From The Imaginative Conservative
By Donald Devine
The intellectual battle between the factions claiming the brand “conservatism” Vox Senior Reporter Jane Coaston.[1]has become “the fight over, well, everything” perceives even outsider
“After decades of cordial friendship
among different right-leaning factions” Libertarian Party Chair Nicholas
Sarwark simply told her the “conservative-libertarian fusion is pretty
much dead.” From the other end of the old partnership, she cites First Things’
Ben Sixsmith reminding us that the old social-libertarian fusion had
been criticized by major traditionalist thinkers from the very beginning
and that these have been “vindicated” today for warning against
prioritizing the rights of individuals over the needs of society, which
is why progressives won the culture war.[2]
To Ms. Coaston this divide between its
old elements represents the “end” of the fusionism that built the
“conservative movement” and, after a half-century, of the dominance of
this thinking within one of America’s major political parties. She was
by no means alone coming to this conclusion.
It is important for conservatives in the
tradition of William F. Buckley Jr., Frank S. Meyer, Russell Kirk, and
Ronald Reagan to appreciate this critique especially from this very
fair-minded analyst. She begins with social conservatives now
characterizing libertarians as understanding moral matters solely in
economic terms, “letting the free market decide what’s good and what’s
bad” rather than properly asking “what’s best for society?” She cites a
speech from the social conservative side by Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance against the “business wing” of the GOP.[3]
What I worry about is that we have outsourced, in the conservative movement, our economic and our domestic policy thinking to the libertarians . . . if we’re worried about the fact that in this country today, for maybe the first extended period in our country’s history, we’re not even having enough children to replace ourselves. If we’re worried about those problems, then we have to be willing to pursue a politics that actually wants to accomplish something besides just making government smaller.
Libertarians broke earlier as its
separate political party demonstrates giving up on a fusion it claimed
supported social conservative statism. But Ms. Coaston demonstrates its
increased intensity by referencing Fox News host Tucker Carlson who once
identified as a limited government conservative but now was
“increasingly embracing populist economic rhetoric, arguing that the
government can reshape culture to help nuclear families, and eschewing
libertarian economic concepts and libertarianism itself.” In an
interview he told her, “I was so blinded by this libertarian economic
propaganda that I couldn’t get past my own assumptions about economics.”
Ms. Coaston was particularly focused upon a debate between First Things’ social conservative Sohrab Ahmari and National Review’s
more libertarian David French. Dr. Ahmari argued, “There is no
returning to the pre-Trump conservative consensus that collapsed in
2016.”[4] Any attempt “would be misguided and harmful.” He gave credit
to the old conservatism for defeating Communism; “promoting prosperity
at home and the expansion of a rules-based international order;” and for
defending natural rights and even the “transcendent dignity of the
human person, as the visible image of the invisible God.” But “this
conservatism too often tracked the same lodestar liberalism did—namely,
individual autonomy. The fetishizing of autonomy paradoxically yielded
the very tyranny that consensus conservatives claim most to detest.”
He distinguished his position from Dr.
French’s by insisting the only way forward is to tame individualism and
limited government by seriously fighting
the culture war with the aim of defeating the enemy and enjoying the spoils in the form of a public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good. French prefers a different Christian strategy, and his guileless public mien and strategic preferences bespeak a particular political theology (though he would never use that term), one with which I take issue. Thus, my complaint about his politeness wasn’t a wanton attack; it implicated deeper matters.
In another essay Dr. Ahmari added that
“With a kind of animal instinct, Trump understood what was missing from
mainstream (more or less French-ian) conservatism.”[5] President Trump’s
“instinct has been to shift the cultural and political mix, ever so
slightly, away from autonomy-above-all toward order, continuity, and
social cohesion.” “Progressives understand that culture war means
discrediting their opponents and weakening or destroying their
institutions. Conservatives should approach the culture war with a
similar realism.” “Civility and decency are secondary values.” To
confront the left “is its own kind of moral duty.”
