United States

Against populism in American conservatism

by kurto

It seems the Republican party, that is the official (officious?) arbiter of American conservatism, is obliged to fight a two-front war:

What began in the twentieth century as an elite-driven defense of the classical liberal principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution ended up, in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, as a furious reaction against elites of all stripes. Many on the right embrace a cult of personality and illiberal tropes. The danger was that the alienation from an antagonism toward American culture and society expressed by many on the right could turn into a general opposition to the constitutional order. That temptation had been present in the writings of the Agrarians, in the demagogy of Tom Watson, Hue Long, and Father Charles Coughlin, in the conspiracies of Joseph McCarthy, in the racism of George Wallace, in the radicalism of

    Triumph

, in the sour moments of the paleo-conservatives, in the cultural despair of the religious right and in the rancid antisemitism of the alt-right. But it was cabined off off. It was contained. That would not be the case forever – as Trump and January 6, 2021 had shown.

15. Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution (10 Aug 2017)

by kurto

The American Revolution exhibited none of the socioeconomic conditions classically associated with political upheaval, yet was a time of thoroughgoing change. Spanning 1740-60s (i.e., before the French and Indian War) to the Jacksonian era, Wood narrates a series of transformations in colorful detail, emphasizing social phenomena. For example, vertical connections of patronage were replaced by egalitarianism, as paternal authority began melting away. Leisure became a suspect trait of residual aristocracy; property transformed from a source of authority to merely another economic interest. Superior virtue was seen to derive from common moral sense, sharpened by participating in society (not government), rather than educated reason. In this way, the emergent middle class fused the gentility of the upper class with the bona fides of the working class to create a distinctly American ‘moral hegemony’. In the economic sphere, commerce which had been predicated on trust (credit) became more purely transactional, while the colonial ‘trading society’ predicted on business with England grew aware of its internal market and thus potential self-sufficiency. Servitude — save for slavery — all but dissolved. In the Federalist era, the granting of private charters became commonplace, such that not every purpose was publicly oriented, thereby raising questions of property rights; so judges became arbiters of public power versus private rights. Politically, government office went from an obligation to a source of social standing. Proto-group rights (first manifest by anti-Federalists), replaced disinterest as the defining standard of decision making. Then the first avowed political parties gook hold as the expression of loyalty to common interest and advancement. The Jacksonian age further restored monarchical characteristics under the cloak of popular rhetoric, such as the spoils system. Wood concludes: the revolution was about deciding who are America’s proper sociopolitical leaders, elsewhere noting the founders died depressed as the new society zoomed past republicanism into democracy. Deeply researched, the author’s taste for anecdote works to crowd out military, economic, and political events (context). Oddly, there is little discussion of Turner’s social mobility in migration, nor much regional color — although the author displays humility in allowing the character of local histories will require adjustments to the main narrative. A major question left unanswered is why the resultant concentration of wealth and broader inequality did not foster increased political instability?

23. Meacham, Destiny and Power (7 Nov 2017)

by kurto

A political biography of George HW Bush, emphasizing his ethic of public service, conciliatory politics, and establishmentarian approach to foreign affairs. Bush was a decent man and more effective than contemporaries recognized. The biography portrays his Connecticut family’s blue blood, in which sports was a measure of character, and points up his unusual pursuit of becoming a naval aviator prior to attending college. But details of his largely independent success as a Texas oil man are sparse, as the author rushes onto Bush’s nascent political career. Reaching Washington’s upper echelon over the course of the 1960s, Bush was loyal to Nixon as he would be to Reagan — even though he was seen as a good loser. (How significant really was his rivalry with Donald Rumsfeld?) As president, he is credited with skillfully managing the Cold War’s denouement, the Iraq war, and the coup against Gorbachev. Yet despite tick-tock details supplemented by deep access to primary materials — diaries and interviews — Meacham unsatisfactorily characterizes the political revolution of 1981-92. Therefore he is less skillful in attributing the cause of Clinton’s surprise electoral win: was it poor campaigning, sociopolitical change, or something more? (The irony of Clinton’s draft dodging, in comparison with Bush’s service, is unremarked.) Ultimately, the work reads as a consensus view of America’s (Democratic) establishment from the safety of a quarter century.

