In his essay Representative Government, Jon Stuart Mill identified three fundamental conditions which the Carter administration would do well to ponder. These are: “One, that the people should be willing to receive it [representative government]; two, that they should be willing and able to do what is necessary for its preservation; three, that they should be willing and able to fulfill the duties and discharge the functions which it imposes on them.”
Clearly, we would be doing damage control in Syria, and expecting as much as the above would be ridiculously optimistic (the current administration may have held that kind of optimism regarding Libya, and perhaps Egypt during its elections, but events seem to be proving the fundamental disconnect between the current Arab-Muslim world and representative forms of government, at least as we understand those forms of government).
I still think many Americans are wary of any involvement in Syria, as am I, but there are also risks to consider in allowing the region to destabilize further. These risks include the region breaking open upon sectarian and ethnic lines, and yet another dysfunctional Arab state which becomes haven for enough radicals to require American engagement of some kind down the road.
We still seem to occupy a position of unipolar military strength at the moment, but in an increasingly multipolar world, there is a dearth of legitimate international institutions and alliances.
How do we line up our military strength with alliances that will lead to the greatest stability for our own democratic and liberal institutions, our own traditions and customs, along with incentives to include as many other players as possible based upon the conditions that alliances require?
Adam Garfinkle had more here on Syria (even Yemen and Syria are vastly different, as he points out).
Another Addition: Dexter Filkins has a piece at the New Yorker, highlighting how Hezbollah is doubling-down in Syria, as Iran is still very much backing Assad for its reasons.
Yet Another Addition: Victor Davis Hanson says if we don’t even know why we’re going into Syria, we could lose before we begin.
It’s a challenge to try and keep up with the demographic changes going on in America right now.
Do you want to be around family? Do you need to be around family for economic reasons? Where is meaning and group membership coming from in your life?
‘As Linker points out in his review, it’s the idea of returning home that separates the Drehers and Kauffmans from simply advocating ruralism. He writes, “If you live in a coastal city or suburb, the supremely unconservative message appears to be: Pull up your shallow roots and relocate to a region of the country where you can start over with a simpler, more humane, and happier life.”’
I suspect this may be part of a larger conservative trend, seeking to regroup around family, church, civic clubs and perhaps, a concept of home. It should be pointed out that a large open market and economic liberalism don’t necessarily lead to social conservatism, at least as some of the current thinking on Margaret Thatcher’s England suggests in her wake. You can wrest the economy from the unions and from the maw of nationalization, but so much economic freedom may be at odds with the good, moral, upstanding, civic-minded citizens desired on that vision.
In a word: rooted.
The Reagan and Thatcher eras had in common a fight against socialism, or creeping statism and secular communitarianism and collectivism. If your ‘community’ tends to be a city, then diversity and multiculturalism will likely have more relevance in your life as practical glue to bring various people together, even if you live in a religious enclave. If you live in a city, your politics is more likely to be machine politics, and corrupt in many cases, and a path for immigrants to attain a better life and more control. Such is human nature.
This may also be a bend in the road at which we can observe conservatives and libertarians more likely to part company. Libertarians tend to draw a ring around the individual and proceed from there.
Here’s a quote from this short essay I wrote, trying to contrast Brooklyn hipsters (many of whom, I maintain, come from the suburbs), and Charles Murray’s vision together (perhaps not successfully):
‘I can understand why many conservatives and traditional thinkers are upset about the decline, as they see it, of our culture. They arguably control much less of it than before, and have much less influence in the public square than they used to, as does organized religion. Many people with conservative views feel targeted by Hollywood and the media generally, as though it’s turned against them, espousing ideas which undermine the virtues and duties which maintain civil society. Even the technology sector tends to vote non-Republican.
Enough! goes the refrain.
Perhaps we could take a look at hipster culture for some clarification (about much I will invariably be wrong):
Instead of how many conservatives might want individuals to live; looking for meaning and group membership through church and civic organizations, intimacy and love directly through marriage, and vocation through traditional means of work, many hipsters (those who can afford it) withdraw into a bubble of irony, seeming to lack outward enthusiasm for anything.
