Yet lurking in the mist behind all these interesting ideas is that great orange beast who may be slouching out of Mar-a-Lago on his way towards Washington again...
I've mostly enjoyed Fukuyama over the years, especially his attention to 'thymos' and its role in human psychology and society, and I guess 30 years ago it made sense that maybe every group could have its thymos appeased by getting its own parade, its own TV series (ideally by Ken Burns), and some patronage here and there...well, that was a more optimistic time!
It seems that since Trump everyone who is not explicitly conservative (or some flavor of crank or contrarian) have all suddenly hit upon the same idea for 21st-century governance: We have no choice but to hand over our societies to an unelected globalist elite who will make all our decisions based on enlightened benevolent technocracy (which is pretty much whatever the Ivy League-NGO complex says it is at any given moment) aka We need to destroy the village in order to save it.
So while the American Left is basically undergoing a public nervous breakdown and will be reduced to the intellectual level of a crackhead for the foreseeable future, their opponents, who claim to want to revive virtue, restraint, tradition, etc, are led by the literal incarnation of all that is opposite of that, the most American of all Americans, History's most hilarious infant, Nero in diapers.
I don't know where Mike Judge stands on the list of most influential political philosophers, but I think of all possible visions of the American future, his "Idiocracy" seems the most likely.
"Yet lurking in the mist behind all these interesting ideas is that great orange beast who may be slouching out of Mar-a-Lago on his way towards Washington again..."
Yes, this is the enormous fear, the enormous elephant in the room that dominates the thinking of just about every public intellectual and the entire progressive left. You see it so clearly in Fukuyama's recent writing, his whole argument is heavily guided by his personal dislike of Trump to the point that corrupts what he otherwise is trying to write.
The Trump ascendancy just might be the most fascinating and consequential event of my lifetime (I'm 53).
I'm not exactly an expert historian, but I really can't find any previous historical episode where an entire ruling class (also comprising a culture and intellectual class) had such a sustained and complete nervous breakdown, to the point where they repudiated every prior principle and belief and replaced it with a permanent tantrum. (I guess living in the age of Twitter makes a big difference.)
Ever since that man came down that escalator, what used to be a liberal ruling class that supported free thought and free expression has turned into a vindictive, authoritarian Red Guard (if the Red Guards were all emotionally brittle and psychologically unstable toddlers) that uses guilt, shame and bigotry accusations instead of bullets.
We will not have any kind of normal politics or culture until Trump is either dead or otherwise incapacitated.
As a British citizen (enjoying refuge in France) add Brexit to Trump. Both fuelled this fire like nothing in my lifetime, not even Thatcher’s financial revolution.
The cultural-left (PMC, BLM, "woke" creepy crawlies, etc.) has mutated into a POLITICAL WEAPON of the ruling elites ("Virtuals", globalists) against the working classes ("Physicals").
Trump is a Druid/Celt. His mother spoke Gaelic fluently while he was growing up.
When Rome disintegrated, it became possible for the "pagans", such as the Druids/Celts, to storm the gates of the crumbling empire.
The real problem isn't that the Druid and his "pagans" were able to storm the gates of the crumbling empire, it is that the empire is crumbling (from techno-economic disruption of the legacy sense-making system and its hierarchies of curated expertise).
Trump is a F.U. vote (that emerged from old and new working-class resentments) to the corrupt, dysfunctional establishment.
Trumpism is by definition reactionary and "anti-establishment" (with a populist, neo-confederate core of support).
But Trumpism is "useful" in the sense that it was/is the first technologically sophisticated attack on the information infrastructure of the "Blue Church". It exposed/exploited the weaknesses and stupidities (and ILLIBERAL totalitarianism) of the "Blue Church" on a widespread basis.
I just put the book on reserve at my library, but I do think it's fair to ask why anyone is still listening to Fukuyama after his reports of history's demise were so greatly exaggerated.
What you describe here sounds a lot like what I hear from Bari Weiss, Andrew Sullivan, David Brooks, and many other non-woke liberals. It boils down to: "we need to get back to the nice friendly liberalism that existed in the 1990's" [or insert your favorite decade.] It's a myth.
Your analysis of the problem is right on: liberalism's claim of value neutrality is an illusion. Claiming that "individual autonomy" is the highest moral good is itself a values-laden statement, which cannot be logically justified by liberalism itself. That's why Patrick Deenen believes the ideology is self-destructive. I would add that liberalism's claim (via Mill) that "my rights only stop at your nose" requires a large state to adjudicate the inevitably increasing number of conflicts between rights and noses, power which will inevitably be turned into a values enforcement mechanism by one side or the other (enter today's woke commissars or apparently DHS's now defunct Mis-information Bureau.)
I look forward to reading the book, but I strongly suspect I will remain in Deenen's camp. Whether it was the Enlightenment or the Reformation or nominalism or the Great Schism that got us here, we need a way out of this morass before we all kill each other or bring in a dictator who will use force to make sure we don't. A rediscovery of federalism could buy us a few decades, but fundamentally, it is not possible to build a society on nothing but "everyone gets to to whatever he wants". We survived for 250 years on the shared cultural (mostly Christian) inertia of 17 centuries, but we've run that down now. A society that doesn't agree on the meaning of man, woman, baby, family, marriage, or even the definition of human itself... has poor long term prospects.
It gives me no pleasure to say it, but liberalism is dead. Let's stop kicking its corpse around the room and look for viable alternatives. (And Sohrab Amari and his half dozen integralists don't count.)
I subscribe to Freddie De Boer, who has a popular substack. Although an avowedly old fashioned socialist, he spares nothing in criticizing the woke progressives. This is what he wrote today about liberals:
"Liberalism has in recent years sloughed off whatever remaining status it had as a coherent political project - an effort by temporary allies to join together despite philosophical differences to achieve a specific and material purpose. Instead, liberalism now functions ontologically, as a form of Being, and specifically of Being Good. The quintessential 2022 liberal is someone who does not want to achieve anything, but rather to be something - an ally, a friend to the movement, one of the good ones. Achieving is beyond the point; the point is to occupy a space of existential goodness. For people like Hobbes, politics is not a thing you do but a thing you are. And what Hobbes is, naturally, is a guy who already knows the answer to every question. In reality, politics is amoral, being right has absolutely no inherent function in the world, and achieving actual moral ends requires precisely the kind of compromise that Hobbes sees as below his exalted station, but no matter. Being Good is Being Good."
FYI the Hobbes referred here is Michael Hobbes, a contemporary talking head, not Thomas Hobbes! But the observation applies to much of the liberal progressives. It also suggests that the woke movement is much hollower than it might first appear?
I do hope you and Freddie De Boer are correct about the longevity of the woke.
It's un-nerving that I find myself again in common cause with radical Leftists like Freddie or Jacobin magazine. And yet I do agree with them that the focus on racial and sexual "privilege" is just another tool for our ruling class to maintain their very real class privilege. I shared politics with commies and socialists 30 years ago, and now I'm once again sharing a political space with radical socialists. :-) Funny.
Once you realize the "new" culture was is just "old" class war in disguise, it makes a lot more sense.
Well said. Fukuyama had one or two interesting things to say in Identity, but even then the 'real liberalism has never been tried!' shtick was pretty cringe.
At least Jordan Peterson made a decent stab at grounding the importance of the individual in metaphysics rather than justifying liberalism by the standards of liberalism - all the other (to steal Lyons's term) Paleo-Liberals you mention just beg the question whenever they get close to the topic.
Tom, do you have a good way to get someone into Jordan Peterson? I like what I've read and seen, but he writes so much and on such broad topics that I don't really know where to start. Any suggestions?
I do love his concise ways of illustrating the absurdities of postmodernism: "the logical end point of intersectionality is individuality; the social justice warriors will get there, if they don't kill us all first."
He has an excellent turn of phrase, and he's unsparing when it comes to the problems of what he called 'the postmodern left' back in 2016 or so and we now know as 'woke.' If concision's what you're after while still steering clear of 'Jordan Peterson DESTROYS xyz' type videos that I'm sure you'll have seen plenty of, all heat and no light, 12 Rules For Life is probably your best bet. If you have a bit more time to invest, I'd recommend checking out his series of lectures on the psychological significance of Genesis: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f-wWBGo6a2w (fair warning they are LONG and really quite engrossing, at least they were for me).
I'll go for the Genesis video. I'm more theology than self-help, and a Bible commentary series by an agnostic shrink strikes me as an interesting premise.
Iain McGilchrist's work in evolutionary psychology is probably far more rewarding than Peterson's, but McGilchrist's audience is more specialized.
McGilchrist uses cognitive science to prove that "religion" is part of cultural evolution (survival adaptations), and that dehumanization becomes pervasive without the kind of meaning (and INHIBITION* of anti-social behavior) that religion provides. (gross oversimplification).
* McGilchrist's research indicates that INHIBITION of anti-social personality was a major feature in the evolution of "modern" humans 100,000s of years ago, along with language and intense social bonding/cooperation for enhanced survival.
After the Bronze Age collapse, mythic-contemplative religion became a "software upgrade" that added even more cultural INHIBITION of anti-social, non-cooperative personalities in agrarian city-states for survival as they were attacked by nomadic marauders (and other city-states/empires).
Well-said, Sir Brian. Thank You. It's been slowly coming into view that liberalism isn't what I thought it was. This essay by N.S. Lyons really firmed it up pretty solid. Problem is I now have four books to read: Fukuyama, Deneen, and two by Hazony. (Like to believe I'll get to all-a them, but realistically? ;-)
"it is not possible to build a society on nothing but 'everyone gets to [do] whatever he wants'"
Yeah, this is what killed it for me. Never saw it coming until (really, *really* slowly) the past 6 to 12 months. Gives me some empathy for people who are still blue-pilled. TYTY again.
"A true conservative is therefore not 'someone who stands athwart history, yelling ‘Stop’,' or a progressive who’s just twenty years behind the curve, but an agent of restoration and rejuvenation through retraditioning."
This is what I try to do at home as a father. And to avoid this: the "reactionary 'dissident' right who feel there is nothing at all left to conserve and are therefore open to radical alternatives."
After the 2020 election, I made a feeble attempt to organize some local conservatives in my area and was taken aback at how much of that there was among them.
A large part of the "right" are the historical-cultural descendants of the Confederacy, and within that a major core are Appalachian Celts that have even more ancient "tribal" resentments against Manorialism and "classical liberalism" (Yankees).
The elite power faction that the "right" represents are primarily the SunBelt industries in the south and southwest: oil, defense, real estate developers, etc.
The elite power faction that the "left" represents are an alliance the media-tech oligarchs (see Yarvin) and the legacy northeast financial sector.
The left-vs-right narrative is increasingly meaningless because of techno-economic disruption of the legacy sense-making system (hierarchies of curated expertise).
" But how can a philosophy that is taken to its own furthest extent no longer be itself?"
Conservatism taken to it's furthest extent isn't itself either. No change in status quo, no challenge to conventional orthodoxy and we are all still living in a flat earth, Galileo still in jail. Push change for change sake and destroy long standing traditions as extremes of liberalism does and you end up in a bad place as well, but both of these examples are extremes. The push and pull between reasonable conservatism and reasonable liberalism is what pushes us forward in a messy yet postive arc. Replacing either with the extremes isn't a good option.
This is probably true, and approximately what I was trying to get at in the last paragraph. It may be that neither can moderate itself, and so needs the other. I think it would be reasonable to posit that in recent times conservatism degenerated too much, allowing liberalism to run out of control, and what we need is a better balance.
When I read people getting all warm and fuzzy and nostalgic about the decline of “traditions”, I think, “Well, what would my life have been like if the influence of those traditions had NOT declined?” (I’m a 70 year old white gay male, raised in a conservative household in Dallas, Texas, with a working dad and stay at home mom. The Southern Baptist Church was the ruling NGO setting the local and regional traditions and social mores. ) ANSWER: I’d be dead, or in prison, or at best, living a lie, constantly in fear. My life would have been crushed. Most people would react with revulsion to my presence. So, I’m perfectly OK with the big brutal state saying to people, no, it’s NOT OK to beat up gay people, deny us housing or jobs, etc. When I read about conservatives whining about the decline of their traditions, I think, “Walk a mile in my shoes, dude—you might change your mind”.
And, when people moan and groan about the current state of liberal societies or the “horrors” of neo-liberalism, I think, “Wait a minute, are you blind? Are you not aware of how human life has materially improved world-wide, how much poverty has diminished in the 21st century? It’s practically a miracle.”
Although I’m basically a Sam Harris/Richard Dawkins atheist, I firmly believe, with Jonathan Haidt and others, that evolution has pretty much hard-wired the need for religion into human societies. I’m reading Deneen’s The Failure of Liberalism, and find it dismayingly compelling. (I might add that most of the criticisms of Fukuyama in the above essay come directly from Deneen.) I also grew up thoroughly grounded in Christian tradition and the nuclear family, and all of its values, which gave me an enormous advantage in life, which I fully acknowledge. I didn’t grow up in a hollowed out world with few churches and it’s just everyone all alone with our smart phones. But, when I read paeans to conservatism and tradition, I consider them thoughtfully, and conclude, “Nah—I don’t buy it.”
But I’m also freaked out by what’s happened to woke left, the Successor Ideology, the Elect, the Cathedral, etc., and think that phenomenon is the sad attempt of a secular society to fill the “God-sized hole” that evolution has tragically left us with. But it is NOT, repeat NOT a phenomenon of liberalism—it’s a quasi-religion, a new church, and anti-liberal. Which is why I subscribe to Substacks such as this one.
The best society is one where Galileo is not in prison and there are no Inquisitions, or Gulags, a MODERATE, liberal society subject only to slow “piecemeal social engineering” a la Karl Popper.
I would be perfectly content living in a liberal society you describe as an ideal. But I think the question is whether that is actually sustainable - or if as soon as one group (who claims all they want is a neutral state) gains sufficient power they will invariably act to impose their vision of the good on the rest of society. Certainly this was the case in your youth as you describe it, and is the case now for others. Is this inevitable? Is liberal neutrality a myth? If not, how can it be maintained? If it can't be maintained, what is the next best alternative? Those are the questions here that I think are most critical. If you find Deneen compelling, then you already see the problems as I and others are wrestling with them.
