1. What may be the GREATEST issue in America’s leading journal of the philosophic dimension of political science is now out!
2. There’s a SYMPOSIUM on Bob Faulkner’s THE CASE FOR GREATNESS, featuring Don Maletz, Andrew Sabl, Mary Keys, Wayne Ambler, and Bob himself responding with grace and depth to his astute critics.
3. NOT ONLY THAT: There’s a special extended book review section, featuring long reviews by David Nichols, our Carl Scott, David Schaefer, Lauren Weiner, Graham McAleer, and (our book review editor himself) Paul Seaton.
4. I’m not kidding when I say that every contribution this time is great. (Eat your heart out POLITICAL THEORY, REVIEW OF POLITICS, and even INTERPRETATION.)
5. Mary Keys: “Faulkner’s [George] Washington who is good as well as great and always mindful of the priority of duty over honor represents the pinnacle of virtue in political life, yet even that majestic peak is gray-stoned and heavy, unable to rejoice and be happy and fully free in the sun that shines on it.”
6. That suggests, in Mary’s eyes, that magnanimity can be reconciled with joy only by being balanced with humility. “Humility opens magnanimity’s doors wider to make room for gratitude, delight, and wonder, and lightens the weight of greatness….” “Humility well-understood emerges as enabling and liberating rather than, as many post-Christian moderns would have it, crippling and constraining.”
7.Our Carl Scott on the shortcomings of the “WCS” [West Coast Straussian] interpretation of the progressives, Woodrow Wilson, etc. (Obviously, I’m actually only giving two of his three criticisms.): “First, it has not sketched an alternative solutions to the real problems that had emerged in the urbanizing, industrializing, and party-and-courts-dominated America of the late 1800s and early 1900s.”
8. Carl goes on: “Third, and perhaps most importantly, it has not been willing to consider the rise of the progressive movement as a response to certain political desires and goods that were not adequately addressed at the time, and which never can be by any merely natural rights approach.”
9. Those two criticisms cry out for development by Carl and others. And certainly someone needs to get Glenn Beck in on the discussion.
November 8th, 2010 | 6:23 pm
Any chance that Carl’s book review/essay makes it out to the general audience. It could be the beginning of what ought to be an important intraconservative conversation. It seems to me that any move to a more limited government politics that is rooted in constitutional restraint of government will have to be accompanied with a well thought out and politic policy agenda that is articulately explained (think Charles Kesler and co. meet Yuval Levin and co. meet Marco Rubio.) A politics rooted in constitutional restraint and inferences from natural rights and that is hazy on policy or is not taking public opinion into account tends to lead to unpleasant experiences out there in the broad American debate. You start with radical sounding statements and end up beating furious retreats as a way of maintaining political viability. It is isn’t entirely a WSC problem. It shows up in the paleo-libertarian version of constitutionalism (think Rand Paul right after he won his primary.)
November 8th, 2010 | 6:25 pm
Meant WCS. Sorry.
November 8th, 2010 | 8:46 pm
Peter,
I trust you will be ready to try out some of these criticisms of the WSC critique of Progressivism at the BYU conference on The Constitution at Risk? — starting a week from Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2pm, with a lecture by Charles Kessler. (Conference runs through Saturday morning. Let me know if you want to come to Provo.)
November 9th, 2010 | 7:04 am
Peter, you are a GREAT PR guy. You did well to highlight Bob Faulkner’s response to critics – it’s a tour de force (poor Andy Sabl comes in for a deserved drubbing); Carl’s l-o-n-g review essay has the gems you highlight and many more, but so does David Nichols respectful, appreciative, and judiciously critical review of Will Morrisey’s second “Self-government, the American Theme” book. Glen Beck needs to read it as well. Thanks for featuring the underappreciated genre, the book review.
November 9th, 2010 | 11:07 am
We have to hope, Ralph, that that is not above my pay grade.
November 9th, 2010 | 5:19 pm
Thanks all…as Mary Keys advises, I will try to lighten the load of my greatness with some humility, and lots of gratitude towards my editors. (And I will also mention the fine review by my colleague and Montesquieu expert Flagg Taylor of Paul Rahe’s book Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty.)
A couple points.
I want to stress that much of my review is an appreciation of the WCS interp of progressivism, particularly Pestritto’s contribution. The WCS intepretation is a breakthrough that has altered the terrain of scholarly debate about the progressives, and what is more, it seems to some degree to be altering the content of contemporary conservatism itself. My review of Pestritto’s Wilson book is quite late to the party (5 years after publication), but that allows me to show why and how it has deservedly become a landmark book in American intellectual history.
