Posted on 06/12/2002 10:55:07 AM PDT by Pyro7480
Principles and Heresies
| The development of contemporary American conservatism has been marked, on the theoretical level, by a continuing tension between a traditionalist emphasis and a libertarian emphasis. Over the years I have argued that these positions are in fact not incompatible opposites, but complementary poles of a tension and balance which, both in theory and practice, define American conservatism as it has come into being at midcentury. If anything, I have stressed the libertarian emphasis because I have felt that unmodified traditionalism, stressing virtue and order in disregard of the ontological and social status of the freedom of the individual person, tended dangerously to towards an authoritarianism wrong in itself and alien to the spirit of American conservatism. Recently, however, there have been ominous signs that the danger of a disbalance just as alien to conservatism is arising not from traditionalist quarters, but from an untrammeled libertarianism, which tends as directly to anarchy and nihilism as unchecked traditionalism tends to authoritarianism. This libertarianism can be seen at its most extreme in such dropouts from the Right as Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess and their handful of followers. While their position has become indistinguishable from that of SDS, there are increasing signs of a more widespread, if more moderate, development in this direction, primarily among the young, but by no means restricted to them. The essential rationale of this position is so far removed from the rationale of libertarian conservatism, and so completely ignores the proper foundations of liberty in the actual circumstances of the human condition, that, like the position of the anarchist wing of the SDS, its proper denomination is not libertarianism but libertinism. A true libertarianism is derived from metaphysical roots in the very constitution of being, and places its defense of freedom as a political end in the context of moral responsibility for the pursuit of virtue and the underlying social necessity for the preservation of order. The libertine impulse that masquerades as libertarian, on the other hand, disregards all moral responsibility, ranges itself against the minimum needs of social order, and raises the freedom of the individual person (regarded as the unbridled expression of every desire, intellectual or emotional) to the status of an absolute end.
Libertine ideologes
The underlying issue between conservative libertarianism and libertine libertarianism is at bottom a totally opposed view of the nature of destiny of men. The libertines—like those other products of the modern world, ritualistic liberals, socialists, Communists, fascists—are ideologues first and last. That is, they reject reality as it has been studied, grasped, understood, and acted upon in five thousand years or so of civilized history, and pose an abstract construction as the basis of action. They would replace God's creation of this multifarious, complex world in which we live, and substitute for it their own creation, simple, neat and inhuman—as inhuman as the blueprints of the bulldozing engineer. |
The place of freedom in the spiritual economy of men is a high one indeed, but it is specific and not absolute. By its very nature, it cannot be an end of men's existence. Its meaning is essentially freedom from coercion, but that, important as it is, cannot be an end. It is empty of goal or norm. Its function is to relieve men of external coercion so that theY may freely seek their good.
It is for this reason that libertarian conservatives champion freedom as the end of the political order's politics, which is, at its core, the disposition of force in society, will, if not directed towards this end, create massive distortions and obstacles in men's search for their good. But that said, an equally important question remains. Free, how are men to use their freedom? The libertine answers that they should do what they want. Sometimes, in the line of the philosophers of the French Revolution, he arbitrarily posits the universal benevolence of human beings. He presumes that if everyone does whatever he wants, everything will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds. But whether so optimistically qualified or not, his answer ignores the hard facts of history. For it is only in civilization that men have begun to rise towards their potentiality; and civilization is a fragile growth, constantly menaced by the dark forces that suck man back towards his brutal beginnings.
Reason and Tradition
The essence of civilization, however, is tradition: no single generation of men can of itself discover the proper ends of human existence. At its best, as understood by contemporary American conservatism, the traditionalist view accepts political freedom, accepts the role of reason and innovation and criticism; but it insists, if civilization is to be preserved, that reason operate within tradition and that political freedom is only effectively achieved when the bulwarks of civilizational order are preserved.
Libertine libertarianism would shatter those bulwarks. In its opposition to the maintenance of defenses against Communism, its puerile sympathy with the rampaging mobs of campus and ghetto, its contempt for the humdrum wisdom of the great producing majority, it is directed towards the destruction of the civilizational order which is the only real foundation of a real world for the freedom it espouses. The first victim of the mobs let loose by the weakening of civilizational restraint will be, as it has always been, freedom—for anyone, anywhere.
My point had nothing to do with Catholicism. It had to do with ritual cannibalism (which is practiced ceremonially by not only Catholics, but in fact by many, or perhaps even the majority of Christian sects).
If you find it necessary to extract some kind of anti-Catholic sentiment from my statements in order to paint yourself as a victim, that's your problem.
No such sentiment was intended.
Oh, Please. You can do a bit better than that.
They only symbolically consume the body and blood of Christ.
No, in fact I said Catholics and other Christian sects.
I did not mention Catholics exclusively.
The only reason I mentioned Catholics individually at all, is that they as a group, are more likely to endorse the doctrine of transubstantiation (the belief in the literal conversion of sacramental wine and wafers, into the blood and body of Christ).
It isn't a slam on Catholics or on what they believe. They may believe as they wish, and I support their right to practice their beliefs in any way they see fit, provided they don't violate the rights of others in the process.
You seemed to me to be slamming libertarians because you percieved them to be defending cannibalism (although I think that's a bit of a stretch). I just thought you might want to think about that statement in a different light.
Apparently it was a bit too much for you emotionally, so you had to drag out your hair shirt.
Hair Shirt? ...mind humoring me?
He was both! Frank's argumentativeness was legendary. He even argued amiably on his deathbed with his priest-confessor -- to the considerable amusement of his friends.
Fusionism was uniquely Frank's. The whole movement, so to speak, debated libertarianism vs. traditionalism. For the first five or ten years after Goldwater, the debates were often rancorous. However, Frank, the libertarian, transcended his own views (and his own feisty style) to find common ground. Traditionalist Russell Kirk, in contrast, made no effort to reconcile the two views and never had patience for libertarians. (He and Frank weren't on speaking terms, though both were columnists for National Review.)
If it's of any interest, George Nash, Morton Blackwell and George Carey have all had distinguished careers and are all still active.
Sure. I knew him well.
A phrase often used today to indicate a false-pious sense of martyrdom, without justification.
Not to hear them tell it. The Catholic doctrine is that it's Jesus' actual, biological body come down from Heaven to replace the bread and wine, even though you can't notice it.
They're wrong, of course.
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