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Rawls: A Partial Defense
Sunday, May 9, 2010, 12:08 PM

Ralph presents his case against Rawls below. Although I agree with much of it, I think he goes too far. Here are a few rather disordered suggestions intended less to vindicate Rawls than to complicate the picture:

1. We need to distinguish between Rawls an sich (as it were) and what Ralph describes as academic “thralldom” to Rawls. On any open-minded reading, both A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism are major intellectual achievements, which should be treated with respect. Problem is, that respect is too often transformed into uncritical reverence. I don’t blame Rawls for this more than I blame Strauss, Voegelin, or other thinkers who have inspired somewhat cultish devotion. Few teachers are well-served by their disciples.

2. It is simply not true that Rawls “liquidates the whole tradition of political philosophy”. That’s because, pace Bloom, the tradition is not univocal concerning the questions to be answered and the right way of trying to answer them. In fact, as Ralph observes, Rawls’ project is related to Hobbes’. According to Rawls himself, it’s even more directly influenced by Bodin and the French politiques. That’s without mentioning the well-known features that Rawls’ thought shares with Rousseau’s and Kant’s. One thing that unites these philosophers is their hostility to Aristotle, and Aristotelian attempts to derive the Right from the Good (their relation to Plato is more complicated). And, with all due respect to Strauss and the Straussians, Aristotle is not definitive of the single authoritative tradition of political philosophy–he’s one star in a much richer constellation of authors and ideas.

3. But what about the substance of Rawls’ doctrine? Here, the criticism that “political liberalism” is much more comprehensive than its supposed is absolutely correct–although, frankly, that’s not very controversial in academic political philosophy. And not only comprehensive. As Thad points it out, it’s also essentially theological–or at least rooted in a specifically protestant conception of religion. This part is more controversial.

Which is why I’ve been looking into this issue recently. Although I’m still working through the texts (including the recently published statements on religion), I’m pretty confident that Rawl’s wasn’t trying to deceive anybody, but systematically underestimated the separability of liberal moral and political concepts from their theological background. That’s a philosophical and historical error that should be criticized, in classrooms and in print. It’s not an excuse for ignoring Rawls.

4. Nevertheless, it’s true that a highly scholastic, historically- and religiously-unreflective brand of Rawlsianism has become popular in many departments of philosophy and political science (although not nearly so popular as it was ten years ago). Why did that happened? Some assume it’s because Rawls justifies the default left-liberalism of most academics. That may be true in some cases. But an even more powerful reason is that Rawls provides a plug-and-play research program, which is just what graduate students and struggling young professors need to publish early and often. It is far easier to master the technical apparatus of TJ than to learn something about, say, Bodin.

5. But has any of this had the slightest practical impact? I must say that I rather doubt it, as Raymond Geuss has argued extensively from the left. What distinctively Rawlsian principles has anyone heard invoked in a politically or juridically relevant way? In fact, does Rawls really say anything that couldn’t be described as Locke outside the Locke-box?


Of Parties and Populists
Saturday, April 17, 2010, 10:39 AM

Over at The American Conservative, Larison uses the NY Times/CBS News poll to argue that the Tea Partiers aren’t populists but rather “base” conservatives. He echoes Peter Beinart, who points out the differences between the Tea Partiers and the followers of William Jennings Bryan. As far as the data go, they’re right. Tea Party supporters appear to be better educated, wealthier, and more likely to call themselves conservative than the general population.

Does that mean that they can’t also be populists? I’m not sure. On the one hand, populism can refer a particular tradition of redistributionist, anti-corporate, usually agrarian political ideas. Most Tea Partiers reject that tradition. On the other hand, populism can describe a conception of the appropriate relation between governors and governed in a representative democracy. On this view, policy should be much more closely tied to public opinion, or to direct popular decision, than to the judgment of legislative or bureaucratic elites.

Many of the Tea Partiers, it seems to me, are populists in the latter sense. If you prefer, call them plebiscitarians rather than populists. Thing is, white, male, married conservatives over the age of 45 are not a majority in this country, or even a majority of voters. I suspect that this frustrating reality is the source of the racial and cultural anxieties beneath the surface of the small-government rhetoric.