They tend to seek meaning and group membership (while remaining totally individualistic) through the arts, fashion, music and popular music. There is some real drug-use there, and a few real artists. There are definite counter-cultural undercurrents as well. Intimacy and love are explored further away from marriage, but maybe not terribly far (gay marriage is now the hot topic). Vocation for hipsters often incorporates ideas of the local, communal, environmentally sustainable, and more often anti-corporate. Sometimes it can veer into the collectivist.
Haven’t we seen these folks before? I’ve heard the argument that they are less radical, and milder copies of the beats and original hipsters.’
How are the economy and technology, meaning and family, the rural/urban, red state/blue state divides, affecting your life?
Are we inevitably drifting towards a secular, more European-style society?
First National Bank of Houlton, Maine
Related On This Site: Richard Epstein, libertarian law/economics thinker at Chicago, says family, churches, and clubs aren’t enough, and open markets and a growing pie should fill in the gaps in a pluralist society of over 300 million people: Link From A Reader: ‘Richard Epstein Introduces Chicago’s Best Ideas To Students’
Bogus advocates for a return to ‘communitarian’ conservatism.
‘Though it may surprise people who have been taught that Edmund Burke is the father of modern conservatism, the Burkeans were, in fact, defeated by a rival group with a nearly diametrically opposed view. The leader of that group was William F. Buckley Jr., founder of National Review. When, in 1952, Buckley first articulated his philosophy in God and Man at Yale, he called it “individualism,” though the nearly absolute laissez-faire philosophy he advocated became better known as libertarianism.’
Libertarians tend to join in common cause with conservatives in battling Enlightenment reason collectivism; those who pursue collectivist ideas in virtue. I take Obama to simply be a man of the Left, generally cut from collectivist cloth, constrained by American traditions, the limits of the office, a cautious temperment etc., but further Left than many Americans are accustomed to.
Here’s a quote from the comments:
‘What is government supposed to do? And what time we are dealing with? Clearly, a different size and type of government was needed in 1900 than was needed in 1941. Clearly, to think that government can do anything is absurd, but to suggest it should do nothing is equally silly.’
I think we’re hitting on something here.
Buckley had to adapt the party to the challenges of Communism, the Cold War, the excesses of 60′s radicalism and the rise of the New Left, Civil Rights legislation and Johnson’s Great Society. He was simply yelling “Stop,” engaging with people who both agreed and disagreed constantly. I don’t see him as a libertarian, so much as deep down a Catholic conservative fleshing out just what it meant to be a conservative.
Perhaps I’m wrong.
Here he is debating Gore Vidal:
—————————————
Do we want the government to provide for the common defense? To secure life, liberty, and property? To provide a basic set of ground rules so that markets can operate?
Do we want government to be a party of well-connected mercantilists, big business/big government types? Do we want it to arise out of networks of families, churches, civic clubs and to represent Jeffersonian individuals?
Walter Russell Mead seems to be envisioning a reinvigorated liberalism 5.0, arguing that 60′s progressivism and 40-50′s conservatism (American politics more generally) are behind the times. There’s been a fundamental shift that we must adjust to, and it involves technology and globalization for starters.
His post expands on ideas explored in the book, and is well worth a read:
‘What I am suggesting is that our crisis of governance, which is reflected but only partly expressed by the mess our political class has made in Washington, is ultimately anchored in a cultural shift that is both a source for and a consequence of revolutionary technological change. Increasing numbers of young and well-educated Americans love the gadgets that help isolate them from one another because they do not wish to be obligated by civilities, do not wish to be constrained by responsibilities to others, do not wish to be limited in any way. We are witnessing the eternal temptation to self-indulgence raised to both principle and art.’
And:
‘Why should we be concerned about this? Because if the individuating tendencies inherent in the technology are not offset by creative balances that can restock social trust, or social capital, in America, it means that we will drift ever further from a high-trust social equilibrium conducive to liberty to a kind of order that needs ever more government to make it work. We will have to face what David Brooks has called “brutality cascades”, a kind of positional arms race to the bottom that ensues when it becomes difficult to impossible for standards of behavior to form out of interpersonal relationships.’
I’m sympathetic to the theme because this blog is animated by a notion of how to conserve tradition, and maintain civic virtue enough to maintain to a smaller, more responsive government on all levels.
