(Guest post by Greg Forster)
After publishing last week’s much-discussed post on schools, state power, culture and citizenship, I had two further experiences that I think are worth recording as a sort of appendix.
One clarification I want to add first, though – I should have bent over a little further backward to stress the distinction between “conservative ideas” and “ideas championed by conservatives.” I never denied – in fact I explicitly said – that the use of the government school monopoly to impose a moral order and civic culture on the nation is something some conservatives have advocated. What I deny is that the idea itself ought to be called “conservative.” If that’s a distinction we’re never allowed to make – which seems to be the position from which my post is being assailed – I can’t see any ground for even using labels like “conservative” at all, since they would have no meaning.
A few days after I put the post up, I was discussing Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom with a friend who is, not exactly a liberal, but certainly not a conservative. Hayek’s thesis was that the “soft” collectivist trends of the Anglo-American world mid-century were parallel in some very important ways to the “soft” collectivism of Germany after WWI – and that murderous totalitarianism was the logical endpoint of both trends. Not because the intentions of the soft collectivists were not noble and uplifting, and everything one might wish them to be; but because the unintended effect of their policies is to destroy the institutions and thought-patterns that obstruct totalitarianism, and strengthen those that give rise to it.
“Well,” remarked my friend,”it sure does make your job easier if you can tie your opponents’ position to Nazism.”
“Yes, it does,” I replied, “but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
The epigram to the introduction of Road to Serfdom, from Lord Acton, says it all: “Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas.”
I’m more than willing to have a civilized debate about the facts, provided I can find an interlocutor who’s interested in a civilized debate about the facts. Until I do, I think that’s pretty much all I have to say about this aspect of the controversy.
Then, over the weekend, I ran across Calvin Coolidge’s speech on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The speech is very, very good and I encourage you to read it all. His critique of Progressivism, which was then in the slow and painful process of receding from the height of its power and influence, is simply devastating:
If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
The more I learn about Coolidge, the more I think he’s known as “Silent Cal” primarily because he only spoke when he had something worth saying.
But in light of the topic I posted on last week – the contrast between the progressivism that sees the diligent exercise of state power as the grounding of a strong moral culture and civic identity, and the conservatism that trusts in our strong moral culture and civic identity as the grounding of state power – I couldn’t help but notice Silent Cal made the same point very well (and far more succinctly). Much of the speech is devoted to the idea that free political institutions ultimately derive from a culture that loves liberty, and cannot survive in its absence. After discussing the historical origin of that culture and some of the social institutions that maintain it, he remarks:
Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.
Wish I’d said it that neatly.
But then, how many hits did Cal’s blog have?
And how did I run across this speech? It was linked in The Corner by…Jonah Goldberg. Small world!
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
I couldn’t agree more with Cal’s first passage. People naturally want to try and make the world a better place, but when they lose their respect for the rights of individuals they inevitably start down the path to ruin.
I’ve been on vacation and just got to reading this.
I am certainly one of the people who read the original post and found it questionable. Quite a few people here in Arkansas had the same reaction.
The disagreement we have isn’t a disagreement about history, it’s a disagreement over the entire exercise–or at least the exercise as you are performing it. In your discussion, conservatism is a static philosophy (definition: all things good), and things done in the name of conservatism that weren’t conservative (things not good) were really the actions of faux conservatives (some of them were even poisoned by liberals). You defined liberals, on the other hand, entirely by the actions of the bad examples you cherry-picked, or by examples you cherry-picked from progressives, who you conveniently defined as liberals. You could have made it much simpler by simply writing “Conservatives are good, liberals are bad.”
I don’t know that entertaining this exercise is even possible when that’s where things begin. Like I said, I think the exercise itself is ridiculous. I’m not comfortable saying that the intellectual pedigree of modern conservatism has Jim Crow at its roots, but that’s the type of thing I could say, if I wanted to play this game. I could find some great quotes by George Wallace, or Strom Thurmond, or Orval Faubus that sounded just like something Reagan might have said. Or maybe I could comb through the transcripts of the Scopes monkey trial, and find all kinds of quotes that prove that conservatives are the intellectual equivalent of the Taliban, and their true aim is to indoctrinate all of America’s schoolchildren with a state-mandated religion, like conservatives today who are fighting the teaching of evolution in Texas, or Kansas, or South Carolina.
But this is tiring and utterly worthless. I’d rather do almost anything than play the game of pin the jackass on the other’s guy’s family tree. If that’s the worldview that works for you, enjoy. But expect a few uncivilized reactions.