UPDATE: Larison responds with a typically thoughtful post. I agree with much of it. But I don’t think that undermines the argument I made above, because we’re actually making slightly different points. To be clear, I’m suggesting that the Tea Partiers tend to regard themselves as plebscitarians. Larison, on the other hand, points out that they really aren’t–or at least that their majoritarianism seems conditional on getting their way.

But both these things can true. Given the incoherence on policy that many Tea Partiers demonstrate (especially in regard to entitlement and defense spending), there’s no reason that they shouldn’t also be incoherent in their self-conception.

So where I disagree with Larison is his claim that “Conservatives actually know very well that they do not speak for a majority in this country, and they are also well aware that changes that would allow for more direct, plebiscitary democracy, whether in presidential elections or in passing legislation, would work to the detriment of their smaller states and their overall political interests.” That assumes a level of cynicism that may be cultivated by a Mitt Romney, but probably not many rank-and-file conservatives, who either don’t know this, or suffer from such extreme cognitive dissonance that it doesn’t effect their thinking.


Dutch Courage
Saturday, April 10, 2010, 12:34 PM

A brief item of self-promotion: PoMoCon readers who happen to understand Dutch may be interested in a new volume, Conservatieve Vooruitgang recently published by Prometheus. It’s a greatest-hits tour of 20th century conservative thought, with an emphasis on libertarian, pluralist, and otherwise heterodox writers. The entry on Robert Nisbet was written by me. But there are also more important chapters by more important people, including Roger Scruton on Eliot and Theodore Dalrymple on Oakeshott.

In addition to its academic interest, the book is a contribution to the revival of intellectual conservatism in the Netherlands, where it’s been partly eclipsed by the antics of populists like Geert Wilders. It’s to be hoped that the editors, Michiel Visser and Thierry Baudet, continue to articulate conservative ideas without venom or rage, which is the only way they’re likely to succeed in the Netherlands, and elsewhere.


Alphabet City
Tuesday, March 30, 2010, 12:44 PM

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Norman Podhoretz emerged from semi-retirement to express his approval for Sarah Palin. No, I don’t propose to revisit the Sarah, pro- and con- debate, which will remain sterile and tedious until she actually, like, runs for something (or not). But I do want to suggest a revision to Podohoretz’s interpretation of William F. Buckley’s of most famous and, I think, misunderstood remark: that he’d rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston phonebook than the combined faculties of Harvard and MIT.

Now Podhoretz admits that what Buckley meant is not immediately clear. Neverthless, he, like almost everyone else, takes it as endorsement of populism. Better Joe the Plumber–or, perhaps, Al the Electrician–than Quincy Mather Winthrop, the Lowell Professor of 14th Century Central Asian Aesthetics. Well, maybe so. But the thing about the phonebook is that the people it lists are pretty randomly distributed. And 2000 is a lot a names, which could very well include a few of the good professor’s colleges in addition to a healthy majority of regular folks.

So it seems that Buckley was suggesting that it’s better to be governed by something like a representative sample of the population as whole than a guild of professors. Which is even more plausible than betting on the individual Al rather than the individual Quincy.  On the other hand, there’s likely to be a place in that sample for intellectuals, even if a smaller one than they often think they deserve.


A Sprawling Debate
Saturday, March 20, 2010, 2:56 PM

In a recent post, Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute takes on Austin Bramwell’s argument that suburban sprawl is the result of government planning. How can this be, O’Toole asks, when notorious sprawls like Houston don’t even have a zoning code? Bramwell responds by pointing out the litany of non-zoning regulations that discourage mixed-use neighborhoods scaled for pedestrians. He points out that in Houston buildings must be set back at least 25 feet from the street and provided with free parking–which pretty much guarantees a landscape of strip malls.

I can’t add anything to the debate on land-use law, although Bramwell’s case seems pretty convincing. But there is a broader issue that’s worth isolating from the specific details. That’s the meaning of “planning”. While O’Toole sees planning primarily in fiats concerning ends–what gets built where–Bramwell recognizes that government can exercises as much influence by determining the means of economic activity.