Also, it’s a blog, my own little digital piece of the public square and my ticket for a few hours a week of self-indulgent utopia free of social interaction.
Generally, I approach this issue from a more conservative/libertarian perspective. I feel I’ve gone on a bit of a journey to explore both some of the anarchy of libertarianism, the problems with anarchy/hierarchy in Europe, and the possibility of classical liberalism.
In my experience, there are many reasons why libertarians and conservatives unite. The primary one is on full display now: Libertarians are anti-collectivist and anti-statist, drawing a ring around the individual and proceeding from there. The progressive pursuit of virtue through collectivist principles and the big government required to do it is a call-to-arms for most libertarians (they’re no fans of legislated religious morality either). While both groups have strong disagreements on where our rights come from, and who has the moral legitimacy to be in charge, conservatives and libertarians can usually agree on this much during a progressive administration.
Another reason for the alliance (more beneficial to conservatives, perhaps) is that libertarians tend to be much hipper to the sciences and technology, having a broad fan base in science fiction and usually more accustomed to arriving at truth and pursuing knowledge through the sciences and similar products of the Enlightenment.
We’ve already seen a huge shift in wealth and social influence to tech money in our society, and this will continue. Many traditionalist and religious conservatives tend not to be as hip to the sciences and technology, and increasingly run the risk of being seen to be as relevant to ‘modern’ life as a group of Amish, dutifully and communally raising a barn, gazed at from passersby on the road. Well, perhaps that’s a bit much, but some technorati no doubt see things that way.
Now, libertarianism can be accompanied by attendant utopianism and grand visions of the future (as strong as the progressive and collectivist love of technocracy). Yet, as for predictions about the future, here’s Jerry Pournelle describing his own home computer and how publishing might look in a few decades time.
Keep in mind he was saying this in 1979:
——————
That’s pretty damned accurate and reasonable. Perhaps his chart could be useful, as he was a sci-fi writer who likely ended up closer to Burkean conservativsm. Conservatives, take note.
The obligatory blog questions:
-How do you see technology affecting your life?
-What are your duties to the people around you, and to the common good?
-Do you ever get the urge to hit that guy talking loudly on his bluetooth, or push that prepossessed, couldn’t be bothered girl at the bus stop into oncoming traffic as she texts away with her earbuds in?
-Are you that guy or girl?
Addition: Via Instapundit-Huxley vs. Orwell, with Huxley in the lead. Robert Heinlein built his own house. L. Ron Hubbard is a good example of when sci-fi writers become ‘alleged,’ cult/religious figures.
Another Addition: Are we losing volunteerism because more women are working and have less time to volunteer, and work locally, and be engaged civically?
Our authors may be following Charles Murray’s lead, which he outlined in ‘Coming Apart:’
They write:
‘In fact, a key part of the explanation for the struggles of today’s working and lower middle classes in the U.S. is delayed marriage. When the trend toward later marriage first took off in the 1970s, most of these young men and women delayed having children, much as they had in the past. But by 2000, there was a cultural shift. They still put off their weddings, but their childbearing—not so much. Fifty-eight percent of first births among this group are now to unmarried women.’
What kind of a society should we have? What kind of society are we creating?
Many women in college and in the professions are delaying marriage and child-bearing. They can generally afford to put off marriage in pursuit of education and career (though they can’t wait too long and we’ve got tremendous student-loan debt). The women without such opportunities and who aren’t in college or the professions generally aren’t putting off having children for too long on the analysis above, but they are putting off marriage. This can have consequences for all of us.
Are we creating a two-tiered society, one of low-skilled, lower educated folks whom we ought to encourage into marriage, and the other full of higher skilled, better educated folks who will probably get married anyways, after putting career first?
Of course, implicit in the above quotation is the idea that conservatives are already losing the debate: The coveted sweet spot in the middle and upper-middle class mind in America, which tends to guide our social institutions, laws, and politics is not currently well occupied by particularly religious, nor traditional, nor conservative ideas.
The newer social model hasn’t addressed many problems that the old social model may have addressed. On Murray’s view, perhaps we’re in danger of losing much in the way of economic dynamism as a result (to which I’ve found very few women in my time who wish to go back to 1963, which Murray doesn’t suggest we do, and relatively fewer women willing to call themselves feminists or address the radicalism inherent in feminism head-on).
