WAITING FOR THE SPARK
As
I write this, an American space shuttle has landed for the last time. Mission
Control is being shuttered. The greatest
nation on earth is running on empty, belatedly acknowledging its deeply
embarrassing addiction to borrowed money – about 40% of all federal spending –
while stumbling towards the inevitable end-game crisis. POTUS 44 has overruled the consensus advice
of our Pentagon leaders, and is prematurely backing US forces out of
Afghanistan - the same country that housed the Taliban and al Qaeda murderers
who were complicit in the worst attack on American soil since Pearl
Harbor. I believe this is a political
ploy – under the cover of the assassination of bin Laden - so that the
embarrassing rout of the fragile Afghanistan government can be delayed until
after the 2012 elections. Meanwhile,
instability courses through the Middle East like a plague, while the nuclear
arsenal of the fragile and unstable Pakistani regime is up for grabs; a nasty
theocracy in Iran is hell-bent on acquiring its own jihad nukes; and the
American national security apparatus is struggling through the fog of
incoherence from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
At
home, the economy is mired in a trap created by the political class, a sinkhole
into which they, their fellow travelers and millions of innocent bystanders
have fallen. Everyone knows that irresponsible borrowing must stop, that the
crippling public debt must be reduced, but somehow the tax load on the private
economy must not be allowed to throttle any recovery. Some guilt-driven soft
leftists feel relief at the prospect of the collapse of the “American empire”
while the hard leftists are showing signs of shadenfreude. The conservatives are fragmented, too fixated
on political positioning to unite.
One
remaining viable exit strategy has eluded the major players: an American creative surge. No such
recovery will take hold this decade unless the government substantially reduces
the political load on economic progress and creative innovation. Yes, we hear voices from the old-line liberal
and conservative commentariat, calling for “creative solutions.” They are
invoking a magic mantra, clueless about the creative process, heedless of the
heavy lifting, the trial and error and the relentless determination that real
creativity demands of us. Given enough
time, minds can change. But quicker progress demands fresh minds, new voices
and new hands at the helm. Where are you?
JBG
THE
AMERICAN CREATIVE SURGE
And the Case for Renaissance Conservatism
By
Jay B. Gaskill
First Edition
July, 2011
Copyright © 2011 by Jay B Gaskill
All Rights Reserved
TABLE OF CONTENTS
[Note – Pagination is omitted – it works only for the PDF version]
A Special Introduction for Conservatives
Executive Summary
Path to the American Recovery
The Death of Conservatism As We Knew It
The New Big Idea
Key Elements of Renaissance Conservatism
A Message to Paleo-Conservatives
A Renaissance Conservative Creed
The Optimistic Outlook
Six Differentials
Integrating the Populist Reformation
The Manipulative Elites vs. the Productive Majority
American Populism Is Unique
The Dialogic Imperative
Escaping the Toxic Political Left
The Defense of Liberty: A Fighting Creed
Key Elements of A Renaissance Conservative Movement
The Hinge of History Moment
The Creative Civilization Paradigm
Observations and Lessons
Creative Artists and Capitalists
Creativity’s Moral Center
Protecting the Creation-Engendering Infrastructure
Conservative Values and the Human Creative Enterprise
The American Recovery Project
Overcoming the Suffocation Effect
Weimar’s Despair and Pixar’s Rules
China and the State Capitalism Fad
Starting the Re-Con Surge
Who among us?
APPENDIX
POINTS
OF LIGHT
The
First Spark
The Islamic
World’s Efflorescence
The
European Renaissance
The
Anglo-Euro-Japanese-American Techno-Renaissance
The
Creative Information Explosion
The
Expanding Creative Nodes
Self
Definition, an exercise
............About the Author
A special Introduction for Conservatives
By
Jay B. Gaskill
Attorney at Law
The Great
Opportunity of the Century
The world is now
witnessing the collapse of the progressive experiment in cost-free, Marxism
Lite. Progressive political liberals, with the complicity of comatose
conservatives and rootless moderates, have brought the modern Western economic
system to the edge of total credit and monetary collapse. This represents a failure cascade so huge
that it is forcing policy changes that would have been unthinkable ten years
ago. While some major correction was
inevitable, these events are unusual in scale, duration and depth.
What does all this
mean for the future of Western Civilization?
What are the implications for the future of conservatism? For that
matter, what do they portend for the survival of liberalism?
In the following
discussion, The American Creative
Surge, the author makes the case that a fundamental shift in American
political/ideological alignments is both inevitable and urgently needed. While both liberalism and conservatism must
adapt, conservatism is now poised to assume the dominant policy role and must
do so first because liberalism (in its present form) remains too entangled with
the ideologies and ideologues that have led to this crisis.
In the largest, most
universal sense, liberalism represents the relentless human instinct to
challenge boundaries, moral, social and economic, while conservatism in the
same universal sense represents the natural human instinct to defend
boundaries. Constructive change over
time benefits from the retention of the essential moral and prudential
boundaries on which stable human societies are founded. The malign social experiments of
authoritarian socialism, whether explicitly or implicitly founded in Marxism,
still exert a deep attraction to the left.
The current world-wide fiscal crisis was driven by the naïve political
consensus that socialist/welfare state burdens on the mostly free commercial,
wealth creating sector could be avoided by a magic trick: reverse time
travel. This is the notion of
concealed wealth redistribution, the allocation of tax revenues as yet
uncollected to fund programs in the present day. In other words, politicians actually believed
(or pretended to believe) that phantom money could be indefinitely taken from
the future without a reckoning. This was
a violation of the boundary between borrowing and theft. Many conservatives went along with the game
in order to fund national security priorities, telling themselves that “growth”
could indefinitely provide a painless path for debt repayment. The debt gap gradually outpaced growth and
the moment of reckoning has arrived.
The author expects
to see little creative change within the left for three election cycles.
This Introduction,
designed to provide the contextual setting for “The American Creative Surge”,
is in three sections, The Conservative
Crisis, the Liberal Crisis,
and the Agents and Contours of Change.
The Conservative
Crisis
Modern American
conservatism is experiencing a crisis of incoherence. I’ll briefly outline the fracture lines, but
first a review of the core ideas, principles and precepts that bind most
conservatives most of the time.
Core Precepts and
Principles of 21st Century American Conservatism
Practical and Ideological Divisions within Conservatism
Inevitably, practical issues intrude on ideals to the end that shared principles and precepts lead to different policy judgments. Outcomes, both bad and good, tend to refract back on conservative principles and precepts, and these pressures have resulted in modifications, eventually even to schisms. Consider the following examples:
Five Loci of Disputes
Seven Divisions
Fractures like these were to be expected, given the
inevitable gulf between ideals and reality, promises and real-world outcomes.
As a result of the many individual policy disputes, the compromises with the
left, and the necessary accommodations to local constituencies, distinct
divisions of conservative thought can be identified. I am persuaded that each
of these divisions allows for substantial mutual agreement on issues, precepts
and principles. A common conservative word view is still possible. The primary divisions are Social
Conservatism, Libertarianism, Community Conservatism, Neo-Conservatism,
Business-Centered Conservatism, Fiscal-Conservatism, and National-Greatness
Conservatism.
Social conservatives are located in both parties where they represent a durable constituency for law and order, family values, patriotism, and – for the most part – a spirited defense of traditional marriage against its redefinition by “social progressives”, and opposition to abortion-on-demand (with significant variations on side issues, like birth control and adherence to Roe vs. Wade).
Libertarians enjoy the virtue and the vulnerability of thematic consistency – an authentically free-market, laissez faire capitalism, linked with drug legalization and an isolationist foreign policy bordering on pacifism.
Community conservatism is founded in the early American vision of nested communities, family, neighborhood, town and state, with a policy of the upward delegation of limited powers, leaving the federal level with only those things that absolutely must be handled by government at the national level.
Neo-conservatives are the former leftists who rebelled against the authoritarian excesses of communism and the naïve apologetics of the domestic left, especially for the murderous excesses of Stalin and Mao, among others. This branch of conservatism represents a fierce rejection of leftist politics and of the new authoritarian challenges that have sprung up after the collapse of Marxism. Their focus on national security leaves room for a great deal of variation on social issues.
Business-centered conservatism represents the substitution of one question – “What is good for existing businesses?” for an overall governing philosophy, and has opened up the GOP for the paybacks of ‘crony capitalism.” Again, social issues are less critical to this subset.
Fiscal-conservatism is making a comeback among centrists, conservatives and even realistic liberals. It upholds “quaint” and “old fashioned” notions about repaying loans, not borrowing more than one can pay back, and opposing financial gimmicks that promote such unwise policies to creep into ongoing political arrangements. Social issues and even taxation issues (within the context of “fiscal responsibility) are secondary concerns.
National-greatness conservatism is perhaps the least philosophically consistent on the list, but the most easily explained and understood. A great nation is prosperous, is faithful to great values, and accomplishes great things. The Hoover Dam, the railroads, the Moon Program and victory in WWII are hallmarks of national-greatness conservatism.
This is just a thematic sketch of the main threads and themes that make up conservative diversity – volumes have been written on the forms of conservatism.
TWO
The Liberal Crisis
The liberal crisis became a witch hunt for apostasy in the wake of the crack up of the Soviet Union. John F Kennedy, Henry “Scoop” Jackson and Daniel Moynihan, all liberal icons of the last century, became Democratic Party dinosaurs (or so it seemed), in light of the profound liberal intolerance (think of Joe Lieberman - a JFK democrat), among others. But Marxism did not die with the collapse of communism. Instead it sought refuge in a recrudescence of the British Fabian Socialism model, clothed in Keynesian deficit spending (without the fiscal discipline that Keynes advocated) and the use of regulatory mechanisms to achieve the same goals without direct expenditures.
The Neo-Marxist Liberal Precepts
___
The hard Marxist left was the bastard child of the radical egalitarians of the French Revolution and the disciples of the authoritarian hierarchical thinking of the German philosopher, Hegel. Post JFK liberalism differs from the hard left, particularly from paleo-Marxism, primarily in its gradualism (borrowed from the British Fabian socialists), its commitment to democratic processes, and its dishonesty (its Marxist origins and occasional secret allegiances are loudly denied). But the ultimate goal of “social justice” liberals remains the achievement of functional social and economic equality, by any means necessary. This assessment of ruthlessness flows from a simple fact: a working majority of people are flat out opposed to this vision. Therefore the ruthlessness is covert, and the hard edges are softened by a commitment to opportunistic gradualism and the inclusion of useful centrists who aren’t on board for (nor necessarily even aware of) the scope of the larger program or the ruthless needed to bring it to fruition.
The American “new” left (the ethos that grew out of the street protests of the 1962-1968 mindset) has temporarily smothered the traditionalist liberals in the Democratic Party. It was the love child of the pre-Marxist anarchists and the post-communist Marxists who are pursuing socialist-egalitarianism via the accumulation of administrative power (regulatory agencies and ideological courts) as an end run around a fickly, bothersome electorate.
In the American setting, a majority of the “common” people remain consistently unwilling to fund the ambitions of a full-on welfare utopia. Culminating with the tax revolts in 1980’s California, funding for the American version of the British Fabian program dried up at the state and local level. In response, liberals supported substantial public borrowing, augmented at the federal level by Keynesian fiat money, filling the gap without imposing “taxes.” In a second policy strategy, liberals discovered how to export the cost of its social justice programs to the private sector. This was accomplished by empowering social justice administrative agencies to make rules that have the force of law, supported by new, government sanctioned causes for law suits. Neither these administrative agencies nor the new law suits, once authorized in the vaguest terms, have required any further approval from the congress, state legislatures, or voters. In sum, these measures were designed as an end run: “taxation without representation” has become, in effect, “litigation and regulation without representation.”
It seems that, early in the 21st century, the utopian liberal game has run its course.
THREE
The Agents and Contours of Change
The power of post-modern liberalism in all its forms, within the academy and the larger intelligentsia, has flowed from its credibility as an agent of ameliorative change. Its dominance among “respectable intellectuals” was cemented by the historical association of “conservatives” with the repressive “right wing” defenders of kings, tyrants, royalty and other malefactors of unearned privilege. Within this parodic construct, the national socialists of Germany and the Marxist socialists of Russia mark the extremes of “right” (occupied by German socialists) and “left” occupied by the Russian variant.
There will be a conservative surge – “fire truck” conservatives are brought to power when the excesses of liberalism become too painful. The pending sovereign debt crisis will inflict pain sufficient to discredit liberalism in all its forms for some decades. The questions of the coming decade become bright line clear- What happens as after the fire is extinguished? What sort of enduring political and intellectual leadership will emerge from the ashes?
The answers to these and the related questions critically depend on two things: (1) whether the coming crisis will be widely recognized as the result of fundamental contradictions within liberalism; and (2) whether a new conservatism can address the future with a simple, powerful philosophy that unites the core precepts and principles of traditional conservatism with a theory of human progress. If the answer to the second question is Yes, then so will be the answer to the first. The following article is about (2).
It turns out that human economic and social progress critically depends on conserving core conservative values in the context of the emergence of a robust creative civilization. It turns out that only a creative adaptive civilization can survive the challenges of the next hundred years. And it turns out that the special conditions for a robust, creative-adaptive civilization where uniquely present at the founding of the American Experiment.
In fact, the extension of the American Experiment as a world model is the single plausible scenario that supports a realistic and optimistic path to a better future. It has the same capacity to inspire as did original Marxism and enjoys infinitely better prospects as a practical program. It therefore opens the prospect of the conversion of a critical mass of the academy and the intelligentsia, while gaining the enduring allegiance of the productive “classes” at all social and economic levels. Whether and how this development takes place depends in turn on the emergence of new conservative leaders in the first instance and new liberal leaders that emerge to engage in an principled and fruitful policy dialogic, the participants in which are anchored in the core moral assessments and commitments to freedom that once animated classic liberalism and constructive conservatism.
This development will be sparked, in the author’s opinion, by a new stage in conservative thought and practice that, by whatever name, will constitute renaissance conservatism.
The term “renaissance man” is still used to describe a polymath (obviously including women), that subgroup of increasingly rare thinkers and doers who live rich, cross-disciplinary lives, filled with creative, productive endeavors in which arts, sciences, humanities and the pursuits of civilization are combined. The original renaissance took place in Roman Catholic Italy, and its creative participants pursued their passions in a moral context that anchored creativity to the moral order of the day.
The modern age suffers from overspecialization without an
undergirding moral foundation, especially among the political class. Harnessing human creative endeavors in the
cause of civilization requires a deep respect for the very notion of “creative”
as a broadband category of human constructive activity, embracing both art and
technology; its protection requires a deep commitment to the freedoms
(including economic freedoms) that creativity requires to flourish, and the a
deep, underlying moral order that both civilization and its creative elements
and nodes must have to avoid a Dark Age.
I have identified several renaissance conservative precursor figures for
discussion, Cicero for his suspicion of Cesarean power, the polymaths Da Vinci,
Franklin and Jefferson for reasons that should be obvious, Burke for his
support of the American revolution over and against the French version, and for
his conservative moral compass, Goethe as a polymath who understood the lure
of evil, Eric Hoffer for his classic
analysis of collectivist regimes and his deep respect for the creative
capacities of the common people, C S Lewis for his acute moral insights and
understanding of the human condition, Ayn Rand (Alisa Rosenbaum) for her
passionate defense of the human creative spirit and insistence that it includes
a broad band of productive human activity, Heinlein and JFK for linking freedom
with eploration. My list is
idiosyncratic and incomplete. Consider
this an invitation to add, subtract and comment.
Some Renaissance
Conservative Precursors[1]
---- Your suggestions ----------
THE
AMERICAN CREATIVE SURGE
Building a
Creative Civilization,
The Roles of
Renaissance
Conservatism, Entrepreneurial Liberalism
Affirming
American Exceptionalism
THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Long term human survival will depend on our ability to nurture and
protect major centers of constructive creative activity everywhere
feasible. This will require the
conservation of the life-affirming moral order, because creative innovation,
when it is un-tethered from all morality, can and will be misappropriated by
the next generation of tyrants. This
project will also require the conservation of the institutions that protect and
foster general conditions of freedom.
All creative enterprises require this, whether they are artistic or
technological.
Creativity is an equal-opportunity disrupter of things as they
are. It produces inequalities. The partisans of left and right each have a
blind spot where creative activities are concerned: The paleo-left, in its
infatuation with artistic creativity, tends to marginalize or ignore the
technological innovation side, while the paleo-right is almost a mirror
image. But life-affirming creativity
resists compartmentalization, and the liberties that sustain it are
indivisible. As it happens, the American
experiment was and is the single most important model of a creative
civilization that has emerged to date.
The temporary bankruptcy of American liberalism is an opening for the
emergence of a renewed, forward-aimed conservatism, one animated and informed
by the vision of a creative civilization, and of the USA as the world’s single
most viable exemplar:
This will be known as Renaissance
Conservatism. The genius of such a new conservative movement imbued
with Renaissance values is the affirmation that creation, unmoored from the
life-affirming moral order, will turn against itself, and that authoritarian
civilizations that throttle creative endeavors will self destruct. Renaissance
Conservatism is to reactive conservatism as a 3d color movie is to a 19th
century daguerreotype. This is not
the conservatism of your grandparents.
It is the conservatism of the generations who will colonize other
worlds.
Blueprint for Renewal
THE
I invite you to step back and
look at the really big picture for a moment.
Human history from the Roman Empire to the present day presents a
Darwinian drama, the life-death struggle of competing forms of civilization for
survival on the world stage. The
American experiment was something entirely new on the planet, a new model of
what a civilization can become. For this
reason alone we were and are seen as a threat to the competing models. But we are not alone. Civilization in all its freedom-friendly forms
is under attack, particularly those nodes of civilization that are most
“American” in their organization and character.
And 20th and 21st century weapons have ramped up
the stakes. We have arrived at the “We
dare not lose” level of the struggle.
One general type of
civilization is uniquely equipped to survive the challenges of resurgent
atavism, post-modern tribalism and the collapse of self confidence of the
secular intelligentsia. That general
type is the creative /adaptive civilization model. The American experiment was the first, but
far from the last such creative civilization.
