Posted on 05/05/2004 9:55:43 AM PDT by u-89
1. Though freedom is not a state of nature but an artifact of civilization, it did not arise from design. The institutions of freedom, like everything freedom has created, were not established because people foresaw the benefits they would bring. But, once its advantages were recognized, men began to perfect and extend the reign of freedom and, for that purpose, to inquire how a free society worked. This development of a theory of liberty took place mainly in the eighteenth century. It began in two countries, England and France. The first of these knew liberty; the second did not.And, of course, Burke began this understanding by pointing out that metaphysical constructs meaning to replace whole settled bodies of law and custom were the dangerous path of the unsettled.As a result, we have had to the present day two different traditions in the theory of liberty: one empirical and unsystematic, the other speculative and rationalistic –the first based on an interpretation of traditions and institutions which had spontaneously grown up and were but imperfectly understood, the second aiming at the construction of a utopia, which has often been tried but never successfully. Nevertheless, it has been the rationalistic, plausible, and apparently logical argument of the French tradition, with its flattering assumptions about the unlimited powers of human reason, that has progressively gained influence, while the less articulate and less explicit tradition of English freedom has been on the decline.
This distinction is obscured by the fact that what we have called the “French tradition” of liberty arose largely from an attempt to interpret British institutions and that the conceptions which other countries formed of British institutions were based mainly on their descriptions by French writers. The two traditions became finally confused when they merged in the liberal movement of the nineteenth century and when even leading British liberals drew as much on the French as on the British tradition. It was, in the end, the victory of the Benthamite Philosophical Radicals over the Whigs in England that concealed the fundamental difference which in more recent years has reappeared as the conflict between liberal democracy and “social” or totalitarian democracy.
This difference was better understood a hundred years ago than it is today. In the year of the European revolutions in which the two traditions merged, the contract between “Anglican” and “Gallican” liberty was still clearly described by an eminent German-American political philosopher. “Gallican Liberty,” wrote Francis Lieber in 1848, “is sought in the government, and according to an Anglican point of view, it is looked for in the wrong place, where it cannot be found. Necessary consequences of the Gallican view are, that the French look for the highest degree of political civilization in organization, that is, in the highest degree of interference by public power. The question whether this interference be despotism or liberty is decided solely by the fact who interferes, and for the benefit of which class the interference takes place, while according to the Anglican view this interference would always be either absolutism or aristocracy, and the present dictatorship of the ouvriers would appear to us an uncompromising aristocracy of the ouvriers.”
Since this was written, the French tradition has everywhere progressively displaced the English.
A very sententious excerpt and quite fitting. Thanks for posting it. It's about having a constitution that ensures attunement to normal human liberty. The opening chapter in Belloc's Danton also gives a summary. For Belloc, if there is any state of nature, it is one that demands perpetual reform, a homogeneity (not abolition) of the classes, and the recognition that no principle is so certain that it can resolve politics from the tension of historical existence. Why did England have the experience liberty? Because of a respectful continuity with the past? One that doesn't deny history? Ryn's depiction of our nascent national character, where "deference to grown-ups seems unknown," is typical of our own revolutionary glee at dispensing with others who have known better.
Again, thanks for the portion from Hayek. And tell Romulus is not entirely correct at post #8.
Yep, after a long-winded theorizing, it usually boils down to a recitation of Jewish names. Jews are damned when they vote Democratic, and they are damned when they join the conservative ranks.
Why did you ping me on this?
Well, I'm no advocate of democracy (as you will know if you've ever read any of my other posts), but this hatred of universals evinced by the "palaeos" is nothing but paganism. It is a rehash of the old lie that "indigenous" (if you're leftwing) or "autochthonous" (if you're rightwing) peoples "evolve" their cultures and their values slowly over the eons and that each "evolves" what is best for it. This is simply polytheism/henotheism. A different "gxd" for each culture perhaps? Hmmm?
