So it’s Sunday and a so a day of rest from politics and economics.
Not only that, it’s THE FEAST OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY. And I was inspired by the sermon beginning that we, made in the image of the God, need to get more insightful about God so, among other reasons, we can be more insightful about ourselves. The priest giving the sermon, who actually is fairly well versed in “Rat Choice Theory” (the theory of our philosopher-pope), even went on to say that God is a unified yet relational being. What we long for God has and we can’t have without his help (due to our sinfulness) is achieving unity with other persons while retaining our personal identity. We seek, it almost makes sense to say, the truthful mean between pantheism and Lockean/Cartesian Deism.
Well, that last sentence wasn’t in the sermon.
Let me add one more: The Trinitarian view is also the mean between the polis-envy of civic communitarianism and libertarianism. In that respect, it’s one of those infamous THIRD WAYS. But it is a way that more effectually secures limited government than libertarianism or even Deistic natural rights all alone. Because being personal is being relational (and logos itself is irreducibly personal), freedom from government is freedom for the family and freedom for the church (church, of course, including synagogue etc.). The latter freedom is for personal participation the truth embodied in an organized, relational body or institution for thought and action.
In a historic compromise, a growing number of counties in Georgia are allowing liquor by the drink after 12:30pm. You shouldn’t be drunk in church or Sunday School, but there might be good reasons to want a drink afterwards. The effectual truth of this line of legislative deliberation is reduce the Sabbath to Sunday morning, the part of Sunday that depressed Kris Kristofferson.
Now that it’s well passed noon, I can, under the law of Floyd County, start drinking in public and, I would suppose, start blathering about politics and economics.
So let me appreciate the insight of John Lewis often displayed in the threads: Americans respond to BRANDING. That’s really true, or it better be. My college has more than once hired big-bucks consultants to improve our brand. It should go without saying that what they thought of we would have thought of ourselves. But we now have the solace of experts affirming the obvious.
Political philosophy—or, in one famous view, the political presentation of philosophy—has always been about branding. One form of branding involves WAVES. There are, of course, three waves of increasing radicality and ridiculousness when it comes to the community or communism involving woman and children in Book 5 of THE REPUBLIC. The most laughable and tyrannical wave is the rule of philosopher-kings, the personal politicization of philosophy.
We might assume that the imaginary rule of philosopher-kings over the imaginary cave would involve a lot of branding.
For Strauss, each of the three ways of modernity seems increasingly ridiculous and tyrannical—moving from Locke (America) to Rousseau/Hegel (revolutionary France and socialism) to Heidegger (Nazi Germany).
I acknowledge of course that the branding of America that involves the Founders (=first wave, comparatively good) vs. the Progressives (=second wave and so much worse) has considerable truth and has been very effective. Actually, lots of American branders have accepted that distinction as crucial, and the progressives differ from the founderists on the issue of what’s progress and what’s decline.
My objection to this branding these days is that the second and third waves have been pretty much discredited by ridiculous and tyrannical events. As Rorty explains, even though our nonfoundationalists have a certain family resemblance to Heideggerian radical historicism, they lack the philosopher’s fascism. They oppose foundations on behalf of the life and liberty of persons around these days, and you might say their undefended foundation is pretty first wavy.
So I turn to Jim Ceaser’s brilliantly innovative branding of POLITCAL, LEGALISTIC, and POPULAR constitutionalism. They aren’t waves or historical phases. This is branding I can believe in and spin to my own purposes.
I only have time to raise my first objection: Jin says that popular constitutionalism has many been defended by liberals in opposition to elitists or libertarians who say that the welfare state is unconstitutional. As even our friend William Voegeli has conceded, if we conservatives were to convince people Social Security is unconstitutional, tha would make the Constitution unpopular, not Social Security. So liberals say that the people decided that the welfare state is constitutional with their votes.
But Jim is curiously silent on the second form of popular constitutionalism—the kind that opposes the rights-based elitism found in ROE v. WADE and subsequent decisions, not to mention notorious “high wall” decisions on religion. The people really need to feel in their bones that the Constitution is not what the Court says it is in ROE and especially LAWRENCE v. TEXAS and be encouraged to employ political means to resist that distorted and pernicious abuse of legalistic constitutionalism.
There’s more. And obviously I mean this to be branding for provocation. I would question the pay grade of someone who actually agreed with me.
June 3rd, 2012 | 1:07 pm
I am happy that Peter can now go out and have himself a glass of cabernet while he constructs his blog posts. His current, which is quite sober, is an essay on “wavism.” There was a long discussion of this theme on a French radio program that focuses on philosophy, and more often than not political philosophy. It is called Repliques, and the host is the philosopher alain finklekraut, who is very much an enthusiast of tocquevile, manent, and strauss. Manent appears regularly. At any rate this last program featured jean claude michea, a fairly well known political theorist. He is quite good, too.
As i said the program turned pretty much on waves. I will call it a debate between waves and dams.
michea argues that liberalism, which begins with hobbes, locke etc., by the logic of waves turns into progressivism. They are related, not antithetical, doctrines. The first wave leads inevitably, even exorably to the second. To put it into American terms, natural rights leads to progressivism (i won’t bother here about the third wave; two generations of waves are enough.) You will notice that one of the few to make this argument is Peter, who in many of his writings shocks the conscience by calling the progressives a certain kind of lockean.
