In case anyone thought that Pascal the existential Russian blue cat was alone in believing that the term "conservatism" is utterly inappropriate for the American political Right, the following is from Nathan Robinson (Current Affairs), who begins by quoting Noam Chomsky:
"There are few genuine conservatives within the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of the age that the honorable term 'conservatism' can be appropriated to disguise the advocacy of a powerful, lawless, aggressive and violent state, a welfare state for the rich dedicated to a lunatic form of Keynesian economic intervention that enhances state and private power while mortgaging the country's future."
Nathan Robinson, in his own words:
It is a mistake to think that right-wing politics is about conserving much of anything. In fact, because the right is committed to the rule of the market, right-wing policies will unleash much more destruction than preservation.
Right-wing populism has always been a fraud because it speaks the language of tradition, community, family, etc. but then supports policies that separate families, atomize communities, and obliterate traditional cultures. Understanding the fraudulence of the word “conservatism” is critical to seeing what the real consequences of the right-wing agenda will be, namely a very different and much worse world.
“Conservatism” Conserves Nothing ❧ Current Affairs
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In his 2008 Book of Absolutes, William Gairdner set out to refute modern relativism, a task he undertook by constructing a strawman, and an exceptionally flimsy one at that:
The three key myths of modernity all have to do with repudiating controls. We accept as dogma the idea that our minds begin as blank slates (have no innate character-determining properties), that we are all inherently good people to start with (and if bad, are made so by poorly engineered societies that can be fixed up), and, finally, that we exist as freely choosing selves unencumbered by any constraints of temperament, biology, or pre-existing moral obligations or standards. We accept at face value the modern conceit that our minds, instincts, and societies start off clean and empty, to be filled with whatever meanings we choose.
The problem with Gairdner’s thesis is that it might have been accurate, and relevant, in the 18th-century, but it is a mere caricature today.
Are “we” in the thrall of John Locke and his “blank slate” theory, and of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s belief in mankind’s “natural goodness”? No, we are not, nor were we ever. Those theories were contested even as they were promulgated, and they have long since been debunked, discredited, and discarded. Today, we debate “nature vs. nurture,” we argue about genetic determinism and about the influence of external factors on individual development; our understanding of ourselves has been both challenged and deepened by the work of Darwin and Freud, not to mention by the catastrophes of modern history. Are there really such things, we ask, as “unencumbered” and “freely choosing” selves? Modern thought is more likely to say that “free will” is an illusion. Post-Locke and post-Rousseau, subsequent thinkers, liberal and conservative alike, have made mincemeat of the simplified ideas that arose in the early modern era only to be complicated and confounded by experience (and, later, by neuroscience).
Despite which, Gairdner proclaimed that “we” are all in agreement on the prevailing “modern conceit,” to which one might respond as Tonto did to the Lone Ranger: “What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?”
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William Gairdner, The Book of Absolutes: A Critique of Relativism and a Defense of Universals (McGill—Queen’s University Press, 2008)
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“Kierkegaard worried that his age was going to swallow itself up in reflection; our age is closer to settling the planet Mars than it has ever come to the experience of reflection.” (D.C. Schindler)
Finally, at The Imaginative Conservative, in what is either a lengthy essay or a short book (complete with seventy footnotes!), theologian D.C. Schindler asks, “What Is Liberalism?” He insists that the question “is an essential one” and he goes on to explain:
In the present moment, the question of the “value” of liberalism—that is, modern political philosophy founded on “natural rights” and some version of the “social contract” theory—has emerged with an urgency it may never have had before. While preceding generations have simply taken liberalism for granted as the given context within which we make practical judgments about many other things, the current generation seems willing to raise astonishingly bold questions regarding liberalism itself. Is it the only possible way to think about politics? Is it the “best regime”? Can we not entertain the notion that there were good features in some of the older political forms that liberalism replaced?
For Schindler, this is not mere academic chatter; it has existential significance. “How,” he asks, “ought we to live in the world we now occupy and respond to the reality of liberalism, which has established its place in the modern West over the course of five hundred years and increasingly around the globe?” In trying to come to terms with what Liberalism has wrought, Schindler provides a list (I know) of “twenty-five features of contemporary life that we take to be evident to anyone who cares to look around thoughtfully.” Taken as a whole, claims Schindler, “liberalism represents a transformation of human nature from the ground up; it is an extraction of human nature, root and branch, from the actual tradition in which it is embedded, so as to enable a truly radical re-interpretation of every dimension of human existence. Such a comprehensive re-interpretation is possible only in reaction to a comprehensive claim on human nature, which is just what Christianity makes by virtue of its universal ontological and historical scope, its mission into the depths of being and through the whole of human culture, all the way up to the world’s eschatological destiny.”
For those interested in pursuing the topic further, Schindler incorporates insights from Pierre Manent’s Intellectual History of Liberalism, with whom he agrees that the historical origins of liberalism stemmed from “the rejection of Christianity, specifically in the form of the Catholic Church, at least in its actual historical condition in the Middle Ages.” The ghost of Bill Occam cannot be far away!
What Is Liberalism? ~ The Imaginative Conservative
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