They have propounded a new myth – the myth of America the Virtuous – according to which America is a unique and noble country called to remake the world in its own image. The myth provides another sweeping justification for dominating others.
Right. Every true conservative knows this is a lousy country that exterminated Indians, enslaved Blacks, stole the southwest from "indigenous/authochthonous" Mexicans, obliterated the quaint Japanese emperor-worship (just because our ships got in the way of their bombs) etc., etc., etc.
One kind of universalist ideology, communism, has been replaced by the ideology of American empire, and the stage is set for another cycle of crusading. With neo-Jacobins shaping U.S. foreign policy, whether as Democrats or Republicans, America and the world can expect an era of chronic conflict.
Once upon a time "chr*stendom" believed it had the one true religion which the rest of the world had to accept (in fact, they sort of invented "crusading"). It's amazing how many anti-universalist "palaeos" embrace this allegedly "universal" religion. Maybe they don't think it takes its universalism so seriously, huh? Maybe they think of it as merely the evolved religion of "the west."
Could any goal be more appealing to the will to power than ending evil? The task is not only enormous but endless. No conservative would need to be told that evil cannot be "ended"
Nope, no "true conservative" believes that evil is anything less than eternal. There's no ultimate victory of good in an apocalyptic, messianic, eschatological Kingdom of G-d, is there (that there'd be liberal commie do-goodism!)? I suppose Communism is ultimately the fault of orthodox religious messianism. So "palaeos" advocate heterodoxy in religion?
Already the Muslim world is seething with hostility.
Yep! It was only a matter of time!
China, which has long found Western hegemony intolerable and is already strongly prone to nationalism, can be expected to respond to American assertiveness by greatly expanding its military power. If present trends continue, the time should soon be ripe – in 50 years perhaps? – for a horrendous Sino-American confrontation.
But I thought that "palaeos" wanted to invade China and Cuba and was just against fighting their Arab darlings! Don't some "palaeos" insist that Israel secretly runs China and Cuba and that therefore it's all right to impose an American imperium on them?
For Christians, the cardinal sin is pride. Before them, the Greeks warned similarly of the great dangers of conceit and arrogance. Hubris, they said, violates the order of the cosmos, and inflicts great suffering on human beings. It invites Nemesis. On the Apollonian temple at Delphi two inscriptions summed up the proper attitude to life. One was "Everything in moderation," the other "Know Thyself." To know yourself meant most importantly to recognize that you are not one of the gods but a mere mortal.
Yeppers. Different ways of putting it in different (all equally valid, "autochthonous" cultures). But doesn't that make it sound like a--gasp!--universal truth??? Oh well. Mustn't give in to the commie one-world notion of there being but One G-d and One True Religion which must eventually triumph over all others. That's Jacobinism, unless it's done by "palaeos" praying to "our lady of Fatima."
As for the old Hebrews, in Proverbs (16:18) we read: "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."
What's this??? The Talmudic Khazars who are the source of all the eeee-vil in the world (that is to say, if evil is defined as the "Jacobin" belief that good and evil exist) being invoked by a righteous anti-universal "palaeo???" It is these very Hebrews (whose ancestors turned ancient Egypt into a COMMIE STATE under SOVIET DICTATOR JOSEPH and who were finally expelled by those fine upstanding autochthonous Egyptians when Moses fluoridated their drinking water!!! [/sarcasm]
The world needs "moral clarity," not obfuscation.
True conservatives of course despise moral clarity as much as they do the notion that a religion can be translated from the culture in which it "evolved" to another.
Many of those who shape the destiny of America and the world today are just such "terrible simplifiers" with absurdly swollen egos.
And of course true conservatives look with disdain on those with simplistic, good vs. evil worldviews. Maybe Revilo P. Oliver (y'sh"v) was right and the very concept of "good and evil" is so "alien" to the "aryan" mind that we should expunge it.
In 1789, George Washington proclaimed a day of thanksgiving for all the good bestowed by Almighty God on the American people.