Our authors continue:
‘But to truly move forward, educators, employers, policy makers, parents, entertainment leaders and young adults themselves need to join together in launching a national conversation about bringing down the childbearing rate of unmarried women and men in their 20s. Such campaigns aren’t just talk. They worked for dealing with teen pregnancy, and they can work again.’
The ending comes off a little weak.
Here’s Murray discussing Coming Apart:
————————-
***Having been asked to watch a few clips of the popular HBO series ‘Girls, I suspect the show can be seen partially as a product of the post 60′s, literary, post-post-modern beat/hippie/hipster culture that comes with a pedigree. There is a deeper current of Western individualism (romanticism, modernism, post-modernism) running through Western culture. On the show, perhaps there is a deeper quest for the Self going on. Freedom is next.
Admittedly, this helps keep many chatterers chattering away who see their own selves and causes (feminism especially) reflected therein. I can’t say I care that much for the subject matter, though I will generally support artists who stay true to their art, as religion, polite society, politics and ideologues of all sorts should be transcended if that art is going to last.
Addition: And, to be fair, it’s entertainment, and it’s designed to give pleasure. It’s pretty well-done. Dunham should watch out for the maw of celebrity culture.
According to the Atlantic: Why are 58% of first-births to unmarried women in lower middle class households. Of course, it might have a lot to do with taking marriage apart, and replacing it with…whatever’s here now. Naturally, being politically liberal, they focus on making more income equality.
Walter Russell Mead takes a look at the blue model (the old progressive model) from the ground up in NYC to argue that it’s simply not working. Check out his series at The American Interest. He has a big vision with some holes in it, but it’s one that embraces change boldly.
A reader, upset that the Washington Post’s stance on same-sex marriage didn’t represent his/her views on the matter, wrote as much to a WaPo reporter who responded that same-sex marriage is one of the core ‘civil rights issues of our time.’ Eventually, the dispute went upstairs to the ultimate referee, the WaPo’s ombudsman, who presented both sides to readers in an attempt at fairness.
In response to the ombudsman, Taranto writes:
‘That “libertarian” is quite a dodge. Most journalists are anything but libertarian in areas where that would mean siding against the left, such as guns, education, taxes, nonsexual health care and nonmedia corporate free speech. And as blogress Mollie Hemingway notes, Pexton’s disparagement of those who disagree with him as “religionists,” which means zealots, is invidious. Was Martin Luther King a religionist?’
One key to the fairness question lies in keeping the market open, and the market signals coming into papers and news-gatherers, whatever their persuasion. Some papers were quite ‘conservative’ themselves when it came to protecting their own interests and revenue streams after the rise of internet technology. Most still haven’t found as effective of a revenue stream to fund their activities. Journalists are naturally going to self-select, and many do think of themselves as cultural gatekeepers in pursuit of justice and ‘fairness,’ and probably are more liberal often times. What’s important is that as a group they’re not overly protected in their self-selection by law or political favoritism.
Addition: As for people with conservative views, they are often closeted minorities in our universities, misrepresented and misunderstood in many media outlets, and maligned as old, white, and out-of-touch in much of the popular culture at large (The Footloose Theory). That means an uphill climb through the current institutional landscape.
Another Addition: Elections can change a lot, so we’ll see where we are in four years regarding partisan bias, and whether or not the press earns some respect back from the people.
Here’s John Stossell, discussing how his libertarian views were seen as outside the norm while working at ABC news:
‘Childs was the autodidact with the nerve to tell Ayn Rand that Objectivism implied anarchism and to tell Robert Nozick that his “invisible hand” argument for the moral creation of the state collapses around itself. The essays in which he does this are both contained in Anarchism and Justice.’
Worth a read as Reason revisits libertarian thinkers of note.