Creative civilizations must prevail in the present century or the entire
game could be lost to a new Dark Age.
We are witnessing an epic
world economic crisis, the kind that can ignite war on a world scale. The roots of the economic crisis are
sufficiently obvious that even a populist movement like the American Tea Party
has a more fundamentally accurate take on the situation than, say, a Nobel
laureate economist like the New York times’ maven, Paul Krugman.
The Western economies, to a
greater or lesser extent, have yoked themselves to an escalating entitlement
system, financed by an imprudent mix of fiat money and sovereign debt. An ingrained political feedback loop between
the underfunded, underproductive beneficiaries of this arrangement and the
timid governments that are increasingly unable to fund anything but the
exponentially growing entitlement sector has emerged. The predictable results have included riots,
populist anger, political polarization and policy paralysis. This distressing
and dangerous situation has finally reached the USA.
We are witnessing on a world
wide scale the collapse of soft-Marxism, the failure of Fabian socialism in all
its guises. As a Soviet factory worker
once quipped, “I pretend to work and they pretend to pay me.” In the post-Marxist, Marxist-Lite West, the
elites might ruefully quip, “We pretended to pay them with faux money and they
pretended to accept it.”
THE DEATH OF
CONSERVATISM AS WE KNEW IT?
On January 26 2009 New York Times ran the last column
written by William Kristol, the paper’s token Neo-Con. Bill Kristol is editor
of The Weekly Standard. His last New York Times piece (“Will Obama
Save Liberalism?”) began with a premature epitaph:
“All good things must
come to an end. Jan. 20, 2009, marked
the end of a conservative era.” Then Mr. Kristol made several telling
points:
· “Conservatives have been right ... about Communism and jihadism, crime and welfare, education and the family.
· “Lest conservatives be too proud, it’s worth recalling that conservatism’s rise was decisively enabled by liberalism’s weakness.
· [Quoting Harvard’s Harvey Mansfield] “From having been the aggressive doctrine of vigorous, spirited men, liberalism has become hardly more than a trembling in the presence of illiberalism. ... Who today is called a liberal for strength and confidence in defense of liberty?”
· “[M]odern conservatism, led at the crucial moment by Ronald Reagan ... assumed the task of defending liberty with strength and confidence. Can a revived liberalism, faced with a new set of challenges, now pick up that mantle?
· “Sixty-seven years ago...another liberal president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt... quoted Paine: “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
·
“Can Obama reshape liberalism to be, as it was
under F.D.R., a fighting faith, unapologetically patriotic and strong in the defense
of liberty?”
When, on November 2, 2010, conservatives acquired a working majority in the US Congress and a working stalemate in the US Senate, President Obama, an avowed, left-leaning liberal, was forced to accede to those new forces, at least as to the continuation of the lower income tax rates opposed by the left, but only reluctantly and temporarily. Modern American conservatism is in the position of the talented understudy who suddenly gets center stage when the star falters. Not every understudy gets a second chance.
The future needs robust policy conservatism because
otherwise it cannot avoid the recurring excesses of contemporary American
liberalism (aided and abetted by its political partners in fiscal
irresponsibility, the ‘kick-the-can-down-the-road-and-hope-for-growth” GOP
leaders.
From time to time
conservative governments have been brought to power as a corrective, then were
swiftly retired, punished for the role.
These are the ‘fire truck” conservatives. The current crisis has deep roots, so deep
that a single election cycle will not be sufficient to reverse the damage and
restore a pattern of robust economic progress.
In the context of the decline
of principled, freedom-friendly liberalism (the recovery of which is a vital
element in any American creative surge), a renewed form of conservatism will be
the key ingredient in the defense of any healthy, distinctly creative
civilization. As kit happens, the
essential steps in the American recovery are also essential to the recovery of
western civilization.
Any robust creative
civilization is necessarily held up by two pillars: a progress-directed
conservatism (something that in this essay, I am calling Renaissance
Conservatism - a term and concept that is developed infra) and a deeper, more
principled liberalism than the postmodern, Marxist Lite version that is in
vogue at the moment.
One party government is inherently dangerous. In the USA, two party government has proven the most stable and productive of the various competing models ...providing there is a bi-partisan overlap about the essential steps and policies needed to preserve civilization. Such a core foreign policy consensus was achieved in the US from FDR through John Kennedy, a period of about 35 years. This was America’s Dialogic Period, the era in which Democratic Party once contained its own subset of the dialogic - hawks like Washington State’s Senator Scoop Jackson, doves like Gene McCarthy, and intellectuals like Daniel Moynihan and George Kennan. William F. Buckley was the quintessential dialogic conservative of that period.
The American recovery will be aided by the renewal of such a consensus and a new Dialogic Period of US politics. In any great dialogic period, conservative voices seek to retain boundaries while liberal voices try to overcome them. Change is inevitable, but the essential moral/social boundaries - the practical and moral boundaries any healthy, working civilization requires – must be preserved. These constitute the essential life support of civilization as much as the necessary ongoing creative adaptations. Therefore, progress requires an intelligent liberal-conservative dialogue. The process is heuristic, an essential component of any creative renewal.
I am personally persuaded
that the stakes are much higher than the current generation of political
leaders is willing to recognize. Beyond
the American situation, writ small, an even larger challenge looms. I submit that, without a resurgent
conservative movement, ascendant and respected in the culture, the media and in
government, most of the freedom-respecting zones of Western civilization will
go under...possibly for a very long time.
I would prefer to avoid a
Dark Age rather than attempt to climb out of one.
Please understand: I really
don’t like the rhetoric of apocalypse. I
am confident that a renewed conservatism linked to the rescue of creative
civilization will in fact emerge, and that sanity will eventually prevail. But there is uncertainty. Yes, there are existential risks. This is why a new vision has both historical
relevance and urgency.
What passes for liberalism in
the present moment is far too infected with pathological post-modernism to be a
constructive player in the coming struggle for the duration of the current
crisis. The next “winds of change” will
necessarily be led by the new conservatives, at least until the reasonable
liberals come out of the closet to join them.
Among the current crop of postmodern liberals, reasonable minds are as
rare as classical guitar players among a flock of turkeys.
The
Congressional Correction of November 2, 2010 represented the first stirrings of
a resurgent conservatism as a necessary restraining force. The question of the decade is whether and how
soon conservatism can become much more than that, to wit - a new,
forward-leading, governing paradigm.
Modern American liberalism is a runaway train because
its natural balancing principle, conservatism, was knocked off the rails. That derailment was occasioned by republican
negligence and a bi-partisan economic mega-crisis that should have been
anticipated. If left unaddressed, that
crisis will fatally destabilize the American polity.
Neither classic conservatives nor the enduring-principles
liberals as such, were operating the locomotive. In truth, the principled, dedicated
conservatives were in a soft cultural exile within and outside the USA’s ruling
elites for years. Out-of-the-closet
vocal conservatives were excluded from the centers of power in the Beltway,
exiled from the Academy, banished from the K-12 Principate and reviled by the
one-note media mavens. Exceptions are
seen as “outliers” (when intelligent) or “raving nuts” (when populist).
This state of affairs proved toxic for the old
fashioned enduring principles liberals.
Remember Hubert Humphrey, Daniel Moynihan and Henry (Scoop)
Jackson? They did their best work when
trading ideas with their conservative colleagues. Contemporary American liberalism can only recover
its balance when it throws off the illiberal influence of the arch-egalitarian
left.
The correction of November 2,
2010 was a missed opportunity for the Democratic Party to shed itself of the
proto-Marxist, politically correct, elitist left. That task, if it still can be
accomplished, will take several election cycles. Meantime, the country at large
does not have the luxury of time. For
now, the opportunity and the obligation to set the new course fall to the
conservatives, beginning with the watershed elections of 2012.
Over
the last two hundred years, conservatives were tasked by history to fight to
retain boundaries while liberals were self-appointed to overcome them. In
a healthy era, these two tendencies work in a constructive dialectic such that
arbitrary boundaries are ameliorated while essential boundaries are
strengthened.
This
is not a healthy era.
In
the 18th and 19th centuries, conservatism was too often
captured or caricatured by the image of
a cadre of privileged ones dedicated to the amoral defense of entrenched
advantage. The liberal failures in the 20th & 21st
centuries demonstrate that the amoral defense of entrenched advantage is not
inherently wedded to the left or right side of the aisle.
The
sins that attend power are ecumenical.
Conservatives
urgently need to make the transition from a mere bulwark against excessive
liberalism (“fire truck conservatism”) to the vanguard of progress. During this
transition, conservatives need to attain, reveal and demonstrate deep authenticity
- both moral and philosophical; and to llink their world view to a sound theory
of creative innovation.
Conservative
leaders will need much more than “the vision” thing. Conservatives now must
have actual Vision.
Conservatives
of the 21st century have a window of opportunity to redefine
themselves, replacing a false image with the fact of integrity and a resolute commitment to a
better (but not perfect) world.
Nothing
less will do.
This article will outline of the shape and design of
a new conservatism, and inter alia,
set the stage for the emergence of a more balanced and healthy liberalism. This will not be the conservatism of your
parents. When it succeeds, I believe
that will be so deeply associated with human progress in the next thirty years
that it will rise in the academy and dominant media to the standing that
conventional liberalism achieved in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
Over the last century, conservatism and liberalism were
locked in an eternal dance, each rising up periodically to check the excesses
of the other. From time to time,
“weaponized” ideologies (such as class warfare, socialist engineering or
paranoid, doctrinaire libertarianism) ripped through the dance floor, chilling
dialogue and crippling the dancers.
Optimally, liberalism challenges traditional social and economic
boundaries while conservatism mounts a principled defense. In the Euro-American politics of the last
century, the privileges of royalty were never supported by American
conservatives (and are gradually being abandoned by their British
counterparts), while the privileges of gender (once supported by male liberals
and conservatives alike) are now supported by neither. The “social issues” of the moment tend to
involve changes in family structures and sexual preference accommodations. Disputes of these sorts benefit from a
prudent certain restraint, an emphasis on gradual local, bottom-up social
evolution, all as guided by the larger paradigm: the protection of a stable,
free, creative civilization. Whenever essential boundaries, founded in the
enduring moral strata of the human condition, are upheld, but non-essential boundaries are reasonably
and incrementally modified, the human condition is advanced.
Progressivism is a misleading label
currently in vogue among the political left.
{As in - “I’m not a liberal. I’m a progressive. Who can be against social progress?”} The
term and concept were taken from the playbook of the Fabian socialists of late
19th and early 20th century Britain. The Fabians were
crypt-Marxists who planned to incrementally and peacefully “advance” England
into a socialist state. This was to be a
humanitarian utopia in which all of the essential elements of economic life had
been gradually brought under government’s benign, democratic/bureaucratic
control. The practical result was a
Labour Party-controlled state of poverty and decline.
But there was no violent revolution. In contrast with their brothers and sisters
in Soviet Russia, the British Marxists preserved the essence of democracy while
the Marxist goal – obtaining state “ownership” of the “means of production”
(effectively all hiring, prices and wages) was accomplished via a vast web of
regulation and control, implemented by bureaucrats and state empowered labor
leaders. The economically stagnant UK is
just now attempting to extricate itself from the suffocating spider trap of a
half century of Fabian socialism.
Contemporary American “progressives” are still
trying to take America down the same failed path. They simply do not accept the view that the
rough and tumble of private interactions among relatively free people can serve
humanitarian aims as well as the bureaucratic state can, especially when it operated
under benign party control. American
liberals have yet to break free from their progressive managers.
Over time, real human progress is achieved through
the fruitful interaction of two forces: (1) creative innovation, especially
when commerce is able to make its fruits widely available; (2) the elimination
of arbitrary boundaries to human achievement, such as race, gender, royal
privilege and political connections. The
direct pursuit of an actual equality in human circumstances, especially using coercive
means, has repeatedly failed. Enforced egalitarian policies have been
counterproductive at best and have opened the gateway to the tyrannical
suppression of human creative progress at worst. It is no coincidence that whenever a tyranny
achieves power somewhere in the world, the most creative people under its
control will take to boats, trains and planes to escape. When allowed, their destination is a freer
country like the USA.
A partisan Op Ed in the 12/7/10 New York Times by Timothy Egan, identified the Obama problem as the
absence of the “Big Idea”: “A Big Idea,
understood by all, would provide a narrative framework for the upcoming
skirmishes with Republicans, whose only idea is to keep rich people from paying
their fair share of taxes. That...and denying Obama a second term. What may
have lulled Obama into his thoughtful stupor was the historic magnitude of his
election. Yet being the first black
president is not an idea. Hope is not a theme. Change We Can Believe In is not
a governing principle.”
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/a-big-idea/?ref=opinion\
Mr. Kristol’s challenged is still posed to us: Under whose leadership will that fighting faith, strong in the defense of liberty arise? Might this still happen under Mr. Obama’s leadership? Based on this president’s ideology, rhetoric and performance, such a prospect, however attractive to his former supporters among moderates and independents, is neither probable nor even plausible.
THE
Any trace of a Big Idea seems altogether absent from within Mr. Obama’s circle. But some of us can detect the outlines of a new force that is capable of auguring in the next “fighting faith, unapologetically patriotic and strong in the defense of liberty”. Its energy is manifest at the grassroots level. This was a distinctly populist energy, to be sure, but the Tea Party movement is still searching of the Big Idea. For the most part, it is a middle class populist rebellion whose ideology remains inchoate and unexpressed
The new conservatism at hand, the one that will
replace progressivism, provide the overdue balancing force to unchecked
liberalism and restart the dance that leads to real human progress, combines
three essential elements: {1} a
comprehensive, broadband respect for all human creative activities, commercial
and artistic, for their interconnections and dependence on the institutions
that protect risk, accomplishment and creative freedom; {2} the absolute
necessity of a life-affirming ethos, rooted in deep moral tradition, that
unites and supports a system of laws and institutions designed and tasked to
maintain the special conditions of freedom and security from predators (private
and government) needed for a healthy, creative social and economic order; {3}
the commitment to the American constitutional model as the first, best such
model, American exceptionalism as the Great Experiment than cannot be allowed to
fail, the vanguard of realistic hope for the rest of the world.
I have proposed that this new force in the world
will be called Renaissance Conservatism. Any name will do, but this is
the missing big idea. I am convinced
that it will form the outline of a coherent, forward-looking, political
movement. This movement has deep
taproots in the American founding and in the Renaissance writ large; it will
have traction on
Its main tenets can be distilled into these six propositions:
·
Civilizations
come and go but the ones that tower over the rest – and have the best chance of
surviving – are the ones that foster and promote human creative potential. Whenever authoritarian regimes seize power,
the most creative members of the captive civilization attempt to leave.
·
Creative
activities flourish in zone of protected freedom and liberty. The model of a free, independent creative
civilization was a new development in human history. It started with the
·
The
survival of the human race is riding on the success of that experiment.
·
Creative
activities flourish under conditions of protected freedom, and the creative activities
that sustain civilization are not limited to the creative arts but include
commerce, exploration and technology.
Capitalism and creative freedom are allies.
·
The
protection of all creative activities requires a life-affirming, liberty
respecting ethos, comprehensive and robustly protected by a deep respect for
the underlying moral order, and real world institutions dedicated to the
protection of ordered liberty: As we Americans have learned, these institutions
include a real constitution, a real bill of rights, and a robust system of
checks and balances against the concentration of power.
Modern liberalism has been temporarily self-disabled by the unbalanced left...and traditional conservatism is struggling to make the transition from a provisional unity-in-opposition (the excesses of the left have united many strange bedfellows) to the path of intelligent, forward-aimed governance.
New Conservatives are just now appearing from offstage, linked by a
common understanding of the American founding principles and a shared
commitment to put the
Renaissance Conservatives are about ruthless practical hope, an ethos rooted in life affirmation, principled respect for the constitution and an enthusiasm for creative innovation coupled with a commitment to promote innovative supply-side strategies for everything that is good. The group contains apostates who are sexual libertarians and others who are arch social conservatives, but all are life affirming, morally centered patriots who understand the core value of the Great American Experiment are willing to unite in defense of freedom.
Renaissance Conservatives (we’ll occasionally be using the shorthand “Re-Cons”) resolutely endorse pursuit of abundance and strongly reject the passive acceptance of scarcity.
The Re-Con ethos is best captured by the salutation of the
archetypal science officer Spock of the Star Trek myth – “Live long and prosper!” This
is a bright line grim injunction of the left:
“Don’t live too long or prosper
too much....”
All life-affirming human creative endeavors are part of the same protected activity. The artists and musicians cannot dismiss the technologists, scientists, engineers, and enterprise geniuses as peripheral to the human condition and the latter group cannot ignore nor denigrate the creative contributions of artists. Humanity has benefited from both the wheel and the song. All forms of life affirming creative innovation are needed in the mix to sustain a living civilization against its ongoing challenges. And all forms of human creative activities and enterprises need protected zones of freedom as much as life on earth needs water to survive. The Great American Experiment established a protected zone of freedom, a nation state with a unique constitution, one designed to perpetuate the blessings of ordered liberty to future generations.
We Americans made the first truly transformative revolution in world history, one that Thomas Jefferson and others recognized for what it really was: a threat to the old world order. We were and are a threat to the constellation of retrograde forces in the world that would hold back the freedom-driven creative forces needed for humankind to thrive and prosper everywhere.
Any
political orientation without a foundational philosophy[2]
contains no checks or balances outside the calculus of success or failure. The conservative transformation into vanguard
of progress will necessarily have a special authenticity, suggesting more than
meets the eye. On further examination, it is revealed to rest on a specific
foundational philosophy. For Renaissance
conservatives, this is a world-view wherein
Renaissance
Conservatism (and eventually its liberal corollary - principled,
entrepreneurial liberalism) will stand out among all the other nascent
political forces as containing the elements of a vanguard of sustainable human
progress, the indispensable facilitator and mediator of constructive change.
Contrast two signal
transformative events in human history, one recent and one not. There was a burst of creative energy in the
Weimar Republic of Germany[3],
the failure of which led directly to the Hitlerian nightmare. There was a far earlier burst of creative
energy in Florentine Italy that sparked a Renaissance that led directly to
modern Western civilization.
