Posted on 01/21/2004 4:04:13 PM PST by optimistically_conservative
Jim Kalb's websites: His main page, here, lists dozens of pieces. Let me suggest beginning with his brilliant Conservatism FAQ (here), and his essays Traditionalism and the American Order (here), and PC and the Crisis of Liberalism (here). Be sure too to visit Turnabout, Jim's blog, here. It's one of the best-written and most thoughtful ongoing shows I've run across on the web.
2Blowhards: Can you explain what you mean when you write about (and criticize) "liberalism"? The way you use the word will be unfamiliar to many people.
Jim Kalb: By "liberalism" I mean the form of political modernity that's triumphed. Modernity is the attempt to base everything on human thought and purpose rather than tradition and religion. If you apply that to social life then society becomes something for people to reconstruct in the interests of whatever goals they happen to have. Naturally, different goals are possible, so the real question becomes whose goals count. If it's group goals that matter then the whole enterprise boils down to group self-assertion and you get fascism. If it's goals of the individual, you get liberalism. So liberalism is basically the view that society should be understood as a kind of conscious arrangement or machine that should be reconstructed and adjusted continuously to give people what they want, as much and as equally as possible.
[snip]
2B: I always found Hume's view of reason agreeable. He seemed to see it as a terrific tool, but as nothing but a tool, and appropriate only for certain kinds of tasks and chores. The French always seem to make the mistake of looking to reason for 'way too much. But I blab. How do conservatives see reason?
Kalb: Hume is more skeptical than most conservatives are. There's a tendency today to interpret reason in a very restrictive way, as formal logic together with scientific observation and theorizing. If you do that then reason becomes very limited in its scope, and Hume's comments become very sensible. Most conservatives I think tend to avoid Hume's skepticism by accepting a broader understanding of reason that includes whatever has to do with being reasonable, with dealing with the way things are and coming to sensible conclusions. They're likely to view Pascal's intuitive mind as well as his mathematical mind (here), and even his recognition of the need to make commitments where proof is lacking, as part of reason.
2B: I like to suggest to people that we need to get over our fear of the word "conservative" because we're all conservative to some extent. We have to be in order to survive. How and why did people get scared of the word?
Kalb: As you say, to function at all everyone has to accept things that are traditional or anyway not chosen. It's all a matter of degree. People should be thinking about the role different ways of thinking, including conservative ways of thinking, play in dealing with the world. Once they do, the conservative case is mostly made. The point of modernism is that there's going to be one clear theory of everything. If you admit that conservative ways of thinking have some permanent value then the modernist dream of a single system of ever-more-perfect rationality falls apart. Greater acceptance of tradition becomes the coherent way to go forward.
I think the ultimate reason people are afraid of conservatism is that they don't want anything to touch them. It's frightening to think that we don't make the world and can't control it, that we have to accept and trust things that lie outside of us that we don't understand completely. After all, the world can seem very threatening, and it's nicer to think that there are experts somewhere who understand things and take care of everything for us. Also, telling people they just have to accept some things makes them worried someone's going to put something over on them. The conservative answer is that there's a kind of cumulative implicit consensus we can look to, but someone has to discern and interpret the implicit consensus so it's hard to get rid of the worry altogether.
2B: I find many media conservatives (Bill O'Reilly, etc) unappealing -- gloating bullies who like to use ridicule and tell people, "Tough, kid, suck it up." To what extent to such people represent the kind of conservatism you discuss?
Kalb: They are indeed conservative, since what makes their views what they are is that they choose some things that are inherited or natural at the expense of liberalism -- that is, at the expense of a direct attempt to maximize the equal satisfaction of individual preferences. They're not thoughtful, though, so they can't explain why they reject the liberal program in favor of something else. The result is that their conservatism takes on an aggressive and arbitrary quality, at least in style.
[snip]
2B: So what is conservatism?
Kalb: It has a negative and a positive aspect. On its negative and theoretical side, it's a rejection of political modernity. It says that the project of basing society on human thought and purpose can't work. One reason it can't work is that purposes and thoughts need a social setting to make sense. If our purposes and thoughts need a setting they don't also construct the setting. It has to be something that already exists that we're entitled to take for granted.
2B: Conservatism and libertarianism are both generally viewed as right-wing. Can you spell out the main differences between them from the conservative point of view? What, in your view, are libertarianism's shortcomings?
