall. I have nothing in my library from him. My only contact by way of Nash’s history of the Conservative Movement.
D Hart
May 31st, 2007 at 11:20 am
I’ve enjoyed again watching Covenanters fight — that’s where. (Plus I was at the Phillies game last night.)
But I am curious, Caleb, what is “the best of the alternative American tradition”?
BTW, I really don’t know what to think of the Stegal-Chellis exchange since I am still coming to terms with my liberal soul. I am no proponent of a glorious American revolution. My sympathies are really with the anti-federalists. But believe it or not, Locke on religious liberty makes sense to me. That is an indication of how much I think Constantinianism was a mistake, nay, a perversion of Christianity.
Caleb Stegall
May 31st, 2007 at 11:45 am
But I am curious, Caleb, what is “the best of the alternative American tradition�
Not entirely sure … but I look to anti-Federalists, prairie populists, agrarians, etc …
GAS
June 5th, 2007 at 12:02 am
“Put simply, Neuhaus and Walsh overestimate the capacity of rational argument and propositional truth to sustain the structures of order. This overestimation is not surprising as it flows from what is a fundamentally liberal misunderstanding of the sources and character of order itself.”
Or perhaps their overestimation (of the capacity of rational argument and propositional truth) flows fundamentally from Catholic dogma concerning the capacity of conscience as a supernatural gift that can be incited toward the good if trained and developed by reason.