——————————————
And now, just to shake things up a bit: Briton Roger Scruton answers (45 min long) a series of questions about libertarianism, individualism, the State, Hayek, free markets, conservatism, our moral obligations to one another, contractualism, Christianity as he sees them etc.:
—————–
“It’s the safeguarding of a traditional order that is the real concern of conservatives“
Scruton mentions this quotation a la Edmund Burke. Such is an order that stretches across time, full of more spontaneously and freely entered into arrangements and contracts between people, but also duties and moral obligations that people have to one another, and sometimes to the State. Such arrangements often form institutions which are much stronger than any planned institution on Scruton’s thinking (and I’d argue often stronger and more stable than institutions defined with positive definitions of justice upon a rationalist framework, as I think promising to distribute and redistribute wealth is an over-promise that overlooks human nature and limits our institutions’ real world effectiveness. Such a view wants to extend liberty to ever new groups of people by granting “rights” to them, often without the duties and moral obligation).
Our constitutional republic, too, grants ‘rights’ to people, and they are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Clearly, people in the U.S have quite differing views on what the role of the State ought to be, in relief especially at the moment as we wade through the effects of excessive individualism through modernism, postmodernism, moral relativism, certain strains of Continental thought (Neo-Marxism in the academy) and those who define freedom, the individual, and the State in very different ways.
Some thoughts on conservatism, its limitations and challenges, its blind spots and strengths.
Don’t call Scruton a man of the right, at least by British standards, anyways.
Also, the connection between political and economic liberty is highlighted, as it should be.
Scruton’s father was a socialist, and he wants to redirect the impulse to save the environment, and the daily lives of people from central planning back toward human aims and away from top down abstract surveys in Britain:Roger Scruton In The City Journal: Cities For Living–Is Modernism Dead?
“…it is emblematic of liberalism’s intention, articulated in the Progressive era and pursued ever since, to replace constitutional politics with a system of interest group (and racial) competition, of bargaining for government benefits within the administrative or welfare state presided over by activist judges, policy “experts,” and bureaucrats (in collusion with congressional committees).”
-Charles Kesler-Buckley Jr., William F. & Charles R. Kesler. Keeping The Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought-A Revised Edition of American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. Print.
Quite germane, I’d say.
The term ‘activist’ judges has become very loaded these days. The nomination process has become politicized and nearly toxic, to be sure.
I looked up Kesler’s quote in context and found he defined 3 conservative camps. Here’s my brief summary, so feel free to add, subtract, or disagree:
1. Traditionalists–Often coming from literary and historical backgrounds, Kesler’s traditionalist standout is Russell Kirk, and he mentions Robert Nisbet. Many traditionalists are more likely to be religious, and find greater wisdom in religious doctrine and teaching about how to live and what to do than most anything else. Some can see an unbroken line back to Aquinas, and they tend to view Enlightenment rationalism with great suspicion. Kirk and Nisbet adopted Edmund Burke’s defense of the British Constitution against what they saw as the ahistorical universalism of the French Revolution.
Many look around and see cultural decay, decline, and often times a moral corruption in society.
I’d say Ross Douthat, currently at the NY Times, is an example of a practicing Catholic and conservative. He’s written a book about the decline of institutionalized religion in the public square and the rise of new-age, mega-churches, self-help and “spirituality.” Robert Bork, despite his faults, was railroaded as an ‘activist’ judge and could be defined as a traditionalist.
2.Libertarians–On Kesler’s view, libertarians are more comfortable with Enlightenment rationalism than the traditionalists are, but the original sin for libertarians is collectivism. This collectivism arises from basing the Enlightenment rationalist foundation in virtue. Marxist, Socialist, and Communist leaders advocated and sometimes succeeded in bloody revolution, and many genuinely believed they were leading humanity to some dialectically “progressive” point in the future, seeing materialist reality for what it was, and acting for the good of all. They were ‘virtuous’. Many in these systems believed they knew better than individuals what was best for them, deciding how they should live, and what they should do. As is common knowledge, this had disastrous results, including food shortages, external aggression, mass murder, forced labor camps, and the systems eventually rotting from the inside out.
For Kesler, libertarians often come from economic and philosophical backgrounds, and he breaks them into two groups. The first group consists of Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, and Friedrich Hayek. For them, freedom simply works, scarcity is all around, and you don’t need to deduce your way back to an underlying rights-based moral theory to justify your defense of individual freedom. Adam Smith’s invisible hand might be a good example.