You are absolutely right in questioning the sustainability of liberalism, and I wish I had a clue how to make the transition from an atomized society to one that has nourishing, non-governmental, not-too-tribal institutions that fuel civic virtue, which seems to be existentially threatened. How do you do that without religion or God? It’s a pretty good joke that if God exists, He created us with our defining characteristic—rationality—impotent to find any evidence for His (Their?🙄) existence! Even Sam Harris can’t seem to do without his crypto-Buddhist meditation rituals. I found Haidt’s Righteous Mind brilliant but very disturbing, but I think he’s right. Interesting that he is himself an atheist but attends a synagogue, which I hear is not unusual. But, I don’t think I could comfortably start attending the Methodist church again, no matter how many rainbow flags it flies, of my childhood, knowing that it’s foundational scriptures damn me. I’m supposed to ignore that? Every critic of liberalism I’ve read inevitably posits religion as a solution.
Liberalism is not anti-fragile to disruption. A new paradigm, beyond the entire left-vs-right narrative, that IS anti-fragile to disruption is what is required.
... At first, when a new form arises, it has subversive effects on the old order, before it has additive effects that lead to a new order. Bad actors may prove initially more adept than good actors at using a new form — e.g., ancient warlords, medieval pirates and smugglers, and today’s information-age terrorists being examples that correspond to the +I, +M, and +N transitions, respectively. As each form takes hold, energizing a distinct set of values and norms for actors operating in that form, it generates a new realm of activity — for example, the state, the market. As a new realm gains legitimacy and expands the space it occupies within a social system, it puts new limits on the scope of existing realms. At the same time, through feedback and other interactions, the rise of a new form/realm also modifies the nature of the existing ones.
... Societies that can elevate the bright over the dark side of each form and achieve a new combination become more powerful and capable of complex tasks than societies that do not. Societies that first succeed at making a new combination gain advantages over competitors and attain a paramount influence over the nature of international conflict and cooperation. If a major power finds itself stymied by the effort to achieve a new combination, it risks being superseded.
... A people’s adaptability to the rise of a new form appears to depend largely on the local nature of the tribal form. It may have profound effects on what happens as the later forms get added. For example, the tribal form has unfolded differently in China and in America. Whereas the former has long revolved around extended family ties, clans, and dynasties, the latter has relied on the nuclear family, heavy immigration, and a fabric of fraternal organizations that provide quasi-kinship ties (e.g., from the open Rotary Club to the closed Ku Klux Klan). These differences at the tribal level have given unique shapes to each nation’s institutional and market forms, to their ideas about progress, and, now, to their adaptability to the rise of networked NGOs.
The older I get, the more convinced I am that there are no ideological answers to these problems. There are only fallen, sinful people struggling with how to raise the next generation while trying to figure out the best way to deal with the specific problems their own time has presented.
For myself, I believe liberalism today is multiplying problems instead of solving them. It has lived out its time. The alternative is still taking shape, but it will not be secular, democratic liberalism. It will be, as R.R. Reno says, a "strong god" of some kind.
As for the strong God, we have gone to an extreme in putting humans as the center of everything, so it stands to reason we will swing back to the opposite, something outside of ourselves. I won’t see it, aged 58, not enough time, this mania will out last me. Profound stupidity is my future.
Agreed. Even the progressive beliefs within liberalism gave us needed outcomes. African Americans were culturally oppressed for centuries in a liberal United States. Likewise for gays and lesbians, particularly gay men who faced threats of arrests and imprisonment well into the 1960s.
The yin-yang push pull is always important to the evolution of society. I'm a subscriber to the Golden Mean theory (thank you Aristotle) and we do flirt between passion and reason in our outlook and societies and best outcome generally has always been seeking the golden mean as the best way forward (or the grubby gray compromise if you'd prefer).
The real problem is when one side (or both) becomes too immobile. We're seeing a progressive left becoming distinctly immobile and inflexible in ways the liberal left was not in the 1990s (remember Bill Clinton and his New Democrats?)
The radical-extremist factions on the right are mainly NEO-CONFEDERATE and largely from the (historically inbred) Appalachian-Celt gene pool*.
Ultimately, beyond those lingering from the Civil War (1860s), their resentments are ancient and tribal.
"Classical liberalism" in medieval Europe required that ILLIBERAL tribes be violently suppressed.
That creates a contradiction in modern liberalism because to "regress" to the use of political violence in suppressing the remnants of the ILLIBERAL Celtic/Border Reiver gene pool is "not nice".
And sadly, the loudest voices today are the extremes (far left and far right), drowning out the push and pull that is needed between conservatives and liberals.
Maybe, instead, the answers lie outside of political theory or social philosophies.
Maybe we need to be fixed before we address those institutions, and maybe our lives are not governed by them, but are instead the governors of them. Maybe we're looking for god-like answers without looking for God. Maybe reason, science, and techne have subsumed reality--or even denied its existence.
Why is history an arc? Maybe, instead, it is a stair-step descent into individualist human anarchy, where everyone does what is right in his own eyes.
The idea of history as an arc traces back to Hegelian thought although there are roots in Christianity seeking an eternal truth in God and bringing man closer to God. But Hegel really outlined the concept of history as an inevitable arc towards an ideal outcome, although Hegel himself certainly wouldn't be a woke radical (I like to think). But this thinking heavily influenced the Marxists and the modern progressive mindset, that we're getting closer to a purer, best form of existence of man, ideally in a state freed from all the shackles of oppression in all forms (and this includes biology these days - see transgenderism). It explains why they are so ideologically rigid and opposed to compromise for they see it as reactionary and opposite the clear trajectory.
But is history as an arc only a foolish belief? Does history really march in a neat arc? Perhaps the arc is a byproduct of the explosive growth of the West following the Renaissance? When, for the first time in history, each subsequent generation had it "better" than the previous generation and the amount of science and knowledge exploded from generation to generation. One can see why you'd think there was an arc to history.
But the rest of the world, other cultures, including today, certainly don't march upwards in an arc. Nor did most of history. The singular thing about the Roman empire, for example, was despite approximately 500 years of Roman imperium, the quality of life at the beginning was remarkably the same as at the end. Very little new scientific discovery, little pushing the boundaries of knowledge. Roman building techniques improved in that aqueducts could be bigger and the arch vaulted bigger spaces and grandiose building projects were more commonplace, but the framework remained largely the same. There was no "arc of history" for the Romans.
But I like your comment that we're looking for godly answers without god. There's truth to it. The progressives seek an answer that could only be provided by God (such as what is justice?) yet man is distinctly not god. We are not and cannot be perfect and to implement a godly perfection on an imperfect species has only been catastrophic.
Dana, if you don't know anything about Orthodox Christianity, you should investigate it. You sound like you're looking for the missing link of Western religious thought. If you're interested, two good books are worth procuring from your library:
Thanks, Brian. I've not read these 2, but am familiar with Orthodox. My flavor of Christianity is a different one, but I do see truth in most all of them. For sure, I do know that my Redeemer lives.
I'll check them out--my reading list is getting quite long these days. That's the problem with reading these quality Substacks!
As is typical for your essays, I will need to reread it to grasp everything you write. There's so many good thoughts and observations that it's easy to miss some of them.
I will say in light of the quote from Fukuyama: "from tolerance of difference and diversity to the celebration of difference and diversity.."
It should be pointed out that the celebration of difference and diversity ended up being restricted to a very narrow range of difference and diversity. In the name of tolerance, it became distinctly intolerant. Much is excluded, such as conservative thinkers and culturally conservative people, albeit generally in the West, which brings our attention to the hypocrisy of openly praising the concept of a smorgasbord of different cultures in the name of diversity while turning a blind eye to that many of those cultures are also distinctly conformist societies with no support or rights for the liberal values, and especially the now sacred LGBTA+ demographics, with Palestine being a chief example of this hypocrisy.
Fukuyama is a classic example of a man who is still trapped by the mindsets of a world that has long passed him. He is aware that things has changed, but as you alluded in your essay, he is still blinded by internal biases and really can't quite face the seriousness of the threats because, ultimately, he would have to acknowledge his role in allowing them to come about as part of the modern globalist liberals of the 1990-2010 era that did so much to destroy national institutions (academia in particular) lingering attachments to Western culture and loyalty to their home societies.
Phew! Thank You! Yet *another* masterpiece, Sir! Can't say enough about it.
I'll just say that it was us boomers who started this mess in a lotta ways. One was "don't trust anyone over thirty." And, in general, DIShonoring too many-a the values of The Greatest Generation.
But, according to "Death of the Grown-Up" by Diana West, part-a the blame goes to the oldsters for letting us get away with it. Only thing I can figure is they didn't want their kids to go through anything like what *they* went through, and let us get by with too, too much. IMO.
Also wanted to "say" the two LOLs from the Editor's Notes were supreme. Fukuyama? Dunno how anyone could take him seriously after this marvel. TYTY and TY again.
They didn't realize that shielding their kids from adversity was shielding them from the things that make them stronger. Although I often wonder what they were supposed to do instead. Generate some artificial adversity?
How can a Cuban that floated to Florida on a raft of truck tires transfer his resiliency to his Cuban-American kids in order prevent them from becoming like the Communists he originally fled? Or a shell-shocked US Army paratrooper that survived the Western front who refuses to talk about his experience in war?
I think most-a the heroes of WWII just experienced too much horror to wanna relate it to their kids. The whole time I knew my Dad (44 years), the only time he referred to it was one sentence in a postcard when he was taking trip to Europe: "Last time I was here they were shooting at us." At the time, I was too stupid to understand the significance.
The really bad influence came when the Boomers were parents. Helicopter (and I guess Snowplow) parenting shielded their kids even more. The Boomers were lucky. THey were one-a the last generations to experience unsupervised play. The day-to-day battles amongst peers set the groundwork for future day-to-day "battles."
It doesn't hafta be any earth-shaking adversity to develop resilience, it turns out. Sports being one-a *the* best Ways to learn how You're supposed to go about winning and, more important, losing. The movement up and down amongst Your social peers.
Kids who are protected from every possibility of experiencing the least little bit of pain? What You'd expect. What we got now, as these kids have (reputedly) grown up. Not entirely tangentially, the "self-esteem" movement was (and, amazingly, still *is*) one-a the stupidest inventions ever created outta the mindlessness of supposedly intelligent people. Scientists laid out in the 90s that it did more harm than good. And, yet, still goes on to this day.. And this "it" goes on and on.
As someone born in late 1976, Generation X, I would say we were the last generation with the unsupervised play, as well as a true connection to older generations. Rotary phones, dirt roads, etc.
Techno-economic disruption (networks, global neoliberalism) is the deeper cause of the emergence of postmodern relativism and the various insanities of the ILLIBERAL, totalitarian "cultural-left".
1. after WW2, the traditional economy of family farms and manufacturing was displaced by the "information economy", office jobs, which required college education (the GI Bill massively expanded higher education). The culture shifted toward postmodern relativism because of the suburban-consumer lifestyle and its physical and cultural infrastructure required less social cohesion, and so encourages alienation.
2. by the 60s/70s, electronic information technologies further accelerated those cultural changes, and the erosion and corruption of the legacy "sense-making" system: hierarchies of curated expertise.
the internet was the ultimately disruptive force because information could freely flow around legacy, curated, expert knowledge hierarchies, and the resulting RELATIVISM (lack of boundaries) and the InfoGlut and "crisis of meaning" could be exploited.
What is now required is a sense-making system that is anti-fragile to disruption under postmodern social conditions. The global-neoliberal economy will make anti-fragility difficult.
Yeah, You're right. Politically (and culturally) it went back to Wilson. Some say back to Lincoln and the bulk-up of the Fed government to carry out the Civil War. But Wilson and the Progressive left *really* started the downhill slide. And they may have receded from time to time, but they never left off entirely. FDR, the LBJ. They mebbe not both-a them considered Progressive. Dunno.
But us (meaning *my* generation of) Boomers? As the saying goes, seems bankruptcy came "suddenly" after us.
Excellent essay as always. As someone who was center left before being mugged by reality in 2020, I found it difficult at first to verbalise the necessity of moderation and convservation. Mind you, I was already an army officer in my country and had been in conservative milieus before, but only post-2020 did I start to (at first grudgingly) truly respect the little traditional rituals. I still call myself a classical liberal, but following this essay, it is becoming also clear to me that without a pre-existing moral framework, liberalism seems to end up repeatedly blackmailed into oblivion. The worst is that conservatism nowadays has to work almost from scratch as the arguments it espouses have only a limited audience which has worked through the logical puzzle, and invoking religion is likely to fall on deaf ears. In addition, the key error of liberalism is the false promise of equality. Legal equality and even equality of opportunity have serious merit as well as equal AND individual rights, but false deity of equity is something liberalism has to again innoculate itself against (ironically I find most 19th century liberals understood this much better and were able to resist on stronger grounds). So many of my friends and family talk about equality without any deeper thought about the implications.
The exploration of a pro-democracy alliance between liberals and conservatives seems like a worthwhile project if for no other reason than such an attempt might begin to sense the glimmer of a type of language or vocabulary/story necessary to capture mutual commonalities and concerns.
In Hazony's last chapter he mentions the word anomie and defines it as a condition of disorientation and dismay--what he calls an existence without law or constraint.
I would suggest that such a word (especially its emphasis on the overwhelming contemporary absence of constraint) captures the mutual longings of a surprising number of San Francisco liberals who just recalled their District Attorney as well as more traditional conservatives who yearn for a more prominent discussion of increasingly unrestrained human impulses (mass shootings/increasing crime etc) and the parallel necessity of a culture which promotes greater inhibitions and constraints.
My intuition is that there is a dramatically increasing constituency for a culture and politics of democratic restraint.