A quick thing you can learn from my review, or simply by thinking a bit, is that two ultimately distinct nomenclature trends are making it likely that liberals and conservatives will often talk past one another when the word “progressive” comes up. The reasons many liberals had for re-adopting the progressive label in the late 90s and aughties are distinct from the growing conservative interest in talking about the original Progressives. The WCS case that the ideas of the original progressives are the “roots” of today’s progressivism is quite strong, but most of today’s progressives know very little about, and are very little interested in, Wilson, TR, Croly, and so on. I dare say you might learn more about the roots of modern progressivism from Stanley Kurtz’s hot new book Radical-In-Chief than from Pestritto’s still-hot 5-year-old book.
Over at No Left Turns they’re also talking about the problem of talking about progressivism.
November 10th, 2010 | 12:13 am
Boo! (Yes, I’ve been scarce.) This is super-important stuff. I actually suspect that a lot of self-styled progressives really are, increasingly, American Progressives at a gut or instinctual level, especially when you consider the thread that led us to Rorty.
But you’re right, Carl, as to where credit is due in a big way. As for Peter’s begged question and your third criticism, I’d say that the itch which natural right / Declaration + Constitution can’t scratch is radical nationalism. Even all that purple talk of Union in the Federalist is far, far away from the Whig -> Republican mysticism of AMERICA the nation-state unitary and whole. And Lincoln is not Aristotle – the Union did not ‘predate’ the States in the way that the flower ‘predates’ the flowerbud. Industrialism is a red herring insofar as it points toward a Progressivist/scientist/historicist frame of reference. The matter is already brought to a head by considering the eternal political (Liberal?) question of radical nationalism.
November 10th, 2010 | 8:30 am
The reader hopes that Carl and James might expand their comments on ‘progressivism’ and ‘radical nationalism’ rather than leaving us hanging.
If Obama and his coterie represent the modern ‘progressive’ how do we properly interpret the Tea Party folks?
It seems our contemporary progressives are joyful participants in ‘immanentizing the eschaton’ and while that’s not an ‘eternal politcal’ problem, history has taught us that nothing good will come from it.
November 10th, 2010 | 11:30 am
Pete, it always sounds like you want two different things: a policy agenda that corresponds to or is consistent with the traditional constitutional functioning of the powers delegated to the government, and policies that appeal to opinions which, due to the influence of fifty years of centralized bureaucratic regulation, no longer think of politics in terms of justice but in terms of economic efficiency. It seems to me, any policy agenda that aims to return to what you call a limited govt politics rooted in constitutional restraint must have as its long term goal redefining the way Americans think about government and what it actually means to govern a nation. Americans, including the rednecks where I live, sound more and more like social scientists. And that ain’t good for constitutional government.
November 10th, 2010 | 1:14 pm
Brad, the reason to pay heed to Pete is that even in the most vigorous vision of “return,” America still has to deal with its current massive obligations, not to mention the mass mindsets that still(!) give Obama 46% approval. I’m not an economics and entitlements policy guy, but that policy has to be gotten right, both in terms of having a high likelihood of working, and having a fighting chance of being passed into law.
The era of big government is not over. And if we post-mody conservatives get all we ask for, there would still be a lonngg era of pretty damn big government in the process of gradually devolving more power to localities, states, businesses, civil society, etc., and some features of bigness would never go, and shouldn’t.
Robert, BTW, I don’t think I’m in agreement with James, but the matter isn’t exactly clear. I’ll just say I can imagine (and I insist the WCSs are obliged to try to imagine) a healthier American politics than the one we did get by around 1900 without our post-Civil War forefathers having first radically questioned America’s nationalism; nor do I see how such questioning, beyond presenting the basic moderate-Porcher and Tocquevillian case for empowering localities (which are more important than the states, incidentally…there’s just one of the itches that a rigorous adherence to WCS doctrine cannot quite scratch), can be a part of better politics and public philosophy. One cannot seek to save the nation by questioning the notion of the nation. And yes, people are going to use terms like “industrialism” and you have to work with that even if you would like to promote less sociological/progressivist terminology.
November 10th, 2010 | 9:31 pm
Ben, everything Carl said (and better than I could have.) I would also add that it seems to me that our politics is quite a bit about justice (and disagreements about the content of justice.) If our politics were primarily built around economic efficiency, we would be farther along in and have fewer disputes about how to handle the Social Security shortfall
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