Brian Chau on Girard; Noah Smith's unintended Girardian prediction; Charles Kesler quibbles with National Conservatism; Martin Gurri admires Alexei Navalni
"Instead of these factions on the left competing over who gets to pick the banner they march under, everyone agrees to scapegoat one particular group of people."
I'd put it slightly differently. The Left, even more than the Right, sees a need for strict conformity of beliefs, and Left ideology covers every topic. Or at least, it should; if there's some topic that hasn't yet had its approved Left position chosen, it's only due to oversight. Since there's a Left position on every topic, all Leftists must energetically champion the Left position on every topic.
The latest Left position is support for Palestine. No, that's not right - I can't tell that Leftists care about individual Palestinians at all. They can't recognize that Hamas and Fatah are both corrupt, thuggish authoritarians who primarily victimize their own people. So the real Left position is opposition to Israel. Since this is the currently most salient issue for the Left, all Left-oriented organizations and leaders must energetically champion it. Hence Planned Parenthood, primarily concerned with reproductive rights, must come out against Israel. Hence the Sierra Club, primarily concerned with environmentalism in the US, must come out against Israel. Hence Greta Thunberg, primarily concerned with climate change, must come out against Israel.
This reminds me less of scapegoating than of a scramble to remain relevant and be seen as the proper leadership of the Left. To apocryphally quote Alexandre Ledru-Rollin: "There go the people, and I must follow them, for I am their leader." Or at least I wish to be perceived as their leader.
The Sierra Club has not primarily been concerned about the environment since circa the late 90s. A George Soros-lite - I don’t recall his name, but this is easily googled - engineered a takeover of the board and the purging of those who were (correctly, of course) concerned about population and thus unlimited immigration. The organization, successfully sabotaged, came to focus most of its energies on brown people. That may be a goal you share but it would be an abuse of the language, and of sense, to categorize it as to do with the environment. To a great degree, many environmental groups have been affected by this ideological incursion and overthrow (especially at the uppermost though least salient levels), and the task of anyone sincerely interested in nature is to find those groups still faithfully honoring their original
I think we're in agreement. Environmentalism, and environmentalists, have been principally identified with the Left for a long time. As such, adherence to Left orthodoxy takes priority over the groups' declared mission.
No, it needn’t have been so. The bad actors should be called out, and the inherent (to the non-moronic) conservatism - indeed the purest expression of it - of the enterprise reaffirmed (as it is daily by those who continue to do this work, all along).
It needn't have been so, but it is. Just as concerns about unlimited immigration have been principally identified with the Left [edit: Right], even though labor unions, a traditional part of the Democratic coalition, have long favored immigration restrictions.
More and more, it seems that we have only two sides in Western society, and most people seem obliged to pick a side. Aside from introducing mindless nastiness into public discourse, this mostly prevents considering issues on their merits.
See, I think calls for moderation and civility are only weaponized; it is necessary to be nasty, and name names, as I just did.
The internet and downstream of it, the real world, are full of people who have no grasp that all of this has been engineered. Your average libertarian, thinking he has contrarian thoughts about the environment, or immigration, is a creation of peopled like the Kochs, and this Gelbach.
"The latest Left position is support for Palestine."
Latest? It's been like this for over half a century at least.
If one focuses too much on American politics to draw these kinds of inferences, one is liable to get confused about the ideological alignment, because America's relations with Israel are unique, and combined with the influence of pro-Israel Jews on American politics and media at the time, there was a long period of oscillation in the modal attitude of party establishment Republicans and Democrats from Truman through Clinton.
Those days are over, the left is openly and explicitly settled on the matter, and leftist Jews know they must either turn against Israel or get demoted first then inevitably kicked out of the club. I've seen a few already start to do this and unlike the usual talent for coming up with compelling arguments for bad ideas, in this case they usually looks like amateurs embarrassing themselves. Perhaps their hearts are not really in it, yet.