Philosophy of history versus free will

by kurto

Philosophy of history – belief in an engine directing events – acts against the free will of men in society:

The intellectual elite claim to understand the direction of history, as well as the scientific workings of the world, and thus feel authorized to impose their rationality on all aspects of society—including areas that had traditionally been regarded as private. This new scientific morality made it possible to present the bureaucracy’s policy preferences as moral justifications for progressivism and administrative rule. There was no limit to the power that could be used to make sure that everyone gets on “the right side of history,” as then-president Obama used to say. But that new morality and those policies could never be made compatible with limited constitutionalism and the rule of law. That is the root of the political crisis we face today.

It has become almost impossible to reconcile administrative rule with self-government. The morality mandated intellectually by our elites has destabilized traditional social institutions and produced a chaotic civil society, undermining any public deliberation and authentic public opinion capable of reconciling morality with the consent of the governed. The technical rule of experts downplayed the role of popular deliberation and public opinion, and also made it harder for any public debate to occur in an intelligent and effective way. Although self-government depends on public opinion to determine what can be done politically, that opinion cannot legitimately be mandated or controlled from the center. It must arise deliberatively from the people in the country at large, and should originate in civil society.

And:

It remains to be seen if the American people understand or will come to understand themselves as political citizens of the nation-state, or as administrative subjects of a scientific global order.

Glenn Ellmers, ‘What Trump and Covid Revealed’

13. Will, Statecraft as Soulcraft (15 Aug 2018)

by kurto

America’s founders underestimated civic virtue. Government is more likely to do justice if it aims to promote a moral citizenry. By ignoring ancient precepts of the Western political tradition, the US focuses on individualism to the detriment of society. Will surveys political philosophy and mid-20th century intellectual currents before making the positive case that ‘statecraft as soulcraft’ is necessary for the community’s cohesion. In the first regard, Will observes that Aristotle thought human nature provided a moral compass, which workings pointed to an orderly society. To accept natural law is to hold that individuals reach better decisions through common judgment. Decision making is a source of cohesion. Hobbes and Locke asserted the privacy of self-interest, rooted in human passions; Hobbes said reason is but a ‘spy’ for passion (contra Kant). In this view, decisions are a source of tension; society is held in check by tolerance; government is a referee. So oriented, moderns have further refocused natural law away from virtue and perfection toward regularity, away from duty toward rights. Turning to contemporary thought, Will demonstrates the leveling characteristics of Freudian psychology, relativism, the academy, and so on, while working his way back to Madison’s founding precept for the Constitution – factions holding one another in check as the ‘defect of better interests’. Madison was one-dimensional, in Will’s view, in thinking that passion trumped all. He shows that if rights rest on convention rather than natural law, then changes in opinion can change these rights. FDR, a social democrat, and Reagan, a Manchester liberal, were each moderns. Burke was the greatest contemporary to side with the ancients. The argument for soulcraft is overtly made with the assertion that the basic goal is not self-government but good government. Neither popularity nor tradition is by itself a guarantee of effectiveness; as regards the latter, this is the distinction between conservatism and reaction. Government promoting virtue is not a question of what to think but how to think. This points up the difference between soulcraft and (Nazi) totalitarianism, of natural law versus the Romantic will to power. But teaching cannot regard all outcomes as equal. Some questions (e.g., slavery) ought to be above the enthusiasms of popular sovereignty. Learned and soundly constructed, but suffers from too many asides and seeming changes of direction, which undermine concentration and depth. As an example, the observation that Plato thought Thucydides failed the first test of statesmanship, to improve the citizenry, ought to have featured in the conclusion, not early on.

