Standouts

16. Strauss, What is Political Philosophy? (24 August 2021)

by kurto

A series of essays and reviews elucidating characteristic elements of Leo Strauss’ political thought. Political thought considers humanity’s greatest objectives, freedom and government, those matters which lift men above their normal, daily concerns. It complements actual practice but stands above the here-and-now because philosophy is a neutral manner of consideration, firstly interested in the best regime and only then in contemporary circumstance.

The pursuit of truth entails value judgements, honestly derived. Contemporary political science, sociology, etc., seek to proscribe subjective criteria but admit judgments via assumptions or conceptual frameworks. Better to acknowledge we must first address what is or should be political, a question that is dialectic or pre-scientific, that is common sense. Philosophy rejects the ‘charms of competence’ (e.g., math) or ‘humble awe’ (meditation on the human soul and its experience): it is a matter of intellectual courage and moderation. Whereas positivism inevitably becomes historicism, which rejects the question of the best society and contends the fundamental questions cannot be answered once for all.

Whereas most philosophers have considered the combination of what is best with what is possible in given circumstance, the historicist insists that circumstance entails a determinative ‘historical conditioning’. But the necessity of all doctrine being related to a particular setting does not preclude the doctrine’s truth or utility. Political thought does not become obsolete because times have changed. Historicism believes in continuous progress, however, that we are necessarily ever closer to the truth. The nature of contemporary politics is superseded by trends, the question not of what is just but what should forthcome.

In political thought, the fatherland is the substance, the regime the form, the latter higher because it is compared to the best form. Virtue emerges through education in the form. Universal education requires technology free of moral or political control, something the ancients would not have countenanced. Moderns are not entitled to say they were wrong that such control would lead to dehumanization.
Machiavelli commenced the shift from government forming character to trust in institutions that deliver justice, implying belief that man is plastic. But the new prince may easily be a bad man disguised by public ambitions. Machiavelli lowered standards to increase the probability of the ‘success’ of the social order. Locke substituted acquisition for virtue as the individual’s goal. Montesquieu, contrasting the Roman republic with English political liberty, seconded the effect, substituting trade and finance for virtue. Rousseau represented the second wave of Machiavelli, wherein the criterion of justice is the general will. Democracy is government by the ill-educated; Rousseau taught that sufficient knowledge stems from conscience, the preserve of simple souls, that man is already equipped for the good life. German idealism sought to restore classicism but replaced virtue with freedom, which required an engine of history, an actualization of the right order which occurs from selfish behavior. Nietzsche commenced the third wave of modernity, characterized by individual will to power, the conquering of nature and chance, the renouncing of ideals and eternity – evidencing radical historicism.

Also:
• High ambition – hard problems – plus the question for wisdom defines philosophy. Ethics is the study of virtues, politics the study of man’s temporal ends. The philosopher ceases to be when he adopts subjective certainty of a solution that surpasses recognizing the problems / challenges to the solution. Similarly, detachment from human concerns regarding the eternal questions degenerates into provincialism
• The classic political philosopher is not a mediator but a neutral. Political science is transferable from one community to another, a teacher of legislators. It is concerned not with the purpose of the nation-state or foreign policy, for these are givens, but with the best political order
• Compared with classical political thought, all subsequent treatments are derivative, estranged from these primary issues. There is an important distinction between independently acquired knowledge and inherited knowledge. Special effort is required to discern what is true of the latter. Lessons must always be relearned if their vitality is to persist
• The law of nature is based on the distinction between the nature of being and the perfection of being
• Classic political thinkers sought the best way; Hegel demanded neutrality; thus thought became theory
• For Hobbes, justice does not exist outside of human institutions. Yet there is no basis but natural law for following the sovereign, so he resorts to disqualifying civil disobedience, but is nonetheless upended by the nature of charity and thus justice
• Locke denies knowledge of natural law by nature, says understanding must come from god. But: proof of the first mover does not prove natural law
• Both Hobbes and Hegel view human society as based on a humanity which lacks awareness of sacred restraints, and is guided by nothing other than thymos (i.e., desire for recognition).
• Spinoza championed pantheism and liberal democracy, running against his era, but was rehabilitated by the philosophes; yet he was surpassed in the 20th century by Hobbes (atheism, Leviathan) due to the work of Hegel and Nietzsche
• The historian is unlikely to know the philosopher’s intention better than the original, no matter the benefit of hindsight. By invading one’s privacy, the historian does not know the subject better but ceases to see the subject as an individual
• Originality or invention of system does not equal depth or true perception, understanding

