The Trouble With Standing Athwart History:
But of course this is the trouble with basing your political value system on things like authority and tradition. It’s always changing! William F Buckley’s determination to stand athwart history yelling stop led him to a robust defense of apartheid as a system of government for the American South. At times in different countries, authority and tradition has meant backing absolute monarchy or vicious dictatorships. Or maybe conservatism means women can’t vote. Eventually, you wind up defending the United Federation of Planets just like Captain Picard. Earlier this week TNR did a fun look back at various instances of social progress that the right swore would doom America. By Picard’s time, it’s bound to be a much longer list.
The question then shifts: have all the enthusiasms of the Left since the Enlightenment been unmitigated goods which they would accept wholeheartedly? No errors where a few eggs were cracked to create a progressive omelette? The Left is wont to critique the unsubtle and manichean vision of the Right which divides the world between Good & Evil, but when looking at themselves all such necessity for subtly and moral complexity is lost. History marches on!
If the question is in good faith; creating perverse incentives that advantaged single motherhood with the Great Society initiatives was moronic. That’s off the top of my head, I could probably come up with some other things with a bit of thought.
Drawing a line back to the enlightenment makes me wonder what question you are really wanting answered is though.
The Left has their own version of our “unsubtle and manichean vision of the Right which divides the world between Good & Evil”. They tend to divide the world into the Powerful & the Powerless and, invariably, the left decides to support the Powerless. This is why they instinctively support the Palestinians over the Israelis, view 9/11 as being the “chickens coming home to roost” and even called the barbarous Al Qaeda supporters blowing up women and children in Iraq “freedom fighters”. That is why they flock to Cuba (and now Venezuela) in droves to worship at the feet of their heroes. Their manichean world view is just as simplistic as ours and, I think, more likely to lead them astray.
here’s an example of the progressive vision which modern liberals would repudiate: eugenics. on this question religious conservatives who were shouting no, and succeeding in blocking progress in catholic europe and much of the american south, would probably be the side which the modern left roots for. there are others. my overall point is that history is not totally whiggish, and that there have been several starts, stops and reversals.
It strikes me that Jim Kalb handles this question well.
http://turnabout.ath.cx:8000/node/3
Once again, a straw man is being attacked. Conservatism does NOT mean simply supporting the status quo. Russel Kirk did our movement a great disservice by labeling it “conservatism”.
“Conservatives supported slavery!”
Well no, it was the Democratic party that supported it.
“Conservatives supported monarchy.”
Well no, the people that supported the monarchy would not fit into the modern conservative movement. Remember how during the last years of the Cold War, the MSM would refer to the old-line communists as “conservatives”?
A modern conservative believes in personal responsibility, the free market, and a strong military and foriegn policy. That’s what it means. And people who believe those things are seldom on the wrong side of history.
“and a strong military and foriegn policy”
Depends on which flavor of conservative you’re speaking about. I also hope that the irony has not escaped you that the “strong foreign policy” part used to be very progressive.
“personal responsibility”
I have to disagree with this notion. I know many liberals that are very personally responsible. And not just ones that begrudgingly supported Obama because he was of the same party. They really liked the guy. This idea that all liberals are lazy and expect handouts is a myth.
@TrueNorth
The problem is that who’s Powerful and who’s Powerless not only changes, but is highly context-specific. Present-day leftists *and* rightists both forget that Zionism was once a *left*wing enthusiasm.
And of course present-day “anti-imperialists” are completely oblivious to the history of Islamic imperialism and of pre-Islamic peoples whose ways of life are threatened by Muslim-majority societies.
@David Hume
People on the left used to be enthusiastic about IQ testing because they believed it would upend hereditary privilege, turning against it when it failed to live up to that expectation.