To use a popular example,  American cities and states rarely decree a price floor for residential real estate. But by imposing building codes that require the use of more expensive materials, they effectively set a minimum price for housing. Sometimes results like this are an unintended consequence. In other cases, governments use indirect regulation to influence behavior without being seen to do so. Consumer preference for detached houses with a scrap of yard is one factor contributing to sprawl. But “hidden” planning is evidently another, as documented by countless studies of the housing policies of the 1940s and ’50s, which included the physical destruction of hundreds of traditional neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal.

You’d expect libertarians to be sensitive to subtle forms of influence as well as obvious coercion. But they often fixate on gross  attempts to regulate citizens’ behavior, while ignoring “nudges” like the location and dimensions of highways and other roads, a tax code that favors home-owners over renters, and a political commitment  to keeping gasoline cheap. A reasonable case can be made for all these policies. But let’s not pretend that our built environment is exempt from planning just because it hasn’t been decreed by a dictatorial Secretary of Suburbanization.


New Grub Street
Tuesday, March 16, 2010, 1:38 PM

The Awl points out this interview with Tina Brown. At about 19:40, Brown asks: “Are we building this new sort of subculture frankly of impoverished, living in garret writers? Because the fact is writers can hardly make a living right now because they don’t get paid.” Leon Wieseltier made a similar observation last month when he described writers as “the new proles“.

I don’t write for a living, and I have mostly sympathy (and perhaps also a little envy) for those who do. But it’s worth recalling that the expectation that journalists, critics, and editors could expect a middle-class income and lifestyle has developed only quite recently.

Before about World War II, newspaper writing was little respected and worse paid, more trade than profession. National magazines offered better fees and more respect. But relatively few people actually supported themselves writing for them. And the scribbler’s existence before the 20th Century–and outside the United States–was notoriously poor and dissolute. There are many memorable portraits of life on both the literal and the figurative Grub Street. The most compelling is Balzac’s Illusions perdues.

But the pre- and proto-capitalist economies of the 17th, 18th, and and early 19th centuries offered a solution that we’ve since forgetten: patronage. Rather than trying to sell their wares on the open market, the men of letters of Paris and London tried to sell themselves to wealthy and influential patrons. Work as a hired polemicist, secretary, or a private tutor, wasn’t romantic. But it did provide a stable income not only to honest hacks, but also some very eminent minds. What would Burke have been without Rockingham? Hobbes without the Cavendishes?

It’s hard to imagine any modern magnate personally supporting a stable of bloggers. But why? It would be cheaper, and probably more amusing, than endowing a building at some pompous university. For one thing, buildings can’t tell you how wise you were to pay for them. For another, they can’t tell your enemies how stupid they are. As it happens, I’m looking for a job myself at the moment. Let the bidding begin!


Wild Hearts, Blue Jeans, and White T-Shirts
Saturday, March 13, 2010, 1:25 PM

As we continue our discussion of popular music and its discontents, I opened up the paper this morning to find a charming tribute to the place and milieu in which I grew up: the New Jersey hardcore scene. Although it’s partly a record review, the piece does a good job capturing the local vibe of being near, but not quite of the City. One of the groups featured, Titus Andronicus, are of a younger generation than I am, and don’t sound very good. But Ted Leo is a real eminence gris whom I remember from his days in the beloved neo-mod band  Chisel (Citizens Arrest were definitely before my time).

Chisel were based in D.C. But somehow they preserved that New Jersey sound, which evokes the experience of being pressed up against the plate glass window of a cool, expensive restaurant or lounge, watching the goings-on within from the cold street. Springsteen had that sound, of course. But so did punk bands like the Bouncing Souls, Lifetime,  and a dozen even more obscure, mostly short-lived outfits of kids with guitars.

None of this is great, or even good music by Roger Scruton standards. But pure aesthetic achievement isn’t the only thing we should, or do, value in music. The new Ted Leo record contains some terrific, thoughtful rock ‘n’ roll. What’s more important to me, though, is that it sounds like home.