But if you were to focus on what I guess one could call the "Global Progressive Influential Intellectual Elite", their position has been consistently, obsessively, and senselessly anti-Israel practically since the beginning and in a manner completely irreconcilable with how these same people treat any other comparable claims, regimes, or circumstances. The security establishment-left has been trying to go along with the intellectual-left for decades, but Israel's enemies can't help repeatedly revealing how bad they really are in ways hard for the establishment to overlook or deny, so it's been a slow process that, nevertheless, advances a step or two with every major incident.
There is also the complicated wrinkle of what happens when this process reaches its inevitable conclusion and the American regime and American leftist Jews turn decisively against Israel. Long before that point Israel will have no choice but to hedge their bets, and all the ways that could happen are paths that lead to very interesting times for everybody not long thereafter.
I wasn't as clear as I thought I was. The Left position on most issues doesn't change. The Left has been opposed to Israel for decades, but it hasn't generally been the most salient issue. Events in Gaza have elevated it, eclipsing police violence, which eclipsed climate change, which eclipsed intersectionality, which eclipsed me-too, which eclipsed Russian meddling in elections, which eclipsed (in the US at least) mass incarceration, which eclipsed homelessness, which eclipsed inequality, which eclipsed poverty. I may be leaving a few other topics out. Each one in turn becomes the Biggest Thing, provoking earnest statements by all Leftists to show that they are on the Right Side of today's Biggest Thing.
Because if they don't jump out, they risk being disavowed by their Lefty allies. Or, even worse, becoming irrelevant.
When organizations--leftist or not--see extreme evil going on(the genocide in Gaza), they don't have to delicately calibrate the different levels of immorality on each side. They just stand out against the perpetrators--the government of Israel! The government of Israel is not even Jewish, since Jews would not $30,000+ innocent women and children out of spite.
That's one approach. My preferred approach would be for organizations with specific missions to stick to the knitting and focus on the mission. They can't really take the time and attention to come to real understanding on every issue of the day, so they don't add anything to public discussion by saying the same things others in their "tribe" are saying. They also don't have to alienate members, or potential supporters, who disagree with them on some specific issue.
For example, the Sierra Club may lose members and potential supporters by taking a position on Palestine, abortion, gun control, urban education, crime policy, transgenderism, Right to Work, or other issues that are contentious in today's environment. If their goal is to protect the environment, that should be their focus. If they want to win points as part of "the Left", they're on the right track. But that comes at the expense of the environmental mission.
[Your ending quote] Sounds a bit like Trump to me. At least leading up to previous elections (especially 2016), I thought he tended to pick positions potential followers already were moving toward.
I think that's a good description. Others have said that Trumpism isn't about Trump and wasn't caused by Trump. Unfortunately, Trump is so far the best able to capitalize on it.
Thanks for the tip off about International Planned Parenthood Federation going full on for Gaza. We have significantly supported Planned Parenthood for over half a century and totally believe in the goal of reproductive rights belongs to the individual, not some religious and/or governmental group.
I read the link to IPPF and followed some of their links and then used Google to search for Islamic laws on the relevant subjects. Islam, like the Pope, allows Coitus interruptus but otherwise bans abortion and some birth control methods (apparently condoms in Gaza). As Islam is the "law", the individual doesn't count and the IPPF is violating the clams made to its supporters when it effectively supports Hamas's barbaric behavior. They supported the claimed 500 killed at a hospital by Israel when all data and evidence says it was a failed Hamas rocket. They denied or ignored weapons and use of "protected facilities" by Hamas while claiming "war crimes" by Israel, while knowing that protected facilities are only protected when they are not helping Hamas fighters and their weapons.
Needless to say, they will no longer receive any contributions from us, even as we consider the present abortion battles critical to individual freedoms.
Watching all our beloved institutions going crazy as "useful idiots" backing Hamas's strategy of getting their own people killed. Hamas has bomb shelters for themselves along with food and fuel along with hundreds of "approved" reporters to spread their propaganda (all approved stories -- why the reports are so consistent). As Berkeley 60s grads who met at the "peoples park riot" what is happening to our nation, institutions, and culture is shocking.
On the subject of our soft and pusillanimous condition in the 21st c. West, I am going to be indulgent and quote..... myself!
