The Dots Connected
By
Jay
B Gaskill
January 2, 2012 ◄
2012 is a year of
major transitions, some of which will not be immediately apparent to the casual
observer and many clueless policy makers.
Three major economies will begin tectonic shifts. America will set the stage for its
reemergence as the world’s exemplar of progress:
Europe
will begin the painful shift away from its incoherent blend of highly
productive, self-sustaining economies linked at the aorta to unsustainably
underproductive, dependency economies. The
new European model, whether the euro survives as a unitary currency, in a two
tier form or not at all, will have one key feature: The failing entitlement
models will be decoupled and made more accountable for their own misallocation
of resources. There is just not enough free-floating
altruism in all of Europe for the highly productive economies to voluntarily carry
the entitlement load of the highly unproductive ones. The governing institutions of the EU cannot
operate as an uber-government over the strong objections of its members. The forms of governance may remain, but the
reality of an EU super-state will not gel in its present form.
China
will be forced by internal pressures to move
from what is essentially a slave labor, subsidized-production economy to
something closer to the current American one – a credit-fueled consumption
model. The pressures to increase wages
and to relax restrictions on consumption cannot long be resisted in China, especially
when its sovereign lending represents unspent money-in-the-bank that can be
used to ease the conditions of Chinese labor.
An important caution: China’s model, a mix of police state executions,
wealthy, oppressive party elites, de-facto local autonomy for high tech areas,
masses of rural poor trying to migrate to cites, and the collapse of communism
as a unifying moral paradigm, cannot be sustained. Chinese communist party leaders do not sleep
well these days.
The
USA will be forced by external circumstances to
abandon its decades-long credit-driven consumption binge in favor of the more
sober investment-driven production model.
In the short and midterm this means “work harder, consume less”. In the long term, America’s success will be,
once again, the exemplar that leads the world into a better place
The common thread in all these shifts is the
breakdown of the command economy model (whether socialist, communist,
mercantilist, or crony-capitalist) and the collapse of the various liberal subsidized-idleness
models. As a result, what we now think
of as liberalism and conservatism will change.
All in all, I am cautiously optimistic.
Let me introduce my optimism with two recently published letters of
mine. After that, I will connect the
dots.
Among my
favorite sources of information and analysis, I particularly enjoy two
intelligent conservative-leaning publications, First Things[i],
which reflects an interreligious,
catholic-centered perspective, and Commentary[ii],
that exemplifies a Jewish point of view. Both are driven by a shared concern for the
advancement of human dignity in the context of our common moral heritage, the
ongoing struggle for human freedom, and a belief in American
exceptionalism.
And both have recently
published letters from me – one defending Ayn Rand from an ideological/religious
attack (in the form of a movie review), and one containing my take on a Symposium on America’s future.
First, from the journal,
First
Things:
First Things is published by The
Institute on Religion and Public Life, an interreligious, nonpartisan research
and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed
public philosophy for the ordering of society.
…my letter as published in
the August/September 2011 issue….
“I’ve been reading First Things for more than a decade now, and David
Bentley Hart’s takedown of Ayn Rand (“The Trouble with Ayn Rand,” May) stands
out, but not in an admirable way. Many conservative Christians, among them
Roman Catholics, will be offended at such a vitriolic attack on a famous
conservative humanist author, and I use the term vitriolic advisedly
(“just a little spiteful,” in Hart’s confession).
“I grant you that Rand, an autodidact Russian émigré (the daughter of a
commercial family whose property was confiscated by the Soviets, and an
anticommunist intellectual who fell in love with America) was indeed an atheist.
But unlike Phillip Pullman, she did not attack or brutally caricature the
Church, and unlike Nietzsche, whom she actively disliked, she did not attack
Christianity.
“Taken as a whole, Ayn Rand’s creative output is a celebration of life and
human creative powers. I suspect that she is on David Hart’s
personal Index Librorum Prohibitorum because
she embraced “greed” over self-immolative sacrifice. Rand’s passion for
creative freedom as a moral imperative was a specific commitment that
transcended “mere” greed and belies the parodic attempts to marginalize an
original, serious ethic, relevant to the modern human condition and, at least
to this believer, something that represents a valued addition to the larger
Christian worldview.
“Ayn Rand’s fiction and philosophy is not Christian by any stretch, but it is
an expression of life-affirming, anti-tyrannical humanism. God forbid there
would be a movie of one of Eric Hoffer’s books.”
Second, in the magazine,
Commentary:
From its founding in November 1945, COMMENTARY has
been “an act of affirmation.” It remains an expression of belief in the United
States, perhaps most of all in America’s central role in the preservation and
advance of Western civilization and, most immediately, the continuing existence
of the Jewish people.
…as published in the January 2012 issue…
“From reading COMMENTARY’S
[November] symposium on America’s future, it became clear to me that short term
and long term optimism are easier to achieve than that pesky midterm
variety. Humanity’s long-term optimism has
a venerable history, based on the enduring affirmation of human life. Our
species’ moral compass points us there.
“The 960 Jewish warriors
and loved ones who stood against the Romans at the fortress on Masada two
millennia ago - refusing to surrender, killing themselves rather than giving the
attackers the satisfaction of victory - were realistic optimists. Their optimism was not unlike that of the
struggling immigrant parents who work themselves into bone deep weariness day
and night so their children will have better futures. It is the same as the optimism of the
inventor, the creative artist, and all others who understand that in the
sacrifices and rewards of their personal creative struggles, it is actually
possible for a few to lift up the lives of the many who will come after them.