There were many differences
between these two events, of course. But
I submit that the core difference was that the first Renaissance was
grounded in a life-affirming, morally grounded ethos and the Weimar experiment
was not. One development flourished in
conservative soil, and the other died in liberal backwash and opened the door
to the holocaust.
A Message to
Paleo-Conservatives:
Whatever you think about those creative communities near your local golf course, whether they are occupied by scruffy, tattooed, pierced rebels, earthy or ethereal musicians, or socially maladroit e-geeks, they are of your tribe. All human creative endeavors writ large, in all their manifold forms - artistic, commercial and technological - are absolutely essential for human survival and prosperity. The success of the human project depends not only on the continuity of civilization; it depends on the emergence and triumph of life affirming creative civilizations. Life affirming freedom is the legacy of conservatism.
Liberty is indivisible. Human creativity is indivisible.
There is no sharp dividing line between innovations in the arts, the sciences, human exploration and technological advance, except as these activities and endeavors further or impede human life in all its fullness and glory.
As it happens, the United States of America - from its very founding documents and personalities, in its a historically unique convergence of political philosophy, moral underpinnings and practical wisdom, became the very crucible of a new, creative civilization.
All friends of liberty (under whatever umbrella or none at all) need to remain alert and active. As Andrew Jackson said – “But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government.” From President Jackson’s Farewell Address, March 4, 1837.
The operatives on the left still live by the motto, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” So what is the next crisis? It is the rapid collapse of the federal debt financing system. This will be a conservative Katrina moment ... or it will be the conservative rescue moment, the arrival of adult supervision. If conservatives produce the masterful exercise of prepared leadership, a grateful nation will remember as our grandparents remembered FDR.
No one will question that a crisis of government finance is owned by the liberal elites. We will need an American Margaret Thatcher (of either gender) with common sense and an iron spine, someone who can shame the weak souls among the putative patriots, “not to go all wobbly.”
And the country urgently needs smart, articulate, tough conservatives in elected office who are willing to show some fire in the belly and stiffness in the spine...because they are driven by core principles and love the USA. Talented and dedicated men and women are urgently needed at all levels in and out of government who are unwilling to be distracted by trivia in order to band together:
All this needs to be explained and sold on several levels, starting with the kind of discussions that a certain subset of liberty-friendly liberals can also hear. The conversation begins with Renaissance Conservatives, the forward aimed creative-adaptive conservatives who are committed to engineering an American Renaissance.
A
Renaissance Conservative Creed
The Declaration of Independence is our normative founding document.
The
Declaration of
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to
assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which
the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure
these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such
principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. .... And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the
protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives,
our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
We celebrate the equality of one’s legal status and the dynamic inequality of a creative society...equally. We share three core liberal commitments: the respect for human dignity, the fierce protection of free expression and the integrity of democratic/republican governance.
We clearly grasp the taproot connections between liberty and liberty’s vital support systems: Between society's commercial & technological innovations and our other creative endeavors, especially in the arts and exploration; between the vitality of our creative endeavors generally and the health and ultimate survival of civilization; between the baseline conditions of security and freedom and the vitality of the human creative enterprise.
We “get” American Exceptionalism: We recognize the emergence of the American experiment as the world’s first, truly vital creative civilization. We are hard nosed, liberty-loving realists who clearly recognize that the emergent historical and institutional challenges to America (atavistic, faux-modern and postmodern) are the challenges to creative civilization itself. We understand that the enemies of creative civilization are targeting America as their main obstacle. This challenge frames the urgent necessity of a renaissance within conservatism the USA, leading to a renaissance of a creative conservative-liberal dialogic, leading to an American renaissance, leading to a world renaissance.
We share in the best of the liberal tradition - the commitment to work to improve the human condition, and to achieve a world in which basic human dignity is respected regardless of one’s status or station.
We share in the best of the libertarian tradition the commitment to expand the scope of individual freedom of choice as an essential expression of respect for human dignity.
We share in the best of the secular conservative tradition the commitment to attain and preserve robust security to all citizens from predators, whether the predators operate within or without the nation’s boundaries, as an essential obligation of any government committed to respect human dignity.
We share in the best of the constitutional and religious traditions that all our fundamental liberties and freedoms are the gift, not of sovereigns, rulers, potentates or even of democratically elected governments, but of nature or nature’s God; that the assertion in the American Declaration of Independence, that we posses inalienable rights endowed by our Creator is the central tenet of our policy and philosophy.
We hold that a robust, constitutional civil polity with the strength and legitimacy to contain and protect individuals against the arbitrary and oppressive use of power within the scope of its authority, whether the oppression if public or private, is essential to preserve liberty and human dignity with in a given territory; that this public goal, when authentically and lawfully exercised, forms the core imperative that is the sole source of sovereign legitimacy.
We hold that the preservation, promotion and protection of all human life-affirming creative endeavors is a vital, ongoing obligation of all governments, and that such endeavors absolutely require conditions of protected freedom.
We recognize and honor America’s exceptional role in preserving and promoting her legacy of freedom, and to that end we affirm that our precious freedoms are a sacred Gift, a legacy from the Authority that rules all rulers, of those inalienable rights that are bestowed to every individual, Including the right to life, to liberty, to the pursue happiness, and to the consent of the governed. We believe that America was called as a sacred trust: to secure these rights; to preserve a government by, for and of the people; and to stand as the beacon of liberty for all the world’s oppressed peoples.
The hallmark themes of Renaissance Conservatism are life affirmation, freedom affirmation and the celebration and support of creative activities in all spheres (artistic, commercial, scientific and exploration), all of which are seen as an indivisible moral and practical imperative. We love creative freedom and its fruits so much that they respect the dangers of government meddling, and understand that the selective bureaucratic promotion of some creative activities over others is subtle censorship. We support free, untrammeled patronage of creative pursuits, encouraged but not controlled by the state.
___
There is heavy lifting ahead. But one bright day, a robust, self confident conservatism will arise from the ashes. When it does, it will be that really new, old thing: a vital self-confident, forward-looking conservatism.
Here is how you will tell: Renaissance Conservatism will be as
attractive in its own way as was the liberalism that inspired the under the
first Civil Rights movement. It will supply the sort of energy,
both intellectual and idealistic, that captures minds and creates key leaders
in both parties. It will infiltrate the media, the academy and even the Nanny
Principia with a single, bright line goal: to reinvigorate Western Civilization
by reigniting the American Revolution.
THE PRACTICAL BASIS FOR AN OPTIMISTIC OUTLOOK
Renaissance Conservatism will
add radical new energy and purpose to the time-honored, but badly shaken world
view of historically-rooted, backwards-facing conservatism. This is to be a broadband cultural and
political renaissance, rooted in and supported by core conservative principles,
and characterized by four themes and elements:
Realistic Idealism,
The Civilization Imperative,
Respect for the Moral
infrastructure,
Defense of Creativity and
Ordered Freedom.
REALISTIC IDEALISM
Ambitious goals require realistic
idealism: Therefore, renaissance
conservatism seeks to optimize the human condition without
attempting to perfect it. Utopia
is supplanted by attainable progress anchored in the special conditions that
promote and protect the human creative enterprise in all its manifold forms.
THE CIVILIZATION IMPERATIVE
Our survival depends on the
emergence of a truly new thing: A vital,
adaptive, morally centered civilization.
Such Great Events are rarely glaringly apparent to those swept up in
day-to-day affairs. The prospect of a
trip to the executioner wonderfully clarifies everything, even one’s entire
world view. Yes, any civilization is a
flawed enterprise. But it remains true
that civilization, as such, is our most powerful and essential social
technology. Modern civilization, all
warts accounted for, is the first iteration of that technology that has
demonstrated the capacity to curb tyranny and rally the decent in the cause of
protection of the innocent. Without the
blessings of modern civilization, the good, the true and the innocent become,
once again, mere prey for society’s worst predators, in and out of
government. Here is the gallows image
that looms over the present world turmoil: Modern civilization may yet fail.
Modernity comes with a
price: We are increasingly dependent on
the blessings and protections of modern civilization and decreasingly able to
survive without its enduring existence.
Therefore, our recovery from another Dark Age is not at all assured. The breakdown of the moral boundaries that
conservatism has been tasked to protect is no trivial matter. As the 21st century dawns, we may
well awake to a shattering discovery:
that we have arrived at the “no failure allowed” point.
Renaissance conservatism
stands with bright line clarity and urgent seriousness for the proposition that
the continued success of modern civilization cannot be taken for granted. Civilization is our life support system and
the bulwark against the prospect of a new, barbaric Dark Age. Any failure of our civilization would take place
against the backdrop of uncontrolled nuclear and biological weapons and the
ongoing “arms race” between humans and natural pathogens for which our bodies
have no defenses.
These are challenges that we
will meet because we must. Realism,
idealism and optimism converge whenever realists awaken to the next
challenge.
RESPECT FOR THE MORAL INFRASTRUCTURE
If an autopsy on a failed
modern civilization is ever performed, we can be assured that the same
pathogens were at work: the accumulation
of moral confusion in the culture leading to the catastrophic failure of the
moral immune system. This will have been
presaged by a loss of moral confidence.
These are the signs and symptoms of a profound moral
failure more systemically dangerous than a biological plague.
Modern civilization is our
bulwark against the next Dark Age. Its
underlying moral infrastructure constitutes our collective immune system. One robust, morally centered creative
civilization has emerged in the modern world, and has been partly copied: The United States of America. Just as the USA is beginning to lose its
sense of mission, Renaissance Conservatism has emerged to make the compelling
case that its moral and philosophical moorings are sound and its self
confidence fully justified. This may be
the ultimate takeaway lesson of the “American experiment”, whose founding
document located the moral authority for life affirming freedom outside mere
human provenance.
DEFENSE OF CREATIVITY
Renaissance Conservatism
holds with equal clarity and seriousness to the historical and practical
proposition that the continued survival of any vital and adaptive civilization
requires the freedom-supporting infrastructure on which all creative and
innovative enterprises are built. The
American constitution is such an infrastructure, providing as it does, not only
robust protections for free expression but also for the protections of
intellectual property rights to the creative innovators in the arts,
technologies and sciences.
At the very foundation of
that freedom-supporting infrastructure lies a profound set of moral insights
(as in the “endowed by our creator” language in the Declaration of
Independence) that the religious and secular among us (when they are wise) will
recognize as the elements of the Common Moral Law.
NOT
SIX
DIFFERENTIALS
The contrast with current
liberalism is self evident, but there are also significant differences with some
contemporary conservatives as well.
DIFFERENTIAL
(a) That there are only three true entitlements: (1) The right to have the laws enforced
evenhandedly, resulting in equal public safety for high and low; (2) The
right to retain the fruits of one’s own efforts, earnings and risks taken
in the course of economic and creative endeavors, as property; (3) The right
to have one’s core liberties protected against all predators, public and
private, especially the right to peaceful expression, self defense and the
pursuit of achievement and happiness.
NOTE: These entitlements are not self-executing but require a
liberty-friendly civilization dedicated to their protection. All the rest are mere benefits.
(b) That a comprehensive anti-bureaucratic
ethos is essential to policy wisdom, an attitude and commitment to
continuously seek ways to lift the dead hand of the stultifying, inflexible and
anti-creative effects bureaucracies exert in both the public and private spheres.
(c) That sound policy entails resolute support
for all entrepreneurial enterprises, personal or corporate, in science,
commerce and the arts, opposing the barriers, penalties, and controlling subsidies that abort and smother innovation.
(d) That the belief in the morality of freedom
and its fruits must lead to policies supporting and promoting supply side resource
development, especially in energy, manufacturing, food production, and
opposing an ethos of denial and deprivation.
(e) That any political philosophy worthy of
support necessarily fiercely protects the common moral foundations of a free
and creative society, readily bridging the secular and religious
foundations as necessary in service of this common purpose.
(f) That a fierce but intelligent nationalism
is the natural product of a true understanding of the current plight of
civilization, in turn leading to a foreign policy respecting and defending
the other freedom-friendly nation states that support ours, one that actively
promotes the vision of America as a revolutionary force in the world.
DIFFERENTIAL TWO:
Re-Cons are pan-partisan.
Re-Cons exist to forge
working policy alliances among republicans, democrats and independents. Therefore, Re-Cons support a
principle-grounded dialogue among all reasonable players who support the vision
of a vital adaptive civilization founded in enduring freedom. Re-Cons understand that dialogue is not a
debate. The latter is staged for the
benefit of a third party audience, a show whose actors are to busy arguing to
listen and think. A debate is
polemic. Real dialogue is mutually
heuristic.
DIFFERENTIAL THREE:
Re-Cons are driven by the creative civilization imperative.
In the old mold, liberals
claimed a natural affiliation with the creative artists, while fully willing to
use the same artists as propagandists; yet the same liberals failed to see the
creative innovations in technology and commerce as just one more facet of the
human creative project. In the old mold,
conservatives were often alienated from the artistic communities, while
supporting technological and commercial innovation.
Latter-day political liberals
have forfeited their claim as “best friends” of the creative forces of
civilization because they have abandoned the core freedom-protecting principles
that constitute the very moral foundation of all creative activity. Liberalism has become an ideology that would
differentially burden creative innovation in commerce by special taxation and
regulation; that would hamper creative freedom in the arts by subsidizing the
preferred artists; and would impose a bureaucratic load throughout the creative
process. In this malign form, liberalism
has become an enemy of a vital creative civilization.
Re-Cons differ from both
modern liberals and
paleo-conservatives because they uniquely understand the vital nexus between
protected freedom and creative progress in all its forms. For Re-Cons, freedom isn’t a mere
indulgence. Freedom is rooted in the
life-affirming moral order and its robust protection constitutes the essential
condition for human survival.
DIFFERENTIAL FOUR:
Re-Cons are driven by a steady confidence in the future and a reasonable
faith in the ultimate wisdom of the “common” people.
These attitudes are rooted in
real world experience. They lead Re-Cons
to seek incremental reform and to reject those who create false crises or seek
to exploit real ones.
The vision of a creative
civilization is one the very scope of which confers a sense of steadiness and
direction. Much as the socialist Fabians
of the UK were able to dramatically repeal economic freedoms over decades,
Re-Cons will restore them in the same, steady, determined fashion. As a bonus, policy prudence allows for real
world policy error correction.
Re-Cons hold venerable
popular institutions in deep respect because they represent the accumulated
human wisdom of centuries of “field research.”
This leads to a pro-family ethos, coupled with procedural populism on
the major social issues. A just and
prudent government does not engage in the elitist “progressive” social
engineering all too often exploited by the undemocratic left whose ideologues
are dedicated to overcome all established traditions that violate politically
correct norms.
Social morality should not be
directed or engineered from top down as long as the sanctity and dignity of
human life and our essential freedoms are protected. For example, the voters of state A should be
free chose to permit homosexual marriage, and those of state B free to forbid
graphic sex education or homosexual advocacy in grade schools; but no judge or
bureaucrat in either state should ever be allowed to overrule the popular will.
Whenever an administrative fiat or an elitist judicial ruling is used to usurp
democratic institutions in the service of political correctness, the ghosts of
Lenin and Stalin cheer.
DIFFERENTIAL
A. Re-Cons
stand out from opportunistic conservatives because of the quality of their
understanding of the nature of civilization, of the existential and cultural
challenges it faces and the absolute necessity of maintaining its secure moral
foundations. Free civilizations cannot
long survive without a supporting moral infrastructure that sustains the
institutions of law and justice such that they apply with equal force to rulers
and ruled, to the winners and losers.
Free civilizations will whither and die unless they respect and protect
creative freedom and the institutions that protect it. This requires the broadest
possible consensus. Re-Cons embrace a
policy and practice of building secular and religious bridges, binding all
those whose belief systems include the core Moral Law as it supports
civilizations and human freedoms.
B. Re-Cons
recognize America as the first modern creative civilization, the first major
nation state founded on free institutions under modern conditions. This is America as a light to the world, the
experiment that cannot be allowed to fail.
This is America as the beloved homeland and the Model for the
World. This is the America that will
survive...even America. From the
Re-Con perspective, the American model is the path to human survival. The scope of this vision leads to a
recognition of the necessity of a heuristic dialogue among the
non-ideologues and a pan-partisan alliance among all conservatives.
C.
Re-Cons understand that the struggle
between liberalism and conservatism is a universal dialogic in which
conservatives are tasked to defend our essential boundaries, particularly the
moral ones, while liberals (at their best) are to attack the arbitrary
boundaries, particularly the social ones.
Re-Cons uniquely see the rigid ideologies of the left (and many of the
right) as pathologies to be overcome. Re-cons understand the need to resume
something like the Cold War dialogic between the anti-communist liberals and
conservatives in the service of the larger goal – the protection of free
civilization. But contemporary
liberalism and conservatism have some heavy lifting to do before that can
happen.
D. Unlike contemporary liberals, Re-Cons believe in the presumptive
defense of traditional boundaries, even when a particular boundary might seem
unnecessary or excessive. This is
because Re-Cons have absorbed the lessons of history that the rash and
thoughtless elimination of traditional boundaries, however “flawed” or “old
fashioned” they seem in the moment, can damage civilization. History teaches that discarding essential,
but misunderstood boundaries is more dangerous than retaining the occasional
arbitrary and useless ones. The excesses
of the French Revolution are a chilling caution about the potential excesses of
the liberal mind when un-tethered by the core Moral Law, ordinary prudence and
common sense. The weakness of the Weimar
Republic is another caution.
DIFFERENTIAL SIX:
Re-Cons are innately predisposed to realistic, long term optimism,
colored by humor, intellectual humility and a commitment to creative
adaptation.
The Renaissance Conservative
commitment to an authentic political and policy dialogic is not an incidental
side issue. Both conservatives and
liberals supported the Civil Rights movement, only to witness with growing
dismay the excesses of excessive victim politics and reverse
discrimination. Liberals and
conservatives supported free market experiments in the form of “contracting
out” government services, superficially harnessing market efficiencies, then serving
as a cover for crony politics and corruption.
Liberal and conservative fads
all too often fail. Whenever error and
failure are possible, humility and good humor are the order of the day. In the real world, error and failure are not
just possible, they are inevitable. The
legendary Murphy – of Murphy’s Law- is the patron saint of the Re-Cons. Only ideologies cling to a failed model in
the face of mounting evidence.
Humor is the
creative human impulse at play. As Eric
Hoffer - that self-taught longshoreman genius for the common people - once
pointed out, some of the most powerful practical innovations first appeared as
toys (e.g., the first steam engine was just a toy for ancient Roman
children). As supporters of creative
civilization and the creative process generally, both in technology and the
arts, Re-Cons are distinguished from many classic conservatives by honoring the
spirit of play and the value of humor.
INTEGRATING
THE PENDING POPULIST REFORMATION
Renaissance Conservative
thinkers and leaders are poised to unify the conservative movement by a
principled incorporation of centrists and reasonable liberals. A plurality of the country will follow, but
to achieve a wide consensus, all of the key players, left, right and center,
will need accommodate and integrate the latest and most uniquely American
populist movement.
The Tea Party movement is
essentially different from its American predecessors because of its middle
class roots and its emphasis on quasi-conservative core values, including the
emphasis on protection of earnings from the manipulation of disconnected elites
(in and out of government).
In this usage, the term populist is meant in its largest
application to describe the politically relevant precepts, attitudes and core
positions that distinguish an enduring majority of adults from the political
elites that depend on their approval.
For example, the support for the death penalty for murder is a populist
opinion, opposed by a plurality of the academic and religious elite
In
practice, American politics has evolved two cooperating political elites, each
of which runs one of the two parties and shares three common traits: (1) high education
levels, (2) important wealth (3) a distrust of the populist vote bordering on
fear. Winning elections for each
requires a periodic courting ritual during which the populist vote (on which
success depends) is earnestly sought, followed by a measure of post-election
betrayal.
The corporate country club
conservatives and the limousine liberals have so far succeeded in achieving a
rough division of the populist center: social populists on one side, economic
populists on the other. Renaissance Conservatives will change that.
Both elite and popular
opinions are subject to fads. The
populist positions that interest me are the ones that endure from election to
election and will be relevant to the specifically American political scene over
the next decade or so.
When manipulative elites
ignore or marginalize the popular moral ethos, sneering at the under-educated
and unsophisticated “ordinary people” and when they promote policies that
violate common sense, there will be trouble.
When judges and bureaucrats abuse the public trust by overriding the
popular will on essential “family values” issues, a populist rebellion is
inevitable and appropriate. When an
economic crash is due to elite neglect and misconduct, there will be hell to
pay.
As the conservative elites
grapple with the implications of coming populist unrest and possible eruption,
everyone should remember that the main populist strands of opinion, concerns
and perspectives are not the only such threads in American politics, just the
ones most often neglected by the elites of the left and right.
This is why populism tends to erupt from time to time,
instead of congealing around a particular party or set of interest groups.
The center of gravity of
American populism is located among those who are too busy working, earning and
living real lives (elites would say “mundane” lives, here) to become political
junkies. They periodically awake...like
the mythical sleeping giant...only when provoked by prolonged policy neglect or
irritated into sufficient anger by repeated disregard of their core values and
concerns.
Whenever the elites forget
who really serves whom for long enough, there is a populist eruption. History reminds us that the consequences of
these eruptions can be very destructive.
The world is full of demagogues ready at the first opportunity to ride
popular discontent into power and thereafter to drive the civil order into the
ground. This is why it becomes an
imperative for American conservatives to take stock of the truly valuable
populist contributions, and to lead the way to a populist reformation.
By populist reformation I
mean a procedural and substantive reconciliation between the political elites
and the most valuable elements of the popular ethos.
Consider free trade as a
sacrosanct political doctrine: Working
people rarely are impressed by any doctrine or theory that has the practical
result of taking away good jobs, reducing the stability and amount of their
incomes and that appears to lower their country’s standing in the world. A conservative populist will find, advocate
and proactively implement policies that restore American manufacturing
capability and the attendant job base. A
conservative elitist will passively accept the perpetual irrelevance of the “manufacturing
problem” because doctrine says that we are always “better off” relying on cheap
foreign suppliers.
In effect, the elites of both
parties think that we can prosper with lower incomes for the formerly well off,
compensated by even higher incomes for the new “information workers”,
especially when the life styles of the newly marginalized workers can be
subsidized with cheap goods from China.
Heads up to the elites: The
credit crash has changed all that.
China will not forever play the game to our benefit.
Populism has a sharply
different look and feel in the USA as opposed to, say, Venezuela or Iran
because the American middle class is so well entrenched and numerous that its
numbers overwhelm those who cling to hereditary privilege.
While ours is not a fully
“classless” society, its various divisions tend to be blurry and membership
levels very fluid as people and families migrate from hardship to wealth and
back again. This is the country where the less wealthy can reasonably aspire to
wealth and the wealthy can reasonably worry about losing everything.
The
Manipulative Elites vs. the Productive & Creative Majority
This juxtaposition identified
the core conflict from which the tea Party has emerged. In this new milieu, there are only two great
“class” divisions in the populist mind that really matter: those who work, create value and struggle to
make productive things happen for themselves, their families and the community
at large, and those who manipulate the former group.
In the populist mind, the
manipulative class includes the idle rich, the idle poor, and the political and
cultural leaders who exploit the productive “class”.
The coming populist
reformation will be driven by the events and exigencies of the next few years
because these challenges will bring the failures of elites of right and left to
address the core populist values and concerns into sharp relief.
The elites could have seen
this coming. Think of the California tax
revolt, the popular resistance in many states to judicial or administrative
attempts to impose political correctness (as in the aborted attempt to conflate
gay rights with the earlier post-slavery struggles of the civil rights era) and
the abrupt right turn by the democrats on the border security issue.
What are the challenging
events and exigencies of the next few years?
The broad outlines are already clear.
The pattern was first evident with the oil and hostage crisis under the
non-populist President Jimmy Carter and became blatant with the 9-11-01 attacks
on American soil. We are energy
vulnerable, economically vulnerable and culturally vulnerable.
There are a number of vital
sub-issues, among them the primacy of the English language, the obligation of
the elites to control the influx of unassimilated “outsiders” and to vigorously
promote the assimilation of the “newly arrived” and the fervent wish of those
who work for a living to be able to retain their earnings. These populist issues (in altered form) are
alive and well in Europe where the elites may have irretrievably mucked things
up. Here, the American elites on the
right and left are on notice that there is still time to avert disaster.
Incidentally, when one is
discussing disaster in the context of growing populism, “disaster” can take one
or both of two forms: (1) The trigger
event that inaugurates a true populist eruption – through neglect or deception
– actually happens; (2) We get a powerful, irresponsible populist figure on the
stage bent on “sticking it to” the elites.
The notion of a populist reformation is that the elites
will be able to reconcile rational policy to the main populist concerns before
a triggering disaster takes place. The
game so far has been one of obfuscation, placation and deception. In the hyper information age, this game is
now over. Information flow has been
democratized. But the dominant media is
still in charge....
American Populism Is Unique
There is an apparent
contradiction for anyone who tries to write sympathetically about populism,
because doing that is an “elite” activity.
Or is it? My favorite populist thinker of the 20th
century was Eric Hoffer, the immigrant longshoreman. He was self educated, trenchant and
brilliant. His signature work, “The True
Believer” was a classic takedown of the elites of communism, Nazism and the
religious authorities whose organizational structure these two bloody secular
religions of the last century copied. I
had the privilege of seeing this passionate, insightful longshoreman twice when
I was a law student in the Bay Area. He
was a man who maintained from life experience that the common people were
“lumpy with talent” and that the idle intellectuals were a dangerous
combination of skill and lack of judgment.
As a student, I worked in
road construction and enjoyed the company of these older guys for whom a 10
hour day with a shovel or jackhammer was a career, as opposed to a source of
tuition money. As a lawyer, I’m now
unable to deny my “elite station” in life.
My predicted populist reformation
is not a populist revolution. We’ve seen
far too many of those events; they end badly for the working people these
revolutions purport to help.
Instead I’m predicting (and
supporting) a mutual adjustment of the relationship between the manipulative
elites and the productive men and women who actually make things happen.
I should acknowledge here
that a legitimate populist movement can accommodate local custom as when
popular sentiment clearly differs from the mainstream. I’m thinking of opinion favoring celebrations
of gay marriages in one jurisdiction and the passionately opposing abortions in
another. It will always be an open
question for conservative populists just how much local variation on sensitive
issues is appropriate. But for conservatives,
there can be no accommodation for the anti-democratic reversal of the popular
will in important aspects of family life, particularly by judicial or
administrative fiat.
This reformation is only
possible in contemporary America because here the distance between elites and
non-elites is smaller than anywhere else in the world, and the fund of
experience, common sense and talent in the “populist sector” often exceeds that
of the elites.
Ours is a unique situation,
the product of three converging social forces:
(1) The democratization of information flow (note that the
cyber-revolution is already changing the information dominance of the academy);
(2) the democratization of economic processes (success of
the pricing systems and entrepreneurial models of modern capitalism that are
copied within socialist economies produce a sort of quick-entry elite group and
destabilize the older ideological and hereditary elites);
(3) The decline of the authority of the manipulative
elites because of the corrosive effects of an overly-fluid relativistic value
perspective that has caused the withering away of the traditional moral
underpinnings of all ruling cliques everywhere that the post-modern ethos has
penetrated.
Just how dramatically
different is the American situation?
Compare just two examples:
In rural India, the ancient
practice of suttee (sati) is still being carried out. Widows are expected to be burned alive on
their husband’s funeral pyre. The urban
elites of India condemn (and prosecute) this barbaric “populist” practice as
murder.
In this country, a late term
unborn male, heart beating, just short of unassisted viability outside the
womb, is dismembered at the prospective mother’s request. Some of our elites defend this as a
“therapeutic medical procedure” and as a “proper exercise of female
autonomy”. Some of our populists condemn
the practice as “barbaric, approaching infanticide” or even as “murder”.
Leaving aside all of the
constitutional law arguments and nuanced public policy debate on the abortion
issue, we elites might reasonably concede that it is not at all clear whether
the elite position always represents the more enlightened moral perspective.
This raises the major reason
that our current circumstances auger a populist reformation that will soon
effect a transformation in one or both of this country’s political
parties.
The older established elites
operated openly, sustained by a mantle of moral authority grounded in deep
tradition and/or universal moral principles commonly accepted as normative by
an overwhelming majority.
The post modern elites are so
disconnected from the popular ethos that they must attempt to operate in the
background, their actual attitudes and positions cloaked with three well-honed
opinion-shaping “technologies”-- deception,
obfuscation and distraction. This is
a hard act to maintain in the information age, much like that of the emperor
who thought none of his subjects would notice that he was naked.
A necessary caveat: At this point I will seem to have
romanticized the populist ethos. This is
really the contrast effect. The modern
populist perspective looks very good next to the post modern moral ambivalence
and narcissistic indulgence (including a tendency to faux moral posturing) that
prevail among the manipulative elites.
Naturally, there are aspects
of the populist mindset (especially on the fringes) that I don’t share. For example, I am much more inclined to
support changes in public policy and private practice that include our gay and lesbian
friends in the mainstream than is typically acceptable within the populist
mindset. But I differ with the typical
elite perspective that dismisses American populist thinking as retrograde or
barbaric. And I strongly agree with the
populists who would not conflate the full social integration of our tiny gay
subpopulation with the epic struggles against slavery. In the main, the distinctively American
version of populism has captured a great deal of folk wisdom and common sense
morality that the elites dismiss only at their peril.
A special qualification: By contrasting the manipulative,
non-productive elites with the much larger group of us who are engaged in
productive work, I have radically changed the contours of the normal
populist-elite divide, and effectively reduced the number of issues held in
common that define the populist perspective.
I would specifically include
among the populist cohort those of us who toil at creative tasks. The creative-productive among us have their
own set of “issues” with the manipulative, non-productive elites.
Modern American populism, in
this expanded and general sense, is much more functionally egalitarian than
non-American populists and much more so than our own manipulative elites who
profess an ideal utopian equality that is functionally empty.
At the deepest, often
unexamined level, our elites have a very strange egalitarian notion indeed, one
driven by the psychological contradiction between an ingrained narcissism and
the need to be “well thought of”. I see
several elements operating in the manipulative elite mindset: Those who think
alike are morally equal. Material
inequalities of all kinds should be redressed by some kind of
compensation. The manipulative elites
manage to feel insulated against the (truthful) allegation that they’re part of
the “inequality problem” by selectively demonizing the people who don’t think
like them. After all (these elites
typically think) that retrograde, unenlightened mindset is the root cause of
all the world’s ills.
Our home-grown populists are
united by a common experience of productive struggle. That experience validates the common morality
of earning which leads quickly to the idea that all men and women are entitled
to keep the fruits of their productive efforts.
Inequalities tend to be readily accepted by the populist mind when they
are not accomplished by fraud and are not defended by hypocrisy.
There are conscientious and
reasonable members of the manipulative elites who will be able to accommodate
the coming populist reformation. But
this will require some self-reassessment.
I see several takeaway points that will be central to this process:
All of the most salient and
durable populist positions represent “field tested” values, enduring social norms
whose utility is well established. These
include tough “rule-consequences” policies for crime control, the obvious
morality of retribution against our enemies on the foreign policy stage, the
need for robust protection of the earned fruits of the productive efforts of
“the people”, and for strong, effective policies to protect the health and
stability of the families who make and rear children.
The elites would be wise to
respect all strongly held populist positions (whether they agree with them or not)
such that major reversals or changes should never be accomplished via deception
or manipulation. I believe that there is
a coming populist reformation, presaged but not yet defined by the Tea Party
Movement. It will be driven by major events, only some of which can be
predicted. At the moment, the political
elites are predominantly liberal. This
is an opening, the major conservative opportunity of the century, if there is a
renaissance in conservative thought.
There are the prominent
threads in the reemerging American populism. They will shape the parties and
the political discussion over the next decade:
[1] PROCEDURAL POPULISM – A PRINCIPLED
STRATEGY
The
signal anti-populist development of the last 65 years was the emergence of
governance via non-elected institutions under the control of the non-populist
elites of the two parties. Principally
the courts and the administrative agencies, these new power centers have
quietly and not so quietly set public policies in motion that never could have
gathered sufficient popular support.
Examples of this, abound, many obvious. The signal pro-populist
development in the same period was the emergence – principally in California
producing what some political scientists are now calling “hybrid government” of
the popular initiative as a tool for setting social and tax policy in ways that
the legislative bodies, controlled by party elites, did not. Resistance to social engendering by unelected
elites, whether acting in the guise of enlightened jurists or empowered
bureaucrats, is a legitimate exercise in populist power. As a rule, social change, especially when it
touches on family arrangements, sex and reproduction, should be gradual,
moderate and bottom-up, not radical, rapid and top down. Renaissance conservatives, even those who are
not on the same page with many social conservatives, can and should make
alliances with local traditionalists that are resisting bureaucratic social
engineering. This aligns procedural populism
and a broad spectrum of conservative and
libertarian thought.
[2] ME-FIRST NATIONALISM
Starting
with Ross Perot several election cycles ago, this is the many headed hydra that
the elites in both parties fear the most, and it is the most universal form of
populism. The failure of the Soviet
Empire as an international model is a classic case of a putative universal
ideology hitting the nationalist wall.
Note that party elites of all stripes tend to be more internationalist
than the so called “common people”.
[3] TOUGH MINDED POPULISM VS. THE WIMP
ELITES
This
covers a whole range of issues from the death penalty for Hannibal Lector to
the prosecution of high placed banking and Wall Street crooks, from a hard line
on terrorism to another mass murder on American soil. These issues will be pivotal in the next
decade and they may be unnecessarily interesting for those of us who prefer to
live in safety.
[4] COMMON SENSE ECONOMICS
The
revolting specter of a broken financial system fueled by pampered executives
(as many of them democrat-pandering as republican-pandering) who pursue ultra
short term paper profits over long term real world gains is so profoundly
unsettling that a populist rebellion is inevitable in some form. The fears and anxieties in the current
electoral-economic situation introduce a mob psychology wild-card effect that
will mask the larger trend...but not for long.
Most conservatives are not
yet wrapped in elitist cocoons and not yet ready to surrender the future to
elite leftist fools. All conservatives
(led by their Re-Con colleagues) should be willing to step up to the task at
hand. Armed with an intelligent and
conservative populism, moved by the vision of a better civilization,
conservatives should be prepared to challenge their principled entrepreneurial
liberal colleagues to engage in next Dialogic Period.
The
first of the two major political parties that manages to integrate the populist
reformation with its own ethos can become a durable majority. If both parties are able to achieve this, the
USA will enter a long and healthy Dialogic Period.
Each party needs a leader
whose visceral commitment to a muscular and farsighted defense of the homeland
is immediately recognized as authentic, a leader who speaks with a distinctly
American voice, with a voice that makes sense to a modern populist. This is the
voice of any renaissance conservative who has integrated the populist
reformation. Many remaining populist
issues, as important as they are, will remain secondary until the jihad against
civilization has been decisively defeated.
This must be content
not stylistic populism because Americans can tell the difference.
Here’s what the post 9-11
version of a renewed American populism might look like:
Postmodern liberals find it
incomprehensible that “ordinary” working people, who (from the perspective of
the Eurocentric left) have no prospect of gaining great wealth, would
nevertheless oppose confiscatory taxation of estates. This is because these liberals don’t take the
American dream as seriously as do the so called “common” people. There is a core populist agenda which sounds
discordant to liberal ears. Eventually
the political landscape will be reformed.
Even the shadow of jihad against the West will fade. Then America will be forced to face and solve the energy production
independence issue. This is the issue
that Renaissance Conservatives, committed to practical creative solutions that
lead to and sustain abundance, can and
should seize as their own.
One other, sleeper issue,
that won’t go away, will be center stage:
Who will be working in this
country at what jobs, for whom and at what pay?
Any party or movement that fails to take this question with the
utmost seriousness and urgency will become one of history’s discards. A working understanding of creativity as the
wellspring of wealth, security and abundance is the threshold criterion for
leadership on this issue. Again;
advantage Renaissance Conservatives.