16. Oates, With Malice toward None (30 Sep 2018)

by kurto

A learned but popular biography of Abraham Lincoln emphasizing the consistency of his vision of the American nation. As an Illinois Whig, Lincoln favored state-sponsored improvement (e.g., roads and technology improvement). He was an eloquent speaker when prepared but not a draftsman of note. Lincoln then served one term in Congress before returning to private pursuits, in which he was known as a railroad lawyer. His rivalry with Stephen Douglas commenced in the late 1830s, rising to its apex in opposing the Democrat’s notion of popular sovereignty, the fudge for extending slavery into the territories. Lincoln ran for the Senate in 1854 but conceded to a compromise candidate in order to keep a Democrat out, consistent with his view of cooperation for the common good. During this time, he appeared in New England and New York in support of fellow Whigs; in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and Scott decision, his decision to jump to the Republicans was a substantial boost for the new party. The famous 1858 debates with Dough elucidated his commitment to the federal union: Lincoln would respect slavery as established by law to preserve the union, but would not countenance expansion. 1860s’s split of the Democratic Party ushered Lincoln to the presidency, which occupies half of Oates’ work. Among the more interesting aspects are the decision to go to war, strong-armed tactics to keep Baltimore as well as the border states in the union, setting aside the fugitive slave law in the occupied south, and the struggle to find an offensive-minded general. Gradually, by 1862, he came to regard emancipation as a war aim, although he was conscious of running ahead of his cabinet, which insisted on a victory (Antietam) before the announcement, and more so popular opinion. Lincoln is presented as quirky, a hard worker and good decision maker, but not necessarily a first-grade Periclean leader. Does he deserve to be considered the redeemer of the Founding Fathers?

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.

18. Morgan, Genuine Article (23 Oct 2018)

by kurto

A collection of book reviews treating Colonial and Revolutionary era topics, often revealing the author’s views of 1980s-90s historiographic fashion. Following Perry Miller, Morgan asserts the value of taking people (i.e., evidence) at their word; socioeconomic approaches are disparaged in that ‘hidden meanings’ can’t be interrogated and so tend to reveal what the historian is looking for’; reliance on statistics for obscuring the big picture, a la Lewis Namier’s structure of politics. Whereas the main value of written evidence is the ability to show changes in how people thought about themselves. As to the 18th century, Morgan sides with the thesis that the America’s was a revolution was not made but preserved. He writes the position of the revolutionaries was to trust men in power no more than necessary: the crowd (‘the mob’) held the same mistrust of Parliament and colonial governors, who were gaining in power as the century went on – notwithstanding the efforts of neo-Marxist historians to find an independent, class agenda. In separate essays, written at different times, he appears of two minds regarding the political position of the Antifederalists and also the legitimacy of popular sovereignty. John Winthrop is convincingly portrayed as pragmatic, the ‘first great American’, for leading the quasi-surreptitious transformation of the English joint stock company into a colonial charter for Puritans. The Puritans’ devolution of sexual morality to civic government is the first sexual revolution. Franklin is like Burke albeit quicker to recognize to the breach with England was irreparable; Hutchinson a man of Burkean principle who nonetheless ended a simple apologist for power. (In an aside, Morgan shows how absolute right was converted to parliamentary sovereignty: from the king can do no wrong to the king wants what is right; what we want is right; the king must want what we want.) The essay on Gordon Wood’s Radicalism of the American Revolution is strong. Those on Southern culture are learned but less gripping, perhaps because of the topics; as Morgan notes, the South became self-conscious of its culture only after it lay in the ruins of the Civil War. The co-authored essay on a successor to the Dictionary of American Biography is poor. Generally crisp and learned, yet Morgan often accommodates contemporary, fashionable liberalism.

