My problem with your localism, Rusty, is the Jews.
But, then, it’s always the Jews, isn’t it? Or the blacks, or the foreigners, or the diseased. The problem usually comes down to the Jews, though. In the experience of Western civilization, the Jews have proved for a long time the stone against which the practice and the various political theories of localism have stumbled.
That, as an aside, points toward a defense, or at least a semi-defense, I’d be willing to make against the charge that G.K. Chesterton was anti-Semitic. Hilaire Belloc, I think, genuinely was an anti-Semite; when he said, “rootless cosmopolitans,” what he really meant were the Jews. Chesterton was, instead, struggling with the fundamental dilemma of localism, and when he said, “the Jews,” what he really meant were rootless cosmopolitans. In other words, Belloc bought the idea that the Jews were the problem, while Chesterton bought the trope that Jew was a handy word to use to describe the problem. They’re both bad, but it’s possible to argue that one is less murderous than the other.
So what is this problem at the root of localism? Part of it involves the simple philosophical point that all definitions—even self-definitions—require, at some point, an assertion of what the defined thing is not. There is no such thing as an entirely positive definition. We define by genus and difference, as Aristotle put it, and the point extends as far as Spinoza’s famous metaphysical formula: “All determination is negation.”
It was philosophically naive of, say, the Southern Agrarians to imagine that they could get a self-understanding that didn’t involve marking themselves off from the Negroes and the Yankees. She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb, as your home state song once declared, Rusty. Huzza! She spurns the Northern scum! / She breaths! She burns! She’ll come! / Maryland! My Maryland!
Meanwhile, the practical part of localism’s dilemma involves, first, the fact that successful localisms attract immigrants, and the presence of immigrants undermines the localism.
It involves, second, the historical truth that people seem only to praise and defend a localism when it’s already in decline. And sometimes, as now, when its communal aspects have already gone completely except as a romantic memory—which makes those who now argue for it as much outsiders as those who argued against it. As a writer we know once put it, “rebellion against rebellion doesn’t escape the problems of rebellion, and a chosen tradition is never quite the same as an inherited one.”
June 30th, 2009 | 1:43 pm
Jews, then and now, seemed to be rather patriotic and all for localism:
“How shall we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten. Let my tongue cleave to my jaws, if I do not remember thee: If I make not Jerusalem the beginning of my joy.”
or as you would have it:
“Look away, look away, look away, Dixie Land.”
Ask Phillistines about the cosmopolitan nature of the Jews…
June 30th, 2009 | 2:10 pm
Right, Okie, but the question we’re working on here isn’t the localism of the Jews themselves, but the problem that various Western localisms have supposed that the presence of Jews creates.
June 30th, 2009 | 3:21 pm
[...] Jody rightly draws attention to the role of anti-Semitism in the sort of modern conservatism that sees history, tradition, and [...]
June 30th, 2009 | 3:39 pm
[...] Reno and Jody Bottum mix it up over at First Things over issues of localism, a hot topic of late on the internets, it [...]
June 30th, 2009 | 3:44 pm
I was going to say something, but Dr. Reno undoubtedly said it better than me…
June 30th, 2009 | 4:12 pm
[...] Bottum says the problem with localists is that they’re all raving racists. O goody, let’s get down to brass [...]
July 1st, 2009 | 9:54 am
[...] Joe Carter, managing editor of First Things, has been gracious enough to put up with my jokes at his boss’s expense, so forthwith, I offer the following as the more serious (but still less than serious serious) response (which Joe was hoping for) to Jody Bottum’s writing on the alleged racist tendencies of localist visions. [...]
July 1st, 2009 | 12:20 pm
I have one question that I hope I can get an answer for in this context: is nepotism evil? (And I don’t mean just irrational, or kinda unfair, I mean outright evil.)
July 1st, 2009 | 2:39 pm
I’ll quote this from a post on my blog regarding the debate between Mr. Bottum and the Front Porchers:
Let me be frank. Does localism engender racism? To a degree, yes. Does localism engender conflict? To a degree, yes. Does localism engender prejudice? To a degree, yes. But that is because localism is, at essence, humanism; it is Man in his proper state, a life lived on a human scale. And Man is not perfect; even in in his proper state, in a well-ordered community, he will have problems.
But let us not forget that it takes modernism to make local racism scientific racism and justify mass genocide; to make local conflicts bloody global wars; to take prejudices and make them national policies, enforced by a pervasive state.
The impulses behind racism and violence are not inherent to any system, but to man. They will be present in a localist society because all of Man’s nature will be present in its proper proportion, and a mistrust of the unknown and willingness to use force to avenge wrongs is part of our nature. We can try to “engineer” or legislate these things out of ourselves, through the grand liberal project that views Man as infinitely malleable. But we will not be able to legislate or engineer them out without legislating or engineering out something far more important -our humanity.
To paraphrase Chesterton, the liberal bargain wishes us to stop being human so that we may start being humane.
The “localist” or “traditionalists” or “Front Porchers” or whatever-you-have-its have a different vision; they propose that we be human, but do not and cannot guarantee that we will be humane.
(Full Post here: http://rumromeandreason.blogspot.com/ )
Yours, &c,
July 1st, 2009 | 3:13 pm
I have to call foul on this attempt to change the subject from localism to the alleged anti-Semitism you think it hides.
Localism may or may not include anti-Semitism. In neither case is this dispositive of anything, contrary to your inference. In spite of what the current First Things seems to think, the world does not fact revolve around Jews, and it not proper to evaluate everthing in existence by asking the question, “How does this affect Jews?”
Does this publication really need a second Spengler?
July 1st, 2009 | 3:16 pm
“Meanwhile, the practical part of localism’s dilemma involves, first, the fact that successful localisms attract immigrants ”
Obviously this need not occur, and in fact has rarely occurred in world history.
July 2nd, 2009 | 6:49 am
[...] Caleb has already noted here, Rusty Reno and Jody Bottum have been mixing it up over at First Things over issues of localism, a hot topic of late on the [...]
July 2nd, 2009 | 11:02 am
Bottum basically wants to know, “but is it good for the Jews?”
July 2nd, 2009 | 3:35 pm
“So what is this problem at the root of localism? Part of it involves the simple philosophical point that all definitions—even self-definitions—require, at some point, an assertion of what the defined thing is not. There is no such thing as an entirely positive definition.”
Replace “localism” with “America”, “Western civilization”, or “the family” — or, for that matter, “Christianity”.
In what possible way is this portion of Bottum’s argument anything other than an argument against ANY form of identity?
In what possible way does the preceding reasoning differ from that found in John Lennon’s “Imagine”?
July 8th, 2009 | 7:10 pm
[...] Jody Bottum on Reno’s localism [...]
July 9th, 2009 | 6:03 am
[...] in as I have been inspired by FPR’s recent online debate and its extensive write-backs and cross-links. So here I am and hello to you [...]
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact