1. That’s basically the charge against our friends THE PORCHERS leveled by Mr. Cheeks below. It’s surely a bad sign that our friend Caleb from Kansas (who was one of my two favorite Porchers) has left the Porch. The charge, as I see it, amount to this: They’re not really talking about AMERICAN Porches these days.
2. My criticism has always been they’ve always had the tendency not to be talking American porches as they really are these days–full as they often are of evangelicals [or even Mormons!} resting up with the kids after a tough trip to WalMart. I do think it’s true enough that a socialist or distributist or redistributist monarchist could be a conservative, but not an American conservative.
3. In addition to Caleb’s love of Kansas, for the record, I love or loved Jeremy Beer’s outing of all the downsides of pure meritocracy–especially, of course, TECHNO-MERITOCRACY. I can’t stand the libertarian praise of the menu of choice gobbled up by merely preferentialist, seventh-day recreationalist, emotionally mobile, and otherwise displaced bourgeois bohemians. And I certainly agree with Tom Wolfe that our officially egalitarian world is actually marked by an unregulated or state-of-nature struggle for status that rewards the clever and shameless far more than the decent and virtuous. (See Wolfe’s I AM CHARLOTTE SIMMONS with the brilliant film THE SOCIAL NETWORK). The lives of ordinary people are pretty darn tough these days–marked as they are by deep and somewhat unprecedented economic AND moral anxiety.
4. So one slogan of POSTMODERN CONSERVATIVES is: Neither Porcher nor libertarian…
5. That doesn’t mean, of course, that either Porchers or libertarians are wrong about everything. It might even mean that a good dose of one is one way of curbing the excesses of the other.
December 6th, 2010 | 12:57 pm
Seems to me that there is a tendency to talk about porches as they were and not as they are. This is a danger for conservatives (and I mean here the porchy-type of which I am one).
The trick is this, one cannot “revive” conservativism and there were no golden ages. But one can (and ought) convert from a life of placeless-gluttonous-leviathan to something more noble which has always been with us.
It is not to “restore” but to “fulfill” our nature as human persons. Modernity isn’t modern, it’s as old as the abyssal layers of Jericho. And it’s answer has always been tribal life; connected, rooted and meaningful.
I don’t mean here primitivism. But I do mean personal relations grounded in the real. That real could be intentional like the examples set by monastic orders around the globe or natural like clans and family farms.
This is hardly socialist (in fact it depends on absolute property rights), but in this age of “those not for me are against me” everyone assumes that we must be socialist if we’d prefer the world without Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company.
December 6th, 2010 | 11:52 pm
You guys think you have it all figured out. Some kind of dichotomy between pomocons and porchers. Neither of these modes presents a life worth living. Rather, these are merely tropes which give form to disassociated lives. To be sure one can quote Tocqueville or even Heidegger. Nonetheless, one is stuck in rhetoric.
Don’t get me wrong, I realize that we are creatures distinguished by speech, but this rhetoric
December 7th, 2010 | 10:52 am
John, I like the heat you bring…but try to have some awareness of the bag we’re in as usually being marginal egg-heady academics, and try not to assume too much about how disassociated our lives are. Peter did participate in the Bioethics debate in a major political way, and his contributions remain out there on that score. As for trying to have it all figured out about the correct model for going forward…well, that’s what political philosophers are supposed to do. Do share your alternative model, or confess to driving aimlessly at present. (I’d also note that POMOCON offers much less in the way of describing a best mode of life than does the Porch.)
Your attack may better characterize my position than Peter’s, as I’m not fond of his slogan here “neither Porcher nor libertarian.” Ours is an hour in which the populist libertarian aspect of the tea-party is to be welcomed, and in which one needs to pay attention to the libertarians most schooled in economics, but ultimately the purist libertarians give me the creeps. By contrast, part of my heart does reside in the imagined Porcher Republic. I’m not a Porcher, but I’m way less of a non-Porcher than I am a non-libertarian.
December 7th, 2010 | 11:43 am
For the moment, I’m somewhat repulsed by the TEA-PARTY fantasy that our present debt crisis will produce a rollback of the welfare state and a return to our past “constitutional greatness.” Having said that, I welcome a good deal of the populist libertarianism as a way of energizing citizens, although not so much as actually mode of governing. Still, I like the heat being brought to.
December 7th, 2010 | 5:44 pm
The problem is, there aren’t any AMERICAN porches left, and if there were, they’d have been foreclosed by now. I think the greatest romanticism is the belief that there is some magic bullet (raise taxes, lower them, increase/decrease spending, whatever) that will save the current system. Obama’s a one-termer for sure; but President Palin (or whatever look-alike is next) will be a half-termer. And then…who knows. But we are at the stage where everything done to fix the system only makes it worse. There is no way to find jobs for the 15 million (an optimistic number) unemployed, much less the 200,000 new workers that come on stream each month. There is no way to pay our debts or win our wars under the current institutional arrangements. And then we will have to re-think some basic assumptions.
