Yesterday I wrote my Thursday column about the ways in which authority contributes to both natural and supernatural human flourishing.
A friend wrote me to protest that, while he certainly agreed about the positive role of authority in political life, my examples of those who wrongly imagine we can live without hierarchy and authority came only from the progressive Left. But he pointed out that these days the most potent enemies of hierarchy and authority tend to be on the Right.
I must say that I find myself chastened. It is indeed the case that today free market libertarians are the most likely people to dismiss the role of authority in human flourishing. At most, they envision a minimal regulatory authority refereeing on the sidelines while we all pursue our own goals in the great scramble of “creative destruction.” But, in the main, for the free market ideologues authority corrupts, making us poorer and less happy.
And not just libertarian disciples of Milton Friedman. Significant portions of American conservatism are animated by a populist fantasy that thinks that government should “just get out of the way.” This populism tends to dismiss various socially sanctioned forms of authority—Ivy League professors, award-winning journalists, and so forth—labeling them as part of a “liberal elite.” The effect is to celebrate good ol’ boys (and girls, as in the case of Sarah Palin) at the expense of the usual social hierarchies.
I support free market approaches to economic life, and I’m sympathetic to critiques of an elite liberal bias, a bias that undermines the legitimacy of elite institutions. But my friend is correct. The ideological fantasies of the Right in America today are at least as likely, perhaps more likely, to reject the necessary and humanizing role of authority.
Some do so cynically, of course, mouthing some of the slogans of Tea Party populism so as to get the votes, while quietly preparing to assume positions of authority. This doesn’t surprise me. After all, the vast majority of higher level political figures in America, liberal and conservative, are part of a permanent elite that lives in Washington, D.C. (or visits very frequently). I call this approach limousine populism.
To a certain degree a rejection of authority is an American problem that transcends distinctions between Left and Right, or more accurately, it’s a problem that has a liberal form (fantasies of egalitarian, participatory democracy) and a conservative form (fantasies of spontaneous human flourishing once we’re freed from the oppressive burden of government). As Toqueville pointed out, our ethos is democratic, which entails an antagonism toward hierarchy, so these fantasies are probably inevitable.
I’m an American, and so I participate in the democratic ethos, which means I feel the same antagonisms toward authority. Emerson runs through my veins.
But I try to avoid the fantasies of life without authority. As is the case with so many of the positive achievement of modernity, the democratic ethos is primarily corrective. That is to say, like a healthy dose of skepticism, which can separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, a jaundiced view of authority can encourage a fitting critical sentiment that scrutinizes the legitimacy of the powers the oversee and govern our lives.
The problem comes when there is very little authority and hierarchy left to critique. Then the democratic ethos meets little resistance, and it becomes determinative and destructive. I fear we’re reaching this point.
January 14th, 2011 | 4:00 pm
Well, a true conservative would be a monarchist, not a republican; most of the so-called right are merely reactionary, so their philosophy is not consistent.
Libertarianism addresses the over-reach of particular institutions and doesn’t address how much authority you have in your life. This is because true authority and coercive institutions don’t necessary co-exist. Think about it- the government attacks parental authority, religious authorities, local and/or traditional authorities, etc… With freedom of association and private property, we can have as much authority as we want, but as long as the government continues to interfere, we cannot.
January 14th, 2011 | 4:42 pm
Hmm…
I don’t know that one (Right or Left) is more or less likely to reject authority. I think each rejects authority over differing aspects of life.
“The Right,” for example, particularly those with a bit of a libertarian streak, seem to reject political-and-associated types of authority. As you say, they support the idea that government should just “get out of the way,” particularly when it comes to such issues as the free market. Many (most?) of the Tea-Partiers, however, would probably also identify as social conservatives, and are (or at least profess to be) quite happy accepting divine/Biblical authority over their own lives, and in fact could arguably be said to endorse the advancement government authority on such issues as abortion and gay marriage.
The Left, it seems, is precisely the opposite. While they are (mostly, at least the ones we’re talking about here) loathe to accept authority over their personal lives (say abortion, gay marriage, etc…) they are precisely the ones arguing for greater authority in political-and-associated arenas.