American Exceptionalism Revisited
Tuesday, March 9, 2010, 12:25 PM

Ponnuru and Lowry respond to their critics. I’m the sure the sphere will be all over this within hours.  But a few particularly egregious points are worth noting.

1) Ponnuru and Lowry claim that Obama rejects American exceptionalism in favor of the “Wilsonian project of relocating American greatness not in our fixed constitutional principles but in our supposed ability to transcend those principles.” This is silly for a three reason, apart from the atrocious grammar.

a) The “Wilsonian project” in no way excludes American exceptionalism. Nor could anyone who’s ever read Wilson think so.  Instead, it offers a different view of what makes American exceptional than Ponnuru and Lowry’s. That view may be unconvincing, or even pernicious. But it attributes the same quasi-providential status to the American regime that they insist on.

b) The difference between “Wilsonian” exceptionalism and the NR kind doesn’t revolve around transcendence of constitutional principles. It’s a disagreement about what those principles are, and the rank order among them.  Does the Constitution’s promise of a “more perfect union”  trump  its formal limitations of government? Are the blessings of liberty material as well as political and juridical? To condemn progressivism as hostile, as such to founding principles is to avoid the argument on the merits, and to ignore the long history of sincere attempts to articulate a left-wing conception of American values.  Regrettably, that’s the tendency of the whole piece.

c) Ponnuru and Lowry admit that Obama has explicitly acknowledged America’s exceptional principles and role. But they dismiss this with the observation that it  “would be remarkable if any president did not say such things.” Which is true enough. But in that case, the argument becomes trivially psychologizing: Obama SAYS he believes in American exceptionalism, but he doesn’t really MEAN it.  As far as I can tell, Ponnuru and Lowry present no evidence for that conclusion except some quotes in which Obama suggests that the election of a black man, namely himself, to the presidency was sort of a big deal.  I guess that can be seen as narcissistic.  But I seem to recall a similar sentiment expressed in the pages of NR and Commentary back in November.

2) The psychologizing continues a few paragraphs later when Ponnuru and Lowry reaffirm their contention that liberals, progressives, etc. support the policies they do because they  secretly think Europe is cooler. Support for mass transit is highlighted: “we suspect that much of the enthusiasm for these subsidies among liberals is based on mass transit’s association with Europe.” Well,  I know a lot of progressives and mass transit enthusiasts. And I can’t think of a single one who appreciated the reliable trains, quiet buses and streetcars, and clear bike lanes found in many European cities BECAUSE they’re European. Actually, many Americans find it pleasant and convenient to travel this way. And they wonder, not unreasonably, if it wouldn’t be nice to enjoy similar infrastructure at home. It’s true that arguments for mass transit often fail to consider the real differences of the American landscape and lifestyle.  But that’s a serious question worth debating in particular cases–what works in Berlin may also be good for New York, but probably not for Tucson –rather than the status envy of Upper West Siders.

3) Victor Davis Hanson is praised for the observation that  America exceptionalism is connected with the lack of a feudal past. Ponnuru and Lowry admit that ” Sadly, a worse institution took root here, but never became part of the national psyche.” The worse institution, of course, is slavery. But anyone who can say that slavery and the ideology of white supremacy NEVER became PART of the national psyche  really should not be taken seriously as a guide to the American character, although how large a part and for how long are open to dispute. Don’t take my word for it, though. Go back to point (1)–all you need to do is read Wilson.


Why is there no Jewish Narnia?
Wednesday, March 3, 2010, 10:30 AM

That’s the question Michael Weingrad asks in the inaugural issue of The Jewish Review of Books.

The article has taken heat from fans of the many Jewish fantasy authors. But most of them have missed the point. Weingrad isn’t asking whether Jews write fantasy or enjoy reading it. Instead, he’s concerned with why there aren’t any compelling fantasy “worlds” that incorporate Jewish folklore and tropes the way Narnia and Tolkein’s Middle Earth develop  Christian ones.

But is that really such a puzzle? In the first place, the landscape of most fantasy novels is essentially the numinous forest of the Teutonic Dark Ages. It is not so much a Christian world as a world on the cusp of Christianity: a pagan Götterdämmerung.