9. Berlin, Crooked Timber of Humanity (11 Jun 2018)

by kurto

A series of essays in the history of ideas which reveals Isaiah Berlin’s leading philosophical precepts. These include pluralism’s triumph over classical ‘monism’; historicism is the inevitable product of choice, which forms a malleable human nature; and the best humanity can hope for is a society which heads off moral ‘intolerables’. To further cluster some of Berlin’s writing:
• The Western intellectual tradition presumes a single answer which can be rationally discovered and what constitutes a coherent whole. Also, in the West, knowledge includes values. Machiavelli first pointed up the possibility that values and ideals may not be aligned. More concretely, Germans disgruntled with French Enlightenment culture promoted self-conscious localism, through prototypical Romanticism. Berlin concurs: men are not created but born into ‘streams of tradition’; ironically, these streams enable new creations, new traditions but nevertheless do not sustain singular ideals. The Romantics shattered European unity of thought: the 19th and 20th centuries evinced conflict of universal ideals versus Romantic will to power, particularly in nationalist corruption (i.e., the leader embodying ‘folkways’ and the highest-value will).
• Vico fathered cultural pluralism, the view that ideals can be incommensurable. He disputed the ideal of progress or even comparability. But he was not a relativist: what (choices) men have made, others can understand. Berlin assets two types of relativism. The first attacks all objectivity. The second lets empirical matters (i.e., science) off the hook. This is the notorious fact-value distinction. At any rate, 18th-century thinkers were not relativists. The construct began only with Hegel.
• English traditionalists (e.g., Burke) and German Romantics saw mankind benignly. Joseph de Maistre saw sin and malic, attacking Enlightenment rationality and returning to the ‘early’ logic of Saint Thomas. However, he effectively anticipated another outcome of Romanticism – the coalescence of the will around the (20th-century) nation-state and especially the dictator. De Maistre said evolutionary social science is trumped by the group which most fervently believes it’s right.
• The core value of the Romantic is making his own choices. When obsolete, community tradition should be disposed. Men ought not be sacrificed to abstract or objective ideals. The Existentialists succeed the Romantics. The glory of man is to choose: the act of choosing is in fact human nature. To repeat, this is not relativism but acknowledgement of incommensurability and skepticism of human progress. The Romantics shattered the unity of European telos, and also paved the way to rationalism and the Existentialists. Berlin says existentialism (and implicitly their successors, the Postmoderns) are in fact a return to natural law or at least ‘Kantian absolutism’ (wherein the moral worth of an act depends on its being freely chosen), on the grounds that to choose is the irreducible essence of human nature, albeit without the metaphysics of theology. Science cannot control the Romantic will. Therefore the best we can do is to steer clear of intolerable outcomes.
Berlin is more of an apologist than a relativist. His work led him to a dead end in the Western tradition. But he did not lose faith, unlike those who glory in the willful ‘subversion’ of postmodernism.

14. Manville, Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens (28 Aug 2018)

by kurto

Traces the evolution of Athenian citizenship in the late seventh and early sixth centuries. The Kleisthenian reforms catalyzed Attica’s transformation to a powerful democratic state. The author begins by sketching Aristotelian concepts of the polis and democracy: justice is the essential condition of the state, and citizens are shareholders in a company whose purpose is moral excellence. Poetry, archaeology, and other remnants of Ancient Athens demonstrate these ideas, but citizenship lacked precise, shared understanding. Kylon’s attempted coup d’etat in 630 provoked aristocratic defense of privilege, as well as Drakon’s subsequent codification of customs such as penalties for killing Athenians (versus foreigners). But interstate warfare played a greater role than socioeconomic factors; scarcity of land was more important in undermining tribal affiliations. The reforms of Solon initiated more precise ideals of membership, inheritance, immigration; he also canceled debt, thus ending the possibility of citizens being sold into slavery, which won many different adherents. Further, several of Solon’s laws transformed formerly private concerns such as marriage, orphanage, weights and measures, and public festivals into public concerns. Yet his foremost concern was the process of justice: the well-ordered society is the just society. His controversial policies, particularly the cancellation of debt, led to tripartite factional warfare and the dictatorship of Peisistratos. The overall effect of his 25-year rule was positive for democratization (a la Pinochet or Kirkpatrick). Then followed 510’s diapsephisis, the judgment of fitness for citizenship on the basis of tribal descent. Kliesthenes’ rise to power dispelled this reign of terror; further, good order became equal order. He revised definitions of citizenship and enhanced participation in the legal system, and his reforms benefitted from foreign threats. Citizens were encouraged to work together domestically and in warfare. The inclusion of anthropology elongates the study, relegating some interesting material to the footnotes. In all, a useful historical work.