"What then of the conservative’s alternative perception: that the human condition – in terms of the.... the interplay of desire and fear, of the capacity for what used to be called good and evil – is fundamentally unchanging. The skepticism that fills the comment threads of conservative media, on both sides of the Atlantic... is skepticism about the chances that swathes of one’s fellow men in the here and now will ever emerge from their lefty p.c. arrested adolescence and grow up. For is that not what the politically correct version of Progress is really about? Ever since Rousseau - ever since Marx - it has been, in essence, an arrested-adolescent mind-game - and a deliciously cost-free one for the well-healed middle class virtue-signaller. Not surprisingly, succeeding generations of real adolescents have lapped it up in spades..... especially ego-flattering, nice sounding words like Progress and Radical." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/are-we-making-progress
“If you are far enough to the left, you cannot spot the difference between Donald Trump and Paul Ryan, or between Trump and Jonathan Haidt for that matter. And you will not have heard of Charles Kesler or Yoram Hazony, two intellectuals known only in conservative circles.” I’ve never heard of Charles Kesler and couldn’t tell you a single thing about Yoram Hazony.
“We in the U.S. suffer from the opposite condition. Our lives are soft and easy, but we are lacking in courage.” This is an accurate description of many Americans.
Gurri's comments about our lack of courage illustrate a situation that has come about through the attenuation or dissolution of intermediary institutions in society (family, church, social clubs, sports teams, and all manner of voluntary associations), leaving only the atomized individual facing the state and trying vainly to seek a sense of community by adherence to the ever more dishonest narratives imposed by self-anointed "elites." These latter are now resorting to engineering social pressure and outright legal persecution to enforce adherence. All this has been long in the making, and was first described by Robert Nisbet, that rare bird, a conservative sociologist, in his first book, The Search for Community. It is only when the individual feels strong bonds to intermediary associations that he can have the courage and backing to stand up against such abuses of power.
The situation was aptly illustrated by President Obama's comment that government was "the only thing we do together." Of course, there is no "we" to it; the citizenry are considered deplorables who need to have "Progressive" narratives imposed on them by authority.
"Thus “the federalist principle,” as explained in the statement, is said to prescribe “a delegation of power to the respective states or subdivisions of the nation so as to allow greater variation, experimentation, and freedom.”"
I haven't yet figured out how the Kesler quote fits with anything you said but thought the federalist principle said any power not specifically given to the federal government remains with the states. One can easily frame this either way. Seems a stretch to frame it top down.
Haven’t finished Kessler’s article yet, but I liked his point on the exceptional nature of America’s nationalism. We are a “founded” nation. We consciously agreed to be a nation via the Constitution and it’s principles, rather than the usual way of a nation organically and historically arising through tribal culture.
This puts to question the relevance of National Conservative political theory which (at least in Hazony’s framing) is based on an unapologetically tribal nationalism.
"the usual way of a nation organically and historically arising through tribal culture."
I think this is the 19th century view on nations, and underpins the arguments for nation states. But, if you look closely, it's romanticized and bowdlerized history. The "nations" principally cited in this context are England, France, and Spain. But all three were forged by military conquest, and retained significant cultural heterogeneity at least into the late 19th century. If you look closely, these differences remain - northern England is distinct from southern England, not to mention Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall. Brittany, Normandy, and Aquitaine remain distinct from Paris.
One thing that has continued to strengthen since Obama, and especially Trump, is that if one side states a position very strongly, the other will suddenly be more strongly opposing. The border is the best example. This is why I found it interesting and baffling when Trump and Hillary were both against TPP.
“For those of you who are new subscribers, be prepared for me to be self-consciously on the right.” Is this actually true? Are libertarians on the right?
Remember Kling's "three languages of politics." The libertarian "anything that's peaceful" ethos conflicts with the left-wing value of equality because it accepts or even approves of huge inequalities of income or social status as long as they are generated and maintained peacefully. It conflicts with the right-wing value of order because it accepts disorder, for instance the ruination of some lives that comes from the use and abuse of drugs, as long as it remains peaceful. Depending on the salience of various issues, libertarians will seem more on the left or on the right.
Arnold, I just love the way that *you* wield language in your biting comment, "Why take a chance on inexperienced, novice scapegoats?"