Dr. French countered that classical
liberalism did not mean refusal to challenge the left.[6] The question
was how? “If and when any of my political opponents seek to undermine
our fundamental freedoms, I’ll be there to pick a legal, political, and
cultural fight with them. I won’t yield. I won’t stop. I won’t be weak.”
But, from his social conservative side he added, “I also won’t turn my
back on the truths of scripture. I won’t stop seeking justice, loving
mercy, and walking humbly.” There is no political “emergency” that
justifies abandoning fusionist conservatism, and “there will never be a
temporal emergency that justifies rejecting the eternal truth.”
Dr. French argued the old conservatism
fused “two main components: zealous defense of the classical-liberal
order (with a special emphasis on civil liberties) and zealous advocacy
of fundamentally Christian and Burkean conservative principles. It’s not
one or the other. It’s both. It’s the formulation that renders the
government primarily responsible for safeguarding liberty, and the
people primarily responsible for exercising that liberty for virtuous
purposes. As John Adams said, ‘Our Constitution was made only for a
moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of
any other.’ ”
The American Conservative’s Rod
Dreher challenged both, asking “the French side of this dispute” to
present a “case for why the liberal order as it exists today — including
the weak church and feeble familyist culture — is capable of turning
back the rising tide of disorder. Seriously, I want to read that
argument. Conversely, what I would like to hear from the Ahmari side —
and what I need to work on doing myself — is an argument for how
traditional Christians would fare in a postliberal order in a society in
which we are a minority. Lose liberalism, we lose the First Amendment —
and then where would we be?”
He noted that The New York Times’s
Ross Douthat went further asking what good would a First Amendment be
in a “future society that remains formally liberal but resembles Aldous
Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ — dominated by virtual reality and eugenics
and mood-stabilizing drugs, post-familial and post-religious and
functionally post-human. Would such a society deserve the political
loyalty of (let us say) a traditional Christian or Muslim, just because
it still affords them some First Amendment protections? It is reasonable
to say that it might not.”
Ms. Coaston correctly concluded: “The
debate over libertarianism and conservatism, and over Ahmari and French,
isn’t just about what conservatives believe. It’s about what
conservatism is.”
The most comprehensive challenge to the
old fusionist balance was manifested at a recent conference in D.C.
launching what its sponsors called “national conservatism.” Texas Tech
University’s William Salter reported on it as separating itself from the
old conservatism in three major ways.[7] It was “much more willing to
question the efficacy and desirability of markets in allocating a
nation’s resources;” it philosophically distanced itself from
fusionism’s libertarian side; and it was comfortable using political
power to combat “social and cultural decline.”
Dr. Salter especially emphasized the new
leadership of Yoram Hazony, who he considered “the intellectual
godfather of the movement.” Dr. Hazony directly announced that, “Today
we declare independence from neoliberalism, from libertarianism, from
what they call classical liberalism. From the set of ideas that sees the
atomic individual, the free and equal individual, as the only thing
that matters in politics.”[8]
Beyond Dr. Hazony, Dr. Salter found very
wide support for industrial policy, for protective tariffs, immigration
restrictions, and promotion of national identity, “all carried out with
the assistance of a friendly national government.” While conceding that
not all speakers were in agreement, “the conference consensus seems
clear: it is time for conservatives to overcome their skepticism of the
state and, in the words of attendee J.D. Vance, ‘actually be willing to
use politics and political power to accomplish’ conservative goals.”
Like Dr. French, Dr. Salter noted that
the left’s centralization of power had been opposed over the last
century by conservatives who “favored federalism, a separation of
powers, and strong Constitutional protection for individual rights” with
“peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.” But the
progressives generally prevailed politically. Conservatives even fought
the “culture war,” but “balked at using the national government to do
it. National conservatives appear ready to discard these qualms.” “No
longer content to get the state back in the role of a referee, they want
to make it a player on their team.” “Making peace with the power of the
national government to achieve admittedly desirable social goals will
sever this link.” “If national conservatives take up the weapons of
their enemies to fight them, they will become that which they sought to
destroy.”
