Well, YOU KNOW my answer. But I’ve been discussing my last post with a couple of distinguished conservatives by email. Here’s what one wrote:
I suppose that’s right. The trick is that “progressivism” now equals “personal liberation” and nothing more—and so “progressivism” bears absolutely no responsibility for totalitarianism, which is nothing but an extreme and insane form of “belonging,” which we don’t do anymore (and can’t understand why anyone would want to do it: we don’t even want to belong to families anymore). Your equation of the end of totalitarianism with the end of existentialism is interesting because the weird Hegelian Patristic folks at Dalhousie…take the view that at some point more or less in Hegel’s lifetime, though not in Hegel himself, the Western philosophical tradition “split” into two separate strands, one radical (Marx, et. al.) and one existentialist (Nietzsche, et. al.) Their project has been to try to weave those strands back together more or less by trying articulate a WWHT (What Would Hegel Think) position on what’s happening now. So perhaps the current situation is an Opportunity for their kind of thought. On the other hand, you present the situation only as one of collapse, a negative. Perhaps you need to work a bit harder to present the positive picture of decent politics in our time.
1. It is great to hear that someone, somewhere is taking Hegel seriously as a great philosopher and not as ideological weapon, as a cause of anti-American evildoing. Hegel, in his way, was trying to save LIBERALISM from Lockean excesses. One piece of evidence he failed is that Marx and Nietzsche thought that was the implausible part of his thought. (Michael Zuckert reminds us that even the evildoer Woodrow Wilson was trying to do the same thing, although I think of Wilson as a more a Kantian than a Hegelian, just as when I blame German evildoers I’m more inclined to begin with Kant than Hegel.)
2. But insofar as Hegel stands for History wtih a capital “H” (or even HISTORY)–as in “History is all there is,” Hegel is dead, in my opinion. That’s why I think there’s a deep interdependence between the death of Marx and the death of existentialism (or RESOLUTE DECISIONS in the face of NOTHING). To repeat: That’s the true meaning of THE END OF HISTORY.
3. Liberals and conservatives still call each other Fascists. So we still hear that the progressive Obama is really a liberal FASCIST. And we hear that the Republicans are really racist, authoritarian FASCISTS (soft versions of the form of Southern Fascism called the KLAN). You can still call Obama a SOCIALIST, even if you really mean wimpy nonfoundational European social democrat and not a totalitarian believer in HISTORY. If by FASCIST or SOCIALIST you mean the reduction of the person to HISTORY FODDER or CLASS FODDER or SPECIES FODDER or RACE FODDER or FATHERLAND FODDER, in each case the claim made today is WRONG. Progressivism today is about personal liberation. Even our EUGENICS–unlike that of the genuinely evildoing progressives of old–is PERSONAL. (I admit there are some residual progressive or species-based elements, but they’re fading. It’s true that we still kill Down Syndrome babies out of sentimentality, but our EUGENIC intention is to repair the personal defect in the womb or even before the embryo is implanted.)
4. So the quote above is surely correct in saying we are so alienated from–so suspicious about–any form of BELONGING we just can’t figure how COMMUNISM or NAZISM (or even POLIS-REPUBLICANISM) ever happened. People used to be insane.
5. The “positive picture of decent politics” I believe in, let me repeat, is Pete’s.
March 5th, 2013 | 1:37 pm
I’m in agreement with the point that Progressivism now means “personal liberation.” And to make matters worse, it seems like the fastest growing wing of the American Right these days is libertarianism, which is basically the same thing.
March 5th, 2013 | 1:50 pm
[...] more—and so “progressivism” bears absolutely no responsibility for totalitarianism, which …read more Source: Postmodern [...]
March 5th, 2013 | 2:12 pm
Douglas, We’ll you’re right.
March 5th, 2013 | 2:24 pm
“So the quote above is surely correct in saying we are so alienated from–so suspicious about–any form of BELONGING we just can’t figure how COMMUNISM or NAZISM (or even POLIS-REPUBLICANISM) ever happened.”
I think a more apt way to put it is that we are so suspicious about any form of belonging that we have become utterly un-selfaware about how our true need to belong ends up manifesting in various forms of crypto-totalitarianism. As an example, the cost for Obama’s Life of Julia-esque liberation utopia is that a population of beings will have their right to life taken away, albeit it will occur behind the liberal epistemic curtain so no one need be troubled by the cost.
Similarly, the burden of such utopianism comes at the cost of a financial and social burden to the community which now must support the Julia’s of the world by dint of extended taxes and contrived rights that makes the business of business, education and even childhood upbringing subject to whatever the liberal fashion chooses to impose upon society.