"Depending on the salience of various issues, libertarians will seem more on the left or on the right."
When I was growing up libertarianism was framed as "left wing social issues, right wing economic issues." Because it seemed like most libertarians cared more about the economy than social issues they tended to vote GOP when push came to shove. But there were lots of libertarians, especially those that smoked a lot of pot, that voted DEM.
I fell into the right leaning camp, even when I used to be less socially conservative. Someones right to get high ended where I paid for it with my taxes, which was basically all the time.
Now that the left is pro-war and very authoritarian on social issues, it's hard to see what could attract libertarians to the left. Some like Bryan Caplan care enough about Open Borders, but even he remarks that the left wouldn't have him.
I think opposition to Trumps personality and a desire to fit into the social milieu most libertarians find themselves in is basically the only thing left. I was pretty disappointed when libertarians went soft on liberty during COVID because it was TRUMP coded.
If you want an example of conservative libertarianism, it's probably Singapore. Which breaks many libertarian shibboleths and yet nobody cares because it works.
The closer you get to a "war of all against all", the harder it is for people to be "free to choose". Libertarianism implies a certain amount of order--a lot more than many libertarians realize. But I think Arnold, at least today's Arnold, does realize it.
Freud's wretched Civilization and Its Discontents was part of a long line of thinking that civilization made people unfree, squashed their desires. And of course, it does take away some possibilities. But it opens up many more. To go from The Three Languages of Politics' civilization to barbarism takes away so many possibilities, makes people much less free. So a thoughtful libertarian has to be somewhat conservative.
It seems to me a "war of all against all" would result in a freedom of a sort. Essentially, nobody can do right now matter what they choose.
I don't think libertarianism implies any amount of order. A libertarian can be an anarchist, or not. Success is most likely with some amount of order though.
One benefit of civilization can be increased opportunities but this is not assured, definitely not assured for all.
Freedom to live a life that is "soliltary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". That may be freedom of a sort--hell, anything is freedom of a sort; there's always Camus's freedom to commit suicide--but its pretty crappy.
I think one of the contributions of libertarianism is that you can have a lot of order without top-down direction, that a lot of order can be spontaneous, bottom-up. Freely agreed upon, or at least as freely as one can in this world.
I believe the point was that, in a "war of all against all", you probably won't live very long to enjoy whatever "freedom of a sort" you have. Or maybe you live by paying off or joining the local strong man, but that doesn't leave you very free, either.
"Instead of these factions on the left competing over who gets to pick the banner they march under, everyone agrees to scapegoat one particular group of people."
I'd put it slightly differently. The Left, even more than the Right, sees a need for strict conformity of beliefs, and Left ideology covers every topic. Or at least, it should; if there's some topic that hasn't yet had its approved Left position chosen, it's only due to oversight. Since there's a Left position on every topic, all Leftists must energetically champion the Left position on every topic.
The latest Left position is support for Palestine. No, that's not right - I can't tell that Leftists care about individual Palestinians at all. They can't recognize that Hamas and Fatah are both corrupt, thuggish authoritarians who primarily victimize their own people. So the real Left position is opposition to Israel. Since this is the currently most salient issue for the Left, all Left-oriented organizations and leaders must energetically champion it. Hence Planned Parenthood, primarily concerned with reproductive rights, must come out against Israel. Hence the Sierra Club, primarily concerned with environmentalism in the US, must come out against Israel. Hence Greta Thunberg, primarily concerned with climate change, must come out against Israel.
This reminds me less of scapegoating than of a scramble to remain relevant and be seen as the proper leadership of the Left. To apocryphally quote Alexandre Ledru-Rollin: "There go the people, and I must follow them, for I am their leader." Or at least I wish to be perceived as their leader.
The Sierra Club has not primarily been concerned about the environment since circa the late 90s. A George Soros-lite - I don’t recall his name, but this is easily googled - engineered a takeover of the board and the purging of those who were (correctly, of course) concerned about population and thus unlimited immigration. The organization, successfully sabotaged, came to focus most of its energies on brown people. That may be a goal you share but it would be an abuse of the language, and of sense, to categorize it as to do with the environment. To a great degree, many environmental groups have been affected by this ideological incursion and overthrow (especially at the uppermost though least salient levels), and the task of anyone sincerely interested in nature is to find those groups still faithfully honoring their original
missions despite this headwind. There are many.