The dynamic engine that held the American version of liberalism together and provided the tension and energy that gave us a purpose and power, but also problems has broken apart. That process of breakdown means that the other varieties of liberalism (home-grown and imported - like neo-liberalism, like neo-Marxism) are carrying the day. It seems to me that our engine was built out of Protestant Christianity, classical Republicanism, Natural Law, and Natural Rights (here lies the liberal or most liberal piece - as developed by Locke, et al.) and that all existed and pulled and tugged and drove each other pushing and containing all at once. In that world, Liberalism cannot just be a procedural or constitutional order. Because I see the heart of American liberalism as the issue of rights, namely the individual's ability to be equal to another, to have liberty, to pursue happiness even against the observations of nature, the demands of the Divine, and the lessons of the past/tradition. The issue is truly the issue of rights against obligation. Jefferson understood this and that is why he tried to square the circle with Nature - nature both gives us the source of both - and his sense of proto-rights and political negotiated rights, together allowing for a polity. His is only one thread of course in our liberal order, but perhaps the most important and the one carry the greatest seeds of self-destruction. It seems that the collapse of Protestant Christianity as a restraining power in the dynamics means we are at the point of no return unless the other pieces can be shored up sufficiently to give a new dynamic, but I fear that isn't possible. I don't think it is an accident that deformed and heretical mutations of Protestantism are the central pillar of the emerging Woke-religion, a process that isn't finished. It feels more like the abundance of cults in the 2nd Century, which one will take the place of the old State Religion is yet unknown...but perhaps what is happening is the rise of progressive/liberal Protestantism in the early to mid-20the century was the real story of what caused the morphing and destruction of our American liberal order. The force that once restrained became too closely allied with the liberalism and they ceased to be separate but merged together unleashing forces that could no longer be contained and like a cancer began to eat itself and or perhaps to think of it differently it caused a sort of political genetic mutation.
Classical liberals are modern-day Pharisees in the truest sense: more concerned with the forms and appearances of moderation, liberalism, democracy, etc. than the underlying purpose.
I wouldn't have phrased it that way, Chris, but I think there's some truth to what you say.
There is a built in contradiction in the idea of "liberal democracy": both ideas (liberalism and democracy) are in competition for supremacy. So a committed liberal would say that people have a right to a Gay Pride Parade, and would not accept a society that democratically chose to outlaw such parades. Similarly, a committed democrat must accept the will of the people even when they do blatantly unjust things (like vote for slavery.)
Classical liberalism doesn't abjure all moral standards, on the contrary it presupposes a certain decency and restraint on the part of its citizens. Even law-abidingness requires a certain degree of restraint. This was well-recognized by founders such as Washington and Adams. What classical liberalism does get rid of is any attempt by the state to prescribe theological beliefs to its citizens. The laws should only govern the "actions of the body" but not "the operations of the mind" to use Jefferson's formulation. What is puzzling is that Fukuyama, who surely must know this, seems to be confused about it.
All moral standards are theological statements, whether we recognize them or not. Any claim of a universal moral standard relies on something transcendental, since a standard created by man can never be universal. If it isn't obvious why, I would suggest Chapter 1-7 of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity.
Liberalism's assertion "the highest social good is individual autonomy" is no more self-evident than the Catholic Church's "the highest good is the glorification of God" or Aristotle's "mastering your passions is the key to apprehending goodness" or the Buddha's "seek balance in your life to attain enlightenment". All of these are theological statements about what society should value most. We pretend the first one is not erroneously.
The founders' assumption of the necessity of basic decency and restraint was not a theoretical argument but a practical necessity. They realized that the modern natural right teaching of Hobbes and Locke was not a sufficient basis, by itself, for a stable political order, "self-interest rightly understood" (Tocqueville) could not be relied upon, at least in the case of the many who were not as enlightened as they.
I'm afraid I don't understand then. The founders built an entire edifice on Locke and Hobbes "natural law'. I would argue that Locke was wrong. "Natural law" isn't universal or natural at all; it's just 1700 years of Judeo-Christian cultural biases masquerading as a universal principle. To me, what we're living through now is the final destruction of that 1700 year cultural edifice, and the consequential breakdown of faith in the "natural law" of the Enlightenment. In short, paganism is reasserting itself into the Western World.
So what do you mean when you say they "realized that natural law wasn't enough"? Where will that "certain decency and restraint on the part of its citizens" come from if not from a set of extra-liberal shared social norms and standards?
The doctrines of Hobbes and Locke are better characterized as theories of natural right rather than natural law: Rights are prior to duties and obligations, which ultimately are viewed as utilitarian or instrumental. There must be "extra-liberal shared norms and standards" because, at least for the many, rational self-interest is not sufficient, but there is no "metaphysical grounding" for such standards. They are simply political necessities. Or one could say that they are grounded in the fear of political chaos.
It appears the "fear of political chaos" is insufficient grounding for the modern mind. I still think the best explanation of that is still the 300 year rundown of shared cultural standards that predate Enlightenment liberalism. However, I hope I am wrong.
I think you are correct, we abandon our cultural heritage - Judeo Christian - out of arrogance, end of history thinking: these things do not apply to our age. Lyons questions if the early success of liberalism is attributed to it riding on the coattails of the earlier religious ethos which it destroyed.
Leonard Liggio's exploration of the historical roots of classical liberalism/liberty might be useful.*
Classical liberalism in decentralized political culture (before 1492) grew out of the co-emergence of "W.E.I.R.D." (Henrich) social characteristics, which involved the early Church's ban on cousin marriage to destroy the power of (inbred) clans.
As the gene pool in NW Europe became more outbred and more variable, the need for increased literacy and numeracy as the urban commoner classes expanded along with river and sea trade (and the market economy) selected for higher IQ and "liberal personality".
"Liberal personality" was also selected for because high-social-trust was required in new "liberal" (post-feudal) social institutions.
Liggio cites the case of the Cluniac Abbies (France, Camino de Santiago) promoting peasants' rights, and the Peace and Truce of God movement.
Liggio sees a regression to oriental despotism (imperialism, political recentralization) after 1492, as the "modern" political elites swept aside decentralized politics and "classically liberal" medieval institutions (cortes, fueros, communas), replacing them with Absolutism (especially in Spain).
The conquest of the kingdom of Grenada in 1492 witnessed the establishment of Absolutism, the core feature of which was the end of the universal, supra-political position of religion and especially of the Church. The universal church was replaced under Absolutism by a subservient, state religious bureau. Throughout Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the
[->] universal, trans-political position of the Church was ended.
For example, the French kings and rulers of the Spanish kingdoms were able by Concordats to gain from the Papacy total control over the church institutions in their territories.
The Protestant reformation, the second phase of this movement, occurred where local rulers were not able to gain similar concessions from the Popes; countries where rulers had wrested control of the Church remained "faithful" and sought to consolidate their gains through the Catholic Reformation centered on the Council of Trent. In Spain, the rulers of Castile, Aragon, and Cataluna after 1480 gained the power to establish political inquisitions beyond the powers of the bishops.
...
Just as the Monarchist’s Church of the Council of Trent (with the Royal Inquisition) contributed to Absolutism, the history of Spain and Spanish colonies in the reign of Charles V indicate
[->] the great turning point whereby Spain lost its medieval constitutionalism
and led much of Europe in substitution of oriental despotism. As William Graham Sumner’s The Conquest of the United States by Spain (1900) showed that while the U.S. conquered Spain’s colonies, Spain’s imperialist ideas had conquered the intellect of American politicians, so the distinguishing characteristics of European constitutionalism compared to oriental despotism (cf. Jones, The European Miracle (1981) were lost with Spanish conquests of Asia and South America. Spain adopted the imperial methods of India, Turkey, China, Mexico, and Peru in place of decentralized, limited constitutional institutions of medieval Europe.
The decline and political control of religious institutions in the fifteenth century undermined the foundations of European constitutionalism’s uniqueness. The Spanish crown’s access to the gold and silver of the Aztec and Inca despotisms made Spain the paymaster of European wars for a Century and a half. Castilian infantry excelled throughout Europe leaving Spain’s monetary and human wealth in graves around Europe. To achieve imperial greatness, Spain had to
[->] abandon the medieval free market and constitutional institutions.
In evolutionary terms, morals are ultimately biological, as explained by Darwin: morals that enforced social cooperation were an evolutionary survival strategy for something like 100,000 years, long before "god" or theology existed.
Such biological morals (in nomadic kindship groups) were disrupted by the end of the ice ages and then after 5,000 years or so, the emergence of agriculture and dense urban populations (walled cities).
The Bronze Age collapse exposed the limitations of biological morals (embodied awareness/spirituality in nomadic social forms). Cultural evolution then produced Contemplative, Axial culture, religious-theology and purity-myth morality (godliness vs sin and evil) in response.
Contemplative religion/theology had an advantage because it could generate meaning and collective intelligence that transcended "tribal" morals, and thus became the foundation of Axial States (the State became necessary to help religion INHIBIT anti-social personalities and social tendencies that were resistant to a transcendent God).
The "left" threw the baby (transcendent spirituality) out with the bathwater (the Ancien Regime).
Not a criticism of you - although it absolutely is one of Fukuyama, who you are reviewing - but the liberal tradition has far more ability to resolve these contradictions than is evidenced here. Shklar's liberalism of fear avoids these absurd knots over 'neutrality' with a clear commitment to the avoidance of cruelty coupled to one simple empirical observation: power makes people cruel.
But that's not enough to be emotionally sustaining. "Don't be cruel" just doesn't have the resonance of (for example) "Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit".
After a lifetime (well, from age 15 or so to my current age of 66) as an atheist, I have reluctantly concluded that religious ritual, sustained by genuine religious belief in most but not necessarily all congregants, is essential to a functioning human society that can continue the ideals of liberalism in a way that most of us would find acceptable.
But I suspect that a serious crisis ("there are no atheists in foxholes") may need to arrive before we can find our way back to meaningful religious practice.
"But that's not enough to be emotionally sustaining. "Don't be cruel" just doesn't have the resonance of (for example) 'Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit'".
Perhaps another, more robust way of articulating the idea of "don't be cruel":
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
How does a non-religious person follow this counsel? In my opinion, a possible distillation of what's stated here is: "The most important thing you can do is to not put yourself first" or something along those lines. A large-scale cultural emphasis on selflessness, which is at the heart of and is perhaps the unifying theme of virtually all religion, is the ticket to better society. Of course it's vital that all of us start with the person in the mirror, but it doesn't hurt to have a strong leader or leaders that personify this ethic.
In evolutionary terms, intense social cooperation by primeval humans required "biological morals" (altruism) for improved survival.
Darwin agrees with those statements of Jesus:
"It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over other men of the same tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes, and this would be natural selection (178-179)."
(Darwin quoted by Peter Richerson, PhD biology, UC Davis)
This is a very good point, and one I think is still applicable even at today's very large scale societies. The problem is that overall societal good, per se, does not seem to be a sufficient motivation for individual humans, if not backed up with a belief that the society is supernaturally ordained.
My point is that I think there is substantial evidence for the proposition that human psychology is such that this only works on a large scale when buttressed by belief (by a large fraction of the people) in the supernatural provenance of the principle.
I am also an atheist who believes in religion but not God.
But it might be simpler, human freedom goes to hell without human obligation. Lyons captures it so very well in his explication of conservatism herein.
It does not have to be the source of all of person's emotional sustainment (although I would argue that if you very seriously took the injunction to avoid being cruel while reducing the sum of cruelty in the world, then it would give you enough work for many lifetimes). The thought that the political order should be the sole source of a person's emotional sustenance is itself totalitarian; and, I would add, both likely to lead to cruelty and in itself idolatrous.
Shklar put it these terms: the liberalism of fear is not seeking a summum bonum, an ultimate good, it is seeking to avoid a summum malum, a very worst evil; and that evil is cruelty. It does not say do not seek your summum bolum. It merely says that you cannot be cruel as you do so.
She was not religious, and she was sceptical about whether or not this was ultimately compatible with religious faith on the grounds that the religious believer, if devout, must put the commands of God above the injunction to avoid cruelty. I am more sanguine. I see little in Christianity that requires a Christian to be cruel, and much that challenges and undermines cruelty.
TY. Had never heard-a her. I see she's written a lot. I just bought "Ordinary Vices. If I may ask: is "Judith Shklar and the liberalism of fear" another good place to look into? Or one-a her other works? TIA (Thank You in Advance).
The essay, 'The Liberalism of Fear' is a later condensation of her argument - it's here: https://philarchive.org/archive/SHKTLOv1 It's very dense, though, and I think Ordinary Vices is more important. Her style is different enough to most political philosophy to benefit from being at book length. I haven't read "Judith Shklar and the liberalism of fear", which isn't to say its bad. Her writing is so clear, though, that I see little benefit in starting with a secondary source. Of her other works, the collection of essays 'Political Thought and Political Thinking' contains a lot of gems, and 'Faces of Injustice' is particularly exceptional; but I would start with 'Ordinary Vices'.
Since I'm always interested to anyone who claims to ground moral standards in something other than the transcendental, I just started reading the essay you recommended. Right there on page 1 is the exact conflict we're talking about here:
"Liberalism refers to a political doctrine, not a philosophy of life such as has traditionally been provided by various forms of revealed religion. Liberalism has only one overriding aim to secure the political conditions that are necessary for the exercise of personal freedom."
Her own definition is self contradictory (just as Lyons says above). She says liberalism refers to only political forms and makes no normative claims. But the very next sentence makes a normative claim: that the exercise of personal freedom is the proper aim of society. She's fallen into the "liberal democracy" dichotomy I outlined elsewhere.
I'll update this comment as I read more, since she isn't someone I've heard of before. But so far she doesn't appear to have a solution, or even to recognize the problem.
Perhaps one could defend Shklar's consistency by saying that, because no one has definitive knowledge of the ultimate ends of life, the best political order is a liberalism that leaves everyone free to choose their own ends without interference from the state or others. I suppose you could call this a "normative" claim, but only in a negative sense: it is based on our ignorance of ultimate ends. By the way, I don't agree with the liberal position, but I think we need to recognize and meet the strongest arguments in its favor.
To be contrarian: maybe it is simple, maybe we know the ultimate end - we die and our consciousness ends - we just don’t like that answer, lotsa obfuscation on that one.
I think the point is that liberalism is running a bad show: greed on the right and absurd philistinism of wokeness on the left. I think it, liberalism, is mostly a practical failure and we should beware, the pitiless crowbar of events is our history. Liberalism is a primrose path.