But it actually was Mr. Sixsmith’s “The
Fusionism That Failed” that put the whole argument in the proper context
by refreshingly focusing upon the old fusionism’s intellectual
forefather, Frank. S. Meyer by looking closely at what he actually wrote
about the fusion, although missing Meyer’s most important essay and
somewhat overstating much of the rest.
Meyer was broadly recognized as the
thinker who best caught the essence of early modern conservatism,
including by William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan themselves.[9] But
most of today’s debate has focused upon the possibility of political
fusionism, about building voting coalitions between libertarians and
traditionalists to achieve power, rather than upon the philosophical
synthesis that Meyer made the core of the old fusionism.
Mr. Sixsmith understood the distinction and explained it this way:
Meyer’s fusionism appeared to bridge the gap by advocating a political commitment to libertarianism and a moral commitment to traditional values. One should preach virtue, in other words, but not prohibit sin. This would have been an interesting synthesis even had it been born of pure pragmatism, but Meyer was more idealistic than that. Virtue, for him, depended on the individual’s having a free choice between good and bad deeds. “Freedom can exist,” he wrote, “at no lesser price than the danger of damnation.” Freedom was “the essence of man’s being,” and so man “must be free to choose his worst as well as his best end.” Otherwise, he is not virtuous, but slavish.
Other than the exaggeration of never
prohibiting sin—obviously Meyer would prohibit murder and other coercion
and fraud—this gets the essence of his and fusionist thinking generally
rather well, especially utilizing the key word, synthesis.
Even so, Mr. Sixsmith then immediately
cites libertarian Murray Rothbard complaining that Meyer’s
anti-communism limited his support for freedom, but also paraphrasing
traditionalist L. Brent Bozell Jr. to protest that Meyer thought
“Americans ought to maximize their virtue by maximizing their freedom.”
That is what happens to those who synthesize. Both sides complain that
the synthesizer synthesizes. But that is what synthesizers do in seeking
to resolve dilemmas.
While Mr. Sixsmith reasoned that “virtue
is necessary for freedom, not freedom for virtue,” Meyer, following
synthesis philosopher F.A. Hayek, agreed virtue is essential for freedom
but also believed that freedom is necessary for virtue.[10] The dilemma
of supporting both principles rejects over-rationalized assumptions
forcing necessary conclusions in a universe of fundamental complexity.
It is the difference between ideology and philosophical synthesis.
Coming from the more traditionalist
side, Mr. Sixsmith most fears freedom undermining virtue. Yet, it is in
fact the social conservative part of the fusionist synthesis that faces
the greater risk in making a pact with the centralized state, allowing
it to become adjudicator of morality and religious matters. As
sociologist Rodney Stark has so carefully documented, the state has been
the historical repressor of religion and that even in its more moderate
garb of protector has most often coopted religion as an instrument of
its own secular and often immoral interests.[11] Indeed, the greatest
accommodation to that protector role is to become an established state
religion, the persisting resentment against which today explains much of
the continuing hostility against Europe’s recognized churches and about
the decline of the mainline sects in the U.S.
There is an even more fundamental reason
for social conservatives, especially those identifying with
Judeo-Christian traditions, to be cautious in abandoning an
individualist libertarian emphasis, the essential one emphasized by
Meyer in his generally overlooked essay, “Western Civilization: The
Problem of Political Freedom.”[12] Here freedom rests upon its God-given
origin. As the Declaration of Independence put it, the freedom many
social critics denigrate was “endowed” to each individual “by their
Creator” and ostensibly should not be taken away morally from them even
by frustrated and well-meaning peoples on the right.
Consider that Genesis recorded an
individual freedom granted even to disobey the Creator Himself, for the
original transgression and ever since. How much simpler it would be if
He had not. The goal is not what is “best for society” much less
“enjoying the spoils” but for individuals to choose rightly. There may
be a “danger of damnation” eventually but not here. Forget about the
state: is even family the highest social value over individualism? Jesus
made this remarkably un-societal statement about that premier social
institution and individual choice. “Do you think I came to bring peace
on earth? No I tell you but division. From now on there will be five in
one family divided against one another, three against two and two
against three” (Luke 12:49-53).