Kesler’s other group are those who need to deduce the morality of the market from the rights of man. If the rights of man don’t come from God, is there some sufficiently transcendent source for our knowledge and thus our moral thinking? Is there a source what would justify giving some people moral legitimacy to rule over others? Where do man’s rights come from? J.S. Mill’s utilitarianism isn’t enough, so, the search continues. Kesler offers Robert Nozick, Murray Rothbard, and Richard Epstein as examples.
In my experience, personal liberty is primary to libertarians. Libertarians often draw a ring around the individual, and proceed from there. How one draws that ring is of some importance.
3.Neoconservatives–Often coming from backgrounds of academic social science, chased away from the New Left and ‘mugged by reality’, Kesler’s neoconservatives would include Norman Podhoretz, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and James Q. Wilson. On Kesler’s view, they come to distrust ideology, rationalist political theory and have been persuaded by the fact/value distinction. Doubts are bred from within the social sciences and political sciences about how one can be sure of what one knows, especially when that knowledge becomes a source for public policy and a way for a few people to run the lives of many others.
‘They’re self-selecting, Richard. The BBC does its recruiting through the pages of the (left-wing) Guardian, so its staff have the same bien-pensant world view. They would consider themselves centrist, moderate, reasonable, not politically biased. But that’s because everyone in the circles in which they move thinks the same way. Very few of them, I think, set out deliberately to distort the truth. It comes to them quite naturally and unconsciously.’
‘It’s not that the network’s editorial brain trust meets each morning to plot the day’s campaign to rid America of Republican taint. It’s that the newsroom is composed almost entirely of like-minded people who share one another’s major philosophical precepts. When my sister says that she wants to hear news from people who think like me, she’s put her finger on the problem’
Extra special bonus***-Anti-multiculturalist provacateur of the Anglosphere!, Mark Steyn discusses complaints brought against Macleans, Canada’s largest publication, by the President of the Canadian Islamic Congress (who sent three representatives) to TVOntario. They were upset at the pieces Steyn had published there. The complaints went through the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal for alleged “Islamophobia” and “promoting hate:”
The connection here is what happens in Canadian society in the wake of the ideas the CBC promotes, and beneath the umbrella of more Left liberal ideas:
————————–
The CBC actually defends Steyn a bit, which is slightly remarkable as Canada does not have nearly the same broad definitions of free speech we have here in the U.S.
—————————-
Clearly, “hate” can get you viewers and make some fun.
My two cents:
Nationalization protects the BBC and the CBC from market competition and thus they remain less open to criticism, innovation, and the interests of large swathes of their taxpayers. Those who have self-selected and made a niche for themselves in such institutions, can more easily discriminate on that basis, even unconsciously. They don’t tend to be friendly to business interests and people in business because they don’t as directly depend on business for advertising dollars. This insulation allows some to think of themselves as gatekeepers to higher culture and above such incentives in the first place.
Generally, all of them seem to put environmentalism and multiculturalism first, above other ideas. A kind of world-mash humanism is the norm and it’s never hard to find a story that trades in the same stuff as the “studies” disciplines that have sprung up in our universities where an “expert” can always be found to comment on the story of the day.
In addition, there is coverage of the Sciences and world events which does the public good, but there seems to be a penchant for science coverage that supports the more liberal worldview along with a penchant for psychology, literary analysis and music criticism that usually favors their own interests: feminism, equality between the sexes and among the races (multiculturalism and humanism again).
Higher culture, modern liberal assumptions and current events are usually combined into bite-sized, well-produced, reasonably thoughtful morsels. A high-end product is produced, but at what cost?
Bork argues that during the 1960′s, likely starting with the SDS, a form of liberalism took shape that promotes radical egalitarianism (social justice, equality of outcomes) and radical individualism (excessive freedom from the moral and legal doctrines which require an individual’s duty and which form the fabric of civil society). This is the New Left.
Grounded in an utopian vision, fed in part by the affluence of the previous decades and the boredom and yearning of largely well-off youth, the New Left blossomed not merely into the anti-draft Vietnam protests across the nation’s universities, but into a movement that has forever altered American life in mostly negative ways for Bork(see Tom Wolfe’s Radical Chic: That Party At Lenny’s… for a rich account of the times).