THE
DIALOGIC IMPERATIVE
The
Dialogic Period
One party government is
inherently dangerous. A two party
government is the most stable and productive of the various competing models
...providing there is a bi-partisan overlap about the essential steps and
policies needed to preserve civilization.
Such a core foreign policy consensus was achieved in the US from FDR
through John Kennedy, a period of about 35 years.
This was the Dialogic Period
of US politics. The conservative
renaissance will be aided by the renewal of such a consensus.
At the most generic level,
the terms “liberal” and “conservative” describe the polarity between one’s
approach to boundaries (in human thought, relationships, interpersonal
definitions, categories and moral precepts).
Liberalism in this sense is the tendency to dissolve, negate or weaken
boundaries, and conservatism is the counter-tendency to harden, affirm or
strengthen them.
During the Dialogic Period,
the Democratic Party once contained its own subset of the dialogic - hawks like
Washington State’s Senator Scoop Jackson, doves like Gene McCarthy, and
intellectuals like Daniel Moynihan and George Kennan. William F. Buckley was the quintessential
dialogic conservative.
But the ascent of the 60’s
liberals remade the Democratic Party into a narrow corridor, a claustrophobic
compartment defined by an ideology that was never really shared by the populist
center.
ESCAPING THE
TOXIC POLITICAL LEFT
This is not an analysis of
historical liberalism as a discipline or conscientious approach to political
and social problems. I am using the term
“political liberal” in a special sense to describe a partisan pathology. I am describing the subset of self styled
“liberals” or “progressives” for whom belonging to “tribe liberal”: (a) is kind
of a calling, in which some one’s declaration that “I’m a liberal” sounds very
much like “I’m a Seventh Day Adventist” (my apologies to all SDA’s...this is
just an illustration); (b) the liberal self-identification is meant to
immediately imply a specific litany (dare I say catechism) of specific
doctrines. In general these are the
positions that are shared by the left wing of the Democratic Party and the
Green party. Because of the fierce hold
of this pathological form of liberalism on the mind, a cure must precede the
possibility of authentic dialogue. The
good news is that most of these people are closet moderates who have adopted
political liberal camouflage.
A short list of the defining
positions of political liberals would include many laudable liberal sentiments
shared by most conservatives (such as opposition to racism and the devaluation
of women; the concern for the protection of the quality of the natural
environment). All of these are
mainstream issues and sentiments widely shared by almost everyone, including
all renaissance conservatives.
But in the “fevered minds” of
political liberals, these sentiments become conflated into an epic struggle
against the grotesque foes of all that is good and true. This is a mythic “liberal” construct in which
all middle class whites are inherently racist; all heterosexual males are
irredeemably sexist; and all businesses (save a select few who donate heavily
to liberal causes) are bent on raping the environment.
It is no coincidence that
political liberals thickly populate some of the wealthiest and best educated
coastal and urban communities in America.
They are bound together, not only by a political religion, but by shared
experiences. For the most part, they
constitute social cohorts that enjoy six linked sets of shared assumptions and
attitudes:
How do we explain the fierce
grip maintained by the religion of political liberalism over its
adherents? Liberalism’s ability to
transmute its “correct” stances and gestures into a tower of humanitarian
virtue has an extraordinary effect: within the liberal-left bubble such stances
and gestures serve to shield the comfortable hedonist life styles of its main
adherents from moral criticism.
Thus the religion of liberalism represents a form of
social détente and clever camouflage.
The faux-religion of
political liberalism has three principal canons:
(1) Nationalization
of charity:
Humanitarian
endeavors cannot be effectively performed, nor equitably supported unless they
are done by government agencies. This
has the virtue of insulating its adherents from real moral claims on their
personal resources. In effect, the
political-moral stance that begins with the phrase, “I support (you can fill in
the blanks with a liberal cause here)”, becomes the equivalent of, “I gave at
the office.”
(2) Social
Marxism:
This
stance (going by various other names of course) dictates that a doctrine of
(pretended) social equality substitutes for the now discredited ruthless
redistribution of all wealth. This
stance (which was really the ur-source of political correctness) allows its
adherents to accomplish (or at least favor) the humiliation and social
repression of those whom its shifting fashions might choose to label
oppressors. This is a low cost approach
to egalitarianism and protects those whose sophisticated hedonism would
otherwise be criticized. The
appropriately expressed politically correct bromides are the camouflage of
“undeserved” well off.
(3) Collective
Expiation of guilt:
Social
survivor guilt, the inevitable result of a sense of “unearned” well being, is
expiated by this religion’s ritual practices.
These rituals, for the most part, consist of bumper stickers, public
gestures, cocktail party banter, and occasional political activity in support
of liberal causes.
The psychological strength of
the liberal religion derives from four related developments in the human
condition, mostly confined to the highly developed and prosperous communities
in Europe and the Americas:
1. The collapse of traditional religious and other
transcendent moral claims on the individual among the dominant intelligentsia
of the developed world;
2. The persistent, nagging voice of residual conscience,
still suffered by those anti-traditional secularists who have not yet succumbed
to outright nihilism;
3. The emperor-has-no-clothes fragility of the whole act,
such that any invalidation or repudiation of a part of the doctrine threatens
the whole;
4. The deep psychological dread of any prospective return
to individual accountability measured by an authoritative moral system.
THE
DEFENSE OF LIBERTY: A FIGHTING CREED
The ideologies of the left
are dying, but the thirst for liberty and the institutions and values that
support it, have never been stronger.
Here are the elements of a new creed, one that should, but does not yet,
cross the major red vs. blue political divide.
Populist conservatism:
Renaissance conservatism
will be seen as constructively redefining and incorporating a sophisticated
populism. In this development,
conservatism helps gives birth and shape to a populist reformation;
Conservatism as a universal idea:
Conservatism’s insights
into the human condition will be seen as a necessary feature of a healthy,
developing and growing civilization and, inter
alia, as providing a constructive redefinition of liberalism. In this development, liberalism is not
repudiated, just called to its highest form and partly integrated. This strengthens the conservative critique of
modern and postmodern liberalism’s excesses;
Creative conservatism:
Renaissance conservative values and
policies will be recognized as a
vital support system for a specifically creative
civilization. This thread is separate
from the populist reformation discussion.
I am personally persuaded that the pursuit of a truly creative
civilization, as a movement, and as an organizing political / moral principle,
will be the principal engine of constructive change in the world for the
foreseeable future. In this context, the
creative forms of civilization will be seen as profoundly normative, and
as presaged by the ongoing American experiment.
Conservatives must be in the vanguard of that movement.
Renewal of the Dialogic Period:
Renaissance conservative ideas will be instrumental in restarting the Dialogic
Period. A fresh, positive vision of civilization enriched by conservatism’s
contributions is the most effective way to restore balance to a media crippled
by the ideologies of the extreme left.
To transform the currently sclerotic media will require the power of
fresh ideas driven by the dawning realization that the pursuit of creative
civilization is the wave of the future (I expand on this below).
Getting Blue Dog & Reagan Democrats back in the
game:
Renaissance Conservatism is more than a shotgun marriage of convenience and
political exigency. It represents the
careful integration of faith in liberty, the populist reformation, the restored
Dialogic Period, the advent of bipartisan conservative alliances, and the
political adoption of the Creative Civilization Model. Neither conservatives nor liberals can
exclusively “own” the creative civilization.
So the question of the next several years becomes: Can
old-line conservatives ride this horse?
THE “HINGE OF HISTORY” MOMENT
I can’t over-stress the point
that the notion of a freedom-friendly civilization explicitly devoted to
protecting and promoting human creative activities, broadly conceived, is a
radical new paradigm. The next wave of the future will be the advent of
specifically creative civilizations
of which the United States of America is the first, most successful, most
powerful and most significant exemplar.
Civilization is soft technology. It represents the single innovation of Homo Sapiens that is most responsible for the dramatic increase of human freedom and welfare. Civilization is a rational exchange system among people which adjusts power relationships (and therefore resource allocations). It requires and therefore preserves and defends group norms, and acts as a carrier for group memory. The group norms appropriate to civilization exhibit a remarkable cross-cultural correspondence. All such norms concern the relationships between human purposes and human power.
ENTER ---
THE CREATIVE
CIVILIZATION PARADIGM
Civilization in its most
developed form follows the “Western civilization” model, a product of Greco-Roman
organization, Judeo-Christian values and Anglo-American jurisprudence, with
accrued innovations from all the other successful models.
Western civilization is
fragmented and unstable at the moment, held in temporary suspension by its
decaying traditions against a storm of destructive challenges. The current challenges are deadly. They represent a unique admixture of
atavistic, nihilistic and paleo-ideological forces. We who are committed to the preservation of
civilization need to achieve general agreement about that which we will fight
to preserve. We are called by history to locate the foundational norms, values
and principles on which, together, we intend to stand.
We remain at risk, in large
part, precisely because Western civilization seems unable to reach that sort of
general agreement. This is a “software”
problem, to borrow a contemporary metaphor.
Western civilization’s operating system has become unstable because of
virus that attacks all values, including those on which the operating system
itself crucially depends.
The failure of modern free
civilizations to survive intact in the face of the current set of challenges
would usher in a Dark Age from which we may not be able to recover, given the
size of our footprint on the world, the virulence of the pathogens that follow
us wherever we live and the scale and seriousness of the instabilities in the
biosphere on which we rely. The current set of challenges has taken us to a
crossroads.
The sign at the intersection
identifies only two branches: “Repair or fail”.
The last eight millennia of
the human story can be described as the post-primal struggle between
competing civilizations. In all of human history only a few nodes within the
civilized zones of the world sheltered robust, well supported efflorescences of
human creativity.
We are now poised at the
threshold of an emerging model of civilization, one that is self-consciously organized to
generate the cultural, esthetic, spiritual and technical innovations necessary
for humanity to thrive in relative peace and freedom, while retaining that
essence that makes us truly human.
Its successful adoption will
propel the advancement of the human species for the next eight millennia. In
the Appendix, POINTS OF LIGHT & DARKNESS, I trace the
acceleration of artistic and technological innovation from its early stirrings
in Athens thought the great American creative surge of the 20th
century.
Late in the 20th
century, the understood scope of human creative activity was broadened to include
technology. This was a key insight of
the American, former soviet émigré, novelist / philosopher, Ayn Rand[4]. It follows that a creative civilization must
necessarily have a free economic system as well as robust protections for
creative expression and free communication.
From the point of view of the
art-friendly left, there is a poignant irony here. The creative activities of the engineers,
technologists and scientists have done more to advance the real living
conditions of the poor people, the so-called commoners to whom the left has
pretended allegiance, than any experiment in social organization explicitly
designed to ameliorate their lot. One
can make the historical case that the specifically “mundane” American style of
technological innovation has done more for the day-to-day lives of the common
people than all of the Marxist and utopian social planners combined.
There are certain moral and
practical principles that make up the foundation of an explicitly creative
civilization. Providentially, these moral and practical principles were set out in
the American founding documents.
Creative activity flourishes in an intensely free society and withers in
a bureaucratic tyrannical one. No wonder
America is the paradigm exemplar of the creative society.
Almost every innovation
listed in the previous section represents the happy confluence of at three
forces: (1) Creative freedom; (2) Protection of the creative process either via
a powerful patron or a robust patent / copyright intellectual property system;
(3) and in the 20th century, the operation of the
risk-incentive-profit sequence.
It is not coincidental that
the technical or so called “industrial” creative innovations since 1700 have
collectively done more to improve the lot of the so called common people than
all the previous creative innovations in art and science combined. We should not forget that the epicenter of
these innovations, of their inspiration, application and development, was and
still is the United States of America.
The insight that a
civilization should provide the foundations of law and peaceful transitions of
power is incomplete. The atavistic
forces that would cripple or destroy Western civilization carry a sharp lesson
for us. When the Taliban took over on
Afghanistan, creative people were forced to flee.
While the spread of an
authoritarian and fanatical theocracy that animates the jihad against the West
minimally meets the definition of ‘a civilization”, it is manifestly hostile to
free human creative endeavors. This
prompts us to take up the simple, but profound agenda that will transform the
conduct and defense of all modern civilizations for centuries to come. The task of furthering the expansion of
creative civilizations and defending them – and their free institutions - has from now on become the overriding goal
of the human enterprise.
The universal goal of
purposively fostering creative civilizations means that the idea of American
Exceptionalism is not jingoism, but the epicenter of an uncompleted world
revolution.
To survive and flourish over
time, a civilization must provide robust, proactive protection for all
peaceful creative activities – and the special conditions of freedom in which
the human creative enterprise flourishes.
In this new paradigm, creative activities (and the concomitant freedom
of expression and communication) are to be defined very broadly, including but
not limited to the free exchange of political ideas, art forms, cultural,
spiritual and esthetic creative products, technological innovations, and human
exploration of the cosmos. As to all of
these creative expressions of our humanity, the protection of intellectual
property and robust firewalls against censorship are paramount among the
creation-friendly conditions that civilizations are now charged to provide.
Therefore it would be a
profound mistake for conservatives to neglect the creative arts as if they were
some inessential frill in a creative civilization, in contrast with
technological innovation. And it would
be even a greater a mistake for the liberals to embrace the creative arts
against technological innovation in some deluded Luddite frenzy.
OBSERVATIONS
Cultural conservatives who are
hostile to modernity in all its manifestations can contribute less to the
discussion than the Renaissance Conservatives.
The creative arts deserve conservative support, especially as they
celebrate beauty, life and human freedom in the context of the love of beauty
and the celebration of life. There will never be a time when humanity
can survive for long (let alone thrive) without robust creative communities
working (and playing[5])
in an atmosphere of productive, life affirming freedom. This lesson and its implications should be,
but are not yet obvious – this, in spite of the huge benefits human creative
accomplishments have brought us in the last 1,000 years.
In contrast with our ancient and medieval ancestors, those of us who live in the developed areas of the world enjoy clean hot and cold running water, the benefits of heating, air conditioning and refrigeration, the pleasure of rapid communication with friends and strangers across the world, and the ability to listen to – even witness - concerts and performances that were once exclusive fare of royalty and the very, very wealthy.
Many of us moderns complain about “quality of life” issues, but in very significant ways, the day-to-day lives of former peasants and serfs are more luxurious on a practical level than their former lords, kings and queens.
A telling feature of the modern creative efflorescence is that former “commoners” have entered the game as creative geniuses. As the autodidact longshoremen philosopher Eric Hoffer put it, “The common people are lumpy with talent.”
The Beatles of Liverpool would have been minor minstrels at best in 11th century England. Albert Einstein might not have survived at all, let alone have enjoyed the benefits of a proper education in the Germany of the 13th century. Part of the modern creative efflorescence is the emergence of zones of protected freedom. Had Albert Einstein remained in the Germany of 1937, he would have been incinerated.
It is no accident that, whenever authoritarian regimes seize power, the most creative members of the captive civilization attempt to leave. Nor is it just by chance that the truly free societies of the world are the ones that have fostered the efflorescence of creative energy and accomplishment of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
A study of human creativity is needed and ongoing, but some lessons are clear enough right now. A great deal has been written about the history of technological innovation as a separate topic, but little if anything has been done connecting this creative efflorescence to the Renaissance periods of European history.
Leonardo Da Vinci was the emblematic crossover figure between the artistic and “practical” achievement, the classic Renaissance man, yet too many models of civilization feel free to repress some creative activities while attempting to control and exploit others. It is now clear that human creativity cannot be compartmentalized, that the conditions for it to flourish are common to all of its forms.
Our creative activities cannot be compartmentalized, in part because the conditions of creative freedom and the protection of intellectual property are the common seed conditions for all creativity, whether “artistic” or “practical”. But any attempt at compartmentalization fails also because the manifold areas and modalities of innovation, inspiration, and discovery that engage the human creative mind are elements of the same general process: they can take place in the same life, the same community and the same civilization. They cross fertilize each other. The impact, richness and value of creative activities in all their forms far, far exceeds the sum of the constituent elements.
The contemporary lesson that has yet to spread across the globe is this: Creative activities flourish in zones of protected freedom and liberty, particularly where the fruits of innovation – artistic and technological – are legally protected as earned property. The model of a free, independent creative civilization was a new development in human history. Foremost among these models in world history is the United States of America, the constitution of which enshrines free speech, free commerce, patent and copyright protections among the many other blessings of freedom.
I believe the survival of the human race is riding on the success of that experiment.
Creative Artists and Capitalists
It is not coincidental that
the technical or so called “industrial” creative innovations since 1700 have
collectively done more to improve the lot of the so-called common people than
all the previous creative innovations in art and science combined. We should not forget that the epicenter of
these innovations, of their inspiration, application and development, was and
still is the United States of America.
Late in the 20th
century, the understood scope of human creative activity was broadened to
include technology. This was a key
insight of the American, former soviet émigré, novelist / philosopher, Ayn Rand[6]. It follows that any civilization that aspires
to be a creative one must created and sustain a free economic system and robust
protections for creative expression and free communication. In other words, there are certain moral and
practical principles that make up the foundation of an explicitly creative civilization. Providentially, these moral and practical
principles were set out in the American founding documents.
While creative activity
flourishes in an intensely free society, it
withers in a bureaucratic tyrannical one.
No wonder America is the paradigm exemplar of the creative society.
Creativity’s
I am proposing here that the protection of all creative activities requires a life-affirming, liberty respecting ethos, comprehensively and robustly protected by legal system anchored in a deep respect for the underlying moral order. And to make these protections real and enduring, robust legal institutions must be dedicated to the protection of ordered liberty as enshrined in a governing constitution. As we Americans have learned, the institutions on which liberty depends include an authentic constitution that includes a concrete bill of rights, a method for their enforcement, and a robust system of checks and balances against the concentration of power.
Almost
every benign creative innovation in the last two hundred years represents the
happy confluence of at least four elements:
The insight that a
civilization should provide the foundations of law and peaceful transitions of
power is incomplete. The atavistic
forces that would cripple or destroy Western civilization carry a sharp lesson
for us. When the Taliban took over on
Afghanistan, creative people were forced to flee.