Romanticism is always followed by anger, and then by violence. And then by who knows what.
December 7th, 2010 | 10:15 pm
Dr. Lawler, if that were the case I’d agree with you but I don’t think it is. I think we have a condition were the TPers seek a moral restoration grounded on distinctly American first principles.
It is amazing to me that these, by all accounts, humble folk seek this restoration in an age of deculturation that results from the loss of reason. For me, these TP people are singularly remarkable because they appear to understand that the process that has destroyed the “image” of God in society is distinctly secular and statist.
I do believe the TPers are America’s last chance.
December 8th, 2010 | 11:29 am
As I have said elsewhere, I am not a monarchist, and I don’t think you can cram the square peg of monarchism into the round hole of America, but that said, I am troubled by the “eww… Medaille has uttered wrongthink” feel to some of the reaction. Medaille’s critique of modern democracy is spot on, and his proposed solution should be dealt with on its own terms. It’s as if we will tolerate only so much illiberalism and no more.
December 8th, 2010 | 12:44 pm
[...] Lawler at the First Things Postmodern Conservative blog has weighed in on the controversy. | | | | | [...]
December 8th, 2010 | 1:48 pm
[...] few thoughts on monarchy regarding the recent discussion, started by John Médaille’s two [...]
December 9th, 2010 | 1:32 pm
Come on, Robert. Would a Tea-Party led “moral restoration grounded on distinctly American first principles” really bring us any closer to the truth about who we are as persons than the welfare state’s liberated individual? If we take O’Connor and Percy’s view (not Sandra Day, but she might do to) we might be tempted to say that keeping the welfare state and its failures around a little longer might divert us less from the truth than restoring the founders’ view. We postmodern conservatives want to know.
December 10th, 2010 | 11:22 am
I would argue the question would be better framed first, by avoiding any prefix such as “neo,” or “post,” or “new”, simply because we are, following Voegelin, analyzing the process of deculturation due to the loss of reason. And, as Voegelin notes, the Western culture (of reason) has provided the means to examine and begin the process of reclaimation and restoration.
Second, I’m concerned by your use of the phrase, “..welfare state’s liberated individual?” I do think those folks captured by the ‘welfare state’ are in a condition that is not ‘liberated’ but rather, in many ways, resembles the olde African chattel slavery sans the racial definition e.g. that the ground of any statist regime means some form of slavery for some of its people.
Third, I’d take issue with your comment that we are seeking to answer the query related to “…who we are..” Now, I’d agree that there are those folks seeking to answer that question but I think in terms of the actual inquiry we are more interested in solving the delemma of Western ‘deculturation.’ And, that is inherently a pneumatic inquiry that reflects the movement in the tension between myth and revelation, where the ultimate end of philosophia is the experience of man and the Divine.
The reason why I continue to insist on a “republican” restoration is because that form carries with it the obligation of the individual in community (and all that that implies), provides the freedom (a mimetic ‘freedom’ that follows the gift of the Divine) of the individual to participate in the search, to worship, to live in the love of God, and finally, the form of gov’t that provides the best opportunity to resist the perverse inclinations of the ‘libido dominandi’ by not interferring with the natural inclination to establish a national myth and the social ‘openness’ to publicly examine and critique the injuries inflicted “in the movement of speech” by the doctrinization (an element of deculturaton) of both philosophy and theology.
I’m pretty sure the Lady of Andulasia wrote extensively on this process of deculturation.
December 11th, 2010 | 1:21 am
I am sorry to say that I have missed a large majority of this debate due to exams and papers. However, it is certainly very fascinating considering the number of comments and opinions offered (the purpose of a blog). I am inclined to say that the original author of the blog on monarchism seems to be on to something in that his position seems sufficiently Straussian. My definition of Straussianism may not be the general definition because I am inclined to believe that his understanding of Nietzsche made him highly doubtful of the proper willfulness of democracy. I am not an advocate of the monarchy but i certainly find the position offered by Hobbes in Leviathan seems reasonable insofar as it gives the plebs their proper dues. I appreciate Dr. Lawler’s excellent analysis of the situation and would recommend he write a blog on the economic issues making their way through our “democratic process” but I know that’s already coming having got to personally hear his well thought-out answer. You sir perpetually amaze me by your ability to have well reasoned opinion on literally everything.
January 4th, 2011 | 8:13 am
“I do think it’s true enough that a socialist or distributist or redistributist monarchist could be a conservative, but not an American conservative.”
True — there are no American conservatives. America is a radical Enlightenment project.
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