Posted on 06/08/2006 7:39:33 PM PDT by neverdem
Last month, the Hudson Institute held a remarkable panel discussion, taking as its point of departure an even more remarkable essay by University of Virginia political scientist James Ceaser. The essay and the ensuing discussion focused on whether and how our political divisions are aligned in accordance with ideas. Does our apparently extreme partisanship bear the characteristics of a family feud—born of the closeness that magnifies minuscule disagreements—or are we in the midst of a genuine culture war?
There was a time when most political observers would have answered this question the first way. The American political spectrum, they argued, is quite narrow, moving from the center-right to the center-left, with virtually everyone affirming the same version of the classical liberal “values” of equality and liberty. We’re blessed—or cursed—they would have continued, with a rough consensus, unbroken by genuine parties of the Right and Left. Unlike our fellows across the Atlantic, not to mention elsewhere in the world, our political life is ultimately placid and boring, as we’re reduced to choosing between Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee.
To be sure, some of Professor Ceaser’s commentators—most notably, Bill Kristol and David Brooks—offer a version of this argument, contending that our differences are small and that our real political life is, for the most part, quite consensual. We have partisanship, they claim, but not polarization. It’s still possible to put together bipartisan pieces of legislation. Real people—as opposed to those who spend their days and nights pounding away at computer keyboards—behave and react in pretty similar ways. And real politicians—as opposed to those who inhabit faculty clubs at elite universities—understand that.
Ceaser’s account of our polarization is thoughtful and provocative, not simply repeating the usual claims about the gap between religious piety or traditionalism, on the one hand, and secularism or modernism, on the other. Instead, he argues that conservatives and liberals are divided by ideas—in particular, foundational ideas. Conservatives have a surfeit of them, while liberals seem to have cast them aside altogether.
According to Ceaser, the conservative movement is made up of adherents of four distinctly different strains of thought, all of which have distinct intellectual histories and pedigrees. There are traditionalist “paleo-conservatives,” libertarian adherents of “spontaneous order,” neo-conservative proponents of “natural right,” and religious conservatives. Representatives of all these positions can be found in Washington, D.C. think tanks and in the pages of conservative journals. They take their ideas and the various intellectual heritages underlying them quite seriously. But he notes:
The principles of these four groups are so distinct that it is a wonder how they can ever make common cause. What induces them to join and remain in the same coalition is a single, self-evident truth: Hillary Clinton. Liberalism is the glue that cements the conservative movement, and if liberalism were to disappear tomorrow, the conservative movement as we know it would begin to disintegrate the next day.
In other words, the strains in the conservative coalition (which lead observers to warn of a conservative crack-up at least once a week) are due to the fact that conservatives take their big ideas seriously. Each theory offers a different account of the origins of political principles, a different standard for deciding what counts as a good argument, and a different basis for judging questions of public policy. Traditionalists and neo-conservatives have famously disagreed, for example, about the reasons for the war in Iraq, while libertarians and religious conservatives are fundamentally at odds over the Marriage Protection Amendment.
Liberals, Ceaser argues, don’t have these problems because they have, for the most part, dispensed with foundational ideas. Don’t get him (or me) wrong. Liberals have lots of ideas, lots of policies, and lots of things they want government to do for us. What they lack is a Big Idea (or two)—an overarching rational, historical, or faith-based mindset that justifies, binds together, and organizes all of their little ideas. Liberals are, Ceaser contends, “idealistic non-foundationalists,” distrusting as oppressive and hierarchical all the big ideas that might underlie their positions and thinking that democracy can proceed much more effectively without them. In academic jargon, liberals are distrustful of meta-narratives.
From his description of the two sides of our current political divide, Ceaser draws two conclusions, one about the practical political predicament of liberals and one about the possible fate of the nation. Conservatives ought in some respects to be heartened by the former and deeply worried about the latter. The first problem, Ceaser says, is that liberal non-foundationalism isn’t marketable at the moment:
Many on the Left doubt—they say as much in some of their strategy papers—that non-foundationalism, when espoused in its naked form, is currently sellable to the American people, who remain stubbornly retrograde.