While the spread of an
authoritarian and fanatical theocracy that animates the jihad against the West
minimally meets the definition of “a civilization”, it is manifestly hostile to
the full range of free human creative endeavors. This prompts us to take up the simple, but
profound agenda that will transform the conduct and defense of all modern
civilizations for centuries to come.
The task of furthering the
expansion of creative civilizations and defending them – and their free
institutions - has from now on become
the overriding goal of the human enterprise.
Protecting the Creation-engendering Infrastructure
Creative activities flourish under conditions of protected
freedom, and the creative activities that sustain civilization are not limited
to the creative arts but include commerce, exploration and technology. Capitalism, in the form of free commerce,
restrained only by reasonable, impartial laws designed to protect honest
transactions and public health and safety, is the necessary ally of creative
freedom in all its other manifestations, and vice-versa. Recent developments in information technology
have blurred the interface between copyright and patent, content and delivery
system, and in the same way information
technology has fully bridged the gap between “mere” technological invention and
art.
Electronically recorded and
transmitted music and images, increasingly available and at decreasing unit
cost, have made music from Beethoven to Beyonce, drama from Shakespeare to the
Matrix, available on a hand held device almost anywhere on the planet earth
24/7/365.
Censorship has become more difficult at the same time that intellectual piracy and the glut of raw talent clamoring for attention have made individual creative endeavors less profitable for the individual aspiring artist.
But the information
technology explosion has generated a parallel explosion in the creative
arts. Tracking the constantly expanding
numbers of movie and television productions during the 20th century
is like tracking the first nanosecond of the Big Bang or the fist second of a
nuclear explosion. Notice the blurring
between creative content and the technologies and modalities of expression and
communication; and note that patent, copyright and trademark protections are
necessarily interwoven.
Notice, as well, the
exponential increase in the synergies of creative forms, music, words, shapes,
narratives, such that a given work cannot be reduced to any one discipline or
art.
Never before in human history
has so much of the entire creative output of the human race been so readily and
instantly available to so many people at such low cost. And note also, the modern sense of threat
felt by certain authoritarian regimes as measured by their attempts to control
and restrain creativity except as it directly serves the needs of their own
power brokers.
They cannot be allowed to prevail.
To survive and flourish over
time, a civilization must provide robust, proactive protection for all
peaceful creative activities – and the special conditions of freedom in which
the human creative enterprise flourishes.
In this new paradigm, creative activities (and the concomitant freedom
of expression and communication) are to be defined very broadly, including but
not limited to the free exchange of political ideas, art forms, cultural,
spiritual and esthetic creative products, technological innovations, and human
exploration of the cosmos.
As to all of these creative
expressions of our humanity, the protection of intellectual property and robust
firewalls against censorship are paramount among the creation-friendly
conditions that civilizations are now charged to provide.
The universal goal of
purposively fostering creative civilizations means that the idea of American
Exceptionalism is not jingoism, but the epicenter of an uncompleted world
revolution.
CONSERVATIVE
VALUES & THE HUMAN CREATIVE
Modern conservatives are the
political world’s most reliable friends of personal safety and liberty. They are the architects the conditions and
institutions that hold up human freedom and liberty, the very soil of all human
creative activities. Conservatives were
the first to extol and advance the virtues of human technological creativity as
a vital strand of the human creative enterprise. In this new era they are the friends and
allies of human creative activity everywhere it is repressed.
Beyond that, conservatives
almost uniquely understand the critical role of boundaries as part of the creative support system. Boundaries are as essential the creative
enterprise as cell walls are to biological function. From the moral and legal boundaries that make
creative civilization stable and capable of self-defense, to the deep
understanding of moral limits that will enable us to survive our own terrifying
inventions, the conservative instinct to protect essential boundaries is part
of the creation support system.
Conservative communities need
to be in fruitful liaison with the creative arts communities. The creative
arts, in their highest forms, operate to challenge trivial boundaries, but
illuminate our essential ones. This essay is not the place to go much farther
with this, so I conclude with three takeaway points:
(1) Because conservatives are natural defenders of
freedom, they (we) understand at the gut level that art should not ever be
harnessed to any political agenda or religious institution.
(2) All art is worthy of strong conservative support (and
the individual patronage of conservatives) when it celebrates life and freedom;
(3) Artists were
the original entrepreneurs.
The current century has begun
to expose more clearly than ever before that there are striking differences
among competing civilizations based on the degree to which each protects,
supports and/or promotes its inner creative functions. We should never forget that when
authoritarian regimes assume power, the creative types flee, many to America.
Recall the fleeing artists from the former Soviet Union. Notice the contemporary anti-creative
tendencies in authoritarian mainland China and the theocracy in Iran. Examine the politically correct soft censorship
in left-dominated universities on our own soil.
The battle for creative civilization has just begun
While some civilizations
promote freedom as a general good, and others promote certain arts as a
national goal, little conscious, intentional value has been assigned to the
task of protecting and fostering creativity within a civilization as one of its
primary raisons d’être.
That must change.
Instances of creative
efflorescence in the past have been driven by unusual circumstances, as in very
local zones of protection and patronage –think of ancient Athens where slaves
allowed the leisure for the creative class, and Renaissance Florence where
creative artists flourished under the protection and patronage of the Medici
family.
For most of our history, the
elites tended to think of the whole notion of human creative activity as
something confined to the fine arts. But
the creative cyber-explosion of the 20th Century is changing our
understanding. Creativity includes more
than paintings, sculpture, literature and music. The creative stepchildren are innovations in
technology, commerce, and social organization.
I am persuaded that the new creative civilization paradigm will broadly
integrate all aspects of human creativity, including exploration and all of the
attendant support activities.
And I also must note that
there has been a profound disconnection between human creative activities and
the field of morality and ethics, such that – especially in religious
traditions –notion of “good” and “holy” were confined to worship and
interpersonal altruism, while the labor and sacrifice of someone in the throes
of creative inspiration tended to be marginalized as self indulgent
egoism. I believe that this
balkanization of human value systems will break down in the current century, as
the inherent value of explicitly creative civilizations takes hold.
I should add that the
creative civilization paradigm fully answers the moralist critique of
libertarianism as mere libertine indulgence.
In a creative civilization there is a vital, overriding interest in
liberty: it is the very soil of all human creative activities.
THE
AMERICAN RECOVERY PROJECT
Any conservative recovery
that fails be robust and coherent, fails period. A successful conservative recovery in the
current left-leaning environment will necessarily be organized around the real
life concerns that transcend popular ideological stereotypes.
Ultimate political success
depends on the ability of conservatives at every level to find, sell and
implement good solutions, the very efficacy of which will serve to expose the
dysfunctional approaches of the current crop of illiberal-liberals.
Renaissance conservatism, as I have described it
here, immediately overcomes the conservative reputation for status quo thinking. This will swiftly become the one conservative
brand that trusted to effectively and creatively solve the problems that
liberalism typically neglects to actually address – as opposed to merely
posturing about them. As it happens,
these are the primary problems facing America in its current malaise after
years of ineffectual liberal tinkering, irresolution, failed experimentation,
and dismal results.
Any short list of our biggest
problems will include these six areas:
►
...The almost Sisyphean task of transforming the US economy into a robust
investment-production model, replacing the failed debt-consumption model...
► ...The looming energy insufficiency...
►
...The prospect of food supply shortages (already foreshadowed by rising
prices)...
►
...The stifling of creative thinking through the political and cultural
censorship called political correctness, media group-think, and the smothering of the arts via
bureaucratic subsidies and political expectations...
►
...The growing toxicity of post modern relativism: -which has given rise to
deteriorating family relationships, cultural baseness, educational failure and
growing moral illiteracy. All of these
malign developments are the consequences of moral boundary decay.
A confident and forward conservative
program will: replace the acceptance of scarcity with the pursuit of abundance;
trump ineffectual gestures with creative accomplishments, unmask the politics
of posture; strengthen our firewalls against predators, corruption, and
disease; and secure family life from the forces, economic and cultural, that
threaten to dissolve it.
Here are the watch words of
the recovery:
The political liberals who
dominate the democratic and green parties, the media and the academy will
eventually be seen (even by traditional liberals) as a small, deranged minority
that achieved undue influence because no one challenged their narrative with
enough coherence, consistency and force.
The time has come to expose the naked emperors. Creative civilization is the almost self-evident wave of the
future.
The Renaissance Conservative
movement is poised attract the participation of competent, forward-looking
conservative leaders with strong communication skills, attracting leaders
because it is the wave of the future.
Exceptional leaders are needed at every level, respected and charismatic
men and women who are comfortable explaining creative conservative principles
and programs in a way that educates the larger public as it drives policy. Conservatives with a renaissance mindset are
needed in both parties, in the academy and the media. Empowered by a motivated belief in the
future, they can do what no conservative movement before have ever
accomplished: move opinion.
The overall goal is to effect
a return to the Dialogic Period in each of the three power centers currently
dominated by the left- the academy, the media (new & old) and the power
brokers of government.
An America imbued with fresh
self-confidence and purpose is an America deeply renewed. America’s renaissance conservatives of both
parties are called to lead the way. The
former liberals and conservatives are welcome to follow.
Overcoming the Suffocation Effect
Mindless Bureaucracy as the Enemy
of Creativity
The term, “mindless bureaucracy”, is redundant. Bureaucracy is the hierarchical mechanization of human relations. Bureaucrats are a necessary annoyance when their role is confined to its proper scope, the routine, efficient administration of mundane, repetitive approval processes. But bureaucrats become an unnecessary evil when they are empowered to become the primary means of social control.
Here are some of the early lessons:
By its very nature, the creative engine cannot be directed down the expected and predictable path without killing it. This is a good thing because the really dangerous challenges that we will face in this century and those that follow will be the least expected ones, the kind that will require an extraordinary capacity for creative adaptation.[7]
Weimar’s Despair & Pixar’s Rules
Creative accomplishment requires boundaries without oppression. Mozart was an exuberant innovator but worked within the musical syntax and language that was developed by Bach and Hayden. Beethoven was a revolutionary who took that language and syntax a step farther into new, romantic-heroic territory.
The PIXAR animation studios have created vivid, engaging fantasy works with enduring value, among them the Toy Story features, Ratatouille, Nemo, UP, Monster’s Inc., Carz and Wall*E. Wide creative latitude is accompanied by plausibility rules that govern the created world. The toys of Toy Story, for example could not teleport, change size, or exert superpowers. In the presence of children and adults they fell and remained inert.
“The core separation into world, character and story is a good example of our most fundamental decomposition. Experts in environments can concentrate on discovering the rules of the world. Character specialists can make believable actors from bugs or lamps or toys. Storytellers can concentrate on what happens and why. Each process informs the other, inspiring a new environment with a story point or a different way to see a character against a fresh background.”
From UC Berkeley explanatory essay released by PIXAR
“[W]e try to stay as true as you can because there’s a certain veracity, you know, you get stable when you create a set of rules for the character and for the environment, it stabilizes the viewer and helps them experience the world in a much better way. You can lose yourself in the story much better if the rules are consistent, you don’t have to think about them anymore. We all know that when we watch films, rules are all over the map or it’s inconsistent, the continuity doesn’t make sense, you start thinking about it.”
Interview with PIXAR producer Darla Anderson
Structure and a common
language of collaboration are evidently essential. But what are the special conditions that
foster constructive creative
activity? There is a need for an
underlying moral context.
There was a burst of creative
energy in the Weimar Republic of Germany, 1919-1933, ending with Hitler's
ascent to power. The Weimar Republic was
born during the crippling reparations following Germany’s crushing defeat in WW
I, and under pressure from left and right, it experienced a burst of cultural
energy characterized by a mood of bleakness and failure (often described as
“modernism”), manifested in the literature of geniuses like Brecht and Mann and
the atonal music of Berg and Schoenberg.
This bleak ethos found
political expression the theories of the so called Critical Theorists of the
Marxist Frankfort School. One prominent
thread in the Weimar cultural mix was a Marxist-inspired attack on traditional
beauty; the beauty “worship” of romanticism was portrayed as part of the
ideology of capitalism (much as religion was denounced as the “opiate of the
people”. One sympathetic writer described
the role of “modern” music as a “message of despair”. The Weimar cultural period, whatever its
incidental value to world culture, contained a dominant anti-life ethos that
ultimately crippled the very creative process itself, marking the beginning of
popular alienation from the “elite arts.”
The failure to honor moral
boundaries and the concomitant undermining of life affirmation within the
creative community of Weimar, undermined the commitment to creative freedom,
and led directly to the loss of all freedom in the Hitlerian nightmare.
China and the State Capitalism Fad
No full-on free-market capitalism has ever really been allowed to operate for long by the governments within which such markets operate, even though full-on laissez-faire conditions are not necessary, just a robust legal system that protects contracts, polices fraud and ensures reasonable safety and accountability.
“State capitalism” is the buzzword of the day, although it is nothing new on the planet. The mercantilism of the British Empire operated in the service of the Crown, exclusive franchises, i.e., monopolies, were the order of the day.[8]
China’s blowtorch economy is an artificial construct - a
hell-bent effort to create a production-based economy capable of employing a
half-billion displaced rural workers by flooding the world with underpriced
goods. Starting from a base near zero,
China’s
As one Chinese
business leader put it, “You have to understand that business is the only
creative outlet permitted in my country.”
I am cautiously optimistic about the Chinese prospects for a peaceful, internal reformation particularly after 2012. Every knowledgeable adult in China remembers not only Tiananmen Square 1989, but they vividly recall the image of that towering white statue, holding a torch, “The Goddess of Democracy”.
Like Voldemort in Harry Potter, one does not publicly talk of these things inside mainland China, let alone name them. But that same Lady still stands on Liberty Island against the backdrop of Manhattan. She and the American example are universals.
STARTING
THE RE-CON SURGE
Renaissance Conservatives
(and their principled entrepreneurial liberal colleagues) are linked by
personal predisposition and a common ethos to all of the creative ventures of humanity, particular those that
celebrate human life, beauty and creation itself and the technologies that make
it all possible. The common task is to
link this ethos to the larger agenda of forming, fostering and protecting a
creative civilization, to all of its creative features, technological,
spiritual and artistic, and to demonstrate in all its forms, and to join our
rhetoric, actual behavior and policies, such that they are deeply linked to
this end.
Here is the message: All benign human creative activity transcends
party, politics and ideology. And bless
the rebellious, anti-conventional members of our creative subcultures. Pierced body parts and purple hair included, they are our allies ... even if they
don’t yet “get it.” The hallmark themes of Renaissance Conservatism
are life affirmation[9],
freedom affirmation and the celebration and support of creative activities in
all spheres (artistic, commercial, scientific and exploration), all of which
are seen as part of an indivisible moral and practical imperative.
Re-Cons love creative freedom and its fruits so much that they respect the dangers of government meddling, even the well intentioned meddling of government subsidies and grants. They understand that the selective bureaucratic promotion of some creative activities over others is subtle censorship. Re-Cons support free, untrammeled patronage of creative pursuits, encouraged but not controlled by the state. Creative activities thrive where bureaucratic power and an ethos of sameness are on the defense. The affirmation of heroic achievement and the celebration of our non-equalities are essential components of any truly creative society.
A litmus test here is the support of the charitable tax deduction for educational and creative endeavors.
Today, the USA hesitates at a crossroads, facing a
fiscal crisis that masks an even deeper moral one. The choices are between competing versions of
America, and our own personal futures.
The
steps we take now will represent a choice of goals and outcomes: “Live long and
prosper!” ...Or... “Don’t live too long or prosper too much.”
Where do you want to be? What are you willing to do? When are you willing to do it?
As Hillel the Elder said, “If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And if I am only for
myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?”
WHO AMONG US?
Which men and women,
among living conservative public figures, best fit the emerging Renaissance
Conservative profile? Add your picks,
please...
Clint Eastwood (1930-
)[10]
Norman Podhoretz
(1930- )[11]
Camille Anna Paglia (1947- )[12]
Victor Davis Hanson
(1953- )[13]
Condoleezza Rice
(1954 - )[14]
Gary Sinise (1955- )[15]
Mark Steyn (1959 - )[16]
David Brooks (1961- )[17]
John Podhoretz (1961
- )[18]
Claire Berlinski
(1968 - )[19]
__________________
__________________
__________________
THE
APPENDIX
POINTS
OF LIGHT & DARKNESS
Over the span of pre-modern
human history, the creative nodes within the human experience stand out like
brightly lit cities on the dark side of the earth as seen from space. We think of Florentine Italy, the
efflorescence of science in Ninth Century Islam, the many sparks in Western
Europe and England. But as we approach the modern era, among the sparks and
bursts we see a creative blaze forming on North America.
Beginning in the mid 1800’s,
the face of America would appear on our imaginary dark-side-of-earth map as a
series of brilliant flares, completely unprecedented in their scope and
intensity. The flames of innovation and creative energy in the USA soon became
a firestorm.
The following summary
illustrates the scope and magnitude of human creative progress from Greeks to
geeks, 500
The FIRST SPARK: Athens 500-300
Starting with geniuses named
Aristotle, Plato, Archimedes and Pythagoras, and others – all were figures
dismissed by the postmodern cultural left as “dead white men”, an astounding
efflorescence of logic, history and the arts flourished in ancient Greece.
Even 21st century
readers are occasionally startled by the modernity of some of these creative
achievements, compared with the many dreary subsequent eras. The seminal efflorescence of creative and
exploratory thought in ancient Greece was made possible by conditions of peace,
leisure and a culture of free and lively discourse, taking mostly within a
protected “creative zone”, sometimes during wars. The classical period left the
world a seed legacy of unequaled and incalculable value.
The Long Darkness
Flash forward to post-Roman
Imperial Europe. All human memory of that Greco-Roman cultural and creative
outpouring was reduced to a precious few ancient Greek texts that resided
mostly in a handful of monasteries after the economic, cultural, political and
military disintegration of the Western Roman Empire. Europe slipped into that
prolonged cultural amnesia we call the Dark Ages.