Since discovering Coolidge some years ago, he has become by far my favorite president of the 20th century. I’m glad you quoted him, Greg.
Brian, I’ll give you credit for quite eloquently constructing a straw man of noteworthy craftsmanship. Kudos. Since you seem to get hung up on the Conservative / Liberal labels though, may I suggest mentally substituting the terms, Classical Liberal and Statist for your respective “right” and “left” ends of the measuring stick. You may find it uncomfortable that the pedigrees of ideas matter as much as they do, but these particular ones can be traced quite easily back to Athens and Sparta if you wish, which in itself is a fascinating exercise I hope you would enjoy.
That said, an apples to apples, point by point comparison between Coolidge and one of his “at odds” contemporaries of notable eminence may help to more concretely put Progressivism in proper light. In other words, no jackass (as you put it) but someone representative and still often admired — Alfred Maynard Keynes from the same period, in a paper from 1926. Let’s note the contrasts with Coolidge:
“Let us clear from the ground the metaphysical or general principles upon which, from time to time, laissez-faire has been founded. It is not true that individuals possess a prescriptive ‘natural liberty’ in their economic activities. There is no ‘compact’ conferring perpetual rights on those who Have or on those who Acquire [sic]. . . . We cannot therefore settle on abstract grounds, but must handle on its merits in detail what Burke termed “one of the finest problems in legislation, namely, to determine what the State ought to take upon itself to direct by the public wisdom [see Madison’s tyranny of the majority] and what it ought to leave . . . to individual exertion.” We have to discriminate between . . . Agenda and Non-Agenda, and to do this without . . . prior presumption that interference [against the individual] is, at the same time, ‘generally needless’ and ‘generally pernicious.’ Perhaps the chief task of economists at this hour is to distinguish afresh the Agenda of government from the Non-Agenda; and the companion task of politics is to devise forms of government within a democracy which shall be capable of accomplishing the Agenda.”
Now, Brian, that you can compare the political left and right of 1926 on equal footing, you may see some parallels when comparing Sparta to Athens, the Jacobin Revolutionaries to the American Revolutionaries, Thatcher vs the Labour Party, and so on.
Straw man? You mean because I cherry-picked some examples of historical conservative visionaries you’d rather not acknowledge? I’m just playing the game as you all are defining it. And then you come back by cherry-picking Keynes? As if liberals everywhere are quoting Keynes, putting Keynes bumper-stickers on their cars, building statues and monuments to Keynes.
Please. This entire exercise has been about straw-manning. That was my point.
Did I say Alfred? That’s what I get for posting after 1:00 AM. Unfortunately, I’m too tired at this hour to make up any jokes about John being his autistic twin brother who became an economist because of his lack of X. There have to be some good economist jokes out there though.
If you and Greg mean classical liberal, then that is what you should say. But don’t pretend like modern conservatism isn’t as far from classical liberalism as modern liberalism is. Both modern conservatism and modern liberalism have classical liberalism in their roots, and both have moved away from classical liberlaism’s emphasis on individual liberty. Modern liberals have traded liberty for concerns about equality, and modern conservatives have traded liberty for concerns about social order. This is AmGov 101.
But all along Greg, who knows better, wants to conveniently use the ideal definition of the term conservative while using the least attractive definition of the term liberal. And he should know better.
I’m in Arkansas people. We gave you Huckabee. Don’t tell me what a conservative is, tell your party.
Quoting the bread and butter of modern leftist (aka Progressive) economics, Keynes, has become cherry picking? Honestly now, I believe spanning over Sparta, the Jacobins and modern Labour Parties also avoids any cherry picking as well.
The point is that the statist impulse has broad, deep and ancient roots. Again, just compare it to Coolidge’s comments, which do, in fact, reflect the ideals most modern “conservative” think tanks seek to advance.
Once again, you appear to assume we are engaged in a mere discussion over modern personalities who claim labels like liberal and conservative, and this becomes a sideshow rather than the substance.
Fine. We get Keynes. You get George Wallace. Happy?
I found this quote in an article by Jonathan Rauch which I found quite funny.
“The history of the modern Republican Party in one sentence: Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller got into an argument and George Wallace won.”
Not bad for a single sentence. Not bad at all. Here’s the full article:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/st_20100227_4350.php
Thank you for the post Greg. I really enjoyed reading it! Have a great day!