The American "gxd," right? I mean, unless each nation "evolves" its own "gxd" and its own autochthonous worldview, crusading Wilsonianism is just around the corner, right?
He asked his fellow Americans to unite "in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the Great Lord and Ruler of nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions."
What??? "'The Ruler of nations???'" Treason! This is unadulterated Judaeophilia!!! One G-d implies one religion and the eventual accessions of all mankind to it, and that's the death knell of autochthony/indigenousness! And you know what that causes??? RACE MIXING!!! And not the good kind (Arabs), but the bad kind, with all those other people!
And the author teaches at Catholic University of America? So rightwing Catholics now officially believe chr*stianity is the religion of "western man" alone and that the other autochthonous cultures of the world should be left alone??? It's utterly amazing how many "catholics" are opposed to any sort of universal truth as being a radical "jacobin" concept.
And as a signature, I am not an advocate of democracy, Wilsonianism, American empire, or even foreign aid, but I am disgusted by the concept of subjective, utilitarian, national/cultural religion. If there is no One G-d Whose rule will eventually be recognized by all mankind then not only do "right and wrong" not exist, but all other ideologies (including "true conservative" ones that oppose the concept of "right and wrong") have no reason to exist either. Either reality is defined by the One G-d or it is made up of random chaos in which all ideological positions/goals are futile and illogical. The sin of Communism was that it was a non-Theistically based moral system. And apparently many "palaeos" subscribe to one as well. And there isn't a dime worthof difference between one non-Theisticall based moral system and another.
How odd that traditional morality (adhered to by some as Divinely revealed and by others as a product of eons of cultural evolution) should join on the same side of the political spectruem the True Believers (this writer) and the disciples of H. L. Mencken (y'sh"v) and the hoarde of professional Puritan-bashers. And I think people who chant "spiritual messiah" while advocating Caesaro-papism are hypocrites.
Either "conservatism" is what G-d says it is or it is merely another false system that must be rejected.
If and when there is such a hatred. However, they recognize that politics sits one step lower, if you get my drift (see reply #11). And that's where Ryn and others come from. They would espouse a constitution for liberty whose order is between the chaos of anarchy and the tyranny of universalized democracy or any other such millenial Reichs. Politics as such is historical existence--as long as that may be--without the consummation of the ages implied by the annihilation of evil. And politics as such does not espouse human mortality for the sake of embracing an all equally valid, "autochthonous" cultures. It admits that human empire and universals are not coeval and will never share the same destiny.
Hopefully these clarifications are not already made pointless by the usual polemicist's grandstanding. I can always trust they don't need to be.
I do not believe in any human system. However, man has been given (first to Adam, then to Noah, then to Abraham, and finally at Sinai) a system from Heaven. This system in no way abolishes the historical nations of mankind, but it does deny that the nations/races have separate origins (apart from Adam) or that religion is a subjective cultural trait that springs from the "blood and soil."
As for the distinction between history and metaphysics, it all depends on whose ox is being gored. Today's anti-messianic "palaeoconservatives" for the most part belong to a church which until very recently claimed the right to rule the world. Why isn't this "messianism" or "chiliasm" or "millenialism?" What about the "period of peace" that "our lady of Fatima" has allegedly promised mankind? Is this not millenialism? Is this not messianism? I fail to see why placing the "messiah" in heaven and having him rule the world through human proxies is any more "spiritual" or "supernatural" or whatever than insisting that it is the Messiah's job to rule the world personally from Jerusalem. The refusal to address this--the condemnation of messianism while clinging to the church that taught a proxy messianism for so long--is nothing but hypocritical. Or at least, I hope you can see why I would interpret it as such. And how many "palaeos" who attack universal systems illogically turn right around and either worship the medieval Catholic utopian "theocracy" or even advocate a return to that "theocracy?" Why is it that I can't get a "palaeo" to deal with this blatant contradiction?
Is it just that you guys don't want the "neos" to rule the world because you want to rule it yourselves?