Kalb: They're both viewed as right-wing because centralized bureaucratic control is the main engine of social rationalization at present. From a theoretical standpoint ideological libertarianism is just another form of rationalism and not at all conservative. As a practical matter though it's mostly an ally of tradition because it opposes the main current enemy, the PC social-services state. The shortcoming of ideological libertarianism is that it says that a very few simple principles are enough for the whole of government and social life. Depending on circumstances that shortcoming can cause serious problems. In practice of course things get complex. People who call themselves libertarians sometimes have a strong streak of philosophical conservatism. They might find libertarian terms a better way to explain their case to the American people and even themselves. That kind of fusionist position can work to the extent the political disputes that matter don't involve government functions that conservatives want to keep and libertarians don't.
2B: Is liberalism the opposite of conservatism? Or is radicalism the opposite of conservatism?
Kalb: I'd say that modernism is the opposite of conservatism. Liberalism and radicalism are both forms of modernism -- liberalism is an individualistic form and radicalism an aggressive form.
(Excerpt) Read more at 2blowhards.com ...
I might be off, but I think we are in agreement with how conservatives use reason based on an understanding of history and tradition to guide them in analyzing the present and progressing to the future ("parents preserve institutions for the young who grow up and maintain/make changes to such and such institutions").
I also appreciate your insight into the conflict that then arises between what is perceived as traditional institutions ("protect the order they are familiar with").
I greatly appreciate your explanation to your dissent on the Iraq war. Previously, I had enjoyed your dissent mostly in the best tradition of wartime dissent expressed by T. Roosevelt and R. Taft.
I think that we depart on what I understand is your assertion of fusion between "New Deal Conservatives" for national defense and "radical liberals" to 'rebuild the Middle East'. Are the "neoconservatives" the radical liberals or the "New Deal Conservatives"? Both?
I think it is important to seperate the Schlesinger mirrors on this forum from non-party ideologues that also consider themselves conservative.
Is there a conservatism that can support progress in the liberation of oppressed here (19th century and mid-20th century civil rights) without accepting the socialized rememdies of the 20th century's latter half?
Is there a conservatism that can, with all it's historical faults and mistakes leading up to it, repel the invasion and occupation of Kuwait and then, after 12 years of the resulting entanglement, decide to finish Saddam's regime as preferable to walking away or dealing with the status quo?
Where WWII provided clearer distinctions in scale and ambition, conservatism in the more subtle Cold War with communism and now hot war with Islamists, challenges thought about stark lines or nuance.
Liberalsim became infested with socialism and even communism. Conservatives provided an opposition to that threat within, but debated how active we needed to be to the same threat from outside our borders.
I don't think that debate has been resolved.
The idea that there is an external threat is itself a pathos, so I am not sure we can begin a policy discussion quite yet. I view "9/11" as a national security/political issue (it was traumatic and therefore there was a vacuum to fill) as one that required an internal solution (closed borders, investigations, renewed calls for an armed citizenry and civil defense...) first before an external solution. Though the event occured in NY and DC, as a people the Americans associated the event as a community and there was much greaf, however, there was no rush to sign up for the military there was say in England when Germany 'violated' Belgium in WWI. The populace has become content to simply pay their taxes which says something about the relationship the American people have with their government in its own right.
Also, patriots who would cite Waco rather than 9/11 as the climactic event that shaped personal views about man and his government, know that if only the government had warned the people that this type of attack could happen, and record show the government knew for up to a decade that 'radical Islam' planned to use hijacked jet liners, I believe the reaction would have been like that which greeted the shoe bomber, Richard Reid.
The problem with nomenclature and conservatism here is that the neoconservatives are a distinct spin-off from the left where as the New Deal Conservative, best captured in the actions of Ronald Reagan, a patriot, saved Social Security and the welfare state arrangement...but who used American power sparingly as the Old Right would prefer.
The neoconservatives, if you read Irving Kristol's book, have a distinct world view that does not come from the United States tradition of thoughts on liberty or the relationship of the individual and his government. A quick read of the Federalists Papers or should confirm as much. There is no attempt by the neoconservatives to base their ideas back to the forefathers, however, New Deal Conservatives, and Ronald Reagan, often employed the imagery of the forefathers and Reagan loved to use patently Old Right libertarian rhetoric, even if he was less successful delivering on policy.
Before we get to finer points of ideology, American liberty traditionalist look at the arrangement of individual and his government through the lens of praxeology, the 'physics' of human society, where as the neoconservatives, imported from the Left, believe in harnessing the power of the state to accomplish this or that. Certainly the Rightwing neoconservatives believe in toppling regimes (indeed, the phrase "creative destruction" is lifted from the Italian fascisti) and the leftwing neoconservatives believe in "humanitarian" missions like Serbia-- using two recent examples.
I have offered on several occasions a way out to understand the Iraq situation: "a terrible dictator has been removed and the often cruel Clinton sanction regime has been ended."
This is a center-left explanation, however, it also suits the Republicans well.
I resist ideological world views in the spirit of Russell Kirk, so I will not argue we would better off this way or that way, however, I will say that as an American Christian patriot, using vast propaganda techniques through layered media ownership to convince 51% of the public that they are under attack is the traditional way states goes to war, and Americans and the West have traditionally reject aggressive war.
An interesting case study on the West's relationship with War would be Stalin's overt invasion of Finland and Poland, contrasted with Hitler's use of the SS who dressed up as Polish soldiers and 'invaded' Germany. We could get into the role of ethnicity and world view, however, currently that is generally out of the artificial bounds set by the PC folks mentioned in the blog.
Since the Christian patriot never knows if the leader of the state is good or bad (God before country, in Islam God is acting through the 'state' mind you and Allah is never wrong), we are required to look at the process by which the state went to war.
I am not a political scientist but I think the future of conservatism is in 'radical localism.' If we can recapture, in a transient time, a sense of what it means to live in our towns, enjoy a drink at the bar with friends, stroll some open lands, perhaps the populace will be less likely to fit their world view with the desired of the DC-regime.
Thus will have to rebuild from the bottom up; rebuild the institutions that make self-government possible. I am less inclined to think and set of ideas can compete against a $2 trillion a year Leviathan, $22 trillion in debt, will reform itself. Indeed letting in foreigners, and then declaring the problem too big to do anything but offer amnesty smells of an end game in the relationship between man and his government.
The best we can hope for are moral men at the top, however, the position is simply to vast for any single leader to handle it 'scandal' free. There are many alien and anti-patriotic men in Washington who slip in and out of private or public positions to further either personal gain or Gramscian gradual revolution.
In conclusion, I think this conservatism you are looking for begins at home by re-adopting the habits of a free people. Plot your family tree for instance and do the work to go back as far as you can; reintroduce ethnic traditions of your people be they Scottish or Greek; learn the history of your state and region--not through contemporary books, but go back in time and purchase books from 100 years ago.
If the people will change from believing in America the ideal, to America, the historical nation where my people settled, perhaps a real conservatism could be born again.
From the praxeology perspective, the large states are finished. One of the most amazing developments from the past 50 years is the role of fiat currency in checking world events. After Roosevelt divided up the world with Stalin, there were few markets that a man of wealth could stick his dollars so most of it came to the United States. This allowed for the largest credit expansion in the history of the world and the state sure did wrack of a credit card bill ($22 trillion indeed.)
However, as we saw in this past war, the state which wants stability (a tenet of conservatism) could not behave with full flexibility. The dollar is crashing overseas; oil republics are threatening to switch to the Euro; the Chinese are laughing; the radicals, the neoconservatives who have been pushing to remake the Middle East argue are either dumb or are simply apathetic to the check the currency market has placed on the United States.
Because Americans, over the last ten years, have not received a meaningful tax cut, and the Fed has been selling money at such a cheap rate, cheap consumer imports (see Wal Mart) have been the key to preserving order. Lose the sense of the order of the moment, Presidents, governors, and Congress, gets tossed out but the radicals don't care about stability indeed, they thrive in chaos. That is how the Old Right pegged the neoconservatives as radicals (French Revolution) or Trotskycons (red baiting) or phonycon Ivy Leaguers (populist) whatever neat name sounds good for consumption to the audience.
His ideas are exhilarating at first, but eventually one might think that for better or worse, most of us are "embedded" in the existing society, and however much we might hope for its improvement or conversion, we don't wish for its decline and fall. I get the feeling that Jim is a conservative -- and a particular kind of conservative -- before all else, while other people may be that and other things as well with sympathies, loyalties, and attachments to existing institutions, the social world around us, and this moment in history.
If it does happen that all of modernity crumbles and our social and political world is replaced by city-states, or autonomous communities, or voluntary self-protection societies, it's hard to see how many of us who grew up in the world as it is today would fit in, or whether we'd give such new institutions our loyalties and our whole-hearted devotion. It's also hard to view such a "paleo" transformation as truly "conservative" if conservatism implies attachment to existing institutions and ways of life. We may see greater devolution of power downward to smaller units and it may be a good thing, but it's hard to see how turning one's back on the nation-state or the wider ecumene is at the heart of conservatism.