Brian,
Perhaps, to avoid the “pin-the-jackass” syndrome, you could identify the modern or historical authors, philosophers, or politicians that in your eyes best epitomize liberalism. And then we can examine the pedigree of that group’s ideas. Fair?
Greg has already made his feelings known about Rawls, so I have avoided bringing him into this. But if he gets to use Hayek, I think we should be able to use Rawls. Still, I have no doubt that you can’t get to Hitler within six-degrees of Rawls. The point I’ve been making is that you can get to Hitler within six-degress of anything if you’re creative enough.
Except that George Wallace was *ahem* a Democrat…
Not a very relevant point Matt. All it does is require me to explain realignment theory to everyone who doesn’t already know it. And I don’t have the time for that. Suffice to say that Wallace, like Strom Thurmond and Orval Faubus and millions of other old-guard Dems who followed them, left the Democratic party when the Dems were no long willing to be the party of the Klan. I know you already knew this, so why’d you bring it up?
And besides, we’re talking about libs and cons here, not Dems and Repubs. The Wallace we all know is uniformly considered a conservative.
I would not be surprised to learn that Greg is no fan of Rawls, but I cannot imagine he would object to you bringing him into the conversation. Perhaps you already covered this in a previous round, but if not, then what has Rawls said on this topic that you find especially pertinent?
Yes, Rawls has been covered extensively in other rounds. Greg finds Rawls too subjective…meaning he thinks Rawls can be used to support anything and everything. Hence, it wouldn’t take long for him to turn Rawls into Hitler.
“And besides, we’re talking about libs and cons here, not Dems and Repubs.”
Plenty of other blogs exist for that.
Once again, on this thread we were discussing the pedigrees of ideas — precisely as Acton was quoted and even Daniel (not this Daniel) reiterated. May I suggest, perhaps, a slower, less emotional reading and posting.
You all may be discussing the pedigree of ideas. I am certainly not, nor do I care to. I am criticizing the exercise (at least how it’s being conducted) outright. It’s all straw-men and slippery-slopes. Why bother?
To be clear, I don’t think it has to be a worthless exercise. It certainly could be a worthy intellectual pursuit. But when it’s just being used to slippery-slope your political opponents ideas into Hitler…
Brian-
I bring up the fact that George Wallace was a Democrat to make a point. Wallace lived and died as a Democrat, and while you are right that there was a realignment, there was also generational replacement going on during the process. It is not the case that white southerners defected to the Republican Party en masse in 1964. Wallace for instance remained Governor of Alabama until 1986 as a Democrat.
“Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller got in an argument and George Wallace won” is a strange reading of history in my book. Liberals were in bed with populist scum like Wallace and people worse than Wallace for 100 years after the Civil War. Where were their evolved sensibilities then?
Contemporary liberals may not think much of southern Whites, but I don’t see them standing in front of schools with baseball bats or hanging people from trees these days. It’s worth noting back in the days when such things were common, the perpertrators were in the same political party as American liberals. In the early 20th Century, Progressives wanted to use state power to build their better society, and Southern populists wanted to use it to maintain apartheid. A strained marriage is still a marriage.
As Jay-Z might say, the Right has 99 problems, but George Wallace aint one.
We can have a fun talk about Wallace and his influence in turning the South into “conservatives” some day. It’s too much to do now. But let me at least say that no, I don’t think Wallace is the well-spring of modern conservatism, even though the southern strategy that the right subsequently adopted is well-documented. But if I wanted to play Greg’s game, you really would have to claim him. When he made his runs for the presidency, it was all conservative rhetoric, and he was no longer a Democrat (American Independence Party, I think). He famously said that he didn’t leave the party, the party left him. And of course, the Dixiecrats famously broke from the Democrats and the high profile ones become Republicans. The fact that Wallace stayed a Democrat later in his life was an act of repentance on his part, or so he claimed.
You called him a populist, which is the term I would use myself. It’s also the same term I would use to describe a lot of the early-20th century progressives. And there were right-wing populists and left-wing populists–but they were all willing to use the state to subvert the liberty of the individual. And they did a lot of illiberal things. Things that most liberals or conservatives, properly defined, would not claim.
Look, Greg’s equating liberalism with Nazism. If you are willing to stand with that characterization, I don’t exactly know where to begin. I’ve tried to use Wallace to point out how silly this exercise is, and instead of acknowledging that it’s silly, we’re now debating who Wallace belongs to.
I’m done.