The 95% of the human species that believe in some kind of a supreme being would argue with your "ultimate end".
Liberalism was birthed in an attempt to pacify disputes about ultimate ends. Maybe that was the problem? Is a society without an "ultimate end" of some kind (some sense of the common good) destined to eat itself in an orgy of hedonistic futility? Never thought I would quote Nietzsche, but he's correct that "he who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." Maybe what's true for a man is true for a mass of men as well. I don't really know; it's late and I'm just kind of thinking out load.
Hi Sir Brian, TYTY. I'm joining this conversation late. And I really hate to "say" something You're not likely to like, but here goes:
I can assure You that people can have a very *strong* sense of the common good without reference to a Supreme Being. Dunno, but might be a purer form of it, because it's not based on a really bad, eternal, punishment coming if You don't love Your neighbor as Yourself. Good just based on goodness. Dunno. A goodness that doesn't *depend* on pain/reward as the motivation?
Ultimate ends? *Real* contrarian view. Don't know much philosophy. But how, on Earth, *can* ultimate ends be knowable? Yeah, I get it. On Faith. And I agree that even Atheistic Scientists rely on Faith.
I guess "Faith" isn't the kind of *knowing* I"m looking for. Or, rather, gave up looking for. That's just me, just thinkin' out loud.
JT, I didn't mean to suggest that an atheist can't have an understanding of the common good. I see how you read it that way, but it wasn't my intention. Here's another attempt at same:
An atheist's ultimate ends will always be in this world. If this world is all there is (fade to black), it falls on man (each man) to define and create his own purpose, as Justice Kennedy put it in Casey, "to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."
In such a society (which we have today), each person defines his own concept of existence and ultimate purpose of life. If yours and mine are incompatible, one of us must surrender our liberty to our own concept of existence in order to have a shared sense of "what is good." We often do this, so there may be a broad agreement about most issues, but over time, as more and more people "define their own concept of existence", we would expect agreement to become less common, and hence "the common good" more elusive.
There is a mirror of this in what happened after the Protestant Reformation: early broad agreement about doctrine, then division into a few major camps, and gradual divergence of views until we have thousands of denominations today. Luther made every man responsible for interpreting Scripture ("defining his own concept of existence") and there's been a gradually increasing divergence of views ever since. I would expect something similar among atheists engaged in the same process, and I think the rise of atheism since the 16th century demonstrates a similar pattern of gradual divergence.
I'm not saying that theists have it any easier. History is not kind to anyone who claims the world's religions don't create conflict. Only that since essentially all major religions assert a cosmic moral order of some kind, such societies are more likely to have agreement about the question "what is good?" (They will likely conflict with each other, but I'm talking about internal cohesion here.) That's why I quoted Neitzsche's point that in terms of importance, the question "how well do I live?" pales next do "what do I live for?".
My point was that the same may be true for a society: agreement on what to live for (the common good) is more important than how well you live. Modern America has among the highest standards of living in the world, but we are lonelier and more spiritually adrift than ever. Our rising disagreement about "why to live" has paralleled rising prosperity in "how we live", but at some point, we will realize that the old bumper sticker, "he who dies with the most toys wins" isn't actually true. In fact, he who dies with the most toys, still dies. We've been so focused on the toys (the how) that we forgot about the why.
I hope that clarifies a little. This topic is near to my heart, since I have had quite a long spiritual (and political and philosophical) journey thus far and it is by no means at its end: Marxist atheist, to libertarian Buddhist, to Christian, to conservative Evangelical, and now find myself drawn to Eastern Orthodox mysticism. The question of ends has occupied my entire 50 years of life, but that by no means implies I understand the answers any better than you or anyone else. Personally, I think this sort of quest is universal to the human experience, and gets derailed mostly by the shiny baubles that modern industrial capitalism is so good at producing.
Don't sell yourself short. By even engaging with those questions like "what is the common good and how can we know it?", you're ahead of 90% of all Americans. You ARE focused on the "why" instead of the "how".
The crux for Shklar, as it was for Montesquieu and Locke in certain moods (see the Letter Concerning Toleration) is less about pacifying disputes in any absolute sense and more about merely ensuring that such disputes do not result in coercion and cruelty. Oh the other hand, she would, I think, be relatively happy for a society with complete agreement about ultimate ends to be called 'liberal', if it could reach that point without coercion and cruelty.
She does not say that liberalism makes no normative claims: indeed she she expressly and repeatedly points out that the injunction to avoid cruelty is normative. Saying liberalism is not a 'philosophy of life' is not to claim it is non-normative: it is to claim that it is not a complete normative order. Nor does she say that the proper aim of society is personal freedom, she says that the proper aim of liberalism is such freedom (as is compatible with the freedom of others). It is completely fundamental to her position that the political order is not the entirety of either the social order nor the normative order. Some of these distinctions might appear fine; but they are important, especially when so few liberals appear to be making them, as this book review shows.
I did actually finish the entire essay, and I like it enough to get the book you recommended from my library. While I don't disagree with her "don't be cruel" theory, I also do not believe she's demonstrated that either the definition of cruelty or the injunction not to engage in it isn't grounded in the divine. God sneaks into her argument in several noticeable places. However, she's interesting, and for me to find a new political theorist interesting is rare. I'll likely have my civics students read this essay; whether I agree with it or not, it's a perspective that is worthy of their consideration. Thanks a lot for the recommendation.
This side of heaven, we will never find a society that agrees on ultimate ends without coercion. The combination of free will and sinfulness pretty much guarantees that. Utopia is a mirage, and always will be. (Well, unless we drug ourselves into compliance -- https://unherd.com/thepost/love-drugs-are-more-dangerous-than-you-think/ Of course, that would be coercive too.)
I think I'm in a middle ground between yourself and Shklar. At one place in Ordinary Vices, she is notably sceptical about whether religion is even compatible with with making cruelty the primary vices to be avoided (it is possible that she later revised this opinion). I think that definitely goes too far. In fact, I think it is a place where she falls into the nasty secular habit of engaging with a lazy caricature of religion rather than with the real thing.
At the same time, I would prioritise the agreement on avoiding cruelty (even if there was no underlying agreement about why we prioritise it) above shared ultimate ends. To some extent, this is a minimalist, interim position: if we can't even agree not to be cruel to one another, what hope is there of agreement on shared ends? If we can, maybe that is how we start to build the trust required to agree about ends?
Personally, I would agree that grounding the injunction in what Taylor calls 'exclusive humanism' is utterly unsatisfying, even if Shklar herself does. That said, I'd be very happy if the dominant branch of secular liberal humanism took Shklar's route while still disagreeing with me about the metaphysics. It would become, perhaps, actually humane and tolerant that way.
I also find her definition of cruelty too narrow, although I think it is intended in a indicative rather than legalistic manner: I discuss this here, although it is (oddly enough) mixed up with quite a lot of talk about the history of British cheeses: https://flatcapsandfatalism.substack.com/p/lost-cheeses-and-impersonal-cruelty?s=w
I'm really happy to hear you will be introducing her to your civics students: surely a better use of their time than Fukuyama et al!
I put a few sections of "The End of History" on the reading list just to illustrate to them how wrong much of what we think about today's world might be.
BTW: Maybe I should be worried that a guy named Fatalist seems to be more optimistic about society than I am. :-) Great conversation. Thanks.
Darwin explained that morals originated in the biology of social cooperation and altruism, as a survival strategy in "primeval" times. Awareness and spirituality were "pagan" and embodied.
From the viewpoint of cultural evolution, transcendent spirituality (Axial, contemplative culture and religion, "anti-paganism") is very recent, going back 3,000 years or so.
Before the Axial age (Bronze Age collapse), transcendence, renunciation, and salvation were not necessary to human survival as an intensely socially cooperative species.
Long time democrat voter. I am not forming an alliance with Trumpers and other no nothing cult of personality types. If someone like Liz Cheney could ascend and somewhat moderate that might be possible. Guard rails are needed on either side of the spectrum to stay out of the political ditch(s) of populism, illiberalism, nihilism.
Tremendous, this Lyons fella is very clear minded, his argumentation is so helpful to me, too my understanding, really, the best I have found.
As for Wesley Yang‘s successor ideology, I suspect he would agree, liberalism is a means to an end, not the destination, he has another coinage which captures this: “ Authoritarian utopianism”.
As for Lyons , his explanation of conservatism is spectacular in its clarity, wow, I’m coming back to read it again and again until I own it.
An aside, I read a Vanity Fair piece on the internecine warfare amongst the woke reporters at the Washington Post: June 8, the title begins with the word “clusterfuck”, so it kinda stands out. It is an object lesson in managing a group of over educated people who believe any power or authority or hierarchy is bad, evil, indeed a trespass against their holy right to self determination and self expression and worse that the imposition, enforcement of rules is violence. Ah, my old friend schadenfreude, I sincerely hope they ripe of themselves to pieces.
Do you think Jeff Bezos’ real business, Amazon, allows people freedom or do you think the warehouse environment is a little more authoritarian than the Wopo vanity project, hum? Liberalism can’t help but contradict itself, Lyons says it is gnosticism all the way down, I say it is douch-baggery, all the way down.
I'm very unconvinced by the proposed connection between liberal individualism and identity politics. The rapid rise of identity politics I think is the result of Christian reverence for victims; the human desire to be part of a community and scarcity of current alternatives; and the useful distraction it is from actual threats to power.
P.s. A couple of style comments, fwiw. I think use of extremely online words like "copium" and the use of parenthetical commentary like "LOL" limit the audience for a piece, without adding much value. I know I've thought twice about sharing it with a) older people and b) people not on the right as a result. Also I found the tone/style somewhat jarringly different between the long section on Fukuyama and the short section on Hazony.
So then what is your solution, Wambat, to the problem that Fukuyama, Deenen, Lyons and many commenters here have identified, that liberalism's desire to liberate people from constraints is now corroding the very institutions (marriage, family, churches, individual conscience, police authority, the military, universities) which society needs to function.
The first job of ANY society is to produce, raise and acculturate the next generation in a manner that will allow them to do the same. Societies which fail at this are not long for the world. This is what Reagan meant when he said "freedom is only one generation away from extinction". Does today's liberalism do that in your view? How so? Because looking at the last 100 years, modern liberalism looks like an anti-cultural acid to me.
Brian, I couldn't agree more with your sentiments on the necessity of constraint.
Taken your position (that there are really no ideological answers to such profound cultural/spiritual problems) do you see any public role for yourself today as one individual( among perhaps a growing number) who is beginning/willing to consistently call for a shift in our internal moral demand system (less impulse, more inhibition or more no and less yes)--despite( among many issues) the dangerous personal will to power issues seemingly involved in such a stance?
There is certainly a secular cultural clerisy quite prominent in liberal circles that seems quite happy to (and already has) stepped into such a cultural role.
Mythic values contain valuable "partial truths", but in themselves are inadequate to support the infrastructure of modern-rational systems and institutions and protect them against disruption by ILLIBERALISM.
The damage is being done by ILLIBERALS, usually postmodern relativists and totalitarian neo-marxists, who are now a useful tool of the corporate-state in the state's war against the working classes.
Classical liberalism lacks "anti-fragility to disruption" by such ILLIBERALS.
Postmodern relativism exists because modern rationalism and liberal individualism laid the foundation for it.
Postmodern relativism rejects the "absolutism" of agentic values, liberal individualism and scientific rationalism.
Postmodern relativism is substantially incoherent because of its rejection of modern rationalism, but that incoherence is politically useful in resolving the "leftist" goal of social revolution with the real world position of identity politics in the "establishment left" and the corporate-state.
In other words, Identity Politics has become a POLITICAL WEAPON (of the "Virtuals") against the working classes (the "Physicals").
To the extent that the Physicals are modern rationalists (agentic, individualist), Identity Politics will adopt the counter-rhetoric of communion values (usually some type of Romanticism).
Safetyism in IdPol is an example: a psychotic communal shriek that incoherently conflates the emotional fragility of mentally ill leftists with physical death or severe injury.
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Lemoine (the Google AI guy?) posted this analysis of the correlation of leftism to psychiatric disorders:
Amazing piece. Dense. Thank you very much. Though I do not have much “hope”, at least now I have an idea of the only possible direction to possibly get out of the disaster that is our current culture.
Another excellent essay!
Yet lurking in the mist behind all these interesting ideas is that great orange beast who may be slouching out of Mar-a-Lago on his way towards Washington again...
I've mostly enjoyed Fukuyama over the years, especially his attention to 'thymos' and its role in human psychology and society, and I guess 30 years ago it made sense that maybe every group could have its thymos appeased by getting its own parade, its own TV series (ideally by Ken Burns), and some patronage here and there...well, that was a more optimistic time!
It seems that since Trump everyone who is not explicitly conservative (or some flavor of crank or contrarian) have all suddenly hit upon the same idea for 21st-century governance: We have no choice but to hand over our societies to an unelected globalist elite who will make all our decisions based on enlightened benevolent technocracy (which is pretty much whatever the Ivy League-NGO complex says it is at any given moment) aka We need to destroy the village in order to save it.
So while the American Left is basically undergoing a public nervous breakdown and will be reduced to the intellectual level of a crackhead for the foreseeable future, their opponents, who claim to want to revive virtue, restraint, tradition, etc, are led by the literal incarnation of all that is opposite of that, the most American of all Americans, History's most hilarious infant, Nero in diapers.
I don't know where Mike Judge stands on the list of most influential political philosophers, but I think of all possible visions of the American future, his "Idiocracy" seems the most likely.
Hah! I enjoyed your post.
"Yet lurking in the mist behind all these interesting ideas is that great orange beast who may be slouching out of Mar-a-Lago on his way towards Washington again..."
Yes, this is the enormous fear, the enormous elephant in the room that dominates the thinking of just about every public intellectual and the entire progressive left. You see it so clearly in Fukuyama's recent writing, his whole argument is heavily guided by his personal dislike of Trump to the point that corrupts what he otherwise is trying to write.
The Trump ascendancy just might be the most fascinating and consequential event of my lifetime (I'm 53).