I think we're in agreement. Environmentalism, and environmentalists, have been principally identified with the Left for a long time. As such, adherence to Left orthodoxy takes priority over the groups' declared mission.
No, it needn’t have been so. The bad actors should be called out, and the inherent (to the non-moronic) conservatism - indeed the purest expression of it - of the enterprise reaffirmed (as it is daily by those who continue to do this work, all along).
It needn't have been so, but it is. Just as concerns about unlimited immigration have been principally identified with the Left [edit: Right], even though labor unions, a traditional part of the Democratic coalition, have long favored immigration restrictions.
More and more, it seems that we have only two sides in Western society, and most people seem obliged to pick a side. Aside from introducing mindless nastiness into public discourse, this mostly prevents considering issues on their merits.
See, I think calls for moderation and civility are only weaponized; it is necessary to be nasty, and name names, as I just did.
The internet and downstream of it, the real world, are full of people who have no grasp that all of this has been engineered. Your average libertarian, thinking he has contrarian thoughts about the environment, or immigration, is a creation of peopled like the Kochs, and this Gelbach.
David Gelbaum. He took his $200 million and used it to destroy the Sierra Club.
The Center for Immigration Studies has a useful timeline on this.
"The latest Left position is support for Palestine."
Latest? It's been like this for over half a century at least.
If one focuses too much on American politics to draw these kinds of inferences, one is liable to get confused about the ideological alignment, because America's relations with Israel are unique, and combined with the influence of pro-Israel Jews on American politics and media at the time, there was a long period of oscillation in the modal attitude of party establishment Republicans and Democrats from Truman through Clinton.
Those days are over, the left is openly and explicitly settled on the matter, and leftist Jews know they must either turn against Israel or get demoted first then inevitably kicked out of the club. I've seen a few already start to do this and unlike the usual talent for coming up with compelling arguments for bad ideas, in this case they usually looks like amateurs embarrassing themselves. Perhaps their hearts are not really in it, yet.
But if you were to focus on what I guess one could call the "Global Progressive Influential Intellectual Elite", their position has been consistently, obsessively, and senselessly anti-Israel practically since the beginning and in a manner completely irreconcilable with how these same people treat any other comparable claims, regimes, or circumstances. The security establishment-left has been trying to go along with the intellectual-left for decades, but Israel's enemies can't help repeatedly revealing how bad they really are in ways hard for the establishment to overlook or deny, so it's been a slow process that, nevertheless, advances a step or two with every major incident.
There is also the complicated wrinkle of what happens when this process reaches its inevitable conclusion and the American regime and American leftist Jews turn decisively against Israel. Long before that point Israel will have no choice but to hedge their bets, and all the ways that could happen are paths that lead to very interesting times for everybody not long thereafter.
I wasn't as clear as I thought I was. The Left position on most issues doesn't change. The Left has been opposed to Israel for decades, but it hasn't generally been the most salient issue. Events in Gaza have elevated it, eclipsing police violence, which eclipsed climate change, which eclipsed intersectionality, which eclipsed me-too, which eclipsed Russian meddling in elections, which eclipsed (in the US at least) mass incarceration, which eclipsed homelessness, which eclipsed inequality, which eclipsed poverty. I may be leaving a few other topics out. Each one in turn becomes the Biggest Thing, provoking earnest statements by all Leftists to show that they are on the Right Side of today's Biggest Thing.
Because if they don't jump out, they risk being disavowed by their Lefty allies. Or, even worse, becoming irrelevant.
When organizations--leftist or not--see extreme evil going on(the genocide in Gaza), they don't have to delicately calibrate the different levels of immorality on each side. They just stand out against the perpetrators--the government of Israel! The government of Israel is not even Jewish, since Jews would not $30,000+ innocent women and children out of spite.