17. Davis, Crucible of Command (15 Oct 2018)

by kurto

A dual biography of Robert E. Lee and Ulysses Grant which serves to portray the primary military campaigns of the Civil War. Lee, 15 years older, sought to prevail by making Northern opinion give up, albeit through winning a Napoleonic, climactic battle; Grant, the most offensive-minded of Northern commanders, was tasked to win in the Confederacy’s spiritual homeland. Defeating Lee helped Grant become ‘second to Lincoln’ as man of the century. Both were Whiggish West Pointers, Lee the scion of a Revolutionary War hero who was forced to become head of the household, and was made by the Mexican War. Grant was hard-working but left the army to become an indifferent businessman. Although Lee was a prized recruit to the Confederacy, because of rivalries and state sovereignty, he didn’t become primes inter pares until May 1863 – months before his failure at Gettysburg. Grant worked his way up through Mississippi Valley wins at Fort Donelson, Shiloh, and Vicksburg, shrugging off a reputation for drunkenness and officer rivalries. Both Lee and Grant preferred surprise, indirect moves, and forceful follow-ups. In summer 1863, as he was charged to clear western Tennessee of Southern cavalry, he grasped the broader potential for destroying Southern resource base in Alabama and Georgia. His planning along with his successes made it inevitable he would be brought east to face Lee (which happened in April 1864). Also that summer, Grant came to appreciate the need to abolish slavery, though he was generally minded to avoid politics and in fact left the niceties to George Meade. When asked by politicians in March 1865 to recommend surrender, Lee declined; a month later he conceded to Grant’s generous terms at Appomattox. Swept to the presidency in 1868, he suppressed the KKK and was the first two-term president to display a modern approach. Lee, elected president of a struggling Virginian college, helped a Republican become governor of the state, thus enabling the Old Dominion to regain admission to the union in 1870 and side with Reconstruction (the only Southern state to do so). Lee, a fatalist, believed God’s intentions practically eliminated risk since events were preordained. Grant, the late bloomer, was prepared to take the good with the bad, to live life all over again.

5. Barraclough, Crucible of Europe (18 Apr 2019)

by kurto

Narrates the emergence of dynastic (neo-nation state) and church institutions in France, Italy, and Germany during the 9th and 10th centuries, contrasting the post-Carolingian order with Anglo-Saxon England. Several persevered into the pre-modern era and later. With the fall of Italy to the Lombards and Spain to Islamists, the center of a truncated Europe had moved north. The lasting importance of the Carolingian Franks lies in the spread of government and civil administration through the northern lands including Poland and Bohemia. In this era the allied Catholic Church became a force to be reckoned with (rather than merely the hallmark of a religious society). Carolingian learning, notably the copying of manuscripts but also innovative epistemology, set down the height of erudition and specifically the legacy of the Latins until the 12th century. The settlement of 812 crowned Charlemagne as a western emperor, fusing two kingdoms in his own right and separating them from the Byzantine lands. But Frankish rule was built on conquest and had already begun to sputter; relying on feudal vassals and missi dominici was too much for contemporary government especially in Lombardy, Bavaria, neo Hungary, and Saxony – even though later peoples would look back upon it as an idealized unity when forging their new state forms. The Danish, Saracen, and Magyar invasions acted as a solvent on the Carolingian state, which was partitioned under Louis, whose legacy is the establishment of the new nation-states as well as primogeniture. In this time, Nicholas I built up the independent role of the papacy.

