Christian Libertarians, Cultural Conservatives, and the Dilemma of Political Power
In reference to a Ross-Daniel back-and-forth, John Schwenkler says the following:
while I am similarly sympathetic to the corresponding Douthatian skepticism of the idea that a conservatism centered solely on apolitical calls for social and cultural reform – yes, even of the culinary sort – is going to be the thing to save America, that doesn’t mean that the conservative agenda can proceed forward in the absence of such elements, either. The relevant institutions and societal mores are in quite bad shape, and if all parties to the debate agree that they’re neither going to be recreated simply through creative economic and social policies nor spring up magically when the rug is pulled out from under the welfare state, then there ought to be a strong consensus that deliberate and concentrated “grassroots” attempts at bottom-up reforms should constitute an important part of the conservative project, too. I’m quite confident that Ross thinks this as well, and so that the disagreement here is primarily one of emphasis rather than substance – but it’s important to be clear that this can be a both/and, and not a simple either/or.
What follows is a meditation on the dilemmas this situation raises for conservatives and libertarians, especially Christian ones, and especially with regard to the strange third leg of the Revolutionary Stool — not liberty or equality but fraternity, AKA solidarity.
In an unpopular recent column, Thomas Frank alleged that DC libertarians were conspicuously unable to strike the kind of balance John is reaching for — because the business of libertarian politics inside the beltway makes the ‘libertarian lifestyle’, in practice, an unattractive absurdity. The result: an ideal cultural condition is politicized in such a way that it can never obtain. A similar charge can be leveled against Republicans, too — crusading conservative comes to Washington and starts racking up divorces — but this is essentially a question of personal, not structural, corruption (unless you think people really are powerless to withstand the attractions of power). There would be a serious problem with the structure of national/federal politics if it really were impossible to achieve policy success without both paying lip service to a way of life and actively undermining it…or at least letting it die of criminal neglect.
And indeed this is a charge that’s been leveled against the Bush administration, which has given cultural conservatives what they wanted on judges and perhaps taxes and nothing more. Yet if the stronger/structural argument that I just mentioned is true, the Bush administration merits less contempt, because in order to get the traction on policy it got it had to sail cultural conservatives down the river.
Obviously, that argument sounds awful. A more serious argument, following John, is that ‘grassroots’ attempts at ‘bottom-up’ cultural reforms are incompatible with the practice of national politics. Not that different groups of conservatives can’t do two different things; just that going to Washington has turned out to be the conservative version of the impatience that led liberals to abandon the slow work of passing legislation and go straight to the highest courts they could find. (Can’t convince people to stop having abortions? Pass a Constitutional amendment!) The whole logic of ‘cultural reform’ is different at the grassroots — versus the national — level. Nationalizing cultural issues, and then politicizing them, turns out to undermine and supersede grassroots cultural reform itself. In part, this may be a product of despair. What if the country really is doomed unless the government orders its decadent citizens to become dutiful, soberminded family members? But it may also be a practical attempt to fight fire with fire. So cultural conservatives saw the left use the law to anti-democratically enact social change, and resolved that they had no choice but to respond in kind. And of course despair and practicality can merge.
But another possibility is that nationalizing cultural issues stems from a conviction that failing to do so unacceptably allows fellow Americans (and/or humans) to suffer. The trouble for Christian libertarians, I think, is mapped by the limits of their missionary work. My inclination in moral matters is toward reliance on the missionary value of lived example (and philosophical blog posts), and away from both national lawmaking and assertive traveling ministry. The question of who exactly is the neighbor plagues the Christian libertarian, and not just he or she. And the problem with Gersonism is that it uses the political power of the State to pressure us as much as possible — not just into acting as if we took all human beings to be our Christian neighbors, but into acting thus on account of a sincerely felt compassion — or perhaps the word is misericordia, Christian pity — for them. So whereas Alasdair MacIntyre, for instance, endorses the virtue of pity in regard to strangers who come to us, Gerson wants to inspire a quest for strangers to embrace in the bonds of solidarity.
And here is the dilemma of politics on the right: culturally, conservatives incline naturally toward solidarity; politically, they inherently distrust it. Politically, conservatives doubt and suspect appeals to fraternity. They are far more at home with maintaining and improving the political liberty of equal citizens. To the extent that politically active conservatives come to see politics as the means to solidarity, I submit, they diminish their conservatism. The common bonds of citizenship are serious; they ought to endure; they clearly delineate who is a member of one’s sovereign regime and who is not. But they are not more serious or deeper than the bonds of common culture. So, at least, true conservatives, I think, are predisposed to argue. (This is not incompatible with a libertarian perspective, either.) Least of all, in the conservative view, should political solidarity be activated by a call to create, expand, or strengthen some form of fraternity that trumps existing cultural and political solidarity alike — a brotherhood of man, for instance. For conservatives, such a move is an abuse of political power sure to bring on yet greater misuses and usurpations.