As a rule, totalitarianism doesn’t begin with a bunch of goose stepping fascists leading a movement, it begins with a large population that is utterly naive and un-self aware that what it is supporting is totalitarian behind a happy mask.
March 5th, 2013 | 4:41 pm
If the observation about the Hegel-era split betw Marx & Nietzsche is right, then I’d observe that Leo Strauss came along to rebuke both prongs & to reintroduce moral realism (hence his points of contact with some Catholics).
I’m glad we can no longer imagine finding Communism or Nazism attractive. And I don’t recommend Polis-Republicanism for immediate adoption. But if we can’t even *imagine* the virtues of Polis-Republicanism, we are philosophically impoverished, and the citizen passivity that may usher in the next great tyranny is all too easily explained.
March 5th, 2013 | 5:48 pm
I don’t know if this is a journal that publishes some of the weird Hegelian Patristic folk at Dalhousie, but google lead me to Animus. It looks good.
http://www2.swgc.mun.ca/animus/
March 5th, 2013 | 8:25 pm
My sense is that there is more of a hunger for a relational (not necessarily a politicized) life than is being expressed in our politics. Obama’s Second Inaugural was, in large part a lecture on what we do “together.” He meant through the state and it is a very flat understanding of “together”, but it is the only kind of together most people are hearing about. Romney’s message, at the level of first hearing, was way more individualist and personal liberation-oriented. If you were a job creator, he was going to free you to build that by cutting your taxes. If you weren’t, then you would eventually passively benefit from the actions of the job creators. You slug. Statist individualism beats on-your-own individualism.
The irony is that Republicans aren’t anything close to “on-your-own” individualists in their actual policies but they are often driven to that kind of language because they blindly respond to Democratic provocations. Obama is a collectivist so we must be individualists. Right? He said the rich didn’t build that, so we have to perseverate about high earners being the vanguard elite who did-to build that. So there. There is a place for limited government politics that addresses people’s contemporary concerns in a healthy way – though there is only a limited amount even good policy can accomplish. Just one example:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323375204578270053387770718.html
March 5th, 2013 | 8:45 pm
Pete, I though J.Last missed an element, which is that it is hard to have a lot of kids when both parents work.
Then, for you other guys, a question: Is it simply that Progressivism is about personal liberation through government intervention and support while libertarianism is about personal liberation without government support and intervention?
March 5th, 2013 | 9:04 pm
Kate, I think that he would say:
a) His policy suggestions would have a small impact but that would still be better than nothing.
b) His proposals to increase the child tax credit and reduce the cost of higher education would bring down some of the overhead of raising children (including parental debt) and allow some prospective parents to balance their work lives differently.
March 6th, 2013 | 6:42 am
Pete, ok, better than nothing, but these days, women tell me they have to get established in a career before they can afford to have children and they cannot have all the children they would like because of the time spent on the career. That b) doesn’t address the complicated expensive process of getting through a pregnancy and the early years of having a child in the first place.
March 6th, 2013 | 8:48 am
Kate, I think you’ve hit on the key point – number of kids go down when both parents work. The question is, what’s the conservative response, and how does that differ or relate to the Christian response?
Most of my (often very bright) female students have never seriously thought about the implications of their plans for extended years and debt in grad school or law school on things like getting married and having children.
I think conservatives should be pushing for more child tax credits to eliminate the marriage bias in our federal taxes and welfare programs, but I don’t think that’s really going to solve this issue.
March 6th, 2013 | 1:22 pm
I do like, “polis repulicanism.”
I thought ‘progressivism” (a shibboleth?) might have more to do with the central state (in a tyrannical condition) and less to do with “personal liberation,” if we consider that the derailed relationship between the individual and the state, under such a condition, soon enough turns saprophytic.
Excellent blog, Dr. Lawler!
March 6th, 2013 | 8:18 pm
Kate, better than nothing might be the best we can reasonably hope for from policy given limited government principle and public opinion. Making it somewhat easier for some families to have their first kid earlier (if they want) and making it easier for some other families to have that second or third kid (if they want), is about the most I hope for. Last points out that you don’t want to use policy to push against people’s desires, but rather to make is easier for people who want to have kids to achieve their natalist hopes.
March 6th, 2013 | 9:57 pm
Lots of good comments… John, That ANIMUS looks like quite a quirky-in-the-good sense journal. Thanks.
March 7th, 2013 | 7:00 pm
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