The raids brought depopulation, agricultural decline, and people seeking protection from local strongmen. They hit hardest in France, hastening retreat to the country castle. Here the tendency to revert to pre-Carolingian traditions was most pronounced, here the author contends we most see the Carolingian breakup did not produce separate countries, but rather they were borne of different regional responses to anarchy. In France, it took more than two centuries for territorial and social restoration of order. Contra Wickham, there was no ‘caging of the peasant’: people willfully surrendered freedom from security from Viking raids. The criterion of nobility was ability to bear arms, not birthright. Vassalage lost stigma of servitude, gaining an ethos of common service and serving to demarcate the political classes. The ca 850 edicts of Charles the Bald required men to choose their lord, sanctioned the vassal’s oath, and sanctioned hereditary succession to the local fief. Thus the country would emerge into medieval feudalism, with 55 counties, up from 27 at the start of the 10th century. But the French rulers’ continued concession of lands to win the support of nobles all but bankrupt the Carolingian and Capetians: the monarchy did not regain really independent strength until 1100. Again the author contends feudalism did not produce anarchy but was an organic reaction. Its principles spread throughout Europe via the Spanish Reconquista, the Norman invasion of England, adoption in Germany and eastward; and would remain the basis of order down to 1789.

The history of post-Carolingian Italy is the struggle for control of the Lombard plain among two Frankish families, from Spoleto and Friuli, and one from Lucca.  As the raids in Italy were piratical, the towns continued to develop, under the tutelage of bishops; the role of counties weakened. Order was restored comparatively earlier, by the German Otto I in 961-62.

The Germans were the first to recover from anarchy, being less impacted by the raids and more inclined to retain elements of Carolingian government including a loyal aristocracy. Henry I prevented the breakup of eastern Frankish lands, his successor Otto I sought not to break the dukes but reasserted control over the royal demenses and the church in the duchies, so as to ally the church with the crown. Vassalage remained an onerous condition, marking another contrast with France. Otto’s crowning by the pope in 962 marked a turning point in progression to dynastic order in German lands under the Saxon dynasty, but its middle-term decline was germinated by its retroactive character.

England did not dissolve by result the Viking raids, as in France, but produced a more coherent, forward-looking response then the Germans: local government via the hundreds and the shires and a single monarchy from several pre-raid kingdoms. Alfred reorganized the military even while on the defensive, forging a mobile, unified force (i.e., not a local levy), a network of forts (burhs), and a navy for forward response. The forts became the basis of civil authority, as in Lombardy, France and to a lesser degree Germany; the hundreds extended the forts in promoting social order (e.g., responses to crime). By assuming responsibility for peace, the monarchy created a machinery for order where none had existed; this was extended beyond the Norman conquest.

The reestablishment of settled government broadened agriculture (notably in Italy), economic exchange, and indeed the purview of civilized northern Europe, most recently centered on Charlemagne’s Aachen but now more dispersed among Hungary and England. Monastic reform, another response to anarchy, also served to extend social order and played a related role in breaking down regional differences; but the church loosed sociopolitical forces which were to challenge the Saxon monarchy in the mid-11th century. Aristocratic hostility to Salian (successor to Saxon) reforms undermined royal authority. After a half century of struggle, a new order in central Europe emerged in 1122.

19. Caldwell, Age of Entitlement (1 October 2021)

by kurto

Contemporary incivility demonstrates a hidden civil war between adherents to the de jure constitution of 1789 and woke proponents of the de facto regime which has grown up since 1964. The latter has captured the establishment and is winning.

Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) undermined the First Amendment’s freedom of association; Griggs vs. Duke Power (1971) next authorized government to address racism where there was no obvious intent; Bakke vs. Univ. of California (1978) sanctioned aspirational ‘remedies’ for hidden racism (i.e., diversity). Extralegally, rioting was part and parcel of the civil rights movement from the late 1960s, while feminism held lieutenancy of the aggrieved cohorts, now led by the homosexual lobby.