“The reasonable optimism
of the entrepreneur with a potentially valuable innovation is grounded in the
creative experience, in contrast with the unreasonable optimism of the
obsessive gambler. It is the optimism of those who understand that setbacks and
failures are built into the processes of creation. It is the essential optimism of all of us who
believe in the future.
“It seems that, early in
the 21st century, the utopian liberal game has run its course. But the power of
post-modern liberalism in all its forms, within the academy and the larger
intelligentsia, is robust. That power
has flowed from the prevalent credibility of the “leveling” ideologies as the
primary agent of ameliorative change. This was cemented by the historical
association of conservatives with the repressive right wing defenders of kings,
tyrants, royalty and other malefactors of unearned privilege.
“Short term optimism flows
from the reasonable prediction that there will be a conservative surge – “fire
truck” conservatives are typically 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 years to
come.
“But midterm optimism is
another matter. What happens 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: one, whether the coming crisis will be widely
recognized as the result of fundamental contradictions within “liberalism”; and
two, whether a new conservatism can address the future with a simple, powerful
philosophy that unites its core precepts with a theory of human progress. If the answer to the second question is yes,
then so will be the answer to the first.
“Conservative
intellectuals like John Podhoretz have their work cut out for them, even before
the new garments are ordered.”
Jay B Gaskill
It is clear to me that contemporary
political liberalism has lost its way, and that conservatism in some form is
needed to provide the necessary corrective, hopefully in time to prevent more
damage. As I observed several years ago
in a popular essay, Liberalism is a
secular religion, there is an important sense in which most of us, whether
we are classic or modern conservatives, are all liberals. I began that piece with the disclaimer, “All
thinking people who respect human life and dignity are liberals in the larger
sense. So that makes me and most thinking conservatives liberals, too.” I went
on to identify the illiberal elements of the political liberalism of the hard left. My purpose was “not to debate the merits of
the public policy issues that make up the catechism of the left, but to explore
the notion that, collectively, these views are
a catechism. There is no better
explanation for the extreme resistance of the ‘political liberal’ group to all
rational argument.”
Liberalism's enduring project – currently overshadowing its
historic commitment to liberty - is to mitigate the harshness of Darwinian
competition on the people. Conservatism's enduring project – formerly superseding
its waning commitment to inherited privilege - is to protect the legitimate
earnings of the people. In former times, neither ideology evidenced a
particularly robust focus on the truly greater project: fostering the special
conditions of ordered liberty in which creative human enterprises thrive
– the very enterprises that constitute the fountainhead of all human progress,
whether in the arts, technology or our social arrangements.
This was the core insight led me to connect the major dots. The immediate problem, as I put it in my Commentary letter, is “whether a new
conservatism can address the future with a simple, powerful philosophy that
unites its core precepts with a theory of human progress.”
I believe that new variety of conservatives (a type that I’ve referenced
in an article below as “Renaissance conservatives”) will quickly adapt and
connect core conservative values to the project of fostering, protecting and
anchoring the human creative enterprise.
This adaptation proves to be a natural fit. As a bonus, it also supports the resumption
of a fruitful dialogue with the subset of enlightened, freedom-loving liberals
who understand that the creative project, writ large, necessarily requires protected
freedoms that have always been closely associated with the conservative
project. These are the very freedoms
essential to the functioning of creative communities throughout history. They include the right to uncensored,
unregulated expression, to the legally protected retention of one’s
legitimately acquired property and earnings (particularly intellectual property
and the fruits of one’s innovations and inventions) and the protection of
voluntary mutual exchange, whether of ideas, art, goods, services or any other
value that free men and women, working for themselves, can generate.
These notions are the bedrock of the creative civilization imperative. It is a powerful idea, one that has the
potential to transform both liberalism and conservatism. And, not coincidentally, the special
conditions for a large scale, ongoing creative efflorescence have strongly
rooted themselves in the New World, protected by the American constitutional
structure of governance. The American
experiment is at its very core the first modern example of a creative society grounded
in protected liberties. As the force of this idea spreads and the policy
implications sink in, the stage will be set for the Great American
Recovery. Once again, our example will
lead the world.
These ideas are developed in the following
articles, available on The Policy Think Site:
The
American Creative Surge (PDF download -75 pages)
http://www.jaygaskill.com/ACS2011.pdf
Political Liberalism as a Secular Religion
http://jaygaskill.com/liberalismasreligion.htm
Living in the Ayn Rand Universe
http://www.jaygaskill.com/InTheAynRandUniverse.htm
The
Dialogic Imperative (PDF download, 41 pages)
http://www.jaygaskill.com/i2i.pdf
Copyright © 2011 and 2012 by First Things and Commentary Magazine, respectively, as to the quoted letters that were
edited and published by those two periodicals, and Copyright © 2012 by Jay B
Gaskill, Attorney at Law as the author of those letters and of the additional material
herein. As always, links and forwards
are welcome and encouraged. For other
permissions or comments, contact the author via e-mail: law@jaygaskill.com
.
[i] First Things is edited by RR Reno. Link: http://www.firstthings.com/
[ii] Commentary is edited by John Podhoretz. Link: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/