I'm not exactly an expert historian, but I really can't find any previous historical episode where an entire ruling class (also comprising a culture and intellectual class) had such a sustained and complete nervous breakdown, to the point where they repudiated every prior principle and belief and replaced it with a permanent tantrum. (I guess living in the age of Twitter makes a big difference.)
Ever since that man came down that escalator, what used to be a liberal ruling class that supported free thought and free expression has turned into a vindictive, authoritarian Red Guard (if the Red Guards were all emotionally brittle and psychologically unstable toddlers) that uses guilt, shame and bigotry accusations instead of bullets.
We will not have any kind of normal politics or culture until Trump is either dead or otherwise incapacitated.
As a British citizen (enjoying refuge in France) add Brexit to Trump. Both fuelled this fire like nothing in my lifetime, not even Thatcher’s financial revolution.
Class warfare in disguise.
The cultural-left (PMC, BLM, "woke" creepy crawlies, etc.) has mutated into a POLITICAL WEAPON of the ruling elites ("Virtuals", globalists) against the working classes ("Physicals").
See Kotkin on Neo-feudalism:
https://joelkotkin.com/the-coming-of-neo-feudalism/
Start a Substack for goodness sake 🙌✔️
Thanks! You're very kind, but I'm much more remora than shark ;)
Trump is a Druid/Celt. His mother spoke Gaelic fluently while he was growing up.
When Rome disintegrated, it became possible for the "pagans", such as the Druids/Celts, to storm the gates of the crumbling empire.
The real problem isn't that the Druid and his "pagans" were able to storm the gates of the crumbling empire, it is that the empire is crumbling (from techno-economic disruption of the legacy sense-making system and its hierarchies of curated expertise).
Trump is a F.U. vote (that emerged from old and new working-class resentments) to the corrupt, dysfunctional establishment.
Trumpism is by definition reactionary and "anti-establishment" (with a populist, neo-confederate core of support).
But Trumpism is "useful" in the sense that it was/is the first technologically sophisticated attack on the information infrastructure of the "Blue Church". It exposed/exploited the weaknesses and stupidities (and ILLIBERAL totalitarianism) of the "Blue Church" on a widespread basis.
https://medium.com/@GoldenGus/collective-intellignce-and-swarms-in-the-red-church-49f6a6d04825
So few people seem to understand this
I just put the book on reserve at my library, but I do think it's fair to ask why anyone is still listening to Fukuyama after his reports of history's demise were so greatly exaggerated.
What you describe here sounds a lot like what I hear from Bari Weiss, Andrew Sullivan, David Brooks, and many other non-woke liberals. It boils down to: "we need to get back to the nice friendly liberalism that existed in the 1990's" [or insert your favorite decade.] It's a myth.
Your analysis of the problem is right on: liberalism's claim of value neutrality is an illusion. Claiming that "individual autonomy" is the highest moral good is itself a values-laden statement, which cannot be logically justified by liberalism itself. That's why Patrick Deenen believes the ideology is self-destructive. I would add that liberalism's claim (via Mill) that "my rights only stop at your nose" requires a large state to adjudicate the inevitably increasing number of conflicts between rights and noses, power which will inevitably be turned into a values enforcement mechanism by one side or the other (enter today's woke commissars or apparently DHS's now defunct Mis-information Bureau.)
I look forward to reading the book, but I strongly suspect I will remain in Deenen's camp. Whether it was the Enlightenment or the Reformation or nominalism or the Great Schism that got us here, we need a way out of this morass before we all kill each other or bring in a dictator who will use force to make sure we don't. A rediscovery of federalism could buy us a few decades, but fundamentally, it is not possible to build a society on nothing but "everyone gets to to whatever he wants". We survived for 250 years on the shared cultural (mostly Christian) inertia of 17 centuries, but we've run that down now. A society that doesn't agree on the meaning of man, woman, baby, family, marriage, or even the definition of human itself... has poor long term prospects.
It gives me no pleasure to say it, but liberalism is dead. Let's stop kicking its corpse around the room and look for viable alternatives. (And Sohrab Amari and his half dozen integralists don't count.)
Robert Kegan's "stage/development" theory points toward the emergence of a post-postmodern alternative to the entire left-vs-right narrative.
Here is one spin on Kegan's work:
The problem: the crisis of meaning
https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history
Solution:
https://metarationality.com/stem-fluidity-bridge
(You can decide if it is "viable" or not of course.)
I subscribe to Freddie De Boer, who has a popular substack. Although an avowedly old fashioned socialist, he spares nothing in criticizing the woke progressives. This is what he wrote today about liberals:
"Liberalism has in recent years sloughed off whatever remaining status it had as a coherent political project - an effort by temporary allies to join together despite philosophical differences to achieve a specific and material purpose. Instead, liberalism now functions ontologically, as a form of Being, and specifically of Being Good. The quintessential 2022 liberal is someone who does not want to achieve anything, but rather to be something - an ally, a friend to the movement, one of the good ones. Achieving is beyond the point; the point is to occupy a space of existential goodness. For people like Hobbes, politics is not a thing you do but a thing you are. And what Hobbes is, naturally, is a guy who already knows the answer to every question. In reality, politics is amoral, being right has absolutely no inherent function in the world, and achieving actual moral ends requires precisely the kind of compromise that Hobbes sees as below his exalted station, but no matter. Being Good is Being Good."
FYI the Hobbes referred here is Michael Hobbes, a contemporary talking head, not Thomas Hobbes! But the observation applies to much of the liberal progressives. It also suggests that the woke movement is much hollower than it might first appear?
I do hope you and Freddie De Boer are correct about the longevity of the woke.
It's un-nerving that I find myself again in common cause with radical Leftists like Freddie or Jacobin magazine. And yet I do agree with them that the focus on racial and sexual "privilege" is just another tool for our ruling class to maintain their very real class privilege. I shared politics with commies and socialists 30 years ago, and now I'm once again sharing a political space with radical socialists. :-) Funny.
Once you realize the "new" culture was is just "old" class war in disguise, it makes a lot more sense.
Well said. Fukuyama had one or two interesting things to say in Identity, but even then the 'real liberalism has never been tried!' shtick was pretty cringe.
At least Jordan Peterson made a decent stab at grounding the importance of the individual in metaphysics rather than justifying liberalism by the standards of liberalism - all the other (to steal Lyons's term) Paleo-Liberals you mention just beg the question whenever they get close to the topic.
Tom, do you have a good way to get someone into Jordan Peterson? I like what I've read and seen, but he writes so much and on such broad topics that I don't really know where to start. Any suggestions?
I do love his concise ways of illustrating the absurdities of postmodernism: "the logical end point of intersectionality is individuality; the social justice warriors will get there, if they don't kill us all first."
He has an excellent turn of phrase, and he's unsparing when it comes to the problems of what he called 'the postmodern left' back in 2016 or so and we now know as 'woke.' If concision's what you're after while still steering clear of 'Jordan Peterson DESTROYS xyz' type videos that I'm sure you'll have seen plenty of, all heat and no light, 12 Rules For Life is probably your best bet. If you have a bit more time to invest, I'd recommend checking out his series of lectures on the psychological significance of Genesis: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f-wWBGo6a2w (fair warning they are LONG and really quite engrossing, at least they were for me).
I'll go for the Genesis video. I'm more theology than self-help, and a Bible commentary series by an agnostic shrink strikes me as an interesting premise.
Iain McGilchrist's work in evolutionary psychology is probably far more rewarding than Peterson's, but McGilchrist's audience is more specialized.
McGilchrist uses cognitive science to prove that "religion" is part of cultural evolution (survival adaptations), and that dehumanization becomes pervasive without the kind of meaning (and INHIBITION* of anti-social behavior) that religion provides. (gross oversimplification).
https://rebelwisdom.substack.com/p/can-iain-mcgilchrist-reunite-science
* McGilchrist's research indicates that INHIBITION of anti-social personality was a major feature in the evolution of "modern" humans 100,000s of years ago, along with language and intense social bonding/cooperation for enhanced survival.
After the Bronze Age collapse, mythic-contemplative religion became a "software upgrade" that added even more cultural INHIBITION of anti-social, non-cooperative personalities in agrarian city-states for survival as they were attacked by nomadic marauders (and other city-states/empires).
Well-said, Sir Brian. Thank You. It's been slowly coming into view that liberalism isn't what I thought it was. This essay by N.S. Lyons really firmed it up pretty solid. Problem is I now have four books to read: Fukuyama, Deneen, and two by Hazony. (Like to believe I'll get to all-a them, but realistically? ;-)
"it is not possible to build a society on nothing but 'everyone gets to [do] whatever he wants'"
Yeah, this is what killed it for me. Never saw it coming until (really, *really* slowly) the past 6 to 12 months. Gives me some empathy for people who are still blue-pilled. TYTY again.
"A true conservative is therefore not 'someone who stands athwart history, yelling ‘Stop’,' or a progressive who’s just twenty years behind the curve, but an agent of restoration and rejuvenation through retraditioning."
This is what I try to do at home as a father. And to avoid this: the "reactionary 'dissident' right who feel there is nothing at all left to conserve and are therefore open to radical alternatives."
After the 2020 election, I made a feeble attempt to organize some local conservatives in my area and was taken aback at how much of that there was among them.
A large part of the "right" are the historical-cultural descendants of the Confederacy, and within that a major core are Appalachian Celts that have even more ancient "tribal" resentments against Manorialism and "classical liberalism" (Yankees).
The elite power faction that the "right" represents are primarily the SunBelt industries in the south and southwest: oil, defense, real estate developers, etc.
The elite power faction that the "left" represents are an alliance the media-tech oligarchs (see Yarvin) and the legacy northeast financial sector.
The left-vs-right narrative is increasingly meaningless because of techno-economic disruption of the legacy sense-making system (hierarchies of curated expertise).
" But how can a philosophy that is taken to its own furthest extent no longer be itself?"
Conservatism taken to it's furthest extent isn't itself either. No change in status quo, no challenge to conventional orthodoxy and we are all still living in a flat earth, Galileo still in jail. Push change for change sake and destroy long standing traditions as extremes of liberalism does and you end up in a bad place as well, but both of these examples are extremes. The push and pull between reasonable conservatism and reasonable liberalism is what pushes us forward in a messy yet postive arc. Replacing either with the extremes isn't a good option.
This is probably true, and approximately what I was trying to get at in the last paragraph. It may be that neither can moderate itself, and so needs the other. I think it would be reasonable to posit that in recent times conservatism degenerated too much, allowing liberalism to run out of control, and what we need is a better balance.
When I read people getting all warm and fuzzy and nostalgic about the decline of “traditions”, I think, “Well, what would my life have been like if the influence of those traditions had NOT declined?” (I’m a 70 year old white gay male, raised in a conservative household in Dallas, Texas, with a working dad and stay at home mom. The Southern Baptist Church was the ruling NGO setting the local and regional traditions and social mores. ) ANSWER: I’d be dead, or in prison, or at best, living a lie, constantly in fear. My life would have been crushed. Most people would react with revulsion to my presence. So, I’m perfectly OK with the big brutal state saying to people, no, it’s NOT OK to beat up gay people, deny us housing or jobs, etc. When I read about conservatives whining about the decline of their traditions, I think, “Walk a mile in my shoes, dude—you might change your mind”.
And, when people moan and groan about the current state of liberal societies or the “horrors” of neo-liberalism, I think, “Wait a minute, are you blind? Are you not aware of how human life has materially improved world-wide, how much poverty has diminished in the 21st century? It’s practically a miracle.”
Although I’m basically a Sam Harris/Richard Dawkins atheist, I firmly believe, with Jonathan Haidt and others, that evolution has pretty much hard-wired the need for religion into human societies. I’m reading Deneen’s The Failure of Liberalism, and find it dismayingly compelling. (I might add that most of the criticisms of Fukuyama in the above essay come directly from Deneen.) I also grew up thoroughly grounded in Christian tradition and the nuclear family, and all of its values, which gave me an enormous advantage in life, which I fully acknowledge. I didn’t grow up in a hollowed out world with few churches and it’s just everyone all alone with our smart phones. But, when I read paeans to conservatism and tradition, I consider them thoughtfully, and conclude, “Nah—I don’t buy it.”
But I’m also freaked out by what’s happened to woke left, the Successor Ideology, the Elect, the Cathedral, etc., and think that phenomenon is the sad attempt of a secular society to fill the “God-sized hole” that evolution has tragically left us with. But it is NOT, repeat NOT a phenomenon of liberalism—it’s a quasi-religion, a new church, and anti-liberal. Which is why I subscribe to Substacks such as this one.
The best society is one where Galileo is not in prison and there are no Inquisitions, or Gulags, a MODERATE, liberal society subject only to slow “piecemeal social engineering” a la Karl Popper.
I would be perfectly content living in a liberal society you describe as an ideal. But I think the question is whether that is actually sustainable - or if as soon as one group (who claims all they want is a neutral state) gains sufficient power they will invariably act to impose their vision of the good on the rest of society. Certainly this was the case in your youth as you describe it, and is the case now for others. Is this inevitable? Is liberal neutrality a myth? If not, how can it be maintained? If it can't be maintained, what is the next best alternative? Those are the questions here that I think are most critical. If you find Deneen compelling, then you already see the problems as I and others are wrestling with them.
You are absolutely right in questioning the sustainability of liberalism, and I wish I had a clue how to make the transition from an atomized society to one that has nourishing, non-governmental, not-too-tribal institutions that fuel civic virtue, which seems to be existentially threatened. How do you do that without religion or God? It’s a pretty good joke that if God exists, He created us with our defining characteristic—rationality—impotent to find any evidence for His (Their?🙄) existence! Even Sam Harris can’t seem to do without his crypto-Buddhist meditation rituals. I found Haidt’s Righteous Mind brilliant but very disturbing, but I think he’s right. Interesting that he is himself an atheist but attends a synagogue, which I hear is not unusual. But, I don’t think I could comfortably start attending the Methodist church again, no matter how many rainbow flags it flies, of my childhood, knowing that it’s foundational scriptures damn me. I’m supposed to ignore that? Every critic of liberalism I’ve read inevitably posits religion as a solution.
