1. A couple of readers suggested that I drop the pointy headed Strauss stuff and comment on the trendy localism posts of the Porchers, the (First) Thingers, and all that. My real experience is that most of them were kind of boring—no offense.
2. It goes without saying that I’m against “localism” or “traditionalism” or any other “that’s the ticket” ism as a solution to the pathologies specific to modern life. Jody Bottum and some others are right to remind us that local life has its own pathologies. That’s a good shot against the selective nostalgia of all romanticism. It also means a stronger local life might balance out us cosmopolitans (like Deneen, who jets all over the place evangelizing localism). A lot of localist “theory” is an admirable self-help program, and certainly many are improved by it. But self-constructing roots–or trying to horn in on the roots grown by others–is going to work less than perfectly. And it often deserves to be poked fun at in the style of the classic GREEN ACRES. This is not exactly real criticism either–all forms of human life have their laughable and screwed-up parts.
3. Because of nationalizing influences (which give us stuff like justice and prosperity), local life is a lot less racist and anti-semitic than it used to be. So localism and localists aren’t even unwittingly encouraging those “redneck” (hardly the same as localist) pathologies now. We do have to remember that a lot of nationalization was in response to racism, and even that it might have been better had the South been more reconstructed than it actually was. It wasn’t Lincoln who destroyed the sense of place in the South, but the South’s refusal to give up what it should have given up. Too many localists (although not so much those in blogland) remain nativists, forgetting the greatness of America–which is about the romance of citizenship or a home for all the homeless–described by Chesterton.
4. The distinctively local features of life in Floyd County, GA are God, family, and country. This is a land of evangelical patriots, and they always tearfully stand up when they hear Lee Greenwood. I would like to see the localist theorists say more good about those actually living the home-grown life. Their faith and their churches lack aesthetic sense, they shop at Wal-Mart, they talk a lot about hunting, God, cars, football, and golf, they are very charitable and neighborly, and they have huge screen TVs. They like both country and rock. They vote Republican for pretty legitimate God and country reasons. I can’t say it’s bad that their lives have been improved by anti-racist and (yes) anti-sexist justice and even by having enough prosperity to travel around some in jet planes and on Interstates. They don’t have to choose, often, between making money and staying near the extended family. Hardly anyone farms for a living.
5. We do have people living the more totally organic life around here: aging hippies, home schoolers of a certain kind, a few professors, and others too. But they’re “secessionists.” They have their own little communities and often their own little churches. They don’t run the place, and the major charitable and community undertakings aren’t theirs.
6. The most localist thing Rome, GA has done in recent years is to get its own minor league baseball team and a cute little stadium. Everyone goes there, and people drive up from Atlanta for the excellent cheap seats and fine concessions.
7. I am really, really for SUBSIDIARITY. That is, government policy ought to promote voluntary caregiving based on love. We should take pride that, even now, most Americans still believe the sick, the disabled, and frail elderly are the responsibility of the family. In the European social democracies, most people regard them as the government’s problem. Thinking about that fact alone should have been reason enough both not to have voted for Obama and to have worked instead, with Yuval Levin and others, to get McCain to read, take seriously, and really defend his health care alternative.
These aren’t really serious, they’re easy to understand, and there’ll be more.
July 2nd, 2009 | 12:17 pm
[...] and the more that I read the ongoing kerfuffle over localism that has spread from PoMoCon and FPR to First Thoughts and Daniel McCarthy, the more I think a similar distinction might be [...]
July 2nd, 2009 | 1:48 pm
“I am really, really for SUBSIDIARITY.”
You are really, really not, as your precedng six points make clear.
July 2nd, 2009 | 3:38 pm
1. Mr. Strauss’ head was round.
2. It’s strange to qualify localism and traditionalism as “that’s the ticket” -isms when their basic insight is that there is no ticket, and we might was well stop trying to find one, and if there is one it certainly isn’t an airplane ticket, and we might as well just live our lives humbly where we were born and do what our ancestors say because we probably are too dumb to know better. Just sayin’.
3. “Nationalizing influences which gives us stuff like justice and prosperity” – or codifies injustice and forces bad monetary policies upon the land. Nationalizing power doesn’t “give” us anything; it just ups the stakes. That is, it can make things go decently well or, really, really, irrevocably screw them up. Same with all concentrations of power.