That's one approach. My preferred approach would be for organizations with specific missions to stick to the knitting and focus on the mission. They can't really take the time and attention to come to real understanding on every issue of the day, so they don't add anything to public discussion by saying the same things others in their "tribe" are saying. They also don't have to alienate members, or potential supporters, who disagree with them on some specific issue.
For example, the Sierra Club may lose members and potential supporters by taking a position on Palestine, abortion, gun control, urban education, crime policy, transgenderism, Right to Work, or other issues that are contentious in today's environment. If their goal is to protect the environment, that should be their focus. If they want to win points as part of "the Left", they're on the right track. But that comes at the expense of the environmental mission.
[Your ending quote] Sounds a bit like Trump to me. At least leading up to previous elections (especially 2016), I thought he tended to pick positions potential followers already were moving toward.
I think that's a good description. Others have said that Trumpism isn't about Trump and wasn't caused by Trump. Unfortunately, Trump is so far the best able to capitalize on it.
Thanks for the tip off about International Planned Parenthood Federation going full on for Gaza. We have significantly supported Planned Parenthood for over half a century and totally believe in the goal of reproductive rights belongs to the individual, not some religious and/or governmental group.
I read the link to IPPF and followed some of their links and then used Google to search for Islamic laws on the relevant subjects. Islam, like the Pope, allows Coitus interruptus but otherwise bans abortion and some birth control methods (apparently condoms in Gaza). As Islam is the "law", the individual doesn't count and the IPPF is violating the clams made to its supporters when it effectively supports Hamas's barbaric behavior. They supported the claimed 500 killed at a hospital by Israel when all data and evidence says it was a failed Hamas rocket. They denied or ignored weapons and use of "protected facilities" by Hamas while claiming "war crimes" by Israel, while knowing that protected facilities are only protected when they are not helping Hamas fighters and their weapons.
Needless to say, they will no longer receive any contributions from us, even as we consider the present abortion battles critical to individual freedoms.
Watching all our beloved institutions going crazy as "useful idiots" backing Hamas's strategy of getting their own people killed. Hamas has bomb shelters for themselves along with food and fuel along with hundreds of "approved" reporters to spread their propaganda (all approved stories -- why the reports are so consistent). As Berkeley 60s grads who met at the "peoples park riot" what is happening to our nation, institutions, and culture is shocking.
On the subject of our soft and pusillanimous condition in the 21st c. West, I am going to be indulgent and quote..... myself!
"What then of the conservative’s alternative perception: that the human condition – in terms of the.... the interplay of desire and fear, of the capacity for what used to be called good and evil – is fundamentally unchanging. The skepticism that fills the comment threads of conservative media, on both sides of the Atlantic... is skepticism about the chances that swathes of one’s fellow men in the here and now will ever emerge from their lefty p.c. arrested adolescence and grow up. For is that not what the politically correct version of Progress is really about? Ever since Rousseau - ever since Marx - it has been, in essence, an arrested-adolescent mind-game - and a deliciously cost-free one for the well-healed middle class virtue-signaller. Not surprisingly, succeeding generations of real adolescents have lapped it up in spades..... especially ego-flattering, nice sounding words like Progress and Radical." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/are-we-making-progress
“If you are far enough to the left, you cannot spot the difference between Donald Trump and Paul Ryan, or between Trump and Jonathan Haidt for that matter. And you will not have heard of Charles Kesler or Yoram Hazony, two intellectuals known only in conservative circles.” I’ve never heard of Charles Kesler and couldn’t tell you a single thing about Yoram Hazony.
“We in the U.S. suffer from the opposite condition. Our lives are soft and easy, but we are lacking in courage.” This is an accurate description of many Americans.
Gurri's comments about our lack of courage illustrate a situation that has come about through the attenuation or dissolution of intermediary institutions in society (family, church, social clubs, sports teams, and all manner of voluntary associations), leaving only the atomized individual facing the state and trying vainly to seek a sense of community by adherence to the ever more dishonest narratives imposed by self-anointed "elites." These latter are now resorting to engineering social pressure and outright legal persecution to enforce adherence. All this has been long in the making, and was first described by Robert Nisbet, that rare bird, a conservative sociologist, in his first book, The Search for Community. It is only when the individual feels strong bonds to intermediary associations that he can have the courage and backing to stand up against such abuses of power.