After all, big ideas come naturally to us. We want to talk about God, about nature, and about the burdens and opportunities of history. We want to claim, in other words, that our opinions and positions aren’t idiosyncratic or contingent, but rather that they’re (cosmically) significant.
If Ceaser is right, then liberals—to the extent that they’re non-foundationalist and honest about it—have a hard electoral row to hoe. In this context, we might do well to consider the status of American exceptionalism on the Left. Remarkably few liberal intellectuals would claim any sort of special historical or global role for America, often preferring to regard our country as simply one nation among many, distinguished (if at all) by its abuse of power. Outside of certain college towns or “ideaopolises” (and some websites), this notion doesn’t sell too well.
But what if this idea did gain some currency?
The non-foundationalist position represents a utopian experiment that has as yet no basis in real political science. Nothing in experience suggests it could ever work, at least for a nation that is tasked with performing an important role on the stage of world history. Without a foundational principle, even more without the moral energy that derives from a concern with foundational principle, a community cannot exist in a deep or meaningful sense. And without this energy, a community would be unable to extract from its members the added measure of devotion and resolve that are needed for its survival and for undertaking any important projects. What is involved, ultimately, in the shift to non-foundationalism is an evacuation of what makes a nation.
While some might applaud a nation thus duly chastened, unwilling and unable to play a significant role on the world stage, others might wonder where we would find the moral energy to respond as we do to humanitarian crises, whether at home or abroad, or to the existential challenges we might face when confronted by emerging superpowers like China.
I share Professor Ceaser’s concerns, but not so much his apparent confidence that conservatives, at least, are proof against the allure of non-foundationalism. Some of his commentators make the point for me. Tamar Jacoby refers, for example, to a “deep pragmatism” marking American attitudes to some political issues. Objecting to talk about polarization, libertarian Brink Lindsey, of the Cato Institute, describes the distribution of American public opinion in the following way:
[The] central hump is located in a rather different place than it was a generation ago, and in fact it is not torturing the language too much to say that it is a kind of libertarian, centrist consensus that prevails. On the one hand, there is a very deep attachment to traditional, middle-American values like patriotism, law and order, the work ethic, and family life; on the other hand, there are very heavily counter-culture-influenced attitudes on race, sex, on authority in general, and on the kind of fervent, almost absolutist embrace of relativism, of which tolerance is the key and cardinal virtue. There is a kind of aversion to preachiness or absolutist truth claims of any kind.
This description certainly fits many of my students, not to mention my neighbors. They are habitually decent and attached to “traditional middle-American values,” but they also betray an aversion to “absolutist truth claims of any kind.” They mistrust meta-narratives, in other words.
The quasi-libertarian component of American public opinion is, I think, growing, as is the confidence of the libertarian component of the conservative camp. While it’s possible for friends of liberty to find foundational ideas in Friedrich von Hayek or John Locke, or even in the Biblical traditions, much libertarianism depends upon a bare assertion of individual autonomy or choice. In the conversation over Ceaser’s paper, Francis Fukuyama makes this point, arguing that the idea of consumer sovereignty, central to modern neoclassical economics and also to libertarianism, is essentially anti-foundationalist. Fukuyama also makes an interesting error, asserting that there are foundational ideas on the Left, stemming from the neo-Kantianism of thinkers like John Rawls, Bruce Ackerman, and Ronald Dworkin, who all try to articulate the case for autonomy as a central human value. But for the most part, the efforts of these thinkers are aimed at developing a position that doesn’t really require foundations. Their attachment to autonomy isn’t grounded in nature, or history, or faith; at most, it’s an assertion about who we are and what we believe here and now.
Thus, as Fukuyama observes, both the Right and the Left are attracted to elements of anti-foundationalist freedom: “Except the interest of the Right has more to do with property and protecting property, and the Left is more interested in sex.”
