1. I’m sad I was out of commission last Thursday and Friday and so didn’t have a chance to say a sad farewell to NO LEFT TURNS. In the name of gender diversity and to up our pay grade a bit, I invite the lovely and legendary KATE to join us on these pages as an actual blogger.
2. So I’ve been very impressed with the PROGRESSIVISM surrounding the President’s “evolved” understanding of same-sex marriage. There’s also, of course, the charge that Romney’s understanding is actually “regressive,” or less evolved than it was when he was to the left of Ted Kennedy on the relevant issues in Massachusetts.
3. The main reason this PROGRESSIVISM should interest us is that it is quite distinct from the economic PROGRESSIVISM that leads to BIGGER and BIGGER GOVERNMENT. As I’ve explained many times, the idea of social democratic progress has been wrecked by harsh demographic realities. Maybe ObamaCare is underconstitutional, but it surely won’t provide affordable and sustainable solutions to our health-care “crisis.” When it comes to economics, the Democrats are clearly the reactionaries, defending discredited and unsustainable entitlements (as did the aristocrats of old) that are being washed away by the same march of individualism through history that brought us same-sex marriage as an inalienable right for a people devoted to the proposition that all men are equal.
4. From this view, history would seem to belong to the libertarians. And the reason the president wants to emphasize social issues more is that on those he’s on history’s right (that is, left) side.
5. But a Darwinian would interject: What about that birth dearth? Excessive individualism is bad for the species and indispensable social institutions. Nietzsche was right that marriage can’t be held together by some mushy and otherwise sentimental view of love alone, some detached from all biological and political imperatives. History is surely not on the side of Europe that is withering away.
6. Changing the subject only slightly, I’m teaching POLITICAL THOUGHT TODAY again the fall. One thing I want to focus on is is lectures given by deep thinkers posing as public intellectuals. So I’m going to take seriously the JEFFERSON LECTURES given by the following—Wendell Berry, Harvey Mansfield, Leon Kass, Tom Wolfe, and Walker Percy. I will naturally supplement with, say, Kass’s very recent AEI LECTURE (which is the deepest version of neoconservatism around) and the “Great Amnesia” by our neo-Puritanical theologian/novelist Marilynne Robinson. And then there’s the two great lectures given at Berry College—one by the cuddly transhumanist Ronald Bailey and our finest Augustinian conservative Bob Kraynak (search THE NEW ATLANTIS for them) and maybe one of several by the excellent polemicist Dr. Pat Deneen (search NLT for Dr. Pat). But I need more—including one by an ordinary progressive compassionate liberal and one by a fairly mainstream African American.
7. As I used to say on NLT, divide up into small groups and discuss. (Thanks to Peter Schramm for allowing many such discussions.)
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