So I’m not sure that the Right or Left is more or less guilty of rejecting authority – it seems that the question is more about whose authority, and in what arenas of life, is being rejected.
January 14th, 2011 | 11:22 pm
The question for conservatives is really which authority we are talking about. Local authority? Or some centralized federal authority? The authority of the parents? Or the authority of sex educators in school? It has less to do with a discomfort about authority as such and more to do with the question of which authority one submits to.
It is also a mistake to think of liberals as ‘anti-authoritarian.’ Many libertarians make the mistake of thinking that it is possible for the government to be entirely nuetral on questions of morality. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Liberals are not interested in scrapping authority per se, but rather want to replace traditional authority and its Christian morality with a new and ‘progressive’ authority imposing a new morality.
Finally, conservatism can have national variants. One of the points of being conservative is that there is not a one-size-fits-all form of government. Within the American tradition, conservatism has always comfortably occupied a classically liberal framework. I see no major break from Burke here.
January 15th, 2011 | 7:16 am
Please write more about Emerson. I view him and Thoreau as completely flaky!
Also, what’s with these Catholic intellectuals (e.g., Thomas Woods) connected with the Von Mises Institute at Auburn who despise Abraham Lincoln as a tyrant?
January 15th, 2011 | 11:04 am
[...] new book by Victor Lee Austin and makes some enlightening comments about authority (later amplified here). With the exception I note below, I do not disagree with Rusty, but I think the discussion would [...]
January 16th, 2011 | 8:37 pm
I think too many people mistake credentials for authority. But I’ve been hanging around Ph.D.s all my adult life, and I know there are a lot of credentialed idiots out there who think their expertise in one narrow subject translates into the authority to expound on totally unrelated matters.
Beyond that, however, I have found that a great many people with credentials in their particular field are not at all knowledgeable in that field, the result of the collapse of intellectual and academic standards in a great many disciplines as a concomitant of the rise of post-modernist deconstructionism. In my own field of history, for example, I find plenty of Ph.D.s who simply do not have mastery of the basic facts (e.g., chronology) or understanding of historical methods, or the use of evidence. They begin with a conclusion largely determined by an ideological bias and work backwards through the body of evidence to cherry pick and rearrange facts into what appears (to them) to be an irrefutable argument. I end up refuting a lot of those.
What has happened in the last decade or so to undermine the “authority” of the credentialed is broad-based access to a vast array of information via the internet. This makes it difficult for the credentialed idiot to argue from authority, because arguments that appear to defy common sense can be fact-checked, countervailing arguments can be identified and evaluated, and in general, nobody gets by on faith alone, anymore.
Which, overall, is a good thing. Trust facts, not persons.
As that eminent Conservative authoritarian, William F. Buckley famously observed, it would be better to be governed by five hundred names picked at random from the phone book than by the entire faculty of Harvard University.
January 17th, 2011 | 10:50 am
Marco wrote
“Also, what’s with these Catholic intellectuals (e.g., Thomas Woods) connected with the Von Mises Institute at Auburn who despise Abraham Lincoln as a tyrant?”
Well, recall the crown of thorns, woven with his own hands, that Bl Pius IX sent to the imprisoned Jefferson Davis.
January 28th, 2011 | 2:22 pm
A disappointing effort from Mr. Reno.
The notion that there is no regulation outside the government is simply wrong. Profit-loss, competition for market-share, and tort law are real regulators, real authorities that protect consumers, enable innovation, and punish offenders without restricting freedom.
The Holy Father avoids this muddled thinking, recognizing that the market is a humanizing place of exchange.
If Mr. Reno wanted to critique libertarians, he could start with those who support abortion (what about the individual?) and gay marriage (marriage pre-dates the State and falls outside legislative revision)
He could even critique the tendency (shared with Progressives) of some libertarians to the Whig Theory of History.
Failing to distinguish dystopian anarchists from libertarians concerned about the COERCIVE authority of the State? Intellectually dishonest.
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