Machiavelli, Rousseau and most of the
great critics indeed traced individualist freedom and its threat to
state power to Christianity as the reason for the modern turn from
ancient communal social order to autonomy and chaos. Rousseau’s The Social Contract was quite clear on this:
Jesus came to set up on earth a spiritual kingdom, which, by separating the theological from the political system, made the State no longer one and brought about the internal divisions that have never ceased to trouble Christian peoples. As the new idea of a kingdom of the other world could never have occurred to pagans, they always looked on the Christians as rebels who, while feigning to submit, were only waiting for the chance to make themselves independent and masters, and to usurp by guile the authority they pretended in their weakness to respect. This was the cause of the persecutions.[13]
But “what the pagans feared took place”
and the Christians came to power and turned into authoritarians
themselves but “this double power and conflict of jurisdictions”
remained intrinsic and “made all good polity impossible in Christian
States.”
This freedom and autonomy, separation
and division of power, and rebellious individualism are still what
frustrate the critics. These indeed have powerful intellectual
progenitors but history has shown the state as the most powerful
corrupter. There is a good reason Western civilization so surprised the
world with its superior economic and social orders after adopting this
strange idea of limiting power by dividing it rather than by increasing
it. And as much as libertarians might avoid the fact, and Dr. Ahmari
criticize it as too libertarian, the roots of this freedom in the U.S.
go to religious roots too, but mostly to non-conformist dissidents like
Roger Williams, William Penn, and Lord Baltimore who planted the seeds
of religious and general tolerance with charters limiting state control
over religion even well before American independence.
Mr. Sixsmith actually correctly
concluded that “we need a new conservative fusion” since the old one was
exhausted, a conclusion I reached six years earlier.[14] Unlike an
ideology, any such synthesis based upon a tension between fundamental
principles needs constant reevaluation. The 1960s solution certainly has
“atrophied” as Buckley himself conceded soon before he passed away. And
listening closely to today’s critics so alienated from the old fusion
is an essential requirement for any such revival. But not at the cost of
Creator-given freedom, not by giving more power to the princes of this
world to define morality, but by dividing and decentralizing power so
that the little platoons of the more virtuous are free to pursue
responsible happiness.
Notes:
[1] Coaston, Jane. “David French vs. Sohrab Ahmari and the battle dividing conservatives, explained.” Vox, June 5, 2019.
[2] Sixsmith, Ben. “The Fusionism That Failed.” First Things, June 2019.
[3] Vance, J.D. “Towards a Pro-Worker, Pro-Family Conservatism.” The American Conservative, May 29, 2019.
[4] Ahmari, Sohrab. “Against David French-ism.” First Things, May 29, 2019.
[5] Kimball, Roger. “Sohrab Ahmari and Our Existential Struggle.” American Greatness, June 1, 2019.
[6] French, David. “What Sohrab Ahmari Gets Wrong.” National Review, May 30, 2019.
[7] Salter, Alexander William. “National Conservatism and the Preference for State Control.” Quillette, July 31, 2019.
[8] Hazony, Yoram. “Why National Conservatism? – National Conservatism Conference.” National Conservatism. July 19, 2019. Video, 33:46.
[9] Devine, Donald. “The Enduring Tension That Is Modern Conservatism.” Law & Liberty, May 20, 2015.
[10] Hayek, F.A. “The Theory of Complex Phenomena.” In Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science, edited by Michael Martin and Lee C. McIntyre, 55-70. Cambridge: A Bradford Book, 1994.
[11] Stark, Rodney. How the West Won: The Elected Story of the Triumph of Modernity. Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2015.
[12] Meyer, Frank S. “Western Civilization: The Problem of Political Freedom.” Modern Age, (Spring 1968), 120-28.
[13] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Social Contract and Discourses. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1923.
[14] Devine, Donald J. America’s Way Back: Reclaiming Freedom, Tradition, and Constitution. Wilmington: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2013.
The featured image is “Argument Over A Card Game” by Jan Steen (1625-1679), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
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