The Islamic World’s Efflorescence 750–1250 CE
During Europe’s later Dark
Ages, Cordoba, capital of Islamic Spain, was the leading knowledge center for
Europe. In the 800’s, the library of the monastery of St. Gall, the largest in
Continental Europe, held only about 36
volumes. But Cordoba’s library contained a half million. During this remarkable
time of Arab creative efflorescence, intellectual developments like the number
zero, the decimal system and basic algebra emerged; they later would form the
foundation for the scientific revolution.
I note particular admiration
the work of Al-Khwarizmi (Alghorismus) after whom the algorithm was named.
Muslims not only passed on Greek classical works but also introduced new
scientific theories, including the theory of the pendulum, the basis for
measuring time.
The European Renaissance 1100-1650 CE
Europe’s first Renaissance
began with the recovery of the writings from the Greek creative period partly
facilitated by the contemporary Irish monks (See Cahill’s “How the Irish Saved
Civilization’) and partly as a result of the contributions by the Muslim
scholars and their Spanish connection. In the 12th century in Europe, all
scholars agree that a dramatic surge in inventions and innovations took
place. More useful innovations directly
affecting day-to-day life emerged than in the preceding thousand years. I note
especially advances in printing, spectacles, time keeping, and navigation. Great ships were built and the Age of
Exploration began.
Europe’s second renaissance
started in Italy, particularly in Florence (think of the Medici family’s
protection and patronage, and of geniuses like Leonardo and Michelangelo). The
creative surge began in the 1300’s and ran at least until the 1600’s.
The Anglo-Euro-Japanese-American Techno-Renaissance
1700-2000
But the greatest economic and
technological progress in all human history was concentrated in a 110 year
period starting about 1890. During this
period the US moved from agrarian irrelevance to the most powerful industrial
nation in world history generated a third of the industrial output for the whole
planet. The intellectual seeds of this
explosion were planted in the 18th century.
Among the innovations of the 1700’s were:
The Steam Piston Engine, The
Mercury Thermometer, Iron Smelting,The Franklin Stove, The Lightning Rod, The
Steam Car, The Steamboat, The Circular Saw, The Hot Air Balloon, Bifocals, The
Automatic Flour Mill, The Threshing Machine, Artificial Teeth, Vaccination ...
Note the acceleration in the:
1800s:
The Locomotive, The
Submarine, The Screw Propeller Steamboat, The Steam Locomotive, The Gas Stove,
The Band Saw, The Arc Lamp, The Miner's Safety Lamp, The Stirling Engine, The
Stethoscope, The Bicycle, The Electric Motor, Portland Cement, Photography, The
Internal Combustion Engine, The Friction Match, The Thermostat, The Magnetic
Acoustic Telegraph, The Reaper, The Electrical Generator, The Braille System,
The Refrigerator, The Combine Harvester, The Incandescent Light Bulb, The
Sewing Machine, The Electric Printing Press, The Steel Plow, The Magnetic
Telegraph, The Electric Telegraph, The Closed Diving Suit, rubber
Vulcanization, Artificial Fertilizer, Anesthesia, The Typewriter, The Fax
Machine, The Ice Cream Maker, The Pile Driver, The Safety Match, The Pneumatic
Tire, The Sewing Machine, the Rotary Printing Press, The Safety Pin, The Telephone, The Passenger Elevator, Gyroscope, Bunsen Burner,
Celluloid, Undersea Telegraph Cable, Oil Drill, Lead Acid Battery, Light Bulb,
Linoleum, Pasteurization, Player Piano, Roller Coaster, Barbed Wire, Dynamite,
Vacuum Cleaner, Cable Car, D C Electric Motor, Electric Street Car, Gasoline
Carburetor, Loudspeaker, Stapler, Induction Motor, Phonograph, Microphone,
Cathode Ray Tube, Cash Register, Roll Film, Safety Razor, Seismograph, Metal
Detector, Electric Fan, Blowtorch, A C Electric Motor, Automobile, Motorcycle,
A C Transformer, Gasoline Engine, Contact Lens, Gramophone, Ceiling Fan, AC
Electric Power System, Kodak Camera, Ballpoint Pen, Harvester-Thresher,
Escalator, Zipper, Adjustable Wrench, Photography, Telephone-Exchange,
Carburetor, Tuned Wireless Communication, Radio Transmission, Milking Machine,
Diesel Engine, Radiotelegraph, Remote Control, Car Self-Starter, Magnetic Tape
Recorder, Gas Turbine...
Now take in a partial
overview of the really big explosion
in the 20th Century:
The Neon Lamp, Rayon,
Electrocardiograph, Powered, Controlled Airplane, Tractor, Radio Tube Diode, Sonar, Helicopter,
Washing Machine, Cellophane, Geiger
Counter, Gyrocompass, Neon
Lighting, Hydroplane, Parachute, Radio Receiver, Stainless Steel, X-Ray,
Liquid Fuel Rocket, Tungsten Filament, Pyrex, Sonar Echolocation, Cruise
Missile, Radio Crystal Oscillator,
Polygraph, Radar, Sound Film, Television, Wind Tunnel,
Xenon Flash Lamp, Aerosol Spray,
Cotton Picker, Sliced Bread, Electric Dry Shaver, Antibiotics, Electroencephalograph,
Band Aid, Synthetic Insulin, Mechanical Potato Peeler, Rigid Dirigible
Airship, Microwave Optics, Disposable Razor Blade, Vacuum Cleaner, Air Conditioner, Radio Telescope, Nylon, Turboprop Engine, Jet Engine, Ballpoint Pen, Xerography,
Fiberglass, View-Master, Computer,
Velcro, Nuclear Reactor, Undersea Oil Pipeline, Aqua-Lung, Electron
Spectrometer, Slinky, Microwave Oven, Atomic Weapons, Mobile Telephone Service, Bikini, Transistor, Polaroid Camera, Long
Playing Record, Holography, Atomic
Clocks, Credit Card, Oral Contraceptive, Nuclear Power
Reactor, Floppy Disk, Optical Fiber, H Bomb, Hovercraft, Medical Ultrasound, Radar Gun, Geodesic Dome, Hard Drive, Video Phone, Videocassette Recorder, Jet Boat, Integrated Circuit Chip, Communications
Satellite, Pacemaker, Laser, Optical Disc, Cochlear Implant, Human Spaceflight, Light-Emitting
Diode, Space Observatory, Computer Mouse, Space Dock, AT M, Hypertext, Video Game Console, Packet Switching,
ARPANET, Relational Database, Space
Station, E-Mail, Liquid Crystal Display, Microprocessor, Pocket Calculator,
And so it continues...
THE CREATIVE INFORMATION EXPLOSION: 1900-Present Day
Marshal McLuhan (1911-1980) is forever known for a
single aphorism, “The medium is the message”.
Less well known is the fact
that he was a converted Roman Catholic and the “patron saint” of WIRED
magazine.
A renaissance conservative
needs to be aware of McLuhan’s insights on more than a superficial level.
Consider
that in McLuhan’s conception all of the new communication technologies (think
print technology, then the new media) profoundly affect the way we think, act
and understand the world.
McLuhan
has persuasively argued that print communication technologies created the
modern Western world. The print culture
was inherently individualistic, leading to democracy and capitalism. In the 1960’s, he predicted that profound
social changes would result as we entered the era of “electronic
interdependence”. The new communication
and information transfer technologies would de-emphasize reading in favor of
graphics and sound, causing the culture to migrate from fragmented
individualism to a “tribal base”, the so-called “global village.”
We
might now detect a return to individuation as a result of the phenomenon of the
individual, handheld multi-media device.
Electronically recorded and
transmitted music and images, increasingly available and at decreasing unit
cost, have made music from Beethoven to Beyonce, drama from Shakespeare to the
Matrix, available on a hand held device almost anywhere on the planet earth
24/7/365. Censorship has become more
difficult at the same time that intellectual piracy and the glut of raw talent
clamoring for attention have made individual creative endeavors less profitable
for the individual aspiring artist.
But the information
technology explosion has generated a parallel explosion in the creative
arts. Tracking the constantly expanding
numbers of movie and television productions during the 20th century
is like tracking the first nanosecond of the Big Bang or the fist second of a
nuclear explosion.
Among the new art forms,
still in their infancy (at by the development standards of pre-modern eras) are
these:
The Expanding Creative Nodes
In the ancient and medieval worlds the centers or nodes of creative activities were so rare that they could be numbered in the handful for an entire millennium. Today, if they were illuminated all at once, a nighttime satellite picture of the world light up with their glow.
Just where are these modern creative nodes?
Consider one list of the top 25 world cities in technology – a study giving special emphasis on cyber-technology: Boston, Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, New York, Frankfurt, San Francisco, Copenhagen, Lyon, Hamburg, Berlin, Toronto, Stuttgart, London, Munich, Milan, Stockholm, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Tokyo, Rome, Kyoto, Washington DC, Shanghai, & Düsseldorf.
[Source: 2thinknow Innovation Cities™ Program: www.innovation-cities.com ]
Robust creative arts communities are thriving in every high-tech city in the top 25, with the exception of Shanghai, where the creative arts do not thrive, except as an underground avocation.[21]
Lists like this one provide a small glimpse into the pervasive and strong correlations between the creative arts and creative technological innovation. In the modern setting, they tend to thrive together. This pattern emerges even more vividly when we expand our understanding of creativity, and look closely at some of the smaller, but highly significant nodes.
For example, the Seattle metro area includes both Microsoft and its spin-offs, and a robust arts community. The San Francisco metro area includes Silicon Valley and another brilliant arts community. Little Israel, given its small population, represents a striking confluence of high-tech innovation and cultural vitality. “The World Economic Forum has designated Israel is one of the leading countries in the world in technological innovation”
That connection is always multilayered. Techno-innovators prefer to live and work in culturally interesting areas. Many of the arts have strong crossover appeal. For example music, mathematics, the graphic arts and aspects of computer technology turn out to be cross-disciplinary, and their creators tend to share crossover interests.
Note that the only two Chinese centers that make the innovation lists are Hong Kong, where freedom of expression is alive, and the Shanghai region, where creativity is sharply channeled into business enterprises, but suppressed in other activities. Professors Sean Chen (Department of Asian Studies, Furman University) and Kirk Karwan (Department of Business & Accounting, Furman University) have collaborated in a study of “Innovative cities in China: Lessons from Pudong New District, Zhangjiang High-tech Park and SMIC Village.” An abstract of their study is telling:
“Although the pace of development in Chinese cities over the past decade has been unprecedented, future economic progress in China may be increasingly constrained by limitations in the social structures that serve to attract skilled labor. ...Although much of what has been seen in Shanghai and Pudong is consistent with recent theories of city innovation, central control of the CDLC leaves open the question of whether the Shanghai model is a sustainable one. In particular, the influence of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in recognizing and supporting social innovations is likely to be essential to future success in Shanghai.
“The question is whether these innovations will be allowed to continue or if they will be controlled by central authorities in a way that will derail attempts to attract the necessary high-tech human capital.”
RENAISSANCE CONSERVATIVE
PRECURSORS
No new movement rises
up unbidden and without antecedents. As
Isaac Newton acknowledged in the 17th century, quoting a 12th
century sage, ‘We are standing on the shoulders of giants. Here are some giants from which Renaissance
Conservatism will trace its origins
Marcus Tullius Cicero
(106-43
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519), history’s most prolific polymath, exemplified the broadband nature of the creative enterprise, including painting, technology and scientific exploration, all in the context of a moral framework. He was, for many, the renaissance personified.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), a scientist, artist and statesman, a renaissance man with conservative values, leavened by a relaxed social outlook.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), author of much of the American foundational literature, was an acknowledged polymath.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Irish lawyer, statesman, political philosopher, who supported the American Revolution, but not the French, and advocated the necessity of moral and social continuity and foundations for enduring liberty.
Clive Staples (C. S.) Lewis (1898-1963), British classicist, novelist, essayist, lay theologian, advocate of universal morality and natural law that support and give form to humankind’s universal desire for freedom. “Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983), the self educated longshoreman, son of a German-Jewish immigrant family, a fierce anti-communist whose insights about the nature of mass movements are still discussed, and who frequently extolled the creative capabilities of ordinary people, “the common people are lumpy with talent.”
Ayn Rand (1905-1982), the Russian Jewish immigrant (Alisa Rosnbaum), novelist/philosopher who fiercely defended individual rights, especially as they related to creative achievement. She was among the very first 20th century intellectuals to defend capitalism and to celebrate creativity in industry and invention as well as in the arts
Robert Heinlein (1907-1988),
the writer and space travel visionary whose work inspired astronauts and
dreamers across the world, a conservative whose vision touched the stars.
John F Kennedy (1917-1963), the American president who lowered tax rates, started the space program and recast the Cold War against Soviet Russia as a long term struggle for liberty.
POLITICAL NOTES
THE TRIAGE IMPERATIVE
Renaissance Conservatism is about preserving, nurturing and protecting creative nodes of civilization, starting with the Mother Node, the USA. We are the mother of all modern creative civilizations, the one experiment that cannot be allowed to fail, because the American experience has captured the unique set of elements that actually works to sustain creativity in all its manifold forms. The elements include these four:
[1] A country-wide zone of broadband creative freedom, including freedom of expression, freedom in the exchange of ideas, intellectual products, goods and services in the context of a constitutional system that protects these and all the related freedoms generally;
[2] Robust protections for intellectual property and the related property rights that entitle creative individuals and enterprises to the fruits of their work;
[3] A consensus moral foundation for the foregoing - a common moral system that not only justifies freedom and creative accomplishments, but puts these values in a still larger, life affirming context sufficient to distinguish the use of creative gifts for good purposes from their employment and exploitation by evil ideologies, evil purposes and the malign systems of thought that are in a death struggle against creative civilizations everywhere;
[4] A stable legal, constitutional governing structure founded and anchored in the constitution, the founding documents, the enduring traditions, such that this structure is coherent with the reinforcing moral foundation.
As general as these points may sound, they go a huge distance towards producing specific policies within an overall unifying paradigm among all thinking conservatives. Here are some of the immediate implications:
Robust, tough-minded, guilt-free national security policies: The preservation of America as a secure, strong and admirable beacon of liberty and freedom to the world is a practical and a moral priority. The USA is to be defended with vigor, using force and intelligence against all threats. The USA is to seek and support allies that are also aligned as freedom-friendly, creative societies and Americans are to recognize the common threats posed by the various totalitarian/authoritarian ideologies and movements, whether scientific (in the Nazi/Marxist sense) or post modern or atavistic (in the jihad sense).
Free market, fiscally sound, pro-growth economic policies: Top down, bureaucratic states not only strangle economic growth, they tend to suffocate creative innovation in all its forms. It is no coincidence that, when repressive regimes assume power, the most creative try to escape, often to America, always to a less repressive, more ‘creative-friendly” polity. Increased prosperity, “surplus” wealth and time have always fostered human creative activities whether during the Medici Renaissance or the creative hotbed of Silicon Valley. Therefore Renaissance Conservatives endorse the mythical salutation from that iconic, optimistic series, Star Trek, “Live long and prosper!” The tepid admonitions of the minders of the left would say, “Don’t live too long or prosper too much.”
Federalism and local control is appropriate for most other issues, subject to the prudent, “procedural populism” rule. With few exceptions, social issues should be left to the people on a local level, as close to the popular sentiment as feasible; they are to be resolved locally without the interference or control of non-elected bureaucrats and jurists. Suppose, for example, that a stable majority of voters in a given jurisdiction are opposed or in favor of granting or withholding the title marriage for a domestic partnership between same gender couples. It is inappropriate for a court or administrative agency to decree otherwise. Some matters are best left to gradual and authentic social evolution, not social engineering, whether by administrative agencies or jurists.
In the current crisis, we face the dire prospect of a fiscal collapse, leading to punitive taxes, rampant inflation, or both, all while the POTUS is unable or unwilling to entertain alternatives designed to reign in excessive government spending, to preserve the private economy and unleash creative progress.
We are suffering from a self-inflicted energy shortage, threatening a world-wide food shortage and worse, while the ideologues-in-charge are unable or unwilling to entertain the readily available realistic alternatives to scarcity.
We are embroiled in a long conflict with atavistic forces
seeking the destruction of Western civilization- these forces covertly allied
with our “former” enemies and false friends.
Yet our Commander in Chief seems bent on snatching defeat from the jaws
of victory. Under current leadership we substitute ambivalence and incoherence
for a clear-eyed assertion of American interests, while following half-hearted
military engagements with dangerously severe funding cuts and dangerously
premature withdrawals.
Triage allows no room for time, energy and political capital to be squandered
on minor local disputes, as passionately as the combatants tend to regard many
of the social issues.
There is a principled accommodation. It is this: Renaissance Conservatives support authentic local control on these issues, whether they and we, as individuals, might agree or disagree on the merits. But Re-Cons remain strong and reliable allies of those who are suffering from the manipulation of the democratic process to accomplish social engineering in opposition to the popular will. We are well past slavery and the civil war. The social issues of the moment need not and should not be national causes that seek to use federal or other jurisprudential tools to quell the popular will, wither the issue is the death penalty, marriage or pre-abortion counseling.
TWO
A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE
Once upon a time, I was a libertarian. Libertarianism is the halfway house between right and left. Its social laissez faire policies, tendencies towards isolationism and neo-pacifism appeal to disenchanted liberals moving to away from leftist neo-Marxism.
These same features appeal to conservatives moving away from rightist neo-fundamentalism.
Like its mirror image twin, socialism, libertarianism is constructed on a single ethical principle, the primacy of individual choice, in effect exalting personal autonomy over all conflicting principles. Socialism is based on the primacy of welfare over all conflicting principles, in effect elevating the collective pursuit of equality over all conflicting principles.
Yet libertarian thought fails to answer the core question - “Why personal freedom?” Socialist thought fails to answer the core question - “Why impersonal equality?”