The challenge to this view, posed by Christianity, is that both politics and culture are parochial, incomplete, and even profane sources of allegiance to people unrelated by blood. The question that has faced Christians thinking about political philosophy since the fall of the Roman Empire has been in what regime Christians can be free, or absolved, of the guilt of not making neighbors of strangers. “Pierre Manent:“http://galliawatch.blogspot.com/2007/12/reason-for-nations.html makes an intriguing, and idiosyncratic, case that the nation-state — as opposed both to the city-state and the empire — comes closest. But even this formula requires a nation — a nationalized culture — and the love of localism prominent among conservatives, especially American ones, militates strongly against the consolidation of a Heideggerean Volk. (As it should.) Americans, in short, appear to be stuck between the illusion of cultural solidarity and political solidarity, with each unattainable and inappropriate yet impossible to ever fully repudiate. True conservatives, as I see it (or am I projecting a little postmodern conservatism?) tend to insist that this awkwardness is an indelible feature of modern American life, one through which all our ambitions, fears, and hopes are filtered. And they tend to resist those who think and act otherwise. The question then for (these) conservatives is whether to remain in the hinterland or converge on the capital. And ultimately, to finally come back around to John’s point, that question can only be answered in the particulars of the individuals who face it.
James, why shouldn’t I just view this dilemma as showing the incoherence of what you call “true conservatism”? You say Americans are unable to give up their illusions of political or cultural solidarity (which I find extremely doubtful—both that they are unable to give up these illusions, or that they have them in the first place), and so true conservatives must insist on these as a necessary feature of American life. But the necessity of those illusions, even if true, would be a sociological fact about American beliefs. And if they really are illusions, wouldn’t it then be a mistake to advocate for a public policy on the basis of them?
In other words, in this posting you describe conservativism as a cultural phenomenom. Fair enough. But as you posit, true conservatives recognize that political beliefs can’t immediately follow from what they think is culturally best. So even what you identify as “true” conservatism won’t necessarily follow from your description. Or, everything you say is consistent with the true conservative rejecting what you call political conservatism.
— sabina's hat · Jul 20, 05:14 PM · #
“christian libertarian”????
it is to laff.
all religion is fiercely anti-libertarian.
— matoko_chan · Jul 21, 12:43 AM · #
are you serious?
the religious guild in xianity tells constituents what to think and how to act.
there is zero liberty involved.
— matoko_chan · Jul 21, 12:49 AM · #
Far be it from I, who finds both Christianity and libertarianism fairly oppositional to my personal and political beliefs, to come to Mr. Poulos’s defense, but I think Matoko Chan is incorrect. Adherence to Christianity is a social and cultural choice; libertarianism is a political-economic one. I find it completely unobjectionable that someone could choose to adhere to an autocratic religious/social framework in their own lives while embracing a political framework that declines to use the state to compel any such choices. While I might agree with Mr. Chan’s implied sentiment that anyone who agrees to submit to a codified religious framework is choosing to relinquish their liberty in some sense, it is entirely possible to do so within a context limited to personal choice.
— James F. Elliott · Jul 21, 07:27 PM · #
And here is the dilemma of politics on the right: culturally, conservatives incline naturally toward solidarity; politically, they inherently distrust it.
Someone, somewhere (you? here?) recently produced a Cold War era quote from William F. Buckley that got me thinking about this notion of solidarity. The gist was that Buckley was in almost total agreement with libertarians except on a few issues where he believed that deviancy had to be suppressed in order to maintain national solidarity in the face of the Soviet menace. Although this idea seems quaint in 2008, it probably seemed more convincing in an era when America was so much more homogenous than it is today, and when affirmative government efforts to boost the morale of the population were still fresh in people’s memories from the World War II years. Also, I have recently been reading an anthology of political essays from Partisan Review which were written around the same time, and they impressed on me the sheer terror felt by both the Left and the Right in the wake of the Soviet Union obtaining the atomic bomb. Still, I think Buckley got it backwards. The heavy-handed attempts to suppress what were then considered deviancies instead of producing solidarity actually sparked various “liberation” movements that have left us culturally fractured to this today.
Starting in the 1980’s the government (especially schools) have launched massive campaigns to inculcate solidarity along ethnic lines according to the multiculturalism model. The empasis on ethnicity above all else, and the endless celebrations of various different cultures and subcultures accelerated a trend away from any sense of national solidarity.
I think it is possible to find remnants of solidarity at more local levels. Think of Bostonians celebrating the Celtics after they won the NBA Finals, for example. But I have some questions: Is it appropriate for government to get involved in attempting to foster solidarity? To what ends? Conservatives and libertarians are ideologically suspicious of government, as you noted. I personally am not a “joiner”, and I think this is true of many other libertarians as well. It seems to me that any project which would be substantive enough to generate genuine enthusiasm in some quarters would provoke a push-back from other quarters, and we would end up with less net solidarity. On the other hand, a symbolic marketing campaign that is broad and vague enough to be inoffensive to all will be ignored by our marketing-weary culture. I think that if you feel a Christian imperative to bond with your neighbors that you should do it on a personal level, rather than a political one. It may sound trite, but the slogan should be: If everyone sweeps his own front yard the whole world will be clean.
— aldo · Jul 22, 05:02 PM · #
pfft, Mr. Eliot, ima grrl.
chan honorific means young person or young lady in my case.
sure the personal framework COULD be adopted, but alas, anti-samesex-marriage legislation, anti-abortion legislation, anti-biotech research legislation, are all profoundly anti-libertarian attempts to impose xian mores on society.
;)
— matoko_chan · Jul 22, 09:35 PM · #
It isn’t nearly as fun over there without you chan.
— aldo · Jul 22, 11:57 PM · #
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qej7-r05BRQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSjfsJVUeHU
— LB · Jul 24, 08:28 PM · #