Postwar government and society had modeled itself on the military, but the Vietnam War’s unpopularity shifted credibility to the Baby Boomers, also buoyed by demography. Reagan arranged a truce between the new left and Americans unwilling to finance the Great Society via taxation, by converting its basis to debt, thereby handing away the fruits of the 1970s counterinsurgency. But social peace frayed anyway as entitlements grew. Clinton’s repeal of Glass-Steagall, which had acted to preserve capital in local banks, transferred debt financing to the credit markets, ushering government regulation (e.g., Community Reinvestment Act, ESG measures) into the marketplace.

Under the shadow constitution, postmodernism and fellow travelers in the media delegitimize tradition and political institutions; woke institutions champion new orthodoxies on behalf of subversive-cum-favored minorities; and working-class whites see New Deal / union economic benefits reallocated. Once-Republican plutocrats have recast their (inevitably) minority status as one sympathetic to the civil rights protagonists, embracing lobbying via foundations to thwart democratic majorities – a phenomenon which FDR resisted for the very reason. (Caldwell describes he subset of Internet titans as oligarchs of digital natives who cannot opt out.) The Tea Party and Trump reject this arrangement.

Speaking of the Russian Revolution, Rosa Luxembourg observed revolutionary tactics are the way to democratic majorities, not democratic majorities the conduit to revolution. The civil rights partisans supplant popular sovereignty with mandate: ‘biases’ are held to be unconscious, and so government is justified in overriding them. (At the time of Brown, Strauss was among those who observed liberal society ought to condone ‘discrimination’.) Caldwell raises the possibility that the American experiment with democratic self-government has already ended.

Compelling but occasionally careless of fact (e.g., 1986 immigration pact, pace Vin Cannato). A very good first draft of the progressive influence on political thought and government circa 1960-2020.

8. Bagehot, English Constitution (2 Jun 2019)

by kurto

Studies British Parliamentary government, setting aside theory for normative analysis of function and drawing favorable contrasts with the American presidential system. Constitutions have dignified and efficient parts, the latter often more important than formal allocation of power. These gain stature through passage of time, even though yesterday’s conventions are not necessarily best suited for today’s affairs. The efficient secret of the British constitution is close union of the legislature (i.e., Commons) and the executive (the prime minister and responsible cabinet). Relations between the PM and Parliament are incessant, unlike the needlessly divided president and congress, and cabinet ministers further are better supervisors of the bureaucracy because they provide fresh views while being accountable to Commons. That is, English party government exposes the leadership both to functionaries and the requirement of maintaining a working majority. The USA’s splitting of sovereignty, by contrast,  is particularly troublesome in times of crisis; Bagehot observes it’s well the Americas are law abiding. There are also valuable takes on political affairs: so long as there’s an uneasy class which lacks just power, the agitators will rashly believe all should have equal power; gross appearances are great realities; bureaucracy conflates substance of government with process, thereby overdoing quantity at expense of quality; in early societies more important for law to be fixed than good. A surprisingly resilient analysis.

20. Collingwood, Essay on Metaphysics (27 Oct 2019)

by kurto

            Metaphysics is the study of absolute presuppositions which underpin contemporary scientific inquiry. Invented by Aristotle, who erroneously conceived it as a science of being (‘ontology’ to Collingwood), the subject’s birth simultaneously gave rise to science: for to think scientifically is to answer a question; questions require presuppositions; and all such questions and presuppositions must somehow be grounded. (Propositions seek to answer ‘is it true’ or similar queries; facts, from Bacon onward, are things that answer questions.) All metaphysical questions are historical questions: what was the contemporary view?

Mistaking the certainties of one’s age for the certainties of all ages is a fundamental error. It is religion’s role to promote the development of absolute presuppositions. Thus Collingwood concludes the Christian church has been the guarantor of Western science. He shows how the doctrine of the trinity corresponds with modern science, which rests of absolute presupposition of nature as one, and therefore science as one in corresponding to law.

‘Antimetaphysics’ is an irrational, unscientific view of life, to which Collingwood ascribes various personas. Deductive metaphysics is a constellation of absolute presuppositions which are without conflict, like coherent mathematics; but metaphysics (i.e., history of ideas) is never without internal tensions. Logical positivism, which seeks to prove presuppositions (and all else) as fact, is the most prominent example of the pair of enemies of metaphysics; in actuality it treats fact in a medieval manner.