Liberalism is not anti-fragile to disruption. A new paradigm, beyond the entire left-vs-right narrative, that IS anti-fragile to disruption is what is required.
https://metarationality.com/stem-fluidity-bridge
Also:
https://rebelwisdom.substack.com/p/can-iain-mcgilchrist-reunite-science
And:
re: David Ronfeldt's TIMN model of social change
disruption -> disintegration -> regression to ideological tribalism -> reintegration at higher level / social form
https://twotheories.blogspot.com/2009/02/overview-of-social-evolution-past.html
---excerpts---
... At first, when a new form arises, it has subversive effects on the old order, before it has additive effects that lead to a new order. Bad actors may prove initially more adept than good actors at using a new form — e.g., ancient warlords, medieval pirates and smugglers, and today’s information-age terrorists being examples that correspond to the +I, +M, and +N transitions, respectively. As each form takes hold, energizing a distinct set of values and norms for actors operating in that form, it generates a new realm of activity — for example, the state, the market. As a new realm gains legitimacy and expands the space it occupies within a social system, it puts new limits on the scope of existing realms. At the same time, through feedback and other interactions, the rise of a new form/realm also modifies the nature of the existing ones.
... Societies that can elevate the bright over the dark side of each form and achieve a new combination become more powerful and capable of complex tasks than societies that do not. Societies that first succeed at making a new combination gain advantages over competitors and attain a paramount influence over the nature of international conflict and cooperation. If a major power finds itself stymied by the effort to achieve a new combination, it risks being superseded.
... A people’s adaptability to the rise of a new form appears to depend largely on the local nature of the tribal form. It may have profound effects on what happens as the later forms get added. For example, the tribal form has unfolded differently in China and in America. Whereas the former has long revolved around extended family ties, clans, and dynasties, the latter has relied on the nuclear family, heavy immigration, and a fabric of fraternal organizations that provide quasi-kinship ties (e.g., from the open Rotary Club to the closed Ku Klux Klan). These differences at the tribal level have given unique shapes to each nation’s institutional and market forms, to their ideas about progress, and, now, to their adaptability to the rise of networked NGOs.
...
---end excerpts---
The older I get, the more convinced I am that there are no ideological answers to these problems. There are only fallen, sinful people struggling with how to raise the next generation while trying to figure out the best way to deal with the specific problems their own time has presented.
For myself, I believe liberalism today is multiplying problems instead of solving them. It has lived out its time. The alternative is still taking shape, but it will not be secular, democratic liberalism. It will be, as R.R. Reno says, a "strong god" of some kind.
That is the voice of reason, perfect.
As for the strong God, we have gone to an extreme in putting humans as the center of everything, so it stands to reason we will swing back to the opposite, something outside of ourselves. I won’t see it, aged 58, not enough time, this mania will out last me. Profound stupidity is my future.
(sorry for the duplication)
https://rebelwisdom.substack.com/p/can-iain-mcgilchrist-reunite-science
Agreed. Even the progressive beliefs within liberalism gave us needed outcomes. African Americans were culturally oppressed for centuries in a liberal United States. Likewise for gays and lesbians, particularly gay men who faced threats of arrests and imprisonment well into the 1960s.
The yin-yang push pull is always important to the evolution of society. I'm a subscriber to the Golden Mean theory (thank you Aristotle) and we do flirt between passion and reason in our outlook and societies and best outcome generally has always been seeking the golden mean as the best way forward (or the grubby gray compromise if you'd prefer).
The real problem is when one side (or both) becomes too immobile. We're seeing a progressive left becoming distinctly immobile and inflexible in ways the liberal left was not in the 1990s (remember Bill Clinton and his New Democrats?)
The radical-extremist factions on the right are mainly NEO-CONFEDERATE and largely from the (historically inbred) Appalachian-Celt gene pool*.
Ultimately, beyond those lingering from the Civil War (1860s), their resentments are ancient and tribal.
"Classical liberalism" in medieval Europe required that ILLIBERAL tribes be violently suppressed.
That creates a contradiction in modern liberalism because to "regress" to the use of political violence in suppressing the remnants of the ILLIBERAL Celtic/Border Reiver gene pool is "not nice".
* https://colinwoodard.com/dna-study-confirms-american-nations-map/
DNA STUDY CONFIRMS AMERICAN NATIONS MAP
Published: 03-21-17
And sadly, the loudest voices today are the extremes (far left and far right), drowning out the push and pull that is needed between conservatives and liberals.
Maybe, instead, the answers lie outside of political theory or social philosophies.
Maybe we need to be fixed before we address those institutions, and maybe our lives are not governed by them, but are instead the governors of them. Maybe we're looking for god-like answers without looking for God. Maybe reason, science, and techne have subsumed reality--or even denied its existence.
Why is history an arc? Maybe, instead, it is a stair-step descent into individualist human anarchy, where everyone does what is right in his own eyes.
The idea of history as an arc traces back to Hegelian thought although there are roots in Christianity seeking an eternal truth in God and bringing man closer to God. But Hegel really outlined the concept of history as an inevitable arc towards an ideal outcome, although Hegel himself certainly wouldn't be a woke radical (I like to think). But this thinking heavily influenced the Marxists and the modern progressive mindset, that we're getting closer to a purer, best form of existence of man, ideally in a state freed from all the shackles of oppression in all forms (and this includes biology these days - see transgenderism). It explains why they are so ideologically rigid and opposed to compromise for they see it as reactionary and opposite the clear trajectory.
But is history as an arc only a foolish belief? Does history really march in a neat arc? Perhaps the arc is a byproduct of the explosive growth of the West following the Renaissance? When, for the first time in history, each subsequent generation had it "better" than the previous generation and the amount of science and knowledge exploded from generation to generation. One can see why you'd think there was an arc to history.
But the rest of the world, other cultures, including today, certainly don't march upwards in an arc. Nor did most of history. The singular thing about the Roman empire, for example, was despite approximately 500 years of Roman imperium, the quality of life at the beginning was remarkably the same as at the end. Very little new scientific discovery, little pushing the boundaries of knowledge. Roman building techniques improved in that aqueducts could be bigger and the arch vaulted bigger spaces and grandiose building projects were more commonplace, but the framework remained largely the same. There was no "arc of history" for the Romans.
But I like your comment that we're looking for godly answers without god. There's truth to it. The progressives seek an answer that could only be provided by God (such as what is justice?) yet man is distinctly not god. We are not and cannot be perfect and to implement a godly perfection on an imperfect species has only been catastrophic.
Dana, if you don't know anything about Orthodox Christianity, you should investigate it. You sound like you're looking for the missing link of Western religious thought. If you're interested, two good books are worth procuring from your library:
Common Ground - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25115.Common_Ground
Becoming orthodox - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/112690.Becoming_Orthodox
Neither is trying to convert you. They are both about how to understand Eastern answers to these sorts of big questions you're asking.
Thanks, Brian. I've not read these 2, but am familiar with Orthodox. My flavor of Christianity is a different one, but I do see truth in most all of them. For sure, I do know that my Redeemer lives.
I'll check them out--my reading list is getting quite long these days. That's the problem with reading these quality Substacks!
As is typical for your essays, I will need to reread it to grasp everything you write. There's so many good thoughts and observations that it's easy to miss some of them.
I will say in light of the quote from Fukuyama: "from tolerance of difference and diversity to the celebration of difference and diversity.."
It should be pointed out that the celebration of difference and diversity ended up being restricted to a very narrow range of difference and diversity. In the name of tolerance, it became distinctly intolerant. Much is excluded, such as conservative thinkers and culturally conservative people, albeit generally in the West, which brings our attention to the hypocrisy of openly praising the concept of a smorgasbord of different cultures in the name of diversity while turning a blind eye to that many of those cultures are also distinctly conformist societies with no support or rights for the liberal values, and especially the now sacred LGBTA+ demographics, with Palestine being a chief example of this hypocrisy.
Fukuyama is a classic example of a man who is still trapped by the mindsets of a world that has long passed him. He is aware that things has changed, but as you alluded in your essay, he is still blinded by internal biases and really can't quite face the seriousness of the threats because, ultimately, he would have to acknowledge his role in allowing them to come about as part of the modern globalist liberals of the 1990-2010 era that did so much to destroy national institutions (academia in particular) lingering attachments to Western culture and loyalty to their home societies.
Phew! Thank You! Yet *another* masterpiece, Sir! Can't say enough about it.
I'll just say that it was us boomers who started this mess in a lotta ways. One was "don't trust anyone over thirty." And, in general, DIShonoring too many-a the values of The Greatest Generation.
But, according to "Death of the Grown-Up" by Diana West, part-a the blame goes to the oldsters for letting us get away with it. Only thing I can figure is they didn't want their kids to go through anything like what *they* went through, and let us get by with too, too much. IMO.
Also wanted to "say" the two LOLs from the Editor's Notes were supreme. Fukuyama? Dunno how anyone could take him seriously after this marvel. TYTY and TY again.
They didn't realize that shielding their kids from adversity was shielding them from the things that make them stronger. Although I often wonder what they were supposed to do instead. Generate some artificial adversity?
How can a Cuban that floated to Florida on a raft of truck tires transfer his resiliency to his Cuban-American kids in order prevent them from becoming like the Communists he originally fled? Or a shell-shocked US Army paratrooper that survived the Western front who refuses to talk about his experience in war?
Surely it must be possible.
I think most-a the heroes of WWII just experienced too much horror to wanna relate it to their kids. The whole time I knew my Dad (44 years), the only time he referred to it was one sentence in a postcard when he was taking trip to Europe: "Last time I was here they were shooting at us." At the time, I was too stupid to understand the significance.
The really bad influence came when the Boomers were parents. Helicopter (and I guess Snowplow) parenting shielded their kids even more. The Boomers were lucky. THey were one-a the last generations to experience unsupervised play. The day-to-day battles amongst peers set the groundwork for future day-to-day "battles."
It doesn't hafta be any earth-shaking adversity to develop resilience, it turns out. Sports being one-a *the* best Ways to learn how You're supposed to go about winning and, more important, losing. The movement up and down amongst Your social peers.
Kids who are protected from every possibility of experiencing the least little bit of pain? What You'd expect. What we got now, as these kids have (reputedly) grown up. Not entirely tangentially, the "self-esteem" movement was (and, amazingly, still *is*) one-a the stupidest inventions ever created outta the mindlessness of supposedly intelligent people. Scientists laid out in the 90s that it did more harm than good. And, yet, still goes on to this day.. And this "it" goes on and on.
IMO, 'course.
As someone born in late 1976, Generation X, I would say we were the last generation with the unsupervised play, as well as a true connection to older generations. Rotary phones, dirt roads, etc.
TY for Your reply. That was my understanding. Feel sorry for those after You.
Reread the "Virtuals vs Physicals" articles.
Techno-economic disruption (networks, global neoliberalism) is the deeper cause of the emergence of postmodern relativism and the various insanities of the ILLIBERAL, totalitarian "cultural-left".
1. after WW2, the traditional economy of family farms and manufacturing was displaced by the "information economy", office jobs, which required college education (the GI Bill massively expanded higher education). The culture shifted toward postmodern relativism because of the suburban-consumer lifestyle and its physical and cultural infrastructure required less social cohesion, and so encourages alienation.
2. by the 60s/70s, electronic information technologies further accelerated those cultural changes, and the erosion and corruption of the legacy "sense-making" system: hierarchies of curated expertise.
the internet was the ultimately disruptive force because information could freely flow around legacy, curated, expert knowledge hierarchies, and the resulting RELATIVISM (lack of boundaries) and the InfoGlut and "crisis of meaning" could be exploited.
What is now required is a sense-making system that is anti-fragile to disruption under postmodern social conditions. The global-neoliberal economy will make anti-fragility difficult.
Goes back further then that in our culture but certainly Wilson and the progressive left early in the last century was a harbinger of things to come
Yeah, You're right. Politically (and culturally) it went back to Wilson. Some say back to Lincoln and the bulk-up of the Fed government to carry out the Civil War. But Wilson and the Progressive left *really* started the downhill slide. And they may have receded from time to time, but they never left off entirely. FDR, the LBJ. They mebbe not both-a them considered Progressive. Dunno.
But us (meaning *my* generation of) Boomers? As the saying goes, seems bankruptcy came "suddenly" after us.
Excellent essay as always. As someone who was center left before being mugged by reality in 2020, I found it difficult at first to verbalise the necessity of moderation and convservation. Mind you, I was already an army officer in my country and had been in conservative milieus before, but only post-2020 did I start to (at first grudgingly) truly respect the little traditional rituals. I still call myself a classical liberal, but following this essay, it is becoming also clear to me that without a pre-existing moral framework, liberalism seems to end up repeatedly blackmailed into oblivion. The worst is that conservatism nowadays has to work almost from scratch as the arguments it espouses have only a limited audience which has worked through the logical puzzle, and invoking religion is likely to fall on deaf ears. In addition, the key error of liberalism is the false promise of equality. Legal equality and even equality of opportunity have serious merit as well as equal AND individual rights, but false deity of equity is something liberalism has to again innoculate itself against (ironically I find most 19th century liberals understood this much better and were able to resist on stronger grounds). So many of my friends and family talk about equality without any deeper thought about the implications.
The exploration of a pro-democracy alliance between liberals and conservatives seems like a worthwhile project if for no other reason than such an attempt might begin to sense the glimmer of a type of language or vocabulary/story necessary to capture mutual commonalities and concerns.
In Hazony's last chapter he mentions the word anomie and defines it as a condition of disorientation and dismay--what he calls an existence without law or constraint.
I would suggest that such a word (especially its emphasis on the overwhelming contemporary absence of constraint) captures the mutual longings of a surprising number of San Francisco liberals who just recalled their District Attorney as well as more traditional conservatives who yearn for a more prominent discussion of increasingly unrestrained human impulses (mass shootings/increasing crime etc) and the parallel necessity of a culture which promotes greater inhibitions and constraints.
My intuition is that there is a dramatically increasing constituency for a culture and politics of democratic restraint.