4. That they shop at Wal-Mart is not an indictment of their “localism” but an indictment of a system that forces even the localists to become globalists. They shop at Wal-Mart because it ran all the other, small, companies out of business. But the real problem is that even such communities are departing from the traditional forms of community -precisely because of Wal-Mart and the fact that hardly anyone farms and other things that you mention in your post. Why would we hold up a local community being undone by globalism as the model of a local community?
5. I mistrust those who want to “set-up” organic communities. The whole point of something being organic is that it isn’t set-up.
6. Good on Rome, GA.
7. You say you’re for subsidiarity but you describe charity. If you were for subsidiarity, you might be for something like states’ rights, unless that was a bit too “secesh.”
Yours, &c,
July 2nd, 2009 | 4:05 pm
What do you think of Tocqueville’s argument that civic virtue is better cultivated in local settings e.g. Town Hall Meetings?
July 2nd, 2009 | 6:17 pm
[...] Lawler on localism.(This will become important later, see below) [...]
July 3rd, 2009 | 8:40 am
VMG, Your whole response is distorted by inexorable talk. Consider 4–there’s no “system” that “forces” them to shop at Wal-Mart. Rome is big enough that local alternatives remain. Wal-Mart is convenient, cheap, one-stop shopping especially helpful for busy people with large families. They could chose to visit the butcher (we have one), the baker (several), and the candlestick maker (well, not sure there), but they often don’t–because it would cost more and take all day. The same with Home Depot–there are reasons of cost and choice why it’s often judged better than the local hardwares… The meaningful designer shopping is the province of those who have the time and taste for it. I myself rarely go the Wal Mart and about never to Home Depot, because I can afford to pay a little more and (like Mr. Dreher) have an easy job. In any case, stop making people victims!
July 6th, 2009 | 2:50 am
Mr. Lawler, you have a sufficient ability to build a good political argument, but you are gravely lacking in your understanding of the complexities of culture and its economic correlations. You assume that “free will” is far more free than it is. In fact, I’m not sure that you have much insight on freedom outside of your American patriotic sense, and that really leaves a lot of empty space in your assumptions. VMG has made numerous, solid points, to which you haven’t really offered a retort.
July 6th, 2009 | 9:40 am
Joshua, Thanks for your positive judgment on my ability, which you clearly are capable of making from your elevated view. My argument has to do with finding more good in ordinary people and their communities and their judgment and their virtue that “some” seem able to do. The victimization comment was admittedly a debate point, but I think I probably more attuned to the complexities than those who exaggerate the dependence of who people are on their mode of production. Of course culture and the economy are connected etc etc, but “capitalism” doesn’t reduce the great mass of people to nothing in some inexorable way, as a great man said. Another overrated man said we’re living “after virtue,” but the truth is we’re living “during virtue.”
July 6th, 2009 | 12:07 pm
Incidentally, Wal-Mart is pushing businesses out of Rome, Georgia, but it’s not the local ones. Large chain grocery stores are disappearing because they can’t compete on price. Millican’s (sp?), the locally-owned gocer down in Silver Creek is still doing about as much business as always, I suppose.
The nice thing about local businesses is that they’re flexible. They know better than the one-size-fits-all chain stores what the community needs, and if a game-changer comes like Wal-mart comes to town, they remain in the game.
I think my main problem with the FPR folks is that they underestimate one of the main virtues of the local community — its ability to adapt to changed circumstances.
July 6th, 2009 | 3:15 pm
Mr. Smiley, Your studies are out of date. Millican’s has become a Piggly Wiggly, although the same guy owns it. (I live almost exactly across the street from “Millican’s” on Legion Drive.) Rumor has it he went with the Pig because he has harbors the ambition to open new stores. the former Millican’s is expensive and limited, but it is flexible, genuinely full-service and even sort of fun. Business, I think, is not great, and it probably has been hurt some by Wal-Mart, which is only about 4 miles away. One beneficial effect of Wal-Mart has been to keep the Kroger, which previously dominated the local market, honest and innovating. Before Wal-Mart, we probably suffered from the high grocery prices that come from inadequate competition. The Kroger has adapted nicely to the changed circumstances and is no danger of dying. We really need a Publix, though, to get these all these stores more flexible and consumer oriented.
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