@jeet
bingo. anyway, i fixated on the enlightenment because you can reasonably trace most “left” and “right” movements back to that period. it gets ridiculous when you are arguing who who was “left” or “right” during the war of the roses. though the dispositional issues are universal.
and let’s be more explicit here: progressive success stories are the ones which will remain salient to us. who knows how many kooky ideas were spewed forth which conservatives checked? who remembers bimetallism? TNR won’t write editorials about how foolish anti-populists were to oppose bimetallism because no one cares. but it was once a big deal.
or consider the idea that conservatives opposed emancipation. one could argue that in the early 19th century gradual emancipation was the status quo. the great federalist rufus king opposed slavery. the planters of 1800 generally assumed that slavery would disappear. what happened in the south after this period, leading up to the civil war, is complicated. but basically new men such as john c. calhoun constructed a vision of a utopia built on slave labor. they used the language of custom, tradition and conventional religious language, but the extremists in the movement even went so far as to suggest that enslaving non-elite whites was worth merit! in the north the abolitionists were utopians in their own right. the ‘conservative’ position was neither abolitionist nor fire-eater, both of which were radical stances.
There’s several fallacies in the argument advanced by TNR there.
One it assumes that the world today is best off because of having followed certain notions labeled progressive at the time. Nobody can ever tell whether it could have been even better if other paths had been followed.
Secondly it can be a circular argument, if you label any popular new idea that is implemented and is successful enough to be deemed self-understood many years later as a “progressive” idea then why yes you will see a track record of success through history. Of course many new ideas were never implemented due to opposition and many indeed failed miserably once attempted, but that is either swept under the rug or if it’s an idea that still holds some sway in the chattering classes their failure is simply disputed.
Thirdly, politics is not a team sport with team Progress and team Conservative fighting it out over the ages. Modern-day leftists and conservatives are drawing from various intellectual influences through history, not all of them neatly labeled. The issue positions have shifted with time and context on all sides of politics. This is apparent enough in the US but it’s extremely easy to see if you look beyond its stability and look at the much more tumultuous rest of the world. In much of Eastern and Central Europe obviously it’s the pro-American free market reformers who are trying to do the never-been-done-before and push for at times radical change against the stubborn opposition of post-Communists who themselves have changed political colors about 4 times in the last 20 years (by the way talk about progressive ideas that failed huh).
Fourthly, very few conservatives are just against change for the sake of being against it. Status quo conservatism has little to do with modern post-1960s conservatism. In fact it’s fair to argue that conservatives at times were the most vigorous advocates of dramatic change in the past 40 years whereas liberals often enough played the role of structural conservatives. Conservatism is just a political label for describing a world view and ideology which is laying out its own vision for the future world. Sure, conservatives tend to draw on positive aspects of tradition and past experience and the resulting insights in human nature, but unless the leftist argument is that we are supposed to ignore all precedent and all established practice and start completely from scratch that can hardly be held against conservatives. And just for the record, the idea of a complete start from scratch and a complete “new human” is a “progressive” one that has actually been discredited and delegated to the extreme fringe.
Fifthly, progressive and conservative are just labels given to various views and thus can be used very dishonestly. If a new idea, a new way of looking at things doesn’t fit socialist notions, it can’t be progressive. It’s new but it can’t be progress. It’s not conservative either but it will be put in the bag with conservatism anyway because it’s seen as vaguely “right-wing”. The use of these labels always depends on viewpoint as well and this whole “progressives are always right, see history” schtick is just another dishonest way of trying to paint the ultimate victory of socialism as an inevitability. As if history hasn’t already shown us where that path leads and that it’s far from a success story.
NR won’t write editorials about how foolish anti-populists were to oppose bimetallism because no one cares. but it was once a big deal.
In 1896 Populists allied themselves with silver Democrats, with generally disastrous results for Populism. Most populists were greenbackers, not bimetallists, but there was nothing particularly wrong with bimetallism either. Some bimetallists were silver fetishists, but many “sound currency” advocates were gold fetishists. The greenbacker system, with a national bank and a fiat currency, is roughly the one in place now, and if we had a state bank instead of a the Federal Reserve hybrid we might be better off.
Some orthodox bankers were bimetallists. The gold standard made the world economy dependent on the supply of gold, so that the opening of new mines (or the exhaustion of existing mines) would have enormous financial effects that changes in supply of no other commodity would. In fact, as Milton Friedman says, the opening of new gold mines in the 1890s did somewhat reflate the currency, as the Populists had demanded, and thus weakened Populism as a political movement. The problem with any specie currency is that a major economic factor is put at the mercy of fortuitous discoveries by mining geologists.