The dynamic engine that held the American version of liberalism together and provided the tension and energy that gave us a purpose and power, but also problems has broken apart. That process of breakdown means that the other varieties of liberalism (home-grown and imported - like neo-liberalism, like neo-Marxism) are carrying the day. It seems to me that our engine was built out of Protestant Christianity, classical Republicanism, Natural Law, and Natural Rights (here lies the liberal or most liberal piece - as developed by Locke, et al.) and that all existed and pulled and tugged and drove each other pushing and containing all at once. In that world, Liberalism cannot just be a procedural or constitutional order. Because I see the heart of American liberalism as the issue of rights, namely the individual's ability to be equal to another, to have liberty, to pursue happiness even against the observations of nature, the demands of the Divine, and the lessons of the past/tradition. The issue is truly the issue of rights against obligation. Jefferson understood this and that is why he tried to square the circle with Nature - nature both gives us the source of both - and his sense of proto-rights and political negotiated rights, together allowing for a polity. His is only one thread of course in our liberal order, but perhaps the most important and the one carry the greatest seeds of self-destruction. It seems that the collapse of Protestant Christianity as a restraining power in the dynamics means we are at the point of no return unless the other pieces can be shored up sufficiently to give a new dynamic, but I fear that isn't possible. I don't think it is an accident that deformed and heretical mutations of Protestantism are the central pillar of the emerging Woke-religion, a process that isn't finished. It feels more like the abundance of cults in the 2nd Century, which one will take the place of the old State Religion is yet unknown...but perhaps what is happening is the rise of progressive/liberal Protestantism in the early to mid-20the century was the real story of what caused the morphing and destruction of our American liberal order. The force that once restrained became too closely allied with the liberalism and they ceased to be separate but merged together unleashing forces that could no longer be contained and like a cancer began to eat itself and or perhaps to think of it differently it caused a sort of political genetic mutation.
Classical liberals are modern-day Pharisees in the truest sense: more concerned with the forms and appearances of moderation, liberalism, democracy, etc. than the underlying purpose.
I wouldn't have phrased it that way, Chris, but I think there's some truth to what you say.
There is a built in contradiction in the idea of "liberal democracy": both ideas (liberalism and democracy) are in competition for supremacy. So a committed liberal would say that people have a right to a Gay Pride Parade, and would not accept a society that democratically chose to outlaw such parades. Similarly, a committed democrat must accept the will of the people even when they do blatantly unjust things (like vote for slavery.)
Classical liberalism doesn't abjure all moral standards, on the contrary it presupposes a certain decency and restraint on the part of its citizens. Even law-abidingness requires a certain degree of restraint. This was well-recognized by founders such as Washington and Adams. What classical liberalism does get rid of is any attempt by the state to prescribe theological beliefs to its citizens. The laws should only govern the "actions of the body" but not "the operations of the mind" to use Jefferson's formulation. What is puzzling is that Fukuyama, who surely must know this, seems to be confused about it.
All moral standards are theological statements, whether we recognize them or not. Any claim of a universal moral standard relies on something transcendental, since a standard created by man can never be universal. If it isn't obvious why, I would suggest Chapter 1-7 of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity.
Liberalism's assertion "the highest social good is individual autonomy" is no more self-evident than the Catholic Church's "the highest good is the glorification of God" or Aristotle's "mastering your passions is the key to apprehending goodness" or the Buddha's "seek balance in your life to attain enlightenment". All of these are theological statements about what society should value most. We pretend the first one is not erroneously.
Very solid, I learned something.
The founders' assumption of the necessity of basic decency and restraint was not a theoretical argument but a practical necessity. They realized that the modern natural right teaching of Hobbes and Locke was not a sufficient basis, by itself, for a stable political order, "self-interest rightly understood" (Tocqueville) could not be relied upon, at least in the case of the many who were not as enlightened as they.
I'm afraid I don't understand then. The founders built an entire edifice on Locke and Hobbes "natural law'. I would argue that Locke was wrong. "Natural law" isn't universal or natural at all; it's just 1700 years of Judeo-Christian cultural biases masquerading as a universal principle. To me, what we're living through now is the final destruction of that 1700 year cultural edifice, and the consequential breakdown of faith in the "natural law" of the Enlightenment. In short, paganism is reasserting itself into the Western World.
So what do you mean when you say they "realized that natural law wasn't enough"? Where will that "certain decency and restraint on the part of its citizens" come from if not from a set of extra-liberal shared social norms and standards?
The doctrines of Hobbes and Locke are better characterized as theories of natural right rather than natural law: Rights are prior to duties and obligations, which ultimately are viewed as utilitarian or instrumental. There must be "extra-liberal shared norms and standards" because, at least for the many, rational self-interest is not sufficient, but there is no "metaphysical grounding" for such standards. They are simply political necessities. Or one could say that they are grounded in the fear of political chaos.
It appears the "fear of political chaos" is insufficient grounding for the modern mind. I still think the best explanation of that is still the 300 year rundown of shared cultural standards that predate Enlightenment liberalism. However, I hope I am wrong.
I think you are correct, we abandon our cultural heritage - Judeo Christian - out of arrogance, end of history thinking: these things do not apply to our age. Lyons questions if the early success of liberalism is attributed to it riding on the coattails of the earlier religious ethos which it destroyed.
Leonard Liggio's exploration of the historical roots of classical liberalism/liberty might be useful.*
Classical liberalism in decentralized political culture (before 1492) grew out of the co-emergence of "W.E.I.R.D." (Henrich) social characteristics, which involved the early Church's ban on cousin marriage to destroy the power of (inbred) clans.
As the gene pool in NW Europe became more outbred and more variable, the need for increased literacy and numeracy as the urban commoner classes expanded along with river and sea trade (and the market economy) selected for higher IQ and "liberal personality".
"Liberal personality" was also selected for because high-social-trust was required in new "liberal" (post-feudal) social institutions.
Liggio cites the case of the Cluniac Abbies (France, Camino de Santiago) promoting peasants' rights, and the Peace and Truce of God movement.
Liggio sees a regression to oriental despotism (imperialism, political recentralization) after 1492, as the "modern" political elites swept aside decentralized politics and "classically liberal" medieval institutions (cortes, fueros, communas), replacing them with Absolutism (especially in Spain).
-----
* https://phillysoc.org/liggio-the-hispanic-tradition-of-liberty/
excerpt:
The conquest of the kingdom of Grenada in 1492 witnessed the establishment of Absolutism, the core feature of which was the end of the universal, supra-political position of religion and especially of the Church. The universal church was replaced under Absolutism by a subservient, state religious bureau. Throughout Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the
[->] universal, trans-political position of the Church was ended.
For example, the French kings and rulers of the Spanish kingdoms were able by Concordats to gain from the Papacy total control over the church institutions in their territories.
The Protestant reformation, the second phase of this movement, occurred where local rulers were not able to gain similar concessions from the Popes; countries where rulers had wrested control of the Church remained "faithful" and sought to consolidate their gains through the Catholic Reformation centered on the Council of Trent. In Spain, the rulers of Castile, Aragon, and Cataluna after 1480 gained the power to establish political inquisitions beyond the powers of the bishops.
...
Just as the Monarchist’s Church of the Council of Trent (with the Royal Inquisition) contributed to Absolutism, the history of Spain and Spanish colonies in the reign of Charles V indicate
[->] the great turning point whereby Spain lost its medieval constitutionalism
and led much of Europe in substitution of oriental despotism. As William Graham Sumner’s The Conquest of the United States by Spain (1900) showed that while the U.S. conquered Spain’s colonies, Spain’s imperialist ideas had conquered the intellect of American politicians, so the distinguishing characteristics of European constitutionalism compared to oriental despotism (cf. Jones, The European Miracle (1981) were lost with Spanish conquests of Asia and South America. Spain adopted the imperial methods of India, Turkey, China, Mexico, and Peru in place of decentralized, limited constitutional institutions of medieval Europe.
The decline and political control of religious institutions in the fifteenth century undermined the foundations of European constitutionalism’s uniqueness. The Spanish crown’s access to the gold and silver of the Aztec and Inca despotisms made Spain the paymaster of European wars for a Century and a half. Castilian infantry excelled throughout Europe leaving Spain’s monetary and human wealth in graves around Europe. To achieve imperial greatness, Spain had to
[->] abandon the medieval free market and constitutional institutions.
...
Disagree.
Theology is the invention of the state.
In evolutionary terms, morals are ultimately biological, as explained by Darwin: morals that enforced social cooperation were an evolutionary survival strategy for something like 100,000 years, long before "god" or theology existed.
Such biological morals (in nomadic kindship groups) were disrupted by the end of the ice ages and then after 5,000 years or so, the emergence of agriculture and dense urban populations (walled cities).
The Bronze Age collapse exposed the limitations of biological morals (embodied awareness/spirituality in nomadic social forms). Cultural evolution then produced Contemplative, Axial culture, religious-theology and purity-myth morality (godliness vs sin and evil) in response.
Contemplative religion/theology had an advantage because it could generate meaning and collective intelligence that transcended "tribal" morals, and thus became the foundation of Axial States (the State became necessary to help religion INHIBIT anti-social personalities and social tendencies that were resistant to a transcendent God).
The "left" threw the baby (transcendent spirituality) out with the bathwater (the Ancien Regime).
re: "Theology is the invention of the state"
Correction:
It is probably more accurate to say that Theology and the State co-emerged in cultural evolution.
Not a criticism of you - although it absolutely is one of Fukuyama, who you are reviewing - but the liberal tradition has far more ability to resolve these contradictions than is evidenced here. Shklar's liberalism of fear avoids these absurd knots over 'neutrality' with a clear commitment to the avoidance of cruelty coupled to one simple empirical observation: power makes people cruel.
But that's not enough to be emotionally sustaining. "Don't be cruel" just doesn't have the resonance of (for example) "Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit".
After a lifetime (well, from age 15 or so to my current age of 66) as an atheist, I have reluctantly concluded that religious ritual, sustained by genuine religious belief in most but not necessarily all congregants, is essential to a functioning human society that can continue the ideals of liberalism in a way that most of us would find acceptable.
But I suspect that a serious crisis ("there are no atheists in foxholes") may need to arrive before we can find our way back to meaningful religious practice.
"But that's not enough to be emotionally sustaining. "Don't be cruel" just doesn't have the resonance of (for example) 'Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit'".
Perhaps another, more robust way of articulating the idea of "don't be cruel":
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
How does a non-religious person follow this counsel? In my opinion, a possible distillation of what's stated here is: "The most important thing you can do is to not put yourself first" or something along those lines. A large-scale cultural emphasis on selflessness, which is at the heart of and is perhaps the unifying theme of virtually all religion, is the ticket to better society. Of course it's vital that all of us start with the person in the mirror, but it doesn't hurt to have a strong leader or leaders that personify this ethic.
In evolutionary terms, intense social cooperation by primeval humans required "biological morals" (altruism) for improved survival.
Darwin agrees with those statements of Jesus:
"It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over other men of the same tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes, and this would be natural selection (178-179)."
(Darwin quoted by Peter Richerson, PhD biology, UC Davis)
This is a very good point, and one I think is still applicable even at today's very large scale societies. The problem is that overall societal good, per se, does not seem to be a sufficient motivation for individual humans, if not backed up with a belief that the society is supernaturally ordained.
"Supernaturally ordained" meaning fear of punishment?
I think most people act based on what they feel is right. I see it all the time in the actions of everyday people.
My point is that I think there is substantial evidence for the proposition that human psychology is such that this only works on a large scale when buttressed by belief (by a large fraction of the people) in the supernatural provenance of the principle.
Gotcha. Do we have examples of this ethic existing more or less organically in a secular society and not working?
It never arisen organically, AFAIK. The German Nazi and Soviet Communist regimes tried to impose it. I think we agree that those were not so great.
I am also an atheist who believes in religion but not God.
But it might be simpler, human freedom goes to hell without human obligation. Lyons captures it so very well in his explication of conservatism herein.
It does not have to be the source of all of person's emotional sustainment (although I would argue that if you very seriously took the injunction to avoid being cruel while reducing the sum of cruelty in the world, then it would give you enough work for many lifetimes). The thought that the political order should be the sole source of a person's emotional sustenance is itself totalitarian; and, I would add, both likely to lead to cruelty and in itself idolatrous.
Shklar put it these terms: the liberalism of fear is not seeking a summum bonum, an ultimate good, it is seeking to avoid a summum malum, a very worst evil; and that evil is cruelty. It does not say do not seek your summum bolum. It merely says that you cannot be cruel as you do so.
She was not religious, and she was sceptical about whether or not this was ultimately compatible with religious faith on the grounds that the religious believer, if devout, must put the commands of God above the injunction to avoid cruelty. I am more sanguine. I see little in Christianity that requires a Christian to be cruel, and much that challenges and undermines cruelty.
TY. Had never heard-a her. I see she's written a lot. I just bought "Ordinary Vices. If I may ask: is "Judith Shklar and the liberalism of fear" another good place to look into? Or one-a her other works? TIA (Thank You in Advance).
The essay, 'The Liberalism of Fear' is a later condensation of her argument - it's here: https://philarchive.org/archive/SHKTLOv1 It's very dense, though, and I think Ordinary Vices is more important. Her style is different enough to most political philosophy to benefit from being at book length. I haven't read "Judith Shklar and the liberalism of fear", which isn't to say its bad. Her writing is so clear, though, that I see little benefit in starting with a secondary source. Of her other works, the collection of essays 'Political Thought and Political Thinking' contains a lot of gems, and 'Faces of Injustice' is particularly exceptional; but I would start with 'Ordinary Vices'.
TYTY Ma'am/Sir!
Since I'm always interested to anyone who claims to ground moral standards in something other than the transcendental, I just started reading the essay you recommended. Right there on page 1 is the exact conflict we're talking about here:
"Liberalism refers to a political doctrine, not a philosophy of life such as has traditionally been provided by various forms of revealed religion. Liberalism has only one overriding aim to secure the political conditions that are necessary for the exercise of personal freedom."