One of the paleo assumptions seems to be that a new world built around the decline of the nation-state will be freer, happier, more righteous, more authentic or more natural than the existing order. That's a vision that one can well be skeptical of, as one is skeptical about socialist or anarchist visions of the shining future. For many alive today, there is a "nostalgia for the present" that prevents us from embracing such schemes, but beyond that it's possible to question whether such transformations are necessary or possible or truly beneficial and just what end they are intended to fulfill.
I am envious of your eloquence.
I can not think of anything to add.
The Right was generally enthralled and still hasn't asked, how much is this going to cost?
Communication and direction from the White House has been less than clear so it would hard to argue where this is all going in an Left/Right situation, however, its fair to say, we are still in a moment of hysteria; when the currency markets stop moving, perhaps, we can suggest the hysteria has passed.
It was an event in a string of events over 30 years.
National Commission on TerrorismAugust 2, 2000.
Not sure that puts me on the right or left, but perhaps we should return to the terrorism of the 70s to make that determination rather than 9/11.
Washington set up a base of operations in Kuwait, intercepting Iraqi communications and radioing orders to rebels. The United States armed Kurdish insurgents. The C.I.A.'s "Health Alteration Committee," as it was tactfully called, sent Kassem a monogrammed, poisoned handkerchief, though the potentially lethal gift either failed to work or never reached its victim.
Then, on Feb. 8, 1963, the conspirators staged a coup in Baghdad. For a time the government held out, but eventually Kassem gave up, and after a swift trial was shot; his body was later shown on Baghdad television. Washington immediately befriended the successor regime. "Almost certainly a gain for our side," Robert Komer, a National Security Council aide, wrote to Kennedy the day of the takeover.
As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958.
(in a question of ideology, you have not laid out facts that will sway me one way or the other. Indeed, these facts reveal something about your faith in the state. I get the sense you have a classical history background, and you know how impossible it is to get historians to agree on any single event thus we must rely on, what Marx called ideology, to understand political history in order to make sense of our world.)
Let me add one point to my previous post as it relates to responding to the question of support for this war (an act of un-(stability) and a welfare handout where support is purchased (stability or entitlement):
1. At the end of the day about 40% vote Republican and 38% vote Democrat and the unwashed middle of 32% makes up the center that determines elections. Of that group are the single issue folks who made their aligments years ago however their choice is stay home or vote(we know them as guns, abortion...) which is different then those who have a financial stake in the outcome: any perceived ethnic minority votes a Democrat which really leaves the elderly as the most important swing vote that the GOP can win. So with the war (not stable) the GOP has to deliver for old folks and Big Pharma and we get welfare.
The Old Right knows that in a large democracy welfare always follows warfare.
The elderly need stability because they often live on either a fixed income or because culturally they feel the gubmint owes them something--of course this is the Greatest (Looting) Generation.
Surely you are not implying a connection between 9.11 and Saddam? ;-)
No, you went pan-Arab on me, so I answered back with a relevant intervention in the Middle East, but also exposed the hollowness of the 'New Deal Conservatives' who look at the Iraq war as a legit means of self defense.
I think you should take a look at the synapses of Charlie Wilson's War to begin a critique of American foreign policy and its relationship to 9/11.
Or if "they hate us for our freedom" does it for you, then, look just site the 2000 Congressional study. ;)
Maybe. It's only logical. But perhaps, the reverse would make more sense.
For Robert Taft or Ronald Reagan, Howard Buffett or H.R. Gross, free market conservatism meant getting back to something that they knew and understood and had lived with: America as it was before 1933 or 1913. Whether or not this connection was entirely true it made rough sense. Conservatives of that generation could talk about "state's rights" because the nation-state and national boundaries were realities taken for granted. They might mourn the loss of traditional morality, but it seemed to be something known to all and close at hand that one could only reach back for to restore. Barry Goldwater could propose "radical" solutions because they implied a return to a way of life that he and many in his audience were familiar with at first hand.
Free marketeers today are advocating something that they haven't had so much experience of, and it would seem more caution would be in order. They won't be able to count on national borders or traditional social norms. In an age when anyone's job can be shipped away to some place where it can be done cheaper and when parts of the country could well go their own way without the rest of us, radical decentralization looks like a big risk, and the nation-state starts to make more sense. When things change too quickly, when basic mainstays like religion and tradition no longer provide security, it's only natural that many will oppose accelerating change yet further.
Or to rival your floating of the 'JFK', what are the odds that a son of the Vice President was having dinner the night before with the brother of the man who nearly killed the sitting President, Ronald Reagan?
History is both troubling and unmystical that way.
It is either simple if you trust the institutions or complex if you think the institutions are corrupt; at that point, it becomes very hard to sign on with the herd for the issue of the moment though the temptation to chose simplicity can be overwhelming.
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