19. Howard, Lessons of History (1 Nov 2018)

by kurto

The French Revolution spurred the rise of nationalism in 19th-century Europe, a phenomenon which proved the major impetus for statecraft and warfare over the succeeding two centuries. More than simply self-conscious culture, nationalism in the 1800s was ideological, entwining a loose worldview with a defined sense of universal (often cultural) mission. It complemented economic modernization while overshadowing Marxism, which in its early phase had no conception of statecraft. Nationalism complicated life for Eastern Europe’s Jews, but (in its imperial guise) looked in colonial lands like routine military conquest. For social Darwinians cum nationalists, war was the ultimate test of folk strength – a view which died out after the carnage of World War I. In the 19th century, the Prussian mindset conflicted with German nationalism; Treitschke’s view that the essence of the state was power (macht), which required an army, bridged the two; ultimately, Nazism replaced Preussentum. Little is said of the interwar era. Howard coopts Churchill to makes a case for postwar British nationalism – as way to consensually accommodate postwar British decline – while giving the Russians a pass because the victorious Soviet army was ‘popular’ in postwar Eastern Europe! They and the Americans were the century’s inheritors of the universal mission, and in the current (when published) century, nationalism rather than social justice or economic equality remained the driver of public spirit. It provides the state apparatus with legitimacy: if unmoored (for example by supranational elites), the structure becomes alienating and oppressive. Turning to warfare, in which the author specializes, Howard’s primary insights are that 1) pre-WWI army doctrines failed to grasp the impact of mechanization despite the evidence of late-19th-century warfare – maneuver was ignored, and 2) in the greatest military literature, the hero cannot win, as abundantly demonstrated in WWI. As to history, the field is meant to train laymen – not professionals – to understand precedents of the contemporary. Howard asserts all ages of are equal interest to the historian, although the book fairly omits the developing world, and is comfortable with historicism though not polemical. In a ranging essay on ‘structure and progress’, he surveys why history has been held valuable and himself settles on its role in tracing society’s movement from the realm of necessity to the realm of choice. Such progress looks a leftward ratchet. The volume is not representative of his professional achievement and perhaps understates his contribution to understanding the relationship of warfare, society, and politics; however, it evinces the postwar bien pensant, the elite who could not see through the Soviets and uphold the enduring value of the liberal society.

20. Dunn, Breaking Democracy’s Spell (4 Nov 2018)

by kurto

Democracy has successfully established itself worldwide, but its record is poor. The author contends democracy is a formula for ‘direction of legitimate coercion’ over territory and population, for the citizen’s subjection to power without sacrificing dignity. Its good name owes to success of Western governments, particularly the USA, and its strengths are in the capacity to harness sociopolitical struggle; monarchy and aristocracy cannot allow for the possibility of conflict. However, democracy as commonly understood ‘equivocates’ between authoritative standard of right conduct and describing the political character of the regime. In an extended treatment of authoritarian China’s coming to terms with democracy, he shows that Chinese hierarchy includes an obligation to instruct the population. But his alternate example of good government rests on the country’s post-1980 economic growth (the real cost of which is not yet known to the West), and ignores that hierarchy has no tides to the commonweal. (Separately, he adds the true exemplar of democracy is India because of its size.) Dunn does not like democracy’s lack of alignment to egalitarian and leftist outcomes, which he dresses up as ‘reliable’ ties to justice and utility. He equates self-government with egalitarian outcomes, instead of opportunity. Ultimately, he seems to dislike Western (especially American) democracy because Americans don’t listen to their betters. He laments the failure of progressives to make the case for the folly of the Iraq invasion or the necessity of climate-change legislation, and proposes the university can steer the world out of its problems. He shows no concept of Thucydidean (or Lincolnian) persuasion (i.e., to know what to do and to be able to explain it), of knowing and representing the group. Dunn appears most concerned power that elites don’t hold power; it’s revealing that his critique lacks Fukuyama’s treatment of accountability and order (i.e., rule of law). The polemic scores a few points but abstruse language muddies the argument, which at any rate fails to really address the important questions of who should rule in the 21st century.