The real issue with the Populists was reflation of the deflated currency. That’s something that obviously could go too far, but deflation is as harmful as inflation (even though those who’ve already got theirs unanimously thinks otherwise). Among those wanting reflation were some industrialists who wanted expansion. Deflation strengthens the dead hand of the past.
Of course, Austrians and goldbugs reject fiat currency, but not even all conservatives agree. Milton Friedman in his monetary history of the U.S. was basically non-commital about the populists and greenbackers, where he could easily scored some cheap points off them. In fact the greenbackers with their quantity theory of money were early monetarists.
@David Hume
It’s also important to note that the abolitionist movement drew heavily on religious fundamentalism and many business leaders whereas the urban working-class was not just violently racist but many of their Democratic Party representatives sided with pro-slavery forces pretty much until the fall of Richmond. It’d be hard to confuse those racist lower class Democrats with conservatives of any sort, after all their racist resentment was also coupled with a hatred of their middle-class and upper-class monocled paymasters. An economic populism that is harnessed by Democrats to this day.
Similarly, many of the same people strongly opposed to slavery were also strongly opposed to drinking of alcohol and other vices. And indeed prohibition was based on pretty much the same puritan impulse as abolition of slavery. Opposition to vice especially amongst the lower classes was considered a very progressive attitude at the time. However, in our time prohibition if anything is played up as a “conservative” sin as the Left disassociated itself from virtue and good living and took a dramatic swing towards libertine ways.
Another oft-overlooked issue is the relationship of abolitionism to nativism. Of course there is plenty of writing out there trying to cleanse early Republicanism (as they are now seen as the “good guys” of their time by most of the intellectual class) of the sin of nativism. But it can’t be denied that nativist votes helped to elect Lincoln and that Know-Nothings often enough eventually turned into Republicans. And of course nativism was tied to the moralism that opposed the “whore of Rome” and the “slavemasters” at the same time. And whilst nativists are nowadays considered villains of history, of course, plenty of those impulses also helped create and advance public education (they hated parochial schools for obvious reasons) and many other institutions that helped shape modern America.
Liberals will always play up the “re-alignment” theory but they never seem to care to embrace the religious and nativist roots of those early Republicans, similarly they didn’t disavow the economic populism that gave them support amongst the underclass in 1850, 1930 and today. Political history is much more complex than any simple narrative of progress vs. status quo and much could be said about the developments of the current GOP and Democratic Party stances and how they relate to historic processes.
I think clearly progressives have a litany of spectacularly failed policies along with successes, however this is not the point. It is in the willingness to risk failure in the hope of a better future. Hayek said it better but the world spins forward and it is simply a matter of whether one is willing to embrace that or dig in and push against it.
Abolitionists were strongly religious not usually fundamentalists by our standards. Many or most followed a modernized or somewhat secularized version of “The Social Gospel”, which held that Christians should act in the world to eliminate evils and bring good. The social gospel still lives in a lot of mainline denominations, where it is also connected with a lack of religious fervor, but the old social gospel people were fervent yet modernist.
Increasingly during the second half of the 20th century fervent Christians became first apolitical and later conservative.
Economic populism was a factor in Bryan’s losing campaigns (and many conervative Democrats boycotted Bryan), but egalitarianism, populism, etc. only became dominant in the Democratic Party with FDR. After WWII liberlaism moved away from populism toward technocratic elitism.
Realignments are routine in American politics because the two-party system suppresses political content and ideology, and each party is always an uneasy coalition. (The parties are more ideologized now than they ever have been.)
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“and a strong military and foriegn policy”
It is true that historically, Democrats often favored a more interventionist foreign policy than Republicans. FDR wisely realized that the Nazis would be a problem before most Republicans did. However, the FDR/Scoop Jackson Democrats are gone. The last 20 years of the Cold War were fought entirely by the Republicans. Using our resourses to stand up for American interests is something modern Dems are very reluctant to do. In fact, they are more likely to support humanitarian missions that don’t have anything with our interests. The Dems always cut the defence budget while in power, cut missle defence, wanted to do nothing about Saddam, don’t want to protect our borders, are too trusting of treaties and diplomacy, ect.