Jews can, of course, appropriate this setting for literary purposes. But I don’t think it has the same imaginative gravity that it does for Christians. Similarly, the warrior values that animate a lot of fantasy are not traditionally Jewish. One could, I suppose, write a story around around a learned rabbi–but surely that would not be as interesting as one focused on knights, errant wizards, and chieftains of mounted hordes. Finally, as Weingrad notes, there’s no fantasy without evil. And Jewish teaching on this subject is extremely ambiguous; unlike some Christian doctrines, Judaism tends to deny evil as a force independent of and opposed to God.

For these reasons, Jews drawn to speculative writing may have an affinity for the science fiction over fantasy. The technological rationalism and optimism of much science fiction is also, in a way, more American–and America has offered the broadest field for Jewish literary efforts since World War II.

But Weingrad neglects a “fantasy” genre founded by Jews, and arguably shaped by Jewish preoccupations. That’s the superhero comic book invented in the 1930s by the likes of Robert Kahn–Bob Kane to you. There could never be a Jewish Narnia that would preserve the features many readers find compelling (I confess that I always vastly preferred Tolkein, whose work is richer and less didactic). But the universes of Superman, Batman, and the rest are worthy counterparts.

PS: A related question is whether fantasy is essentially conservative. One of the more interesting recent fantasy writers, China Mieville, thinks so–and has developed his urban, industrial, and democratic “Bas Lag” world as a direct competitor to Tolkein’s Middle Earth, which he considers implicitly reactionary.

ADDENDUM: I found some related arguments in the excellent post and conversation here.


Two Concepts of Exceptionalism
Friday, February 26, 2010, 1:30 PM

In the current issue of National Review, Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru try to develop a respectable argument that President Obama is un-American. They dismiss the literal version that defines Birtherism. And they stipulate that the president and his allies want sincerely to improve the lives of their countrymen–no accusations of despotic conspiracies here. What Obama lacks, it seems, is a proper appreciation for our national creed. Lowry and Ponnuru dub this creed American exceptionalism: that view that United States has “a unique role and mission in the world: as a model of ordered liberty and self-government and as an exemplar of freedom and a vindicator of it, through persuasion when possible and force of arms when absolutely necessary.”

I have a lot of historical objections to the argument. Among other things, Lowry and Ponnuru rely much to heavily on the Reaganite holy trinity of Jefferson-Lincoln-Wilson at the expense of small-r republican and non-interventionist traditions. There’s also some curious, and apparently not playful, appropriation of theological language, as Matthew Lee Anderson observes. America is said to offer not only a economic system, but “an economic gospel”, as if our particular blend of public subsidy and private profit–which has existed at least since the internal improvements of the 1820s–were divinely ordained. But the most serious problem is conceptual. Lowry and Ponnuru don’t distinguish between two ideas, one of which can be called American exceptionalism, the other American exclusivism.

The exceptionalist can agree with the definition given above. As far as I can tell, Obama, almost all the influential figures in American politics, and most ordinary people do. But the exceptionalist also knows that the meaning of the ideals involved in America’s mission is open to interpretation–as in the Isaiah Berlin essay on which the title of this post is based. Further, he’s aware that they’re not the only ones worth pursuing.

Ordered liberty and self-government are important. But so are justice, peace, personal morality, and cultural excellence–areas in which America has not always been an inspiring model. From this point of view, there’s no contradiction between American exceptionalism and acknowledgment  of the many ways in which America falls short, both of its own ideals and of those sometimes better represented by other nations. At the very least, it admits the possibility that we have something to learn from foreigners, even Europeans, who may be exceptional in their own ways.

American exclusivism, on the other hand, holds that the United States effectively represents and defends the only significant values, or at least the supreme ones. From this point of view, America is, as such, on the side of the angels. It can perhaps do wrong, but it can never be wrong.

This  more extreme view is far from universal among our rulers and fellow citizens. What it is, as Lowry and Ponnuru admit, is the animating principle of the modern conservative movement. But do they really want to argue that movement conservatives have a monopoly of the American creed comparable to America’s monopoly of values? Surely there’s something un-American about that.

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