Finklekraut erupted in response. He said no, liberalism is the antithesis of progressivism, so why should they be conflated? Liberalism, for example, rests on the idea of a fixed anthropology, a human nature, whereas progressivism denies a fixed human nature and speaks of perfectibility of man; liberalism is supposedly moderate and favors limited government, progressivism has usually called for forms of large government without rights and restraints…. and on and on. So Finklekraut has the idea of a damn. Modernity has passed from liberalism to progressivism, and it is for good liberals to rebuild the damn, to be good beavers and reconstruct the old barriers, and to beat back progressivism. Finklekraut regards progressivism as alien to liberalism. In this sense at least, finklekraut is like most who write for the CRB and most who live by the distinction of liberalism, progressivism, founders good, wilson/dewey/croly bad..
Michea reposnded. He said of course there is a formal difference, a huge one, between liberalism and progressivism. But, under wavism (or what he calls the logic of liberalism), liberalism will almost inexorably turn into progressivism. Progresssivism is not alien to, but a envelopment of liberalism. And he tries to show why. Liberalism, he says, was developed to end the utopias or moral projects of the classics (use politics to make men virtuous) and the Christians (use politics to make men righteous). The only way to fight these ideologies, he says, was not to propose another idea, but to oppose them by a fact. The fact would be a kind of progress. Stop the ideas, and some of the wars would cease and man, in a free society, would become wealthier and healthier….this would be a fact, not an opinion. Hence, michea argues, liberalism was always and from the first a form of progressivism. It was a cautious progressivism, based on the sober fact that man was not very good, but a progressivism nonetheless because the acceptance of this idea of a flawed human nature was the wisdom that would bring us progress via the market etc. Progressivism rejects large parts of liberalism but in the name of its progressive program.
So what Michea calls the logic of liberalism is an embrace of the idea of waves….
I won’t tell you any more about Funklkraut’s rejoinder; it’s time to go have a glass of rose, which we have been able to do on Sunday for a long time now in Charlotteville. I like those damns of liberalism. And just before I order my glass of wine, I’ll buy a 32 ounce cup of coke, just to celebrate my freedom….
June 3rd, 2012 | 1:37 pm
So I can’t even after some CABERNET unpack the levels of irony in such a defender of American Exceptionalism responding to my semi-deconstruction of American wavism with a story about French theorists. I will say I too like and so don’t really damn the dams of liberalism.
June 3rd, 2012 | 6:48 pm
Cabernet, like most red wines contains a chemical that can help fight Alzheimer’s, (thus its “trademark powers” for understanding or entering into communion with French Theorists).
Studies show the first part, and the part in parenthesis is more or less mystical pantheism, or imagination at work.
That is the Cartesian is not welcome in France. He is not welcome because he sort of destroys the mystique of source origin and sponsorship, that which makes a Champagne a Champagne. A vital element in Christening ships, a drink that unites people across generations at funerals and weddings. A beverage of solemnization and celebration. At the very least french blood and soil, transubstantiated into pure joy! (insert more pantheistic history+immagination, more puffery, more of the sophistic industrial complex).
What Toqueville was saying when he said that americans were naturally cartesian, is essentially that they could start on new foundations without deep traditions (and the puffery+sophistry+pantheism, that veils a mechanical Lockeian/Newtonian understanding of the world). A man could make his reputation, there was not a hierarchy of “historical/pantheistic/aristocracy”.
Of the three french theorists named I think I agree with Michea. This is because Liberalism and Lockeianism coincides with a “real property” structure. How one comes to have ownership in something is by mixing ones labor with it. Not so with Trademark, here one comes to have ownership in something by mixing ones imagination with it. Or not “ones’ immagination, but the imagination of others. Perhaps an imagination rooted to some degree in facts, in consumer reports, or even in blood, sweat and past sacrifice of the sort that stubbornly requires even more commitment. This is where the sophistic industrial complex comes in, high priests of Pantheism all(and technically speaking arch ennemies of Descartes and Analytical Philosophy).
The end of american exceptionalism is to make people believe that america is good and the source origin and sponsorship of all that is good. Who that is respectable actually argues this? No one, but it would be the “holy grail”. In the same way, if you can make someone believe they are a tree, that is pretty awesome (from the standpoint of the sophist/cult leader, the high priest of Pantheism, aka the Evil Genuis.)
Of course in my opinion the idea of a brainwashed/zombie Marine is more of a joke the Army shares uncomfortably with certain academics. The idea of the academics is that he is captured by the Brand, or the “ethos”, i.e. the pantheism of american exceptionalism, and the marine corps history. The Army, it almost makes sense to say, seeks the truthful mean between pantheism and Lockean/Cartesian Deism(aka technical/mechanical skill).
So in terms of American Exceptionalism the Army is the THIRD WAY, and the Marines are the ones who drank a bit too much cool aid(A sugary beverage for naive/imaginative kids?, or a cult drink?)
How do you know that Pantheism isn’t simply Trademark? That is you want to take your product which would be a commodity (to a Cartesian, something functional) and imbue it with sophistry/poetry, or secondary/relational meaning.
The third way better work, because your customer is going to be pretty pissed if there is too much Pantheism in the good and not enough substance. When Toqueville was praising the americans as Cartesian he was saying they lacked imagination, they lacked the brands+aristocracy+Pantheism of the French.
The americans lacked Champagne, they did not have Cabarnet, they did not have a palate. When you drink a CABARNET and it is has an oak like finish, maybe you are a tree.
June 3rd, 2012 | 8:01 pm
John Lewis, very funny if not perfectly lucid.
June 4th, 2012 | 8:41 am
My head hurts now. Need Beach Goth music.
June 4th, 2012 | 9:24 am
It is fascinating, like a Dylan song say in the late Sixties. Sadly, much of the poetry eludes me.
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