“personal responsibility”
I certainly agree that a lot of liberals are responsible in their personal lives (and many conservatives aren’t). But conservatives are more likely to support government policies that assume people should be responsible for their actions. Liberals are more likely to support government programs for drug addicts, favor welfare state programs, favor more lenient criminal penalties, and generally favor people of need who got into problems because of their own bad decisions. Conservatives are more likely to say, “You made your own bed, now you get to sleep in it.”
By fighting the Cold War did we prolong the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Empire?
Heck no. The arms race hastened the end.
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Dave et al.
“Earlier this week TNR did a fun look back at various instances of social progress that the right swore would doom America.”
This is like someone saying the South was not doomed by the loss of the Civil War because, of course — it’s rather vibrant today. Or, the world would not be doomed by a gigantic meteor because, of course, in a few million years it would be vibrant again. Obviously, when it comes to costs ‘for whom’ and ‘in what way’ matters. Of course conservatives play the same game.
The conservative right is white people trying to hold onto their national identity, right people trying to prevent their nation from going left, capitalists not wanting socialism, and other people not wanting to go statist.
These are tied together by the fact that, ‘rightism’ is group centered. And group centered presupposes a group, which usually means ethnos — in the sense of ‘a people.’ What we are seeing is just the inversion of what we had. We had a Christian West Caucasian society, which largely regulated social behavior via norms, and which allowed for largely unregulated democracy and capitalism. Naturally, this entailed discrimination, since norms presuppose normality — and some people relative to others are not typical.
What we are getting is the reverse. To ‘solve’ the problem of discrimination, we are getting rid of that ethnos and their traditions. Hence the Birth of a Multicultural Nation. Well, we know what that means. Trade the vices of conservative capitalism based on Christian European norms, with those of multicultural managerialism based on ‘Liberal’ ‘Democratic’ statism. Bottom up or top down. Confucianism or Maoism/Legalism.
“have all the enthusiasms of the Left since the Enlightenment been unmitigated goods which they would accept wholeheartedly? …No errors where a few eggs were cracked to create a progressive omelette? The Left is wont to critique the unsubtle and manichean vision of the Right which divides the world between Good & Evil”
Manichean is not a right thing, it’s a cultural thing. And, as you mentioned, the West is christianesque — and that means the Liberal West. In terms of morality, Liberalism just inverts the morality play. White proracial behavior is the new homosexuality, ect.
Manichean, itself, is a mixed bag. It just radicalizes things. It’s cultural obsessiveness and is related to other dualisms. It really depends on what the obsession is about. I mean you can compare Manichean cultures to rather non-Manichean cultures — like many of the eastern ones. Compare and contrast the cost and effects.
But the comical thing is the progressive bit. I call it the progressive fallacy. It’s pretty clear that the affluence of the West is behind the social changes. And it’s pretty clear (to me) that the particular nature of the West was largely behind the affluence — and rapid social change was the result.
Which is fine and all. And to the extent that ‘Leftists’ were just those people that developed with the times, they were great. But this is not leftism and it’s not progressivism. There is a difference between a 1960’s ‘Leftistism’ which turned into Conservativism, Libertarianism, and Liberalism. Or, I guess an 1800’s ‘Leftism’ which turned into Nationalism, Classical Liberalism, or Socialism. Especially when they are working in a Manichean cultural frame.
With regards to the progressive fallacy, you made this point in your “The limits of pluralism, and the necessity of an identity” post.
“Muslim elites saw in the West an object of emulation, and fixated on the exoteric aspects without comprehending the deeper structural preconditions of prosperity. Kemal Ataturk exemplified this, he forced Turks to re-conceptualize themselves as Europeans by battering them, both psychologically and literally. He demanded that Turks look the part of Europeans, that they change their dress and switch to a Roman alphabet from an Arabic script. In addition to the cultural shifts Ataturk also set the tone through an emphasis on top-down institutional development”
Our elites are doing the same. Just replace ‘West’ with ‘the various liberties that societal success afforded.’ Post hoc ergo propter hoc.