I just had a conversation with an imaginary friend of mine who isn’t able to recognize a straw-man or slippery-slope argument when he sees it. Here’s what I said:
”I told him that the “soft” puritanical trends of conservatives were parallel in some very important ways to the “soft” puritanical trends of Afghanistan after they dispelled the Soviets – and that murderous totalitarianism was the logical endpoint of both trends. Not because the intentions of the soft puritans were not noble and uplifting, and everything one might wish them to be; but because the unintended effect of their policies is to destroy the institutions and thought-patterns that obstruct totalitarianism, and strengthen those that give rise to it.
“Well,” remarked my friend,”it sure does make your job easier if you can tie your opponents’ position to Islamo-fascists.”
“Yes, it does,” I replied, “but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
Brian-
I agree with much of your last comment. There are skeletons in the closets of both parties and on both the right and the left.
The Rockefeller/Goldwater/Wallace statement just rubs me the wrong way because it is a bumper sticker type of an oversimplification of a complex history.
It was intended to rub Greg the wrong way. It’s an over-simplification of something complex, much like Greg’s reductio ad Hitler job, which I’m sure you can tell rubbed me the wrong way.
Make that your second to last comment…you must have posted just before me.
Since trolls are originally a Norwegian creation, I can only suppose that “done” is some kind of Old Norse slang for “just getting started.”
Hmmm. So you make an off-topic personal attack towards me, and somehow that makes me the troll? I think you better consult your techie dictionary. I don’t think you know what a troll is.
I really appreciate your earlier comment Matt, addressing Greg’s first quote of Coolidge. His crystal clear understanding of the absoluteness of natural law as *final*, then leveraging our own recognition of that supremacy as the basis for challenging us to really think — that is, to soberly question the forward direction of any allegedly “progressive” ideas with their statist intent, no matter how well-meaning we are. Utterly brilliant.
Of course, knowing the pedigree of such principles is helpful as we trace back through Locke and beyond and examine ourselves, but an important defining landmark on the pedigree of Progressivism, between the Jacobins and Mussolini, is Bismarck’s progressive utopia which laid the template for not only the Germany that followed, but the rest of Europe and eventually every industrialized nation as a welfare state.
It is fascinating to me now little that monumental step in history is discussed, let alone its philosophical roots that reach back Roman incarnations and even Sparta. I suspect that this deficit is actually an artifact of its triumph in modern times — the educational abandonment of the classical liberal arts for the sterile pragmatics of job training that such a society would seek to perpetuate.
This, to me, is one of the gravest dangers of national standards. Even on the state level, how do you create a metric for the classical liberal arts school with its greater emphasis on the principles of humanity Coolidge is applying? Truthfully, this weighs heavy on me often. Matt and Greg, what are your thoughts?
Daniel-
I really don’t know the answer to your question. It seems to me that it will take much more than simply better performance by our schools and universities, which is iffy in any case.
I think that parents need to take personal responsibility in teaching their children these sort of things, and that civic, religious and voluntary associations should take a much larger role than they currently have.
I think you’re right, Matt, that it will be the private sector that reverses the spiral, if it can be done at all. Right now my primary hope is in organizations like ISI, ACTA, NAS and their various allies and counterparts across the educational landscape. Of course, depending on how far government standards begin encroaching via compulsory means, then much of their work could be thwarted. This, to me, is the most worrisome tug of war.
Even on the state level, how do you create a metric for the classical liberal arts school with its greater emphasis on the principles of humanity Coolidge is applying?
You don’t, or at least not directly. The only “metric” that can be used to move healthy systemic change over the long term is parent satisfaction. That metric doesn’t directly measure “the classical liberal arts school” etc. but it measures something close to that – since what most parents want is something close to the classical liberal arts school etc.
In any event, the whole point is to get out of the mindset that we need to figure out what schools should be and impose a metric that gets us there. That can be a positive thing to do in the short term if it’s done right, as experiences in places like Florida attest. But in the long term the only way to really get sustainable reform is to let go of ultimate control.
Greg, I believe you have laid out the essence of the problem — the mindset of those wielding the power to impose, and the temptation to engineer society — to which those at the helm seem to inevitably succumb.
I’m glad you used the term “mindset.” Unfortunately, the one that drives many bureaucrats is “parent” — a role they oftentimes come to believe they were either elected or appointed to fill. Of course, we have all observed parents who struggle to ultimately let go of control. Hence the daunting challenge we face, indeed, in perpetuity, and the vigilance that will always be needed.