Bork is quite explicit about the violence and threats of violence he witnessed, the barbarism on display, and the confused, tense years that unfolded (culminating in the Kent State debacle). He was one of two conservative law professors at Yale during the late 1960′s and he argues that events have rarely been represented accurately as he saw them. It is a personal account.
On Bork’s view, the New Left is still quite with us, for the New Left, to some extent, has morphed into the multi-cultural, diversity politicking, equality pursuing liberal left we’ve come to know and love. How much equality is enough? There’s never enough. How free is the individual? Well, he’s almost, if not totally, free. But definitely free from “the patriarchy” and all those silly religious myths. He’s also adrift, mostly engaged in self-gratification and mostly only able to articulate what he’s free from. Hence, the radicalism of the New Left on Bork’s view.
I think Bork is at his best when he highlights how portions of the radical individualist project continue to seek meaning in life through collectivist political philosophy, politics, political ideology, gender equality, feminism etc (whereas I would think Bork finds this meaning, a deeper, wiser meaning, in Church doctrine, but the Natural Law folks have problems with him). Bork even concedes that it may be something in the pursuit of liberty itself, as we do have liberty and equality defined in our Constitution, such as they are. On this view, the seeds of its destruction lie within liberty and our founding documents to some extent. Perhaps the old, classical liberalism (equality of opportunity, free markets, party of the working man) will eventually go soft and give way to more radical liberty, given due time. This is what Bork, as a nearly lone conservative amongst older-school liberals, claims happened at Yale in 1967-69.
Bork also puts forth an originalist interpretation of the Constitution. He makes the case that there are simply a lot of cultural elites legislating from the bench, using the Supreme Court as a means to the end of more diversity and equality-making, and that they’ve wandered far afield from the document itself (some background here, if you have a better link or better understanding, drop a line). They court an ultimate danger of undermining themselves, cultivating radicalized people and setting themselves up as the only authority capable of interpreting and directing those people:
If the Constitution is law, then presumably its meaning, like that of all other law, is the meaning the lawmakers were understood to have intended. If the Constitution is law, then presumably, like all other law, the meaning the lawmakers intended is as binding upon judges as it is upon legislatures and executives. There is no other sense in which the Constitution can be what article VI proclaims it to be: “Law….” This means, of course, that a judge, no matter on what court he sits, may never create new constitutional rights or destroy old ones. Any time he does so, he violates not only the limits to his own authority but, and for that reason, also violates the rights of the legislature and the people….the philosophy of original understanding is thus a necessary inference from the structure of government apparent on the face of the Constitution.
As to the legal aspects, I do know that Justices Clarence Thomas, William Rehnquist, and Antonin Scalia have been/were influenced by originalism to some extent. Of course, like Bork, this makes them targets for attack by the opposition:
—————————–
I must say I find Bork refreshing reading when he helps to reveal the authoritarian (nay, totalitarian) impulses of the “personal is political” crowd. It’s fun to have someone provide context when observing the tolerance crowd keep on doing intolerant things, yet piously and humourlessly demanding tolerance all the same (see what FIRE does in response at college campuses). Many of these people actually do run our universities.
***As an aside, I think what’s happened at Slate magazine helps advance the theory. While politically left, I like Slate when it can be a bit edgy, thoughtful, occasionally more of a haven for artists, writers, creative thinkers and iconoclasts (Christopher Hitchens was a good example). As of this writing, I find a commitment to the shibboleths of the Left is the ruling order of the day (see the NY Times as well): You have to toe the line with political correctness and gender and racial equality, and all that individual freedom has limits, obviously, and coalesces around regulated markets, trying to control the public square, and other Statist projects. Such collectivism should make every individual stop and think about how they fit into such a framework.
As for art, as T.S. Eliot points out, a first-rate poet can also chart a course back to church doctrine, though this blog believes art is best served when one points out the obvious problems that religion, politics, law, and polite society have with it. Robert Bork quoting Yeats and Auden is interesting though potentially problematic, but Robert Bork quoting rap lyrics to show cultural decay is a little humourous, and probably just emboldens the opposition.
I think Bork is arguing that unless we stay religious to some extent, and recognize that truth can be revealed to us through the word of God as well as through reason, we will decline (and there are all sorts of declinists out there).