By targeting metaphysics, positivism continues the 18th-century attack on classical Greek thought. Separately, psychology, which purports to be the science of how we think, cannot claim dominion over metaphysics because it does not uniquely do so (so too does logic) and since it makes no recourse to truth and falsehood and thus to self-criticism which is the end of thinking (i.e., was my thought successful?). Theoretic thought is logic, practical thought is ethics. Psychology in actuality is not cognitive (as the ancients thought); it is the science of feeling; lacking not only self-criticism but also a science of the body and also an understanding of truth, it is no science at all. Psychology is a pseudo-science which cannot supplant metaphysics and other sciences because it ignores procedure: it is the propaganda of irrationalism, which is not a conspiracy but an epidemic undermining the scientific pursuit of truth.

Elsewhere, Collingwood treats the sequence of physics from Newton (all events have causes) to Einstein (all events are governed by laws, but most have no cause). Physicians escaped the anthropomorphic problems of the 19th century – nature causing things – by concluding there are few causes only behavior according to law. But philosophers and positivists alike extended Kant’s view that every event has a cause. Kant himself considered metaphysics as ‘god, freedom, immortality’. Of his categories of modality – possibility, actuality, necessity – possibility (i.e., something that could be) is a major stumbling block for positivism. The scholastics considered that pagans ended Roman civilization, but it was really the loss of faith in Latin absolute presuppositions.

21. Kelly, March of Patriots (22 Nov 2019)

by kurto

            Prime ministers Paul Keating and John Howard extended Alan Hawke’s reform program, albeit for different reasons and in contrasting ways, positioning Australia for a tranquil prosperity in the 21st century. The pair shared a working-class heritage though the Labor man was egalitarian by ideology, the Liberal by creed. Kelly describes the outcome as ‘Aussie exceptionalism’, the transition from a protected to a global economy while preserving pragmatic, socially egalitarian features and avoiding ‘US style’ laissez-faire (or neoliberal) features.

a            Then-Liberal party leader Alan Hewson should have won the 1993 election, but his Fightback platform provided Keating a target to distract from a deep Labor recession; this year, not 2007 ended ‘neoliberalism’ in Australia. Despite winning Keating blamed Hawke for not relinquishing power in 1988. His income tax cuts (combined with raising gas and tobacco surcharges) were cynically designed to make the Hewson’s GST proposal unworkable, and would force his finance minister to resign soon after delivering his first budget. Nonetheless, despite 10 percent unemployment he stood by the 1980s reforms, breaking tradition of responding to downturns with higher tariffs. The introduction a central bank and abandoning the wage award system would set the stage for low inflation. As a cultural warrior, Keating was anti-British (a la Manning Clark) and a radical nationalist (i.e., anti Federation), exemplified by his attack on the flag. Prone to overreaching, he required faith in his ideological, ‘redemptive’ positions on the market economy, republicanism, Aboriginal reconciliation, and Asian détente. Keating held the Mabo decision allowed for ‘coexistence’ of native claims and pastoral title, allowing the former a seat at the negotiating table; but the outcome was judicial administration and so tanglement. Ultimately he failed to graft Mabo, Asian détente, republicanism, and multiculturalism onto modernization.

            Labor’s contesting the 1996 election on terms of concealed budget deficit cost the party a decade. Workchoices, Howard’s effort at labor (industrial) deregulation, not only raided the opposition’s turf but also sought to demonstrate growth did not result in inequality (but shared gains). Howard could not have succeeded Hewson, but followed Alexander Donner because Kevin Costello was prepared to wait his turn. He had changed since his first term as Liberal leader, moving beyond the party divisions of the 80s to fuse a Burkean conservatism with Smithian economics. Labor’s reform model comprised financial deregulation, tariff cuts, moves to counter inflation (i.e., the central bank), privatization, and enterprise bargaining; Howard added tax (GST) reform as well as fiscal and labor measures – unusually conceding credit to Labor for the effects of financial and tariff changes. Unemployment was not conquered until the 2000s, but the Liberal PM renewed the country’s sense of personal responsibility, moving it further away from (social) protection. He was disinterested in religion as a political objective, and dropped opposition to ‘multiculturalism’, but held his ground on citizenship and immigration and contested Mabo and the 1996 Wik case, which implicated some 40 percent of the land. Kelly writes Howard missed his opening vis-à-vis Aboriginal reconciliation. He loved talkback radio and laid claim to a generation of ‘battlers’, the Aussie Reagan Democrats.