Her own definition is self contradictory (just as Lyons says above). She says liberalism refers to only political forms and makes no normative claims. But the very next sentence makes a normative claim: that the exercise of personal freedom is the proper aim of society. She's fallen into the "liberal democracy" dichotomy I outlined elsewhere.
I'll update this comment as I read more, since she isn't someone I've heard of before. But so far she doesn't appear to have a solution, or even to recognize the problem.
Perhaps one could defend Shklar's consistency by saying that, because no one has definitive knowledge of the ultimate ends of life, the best political order is a liberalism that leaves everyone free to choose their own ends without interference from the state or others. I suppose you could call this a "normative" claim, but only in a negative sense: it is based on our ignorance of ultimate ends. By the way, I don't agree with the liberal position, but I think we need to recognize and meet the strongest arguments in its favor.
To be contrarian: maybe it is simple, maybe we know the ultimate end - we die and our consciousness ends - we just don’t like that answer, lotsa obfuscation on that one.
I think the point is that liberalism is running a bad show: greed on the right and absurd philistinism of wokeness on the left. I think it, liberalism, is mostly a practical failure and we should beware, the pitiless crowbar of events is our history. Liberalism is a primrose path.
The 95% of the human species that believe in some kind of a supreme being would argue with your "ultimate end".
Liberalism was birthed in an attempt to pacify disputes about ultimate ends. Maybe that was the problem? Is a society without an "ultimate end" of some kind (some sense of the common good) destined to eat itself in an orgy of hedonistic futility? Never thought I would quote Nietzsche, but he's correct that "he who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." Maybe what's true for a man is true for a mass of men as well. I don't really know; it's late and I'm just kind of thinking out load.
Hi Sir Brian, TYTY. I'm joining this conversation late. And I really hate to "say" something You're not likely to like, but here goes:
I can assure You that people can have a very *strong* sense of the common good without reference to a Supreme Being. Dunno, but might be a purer form of it, because it's not based on a really bad, eternal, punishment coming if You don't love Your neighbor as Yourself. Good just based on goodness. Dunno. A goodness that doesn't *depend* on pain/reward as the motivation?
Ultimate ends? *Real* contrarian view. Don't know much philosophy. But how, on Earth, *can* ultimate ends be knowable? Yeah, I get it. On Faith. And I agree that even Atheistic Scientists rely on Faith.
I guess "Faith" isn't the kind of *knowing* I"m looking for. Or, rather, gave up looking for. That's just me, just thinkin' out loud.
TY again, and Sir RJF as well!
JT, I didn't mean to suggest that an atheist can't have an understanding of the common good. I see how you read it that way, but it wasn't my intention. Here's another attempt at same:
An atheist's ultimate ends will always be in this world. If this world is all there is (fade to black), it falls on man (each man) to define and create his own purpose, as Justice Kennedy put it in Casey, "to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."
In such a society (which we have today), each person defines his own concept of existence and ultimate purpose of life. If yours and mine are incompatible, one of us must surrender our liberty to our own concept of existence in order to have a shared sense of "what is good." We often do this, so there may be a broad agreement about most issues, but over time, as more and more people "define their own concept of existence", we would expect agreement to become less common, and hence "the common good" more elusive.
There is a mirror of this in what happened after the Protestant Reformation: early broad agreement about doctrine, then division into a few major camps, and gradual divergence of views until we have thousands of denominations today. Luther made every man responsible for interpreting Scripture ("defining his own concept of existence") and there's been a gradually increasing divergence of views ever since. I would expect something similar among atheists engaged in the same process, and I think the rise of atheism since the 16th century demonstrates a similar pattern of gradual divergence.
I'm not saying that theists have it any easier. History is not kind to anyone who claims the world's religions don't create conflict. Only that since essentially all major religions assert a cosmic moral order of some kind, such societies are more likely to have agreement about the question "what is good?" (They will likely conflict with each other, but I'm talking about internal cohesion here.) That's why I quoted Neitzsche's point that in terms of importance, the question "how well do I live?" pales next do "what do I live for?".
My point was that the same may be true for a society: agreement on what to live for (the common good) is more important than how well you live. Modern America has among the highest standards of living in the world, but we are lonelier and more spiritually adrift than ever. Our rising disagreement about "why to live" has paralleled rising prosperity in "how we live", but at some point, we will realize that the old bumper sticker, "he who dies with the most toys wins" isn't actually true. In fact, he who dies with the most toys, still dies. We've been so focused on the toys (the how) that we forgot about the why.
I hope that clarifies a little. This topic is near to my heart, since I have had quite a long spiritual (and political and philosophical) journey thus far and it is by no means at its end: Marxist atheist, to libertarian Buddhist, to Christian, to conservative Evangelical, and now find myself drawn to Eastern Orthodox mysticism. The question of ends has occupied my entire 50 years of life, but that by no means implies I understand the answers any better than you or anyone else. Personally, I think this sort of quest is universal to the human experience, and gets derailed mostly by the shiny baubles that modern industrial capitalism is so good at producing.
Don't sell yourself short. By even engaging with those questions like "what is the common good and how can we know it?", you're ahead of 90% of all Americans. You ARE focused on the "why" instead of the "how".
BV, well done, yes devoid of meaning it seems society is Babylon, so we need a supernatural saviour. What does that say about us?
The crux for Shklar, as it was for Montesquieu and Locke in certain moods (see the Letter Concerning Toleration) is less about pacifying disputes in any absolute sense and more about merely ensuring that such disputes do not result in coercion and cruelty. Oh the other hand, she would, I think, be relatively happy for a society with complete agreement about ultimate ends to be called 'liberal', if it could reach that point without coercion and cruelty.
She does not say that liberalism makes no normative claims: indeed she she expressly and repeatedly points out that the injunction to avoid cruelty is normative. Saying liberalism is not a 'philosophy of life' is not to claim it is non-normative: it is to claim that it is not a complete normative order. Nor does she say that the proper aim of society is personal freedom, she says that the proper aim of liberalism is such freedom (as is compatible with the freedom of others). It is completely fundamental to her position that the political order is not the entirety of either the social order nor the normative order. Some of these distinctions might appear fine; but they are important, especially when so few liberals appear to be making them, as this book review shows.
I did actually finish the entire essay, and I like it enough to get the book you recommended from my library. While I don't disagree with her "don't be cruel" theory, I also do not believe she's demonstrated that either the definition of cruelty or the injunction not to engage in it isn't grounded in the divine. God sneaks into her argument in several noticeable places. However, she's interesting, and for me to find a new political theorist interesting is rare. I'll likely have my civics students read this essay; whether I agree with it or not, it's a perspective that is worthy of their consideration. Thanks a lot for the recommendation.
This side of heaven, we will never find a society that agrees on ultimate ends without coercion. The combination of free will and sinfulness pretty much guarantees that. Utopia is a mirage, and always will be. (Well, unless we drug ourselves into compliance -- https://unherd.com/thepost/love-drugs-are-more-dangerous-than-you-think/ Of course, that would be coercive too.)
I think I'm in a middle ground between yourself and Shklar. At one place in Ordinary Vices, she is notably sceptical about whether religion is even compatible with with making cruelty the primary vices to be avoided (it is possible that she later revised this opinion). I think that definitely goes too far. In fact, I think it is a place where she falls into the nasty secular habit of engaging with a lazy caricature of religion rather than with the real thing.
At the same time, I would prioritise the agreement on avoiding cruelty (even if there was no underlying agreement about why we prioritise it) above shared ultimate ends. To some extent, this is a minimalist, interim position: if we can't even agree not to be cruel to one another, what hope is there of agreement on shared ends? If we can, maybe that is how we start to build the trust required to agree about ends?
Personally, I would agree that grounding the injunction in what Taylor calls 'exclusive humanism' is utterly unsatisfying, even if Shklar herself does. That said, I'd be very happy if the dominant branch of secular liberal humanism took Shklar's route while still disagreeing with me about the metaphysics. It would become, perhaps, actually humane and tolerant that way.
I also find her definition of cruelty too narrow, although I think it is intended in a indicative rather than legalistic manner: I discuss this here, although it is (oddly enough) mixed up with quite a lot of talk about the history of British cheeses: https://flatcapsandfatalism.substack.com/p/lost-cheeses-and-impersonal-cruelty?s=w
I'm really happy to hear you will be introducing her to your civics students: surely a better use of their time than Fukuyama et al!
I put a few sections of "The End of History" on the reading list just to illustrate to them how wrong much of what we think about today's world might be.
BTW: Maybe I should be worried that a guy named Fatalist seems to be more optimistic about society than I am. :-) Great conversation. Thanks.
Likewise!
(again, sorry!)
Darwin explained that morals originated in the biology of social cooperation and altruism, as a survival strategy in "primeval" times. Awareness and spirituality were "pagan" and embodied.
From the viewpoint of cultural evolution, transcendent spirituality (Axial, contemplative culture and religion, "anti-paganism") is very recent, going back 3,000 years or so.
Before the Axial age (Bronze Age collapse), transcendence, renunciation, and salvation were not necessary to human survival as an intensely socially cooperative species.
The liberal tradition does not have anti-fragility to disruption under postmodern social conditions.
Thus, ILLIBERALISM has exploited such disruption to gain power: the merger of postmodern neomarxism (PMC, etc.) with the corporate-state.
Long time democrat voter. I am not forming an alliance with Trumpers and other no nothing cult of personality types. If someone like Liz Cheney could ascend and somewhat moderate that might be possible. Guard rails are needed on either side of the spectrum to stay out of the political ditch(s) of populism, illiberalism, nihilism.
This kind of discourse is pretty lame on such a thoughtful blog. Is this the best you can do e.pierce ? Stupid and Evil ?
Tremendous, this Lyons fella is very clear minded, his argumentation is so helpful to me, too my understanding, really, the best I have found.
As for Wesley Yang‘s successor ideology, I suspect he would agree, liberalism is a means to an end, not the destination, he has another coinage which captures this: “ Authoritarian utopianism”.
As for Lyons , his explanation of conservatism is spectacular in its clarity, wow, I’m coming back to read it again and again until I own it.
An aside, I read a Vanity Fair piece on the internecine warfare amongst the woke reporters at the Washington Post: June 8, the title begins with the word “clusterfuck”, so it kinda stands out. It is an object lesson in managing a group of over educated people who believe any power or authority or hierarchy is bad, evil, indeed a trespass against their holy right to self determination and self expression and worse that the imposition, enforcement of rules is violence. Ah, my old friend schadenfreude, I sincerely hope they ripe of themselves to pieces.
Do you think Jeff Bezos’ real business, Amazon, allows people freedom or do you think the warehouse environment is a little more authoritarian than the Wopo vanity project, hum? Liberalism can’t help but contradict itself, Lyons says it is gnosticism all the way down, I say it is douch-baggery, all the way down.
Schadenfreude, get the popcorn.
I'm very unconvinced by the proposed connection between liberal individualism and identity politics. The rapid rise of identity politics I think is the result of Christian reverence for victims; the human desire to be part of a community and scarcity of current alternatives; and the useful distraction it is from actual threats to power.
P.s. A couple of style comments, fwiw. I think use of extremely online words like "copium" and the use of parenthetical commentary like "LOL" limit the audience for a piece, without adding much value. I know I've thought twice about sharing it with a) older people and b) people not on the right as a result. Also I found the tone/style somewhat jarringly different between the long section on Fukuyama and the short section on Hazony.
So then what is your solution, Wambat, to the problem that Fukuyama, Deenen, Lyons and many commenters here have identified, that liberalism's desire to liberate people from constraints is now corroding the very institutions (marriage, family, churches, individual conscience, police authority, the military, universities) which society needs to function.
The first job of ANY society is to produce, raise and acculturate the next generation in a manner that will allow them to do the same. Societies which fail at this are not long for the world. This is what Reagan meant when he said "freedom is only one generation away from extinction". Does today's liberalism do that in your view? How so? Because looking at the last 100 years, modern liberalism looks like an anti-cultural acid to me.
Brian, I couldn't agree more with your sentiments on the necessity of constraint.
Taken your position (that there are really no ideological answers to such profound cultural/spiritual problems) do you see any public role for yourself today as one individual( among perhaps a growing number) who is beginning/willing to consistently call for a shift in our internal moral demand system (less impulse, more inhibition or more no and less yes)--despite( among many issues) the dangerous personal will to power issues seemingly involved in such a stance?
There is certainly a secular cultural clerisy quite prominent in liberal circles that seems quite happy to (and already has) stepped into such a cultural role.
Mythic values contain valuable "partial truths", but in themselves are inadequate to support the infrastructure of modern-rational systems and institutions and protect them against disruption by ILLIBERALISM.
The damage is being done by ILLIBERALS, usually postmodern relativists and totalitarian neo-marxists, who are now a useful tool of the corporate-state in the state's war against the working classes.
Classical liberalism lacks "anti-fragility to disruption" by such ILLIBERALS.
My comment is limited to identity politics, not the myriad other symptoms of liberalism.
Identity Politics is ILLIBERAL, postmodern, relativist, totalitarian and neo-marxist/neo-communist.
Identity politics is postmodern relativism.
Postmodern relativism exists because modern rationalism and liberal individualism laid the foundation for it.
Postmodern relativism rejects the "absolutism" of agentic values, liberal individualism and scientific rationalism.
Postmodern relativism is substantially incoherent because of its rejection of modern rationalism, but that incoherence is politically useful in resolving the "leftist" goal of social revolution with the real world position of identity politics in the "establishment left" and the corporate-state.
In other words, Identity Politics has become a POLITICAL WEAPON (of the "Virtuals") against the working classes (the "Physicals").
To the extent that the Physicals are modern rationalists (agentic, individualist), Identity Politics will adopt the counter-rhetoric of communion values (usually some type of Romanticism).
Safetyism in IdPol is an example: a psychotic communal shriek that incoherently conflates the emotional fragility of mentally ill leftists with physical death or severe injury.
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Lemoine (the Google AI guy?) posted this analysis of the correlation of leftism to psychiatric disorders:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1227338353101672450.html
data:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/20/ssc-survey-results-2020/
Amazing piece. Dense. Thank you very much. Though I do not have much “hope”, at least now I have an idea of the only possible direction to possibly get out of the disaster that is our current culture.