By giving prominent moral status to life-affirming human creativity in all its manifestations we resolve these apparent conflicts, and supply the larger moral context: Human creative activities are a primary good when they support human life and the conditions for further human creative activities. The implications of a creative moral imperative are clear: Freedom is necessary for our creative accomplishments, which in turn flourish under circumstances in which the “unequal” results of successful creativity are widely honored and respected. The entire human enterprise, writ large, is built on exchange processes that include but are hardly limited to those of traditional commercial capitalism. It is bright line clear to me that life-affirming creativity is an indivisible good, embracing exploration, artistic, commercial and technological creative innovation, without which we humans would still be living the bleak lives described by Thomas Hobbes as “nasty, brutish and short.” And it is equally bright line clear to me that the special conditions for creative activities to flourish, to wit -- a sound, freedom-affirming moral framework, and the broadband protection-in-fact of all creative freedoms (artistic, technological, commercial, the exchange of goods and services and the protection of property, creative and otherwise), cannot be limited. This meant that freedoms are not to be compartmentalized or limited to some political notion of appropriate or favored activity while other less “worthy” endeavors are discouraged or prohibited.
As a result of this line of thinking – and my take on the state of the country and the world – I’ve evolved into a pan-partisan conservative, a life affirming social-libertarian, a fiscal and foreign policy hawk - in the traditions of Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan, dedicated to the restoration of American greatness. I support robust energy independence (including the aggressive development to the newer nuclear power technologies). I support an awakened America that serves its historical calling as the world’s leader against the neo-Marxist and atavistic jihadists, both of which are the declared blood enemies of free creative civilizations everywhere.
The support of enclaves of freedom and decency in the world, especially those who are our traditional friends and allies, represents a vital, enduring national obligation, constrained only by immediate practical concerns for our own protection, and the normal prudential considerations that govern any great nation’s military engagements.
Therefore, strong, unwavering, practical support for Israel (economic, diplomatic, political and in terms of national security) is a no-brainer.
The promotion of third and fourth generation nuclear energy technologies and the exploitation of our vast coal reserves in the meantime are also no-brainers.
Immediate federal fiscal restraint, achieved, as necessary, by the pro-rata reduction of salaries and benefits for all employees and beneficiaries of the federal government from POTUS on down is another no-brainer.
The tendency of liberals to hold defense and national security hostage when budget cutting becomes an issue – or when a balanced budget amendment become effective -must be decisively taken off the table as long as creative civilizations must survive in a hostile and deadly international environment. I recommend a bypass: a national, flat income surtax of a small percentage of adjusted gross income (applied down to $15,000k/person). The funding flow would be designed to provide a realistic floor for all ongoing military and security funding, such that the appropriations could not be traded away or held hostage to other programs. All other budget expenditures, including entitlements and additional defense and security spending would be in the discretionary category, requiring annual specific appropriations.
I am pro-life. As a moral proposition, I find a deep and disturbing linkage between societal callousness about the termination of a viable pregnancy and the euthanasia of elders and disabled, whether overt or under bureaucratic cover. But I am a realist. The mere repeal of Roe vs. Wade, for example could have the effect of opening the abortion floodgates in certain pro-choice states. Pro-life advocates tend to forget or discount that the Supreme Court, under Roe, has granted authority to virtually ban all abortions done in the last 66% of any pregnancy. The most dedicated pro-choice advocates tend to emphasize “the protection of the life of the mother” (which is a medical/ethical given) but actually mean the “health” of the mother, hoping that it will be construed to mean emotional distress over the pregnancy, allowing courts to create a back-door exception. I stand with the pro-life advocates on this. Where an abortion would otherwise be unlawful, the health exception needs to be bright-line medically clear. No pro-life ethic can support the subordination of the life of a mother to that of her unborn child, unless she heroically grants informed consent.
It is a fact of life that Roe represents a fragile societal consensus but does not bar significant further movement in the pro-life direction. Its main limitation, in my legal opinion, is its arbitrary and increasingly obsolete definition of “viability”, simplistically decreed to obtain in the second and third trimesters, but not the first. This is viability outside the womb, of course, something that medical technology is gradually pushing back in time.
There are a number of pro-life measures within the overall ambit of Roe vs. Wade, such as required pre-abortion counseling, including a requirement that the latest baby-imaging technology be used. Ditto: parental notification and consent.
Therefore (again on a personal level) I advocate the concept of using a different viability test --intra-utero viability, rather than extra-utero. This would leave a gray area soon after conception during which viability cannot be presumed.
But I also advocate policy restraint, and a bias in favor of gradual social change. Like the other “social issues”, it is prudent and sound policy to stake out an emphasis on local decisions based on a healthy respect for custom and practice. In my opinion, a forward-aimed conservative movement can and should accommodate any candidate who is aligned with the pro-life sentiment, while unwilling to push for the repeal of Roe vs. Wade at least while all of the other pro-life measures are implemented.
The other divisive social issue of the day is typically described as the “Gay Marriage” dispute. I favor substantial legal accommodations for gay couples who are trying to form family units that are traditional in all respects save the same-gender union element. This includes access to the same insurance benefits, medical and otherwise, and to care givers (thinking of “next of kin” status in a hospital, for example) as would be afforded heterosexual couples. Such practical benefits should not, in my opinion be denied gay or lesbian couples.
But the term, “marriage” cannot and should not be redefined or reassigned except via a wide and durable social consensus honestly ascertained on a local basis by the regular democratic political processes. Marriage redefinition is not an appropriate issue for social engineering, whether the engineers are wearing black robes or not. As I explain this to pro-gay marriage advocates, I ask them to think of it as a brand or trademark issue. The trademark for traditional official heterosexual family unions is taken – it is marriage.
And – as I have told some of our gay friends – the marriage issue, especially in the context of the grave issues facing the USA and the world, remains a boutique one. As a conservative, I favor measures to uphold, honor and strengthen the traditional family without going out of our way to harm or disparage non-traditional families. I strongly believe that no substantial fundamental changes in such a basic feature of daily life as marriage should ever be imposed without wide and deep public consent. I also believe that our gay and lesbian relatives, friends and neighbors who choose to life as same-gender couples have the right to live their lives in peace and dignity. They should not be arbitrarily barred from key economic and practical benefits just because they are not a “straight couple.” But the term marriage has a settled meaning and the federal government has no business changing it.
I am strongly opposed to drug legalization, by which I mean the virtual elimination of meaningful controls on the sale and distribution of strongly addictive, psychotropic substances. My reasons are grounded in long experience with the criminal subpopulation and the insight that the serious addictions amount character poison and in cased of hard addiction they are chemical slavery. A free society cannot endure when a substantial subpopulation is addicted to mind-altering drugs.
I am not a free-market absolutist when it comes to government investments in education, research and development. But I am deeply hostile to the stultifying effects of empowered bureaucrats. DARPA, in its present form, is effective because it designed to operate outside the bureaucratic mentality and culture, seeding promising defense-related developments with an intelligent, light touch.[22]
My point in this personal exegesis is to make clear that I do not require agreement on the details in order to engage in a fruitful, mutually respectful dialogue on good policy. Not for those of us who remain united on the larger topic of building a free, creative civilization using America as the model. I am deeply convinced that a forward-aimed conservative movement is an essential first step, but I would never exclude non-conforming conservatives or thoughtful liberals from the conversation. Good dialogue is heuristic for all the participants.
Nor would I require that same level of agreement from a presidential or other candidate who is authentically closer to the renaissance conservative positions and philosophy than an incumbent leftist. What I do require of any liberal or conservative that which I require of myself. Intellectual and transactional honesty, borne of several deep visceral and practical commitments, to wit: to promote the conditions of ordered liberty necessary to sustain a creative civilization; to maintain a blood commitment to defend our constitution; and to keep a fierce, abiding loyalty to the vision of the USA as the greatest nation on the earth, the last best hope for a free world.
________________________________________________________________________
Re-Con Self Definition
An Exercise
Because renaissance conservatism is a new development, subtly but significantly differing from paleo-conservatism, the task of differentiation is one and the same as the task of evangelism. This means that no opportunity for positive self-definition is to be neglected. Surface differences invite deeper exploration. And Re-Cons differ in one common feature – the philosophical depth and consistence of the belief system that underlies everything they do and advocate, even when they disagree with each other.
Re-Cons sound different, tend to hang with different people, and react differently, than other conservatives.
“Sounding different” means that we hear Re-Cons using certain themes and language that are not common to modern conservatives, particularly the retrospective ones. For example:
In sum: About one third of the contents of Re-Con discourse – even in casual discussions - are cheerfully positive and future-aimed.
Hanging with different people means that Re-Cons go out of their way to cultivate friendships within the various creative communities on a pan-partisan, non-ideological basis. Re-Cons are ambassadors from and to conservative values, from and to the creative communities that thrive in the settings that such values make possible yet remain alienated by their conservative stereotypes.
Reacting differently means a fierce defense of issues and concerns, many of which are neglected by liberals and conservatives, especially of creative freedoms, the defense of which is stated in specific Re-Con terms, whenever and from whatever source the threat presents: the Re-Con defense of creativity is coupled with a moral ethos of life affirmation. The Re-Con message can be summarized: The conservative gift to progress is that all our creative endeavors need to be fruitfully integrated with the larger, freedom supporting, life affirming moral order.
Re-Cons are uniquely capable of doing this sort of thing without seeming puritanical or falling into the trap of fashionably hip amorality. Here are some test issues and typical Re-Con visceral[23] responses:
___
Jay B Gaskill
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jay B Gaskill is a well known California attorney,
author, commentator and consultant, who served for ten years as the 7th
Alameda County, CA, Public Defender. He
has appeared on CBS 48 Hours. His
website, THE POLICY THINK
Among his widely read articles are:
Political Liberalism as a Secular Religion
“Liberalism
in this form is a secular religion. This religion originated,
innocently enough, as an attempt to off-load the entire charitable and
humanitarian enterprise to the regulatory and social action agencies of
government. ...political liberals consist of two groups: the angry
and outspoken activists who define “pure” doctrine, and the much larger group
who simply go along. It is the unwillingness of this second, larger
group to openly deviate from doctrine that interests me. I believe
that, for this larger group (most of whom are well off financially and educated
far above the “trailer park” level they tend to despise), the primary
function of this secular religion is to protect the comfortable lifestyles of
its adherents.”
http://www.jaygaskill.com/liberalismasreligion.htm
Thugology
101
“A working understanding of thuggish behavior is basic
to any study of the human condition, essential to the study of history,
important for the conduct of American foreign policy and a key to local police
staffing issues. What I’ve learned about
thugs comes from 28 years of interactions with the crooks of Alameda County.”
http://www.jaygaskill.com/THUGOLOGY101.pdf
Recovery
101
“We Americans
are writing this story, and the narrative is under our control.
Public opinion polls
tell us that a majority of Americans actually understand the gravity and scope
of the fiscal crisis. The most of us
still believe in American exceptionalism. A majority of voters are out of synch
with Obama 1.0, the arch liberal who pushed through a hugely costly health care
reform scheme that rank and file Americans strongly opposed.”
http://www.jaygaskill.com/Recovery101.pdf
CONTACT INFORMATION
Detailed author contact
information is available, on request, via e-mail:
law@jaygaskill.com or outlawyer.gaskill@gmail.com
_______
[1] See the Appendix at pp66-67 for more of the author’s selection rationale. After reading the following pages, you are invited to add and subtract names. Who would you include or exclude and – more importantly - why? Contact the author via e-mail > law@jaygaskill.com
[2] By foundational philosophy, is simply meant a common moral understanding that transcends mere fad and custom.
[3] The Weimar Republic was viable from 1919 ‘till 1933, ending with Hitler's ascent to power. Born during the crippling reparations following Germany's crushing defeat in WW I, under pressure from left and right, the Weimar Republic experienced a burst of cultural energy characterized by a mood of bleakness and failure (often described as “modernism”) in the literature of geniuses like Brecht and Mann and the atonal music of Berg and Schoenberg, and in the political theories of the so called Critical Theorists. The predictable result was a catastrophic loss of confidence in the value of liberal civilization, providing an opening for Nazism.
[4] Alisa Rosenbaum, A footnote. A core element of the conservative ethos is the celebration of individual heroic achievement, whether that of an entrepreneur, explorer or creative genius (thinking here of the archetypal architect, Howard Roark, in Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead). Taken in their totality, Ms. Rand’s novels (particularly The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged) and her non-fiction works (esp. The Romantic Manifesto) make a philosophical case for a comprehensive vision of creative freedom. This is a notion of considerable scope that folds in the creative arts and the innovative arts of industry. While many conservatives are uncomfortable with Ms. Rand’s philosophy of atheistic egoism, especially as it derides altruism, her contributions to the philosophy of freedom are too great to be ignored. Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was born Alisa Rosenbaum in Russia and learned fluent English while working in Hollywood. As a young graduate student in New York, Alan Greenspan belonged to a group that was in the thrall of Ms. Rand. As a secular Jewish Soviet émigré -- the Soviets had essentially destroyedd her parent’s business, she was a fierce anticommunist who defended the ethic of rational self interest against cultural and political forces that would compel a sacrificial ethos, deride profit and sap achievement.
[5] There is a fascinating body of information that links playful activity to creative achievement. It seems that recreation and creation are joined at the hip. Eric Hoffer has pointed out that the first working model of a steam engine was a toy for Roman children ignored by their bureaucratic elders.
[6] See footnote 4.
The daughter of a commercial family whose
property was confiscated by the Soviets, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum escaped to
the USA, eventually changing her name to Ayn Rand. In her breakout novel, The Fountainhead, the
nexus between creative freedom and intellectual property is explicit, and in Atlas
Shrugged, the underlying links between artistic innovation, invention
and commercial freedom are central to the storyline. Her philosophical writings, loosely grouped
under the rubric, Objectivism, have
been scathingly dismissed by the left as amoral. But Ms. Rand’s passion for creative freedom
as a moral
imperative was a specific commitment that transcended “mere” greed and belied
the parodic attempts to marginalize an original, serious ethic, sharply
relevant to the modern human condition.
[7] I find David Brooks on the same page. In the New York Times, he wrote, “The new
sort of competition is all about charisma. It’s about gathering talent ...
because people are most creative when they collaborate face to face). This
concentration of talent then attracts more talent, which creates more
collaboration, which multiplies everybody’s skills, which attracts more talent
and so on. The nation with the most diverse creative hot spots will dominate
the century.” And he points out the
function of the patron, business or government is to facilitate, not
dominate. “So it is with government in
an innovation economy. Entrepreneurs, corporate executives, line workers and
store managers handle the substance of the economy. Government tries to nurture
settings where brilliance can happen.” David Brooks, “The Talent Magnet”, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/opinion/25brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
.
[8] For a discussion of mercantilism as a general theory,
see < http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Mercantilism.html
>. As mercantilism affected the
colonies, see < http://www.landandfreedom.org/ushistory/us3.htm
>. The policies of mercantilism were
opposed by Adam Smith and John Locke, among others, but they reappeared under
Germany’s National Socialism.
[9] Setting aside the legal and theological discussions of
early pregnancy issues, Renaissance Conservatives support a culture of strong
life-affirmation, rejecting the notion that any creative civilization can long
endure when involuntary euthanasia – in whatever form or guise – is promoted or
encouraged.
[10] An actor whose true genius became increasingly evident in his later films as a director, musician-composer; Eastwood was a mayor, a patriotic social liberal whose deeper conservatism leads to a mixed, thoughtful world view.
[11] A converted leftist intellectual, the patron of the dreaded “neo-cons”, in other works a free- thinking, conservative with deep credentials, much, much brighter than the typical leftist “smarter-then-you” type.
[12] While not easily categorized, Paglia is that rare combination of social liberalism, leavened by a touch of moral conservatism; she is a libertarian member of the literati, someone with great personal authenticity.
[13] Farmer, classicist, military historian, Hoover Scholar, a thoughtful conservative columnist and author, an intellectual with roots in the common experience, a writer and thinker with a larger world view and deeper historical perspective than the surrounding commentariat.
[14] As a Hoover Scholar, Secretary of State, concert-class pianist, Dr. Rice fits the Re-Con profile perfectly.
[15] A highly creative conservative - an accomplished actor, director and musician, a patriot who devotes every spare moment to visit and entertain US troops in combat zones and hospitals, a quiet Re-Con.
[16] Steyn is brilliant, funny critic of the excesses of liberalism, a Canadian who fully appreciates American exceptionalism, an intelligent advocate of core conservative principles, and who sees them on the larger stage of a civilization in trouble. A great Re-Con model..
[17] Brooks occupies the thoughtful liberal wing of the renaissance conservative spectrum but, at core, he respects and honors creativity and the conservative values that sustain it. He belongs in the Re-Con camp.
[18] Like his father, Norman P., John is an intellectual conservative with a wide and lively interest in the culture, the arts and the condition of civilization, in other words, a Re-Con-leader-in-the-making.
[19] Dr. Berlinski (international relations, Oxford) is a courageous American writer living in Turkey. See the Manhattan Institute profile < http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/berlinski.htm>. A closet Re-Con embedded in a hostile, atavistic milieu.
[20] There are a number of sources for the various parts of
this section, including a Wikipedia article on the chronology of technological
inventions. There are many avenues for
further research, among the most valuable: The Lever of Riches, by Joel Mokyr,
Oxford 1990; Structures of Change in the Mechanical Age: Technological Innovation in
the United States, 1790—1865, by
Ross Thompson, John Hopkins 2009; Technological innovation as an Evolutionary
Process, John Ziman, Ed., Cambridge University Press 2000: The
Timetables of Technology: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events
in the History of Technology, by Brian H Bunch & Alexander
Hellemans, Simon and Schuster 1993; An Encyclopedia of the History of Technology,
Ian McNeil, Ed. 1990, 1996 Routledge; and Fortune is a River, Leonardo
Da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli's Magnificent Dream to Change the Course of
Florentine History by Roger Masters, Penguin 1998, 1999.
[21] “Chinese Authorities Raze an Artist’s Studio” New York
Times, January 12, 2011.
“Mr. Ai’s studio was to be
used as an education center and a site for artists in residence.” ...
“Everything is gone,” he said. “It’s all black now. They finished the job at 9
o’clock last night.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/world/asia/13china.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=china%20artist&st=cse
[22] See The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs, by Michael Belfiore, Harper Collins 2009.
[23] The key here is visceral, a litmus test of the authenticity of someone who might or might not have internalized the core understanding of the renaissance conservative world view.