            The passage of GST was opened by a court ruling stopping New South Wales from taxing tobacco; monies were to go the states. The newly floating currency enabled the country to weather the Asian crisis, while underlining Howard’s confidence in its Western ties. Under Howard, Australia’s plan was not détente but world deputy (e.g., Afghanistan) and regional leader (Timor independence). By the end of his term, relations with Tokyo, Dew Delhi, Jakarta, and Beijing were at a high point; Howard skillfully drew closer to China while immediately supporting America in its war on terrorism (having been present in Washington on September 11, 2001). Hanson was a noisy, worrisome, and ultimately flawed challenger. As to an Aussie republic, Howard agreed with Keating a popular presidential mandate would overturn the Westminster system, and exploited uncertainty whether it meant the country would no longer have a British head of state or should become a direct democracy.

            After the debacle of Seattle 1999, Howard had sought a bilateral trade deal with America, sealing the arrangement with instinctive show of support after 9/11: Howard immediately understood the attack as a threat to the West. (Ironically, the economic downturn of the Howard’s second term, punctuated by the 2000 introduction of the GST, a landmark to his tenacity, broke the common assumption that Australia was tied to the US economy, the Antipodean slump being unrelated to tech.) The Tampa incident demonstrated both determination to control Australia’s borders and response to judicial activism. Australians agreed with Howard the executive branch should be responsible immigration, regardless one’s party affiliation. Post-reform Australia was not prepared to accept judicial activism as an alternate policy mechanism.

            Full of contemporaneous and post facto interviews, Kelly is Australia’s answer to Bob Woodward, himself an establishment figure if not quite so biased. Though sometimes repetitive, and the introduction is something of a flying start, the book is clearly the starting line for academics.

22. Kirk, Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered (29 Nov 2019)

by kurto

Narrates the life and elucidates the political legacy of Edmund Burke, whose views on constitutional government, political party, and sociopolitical reform are fundamental to Western civic heritage. Though lacking the élan of Rousseau or Johnson, Burke’s wisdom pertains in the mid-20th century. Drawing on numerous Burke scholars, Kirk makes particular use of Peter Stanlis’ summary of Burke’s objectives:

  • To maintain the structure of the British state
  • To define the limits of British monarchy
  • To extend the role of the House of Commons
  • To expound the role of the political party
  • To extend civil rights and economic opportunities to all citizens, including throughout the Empire (according local custom)
  • To defend the historical traditions and order of Europe (i.e., Greco-Christian West) versus the Enlightenment
  • To solve problems (i.e., to do justice) with an eye to custom (often ‘prudence’) and equally the ethics of prevailing legal norms

As early as 1746, Burke worried that decadent Western elites would succumb to leveling rationalism. As a parliamentarian, his initial impact owed to advocating self-government in Ireland and America, restraint of the British monarch (‘economy’) and simultaneously promotion of the political party, and social justice in India. His moral imagination and literary genius revealed his approach: ability to reform, disposition to preserve. Thoughts on Our Present Discontents first propounded the role of party harnessed to national interest (i.e., accountability to the public), because rising ‘popular interests’ would no longer abide conventional monarchy or aristocracy; but party needed to surmount the taint of faction. Burke always opposed arbitrary power and so the turn to opposing Jacobinism evidenced his recognizing rationalism’s inciting a European civil war. Reflections on the Revolution in France demonstrated the natural ends of Enlightenment government: the destructive energy of all radicals and the insistence on absolute submission to will. Contesting the notion that Burke ‘gave to party what was intended for mankind’, Kirk shows Burke’s political philosophy in fact formed the initial and most enduring defense of Western civilization. Meanwhile, the defection of the Old Whigs to the Tories created the first and oldest political party (contra Jones, Invention of Modern Conservatism). Elsewhere Kirk is concerned to demonstrate Leo Strauss’ misreading, in Natural Right and History, of fatalism: though seeming to concede he could do no more, in fact Burke’s works during the 1790s anticipate Churchill in locating perseverance in the English public and rallying them to it. Valuable as one of the clearer biographies, Kirk settled the debate over whether Burke was a conservative.