Call me a worrywart. I fear that Lindsey and Fukuyama are correct in describing a non-foundationalist center of gravity, even on the Right. To the extent that we celebrate (groundless) choice or (groundless) autonomy, and to the extent that we flee above all else from “judgmentalism,” we’re moving in a libertarian direction. Our “middle-American values” can survive for a time without the serious consideration of their foundations. But over the long run, strong libertarianism can have a corrosive effect, not only on the values themselves, but also on any effort to go beyond the untutored and untethered reason of those who would affirm them.
I wonder if we are headed for a great compromise, a meeting of minds brokered by non-foundational libertarianism. Liberals have already, in some instances, made their peace with market mechanisms. And some conservatives regard concerns about marriage and the family as side-shows, focusing instead on reducing the size of government. Of course, the devil would be in the details, but the non-foundationalists would have won.
We’d be stuck in the middle with...who?
Joseph Knippenberg is a professor of politics and associate provost for student achievement at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. He is a weekly columnist for The American Enterprise Online and a contributing blogger at No Left Turns.
good article
Think of some keywords! Looks like an article that should get read; unfortunately I don't have time to do it justice right now.
Wagglebee - is this list worthy? Or am I wrong?
A thoughtful article. As evidenced by the many brawls here on FR, it is anti-Liberalism that unites the conservative movement. Take away the specter of someone like Hitlery, and we fight each other tooth and nail on political, economic, social and cultural issues.
ping
Very thought provoking. Libertarians (especially of the Bill Maher variety) often bug me as much as liberals do. Now I know why.
remember Sobran and Rockwell on 9/11? (For that matter, Falwell?)
Not really, sorry.
WOW!
>If liberalism were to disappear tomorrow, the conservative movement, as we know it, would begin to disintegrate the next day<
Interesting, but brashly overconfident. Actually, conservatism has likely been around much longer than liberalism.
>Liberals have lots of ideas, lots of policies and lots of things they want government to do for us<
Too many ideas, too many policies, and too many things they want government to do for us. Power-struck, they want control, control, control, exhibiting in the process small mindedness, no vision, resulting ultimately in the destruction of the country.
Conservatives, on the other hand, revere a lawful freedom to follow their dreams to develop individual growth without intrusion, or overt attempts to indoctrinate them away from their value system. In other words, conservatives are dedicated to conserve that which is lawfully good, and to condemn that which is not, and to live accordingly. And, yes, I think that conservatives tend more to have faith in God, thus base their standards on His teachings as given to us in the Bible.
Just MHO, neverdem. A very provocative article. Thank you.
it's o.k. I guess it was variations on the "paleo" theme that we should have stayed home and minded our own business, so we had asked for it.
How about "meta-narratives"? The right has at least a few. The left has close to nothing except variants of socialism.
The only unifying concept behind much of what a leftist desires is that they want what they want, they can't stand the thought of any authority beyond themselves, and any adult who would stand in the way with concepts such as 'reason' and 'logic' and 'principle' must therefore be evil. It explains, for example, how a leftist can take a firm and unyielding position that elevates "choice" as the ultimate human right, declaring boldly "how dare the government put any restrictions whatsoever on what I can do with my body" and then in the next breath advocate the exact opposite by encouraging the government to put restrictions on other peoples' wealth, property, speech, religious expression, guns, health care, school choice, eating and smoking habits, and individual freedoms in general.
Perhaps it is the unfortunate side effect of unearned prosperity, where freedoms and civilization were bought by earlier generations at great expense of blood and treasure, only to be pissed away by the ungrateful, childlike beneficiary generations. In other words, Atlas Shrugged... (and no, there is no internal contradiction there, because despite the caricature that seems to be in vogue on FR, and despite some of the characterizations in the article, libertarians in general "get it" in a way that eludes the leftists).
Knippenberg should have used whom in the title.
Somehow "Stuck In The Middle With Youm" doesn't cut it... :-)
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no, not hardly.
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