As for the other aspects of "palaeoconservatism," I actually subscribe to many of them myself. But I am by definition disqualified from being a "palaeo" because instead of chr*stianity as the hope of the world I believe it lies instead in an older (and therefore inherently more conservative) religion--a religion which everyone other than me insists on identifying with modernity, but which I (apparently alone) still interpret as patriarchs with tents full of concubines, pastoral shepherds offering animal sacrifices, King David sitting on his throne, and Yehoshu`a Bin Nun slicing through Canaanites at a rate that no medieval crusader could have equalled.
The insistence that the Jews and their supporters are inherently "modern" or "anti-traditional" or "subversive" or "corrosive of morality" infuriates me as nothing else does (especially when it involves certain homosexuals who think they have the right to look down on Jerry Falwell as "not a true conservative" because he doesn't hate Jews). I have speculated on what lies behind this thinking in some of the articles at my web site. But at any rate, if Catholics can condemn Protestantism for introducing modernism by abolishing the mass, then how much the more can Judaism make the same accusation against chr*stianity for replacing the literal sacrifices with a "mystical" one. If this was not the first step from G-d-centered, cultic religion to a "religion of pure ethics" then Catholics can shut their yaps about how all Protestants are liberals who don't know it.
How would Jefferson be a neocon by today's definition? Hamilton, Clay, and their political lineage I can easily see but Jefferson?
That could be a contradiction, but contradiction must be part of life in middle-earth, life in the shadowlands--to borrow imagery from a protestant and a catholic-- for rule when there is no Messiah, as yet, to be had.
Although the classical and Christian view of human nature has eroded, big government still has a bad name in America. Challenging the Constitution outright remains risky. Americans attracted to the Jacobin spirit have therefore sought instead to redefine American principles so as to make them more serviceable to the will to power.
Before 911, I sadly scraped the Bush campaign stickers off my car. I was shocked at the spending, the expansion, the capitulation to big government ideas apparent in the Kennedy education bill, the kowtowing to poverty pimp loudmouths, the spineless reality of 'compassionate conservatism' and the 'new tone'.
With the war, however, I'm truly in favor of it. WE WERE ATTACKED. They want us dead. They can't be talked out of it or reconciled with.
I just wish we would use some nuclear subs instead of tanks and humvees to do the job. That method spills less American blood.
And you're right about Hamilton!
He's ruling all right... and His rule is the only solution to Islam. Certainly not the 'carrot and stick' game we are trying to play with them. It may work for some, but the true believers don't want security and prosperity. They want war and death. Individuals such as that must either be changed by Christ Himself, (through the work of christians) or killed.
The third way is the Hiroshima/ Nagasaki strategy, dealing with them as a nation and disregarding the individuals for now.
The flaw there is that we were almost crippled by nineteen individuals.
the condemnation of messianism while clinging to the church that taught a proxy messianism
That could be a contradiction, but contradiction must be part of life in middle-earth, life in the shadowlands--to borrow imagery from a protestant and a catholic-- for rule when there is no Messiah, as yet, to be had.
Now you're not making any sense.
Are you justifying the hypocrisy of opposing someone else's universal utopian system while promoting your own? Are you saying that an imperfect world justifies your religion's condemning Jewish messianism while claiming the right to rule the world? Are you saying that Jerry Falwell is a "heretic" for believing that your Nazarene is going to rule the world from Jerusalem but it is perfectly hunky dory for you to believe that "our lady of Fatima" is going to bring about a chr*stian world order ruled by the Pope at some time in the future? Are you saying that an imperfect world that can accommodate the utopian messianism of the medieval Crusades cannot accommodate the utopian messianism of the "neocons?" If so you are a hypocrite, plain and simple.
At least you could have the decency to say "the difference is that we're right and you're wrong." But you when I point out these maddening hypocrisies you just shrug your shoulders? Shrug them at the "neos!"
And Judaism is an older religion than chr*stianity, and therefore more conservative, and nothing in the world can change that obvious and self-evident fact.
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