The situation was aptly illustrated by President Obama's comment that government was "the only thing we do together." Of course, there is no "we" to it; the citizenry are considered deplorables who need to have "Progressive" narratives imposed on them by authority.
That Gurri essay was excellent. Thanks for the pointer.
The base rate of victory against Israel suggests that the Left is in for quite a cataclysm.
Test comment
"all of us are just arguing fine points about how to arrange the deck chairs on conservatism’s Titanic."
"Man the [neoliberal] lifeboats!" :)
"Thus “the federalist principle,” as explained in the statement, is said to prescribe “a delegation of power to the respective states or subdivisions of the nation so as to allow greater variation, experimentation, and freedom.”"
I haven't yet figured out how the Kesler quote fits with anything you said but thought the federalist principle said any power not specifically given to the federal government remains with the states. One can easily frame this either way. Seems a stretch to frame it top down.
Haven’t finished Kessler’s article yet, but I liked his point on the exceptional nature of America’s nationalism. We are a “founded” nation. We consciously agreed to be a nation via the Constitution and it’s principles, rather than the usual way of a nation organically and historically arising through tribal culture.
This puts to question the relevance of National Conservative political theory which (at least in Hazony’s framing) is based on an unapologetically tribal nationalism.
"the usual way of a nation organically and historically arising through tribal culture."
I think this is the 19th century view on nations, and underpins the arguments for nation states. But, if you look closely, it's romanticized and bowdlerized history. The "nations" principally cited in this context are England, France, and Spain. But all three were forged by military conquest, and retained significant cultural heterogeneity at least into the late 19th century. If you look closely, these differences remain - northern England is distinct from southern England, not to mention Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall. Brittany, Normandy, and Aquitaine remain distinct from Paris.
Arnold - Can you list the right-wing policies that you’re in favor of? Pro-life? Anti-immigration? War on drugs? What are your top five?
What about low taxes, free trade, de-regulation and American Hegemony?
If free trade a right-wing policy or left?
Free trade among allies is a good policy. No idea about the color.
Definitely not left. Right wingers don't necessarily favor free trade either, though.
One thing that has continued to strengthen since Obama, and especially Trump, is that if one side states a position very strongly, the other will suddenly be more strongly opposing. The border is the best example. This is why I found it interesting and baffling when Trump and Hillary were both against TPP.
Right wing in theory, but in practice politicians like to get bribes to avoid it when possible.
It is not a populist policy, which is why Sanders, Warren and Trump oppose it.
“For those of you who are new subscribers, be prepared for me to be self-consciously on the right.” Is this actually true? Are libertarians on the right?
Remember Kling's "three languages of politics." The libertarian "anything that's peaceful" ethos conflicts with the left-wing value of equality because it accepts or even approves of huge inequalities of income or social status as long as they are generated and maintained peacefully. It conflicts with the right-wing value of order because it accepts disorder, for instance the ruination of some lives that comes from the use and abuse of drugs, as long as it remains peaceful. Depending on the salience of various issues, libertarians will seem more on the left or on the right.
Arnold, I just love the way that *you* wield language in your biting comment, "Why take a chance on inexperienced, novice scapegoats?"
"Depending on the salience of various issues, libertarians will seem more on the left or on the right."
When I was growing up libertarianism was framed as "left wing social issues, right wing economic issues." Because it seemed like most libertarians cared more about the economy than social issues they tended to vote GOP when push came to shove. But there were lots of libertarians, especially those that smoked a lot of pot, that voted DEM.
I fell into the right leaning camp, even when I used to be less socially conservative. Someones right to get high ended where I paid for it with my taxes, which was basically all the time.
Now that the left is pro-war and very authoritarian on social issues, it's hard to see what could attract libertarians to the left. Some like Bryan Caplan care enough about Open Borders, but even he remarks that the left wouldn't have him.
I think opposition to Trumps personality and a desire to fit into the social milieu most libertarians find themselves in is basically the only thing left. I was pretty disappointed when libertarians went soft on liberty during COVID because it was TRUMP coded.
If you want an example of conservative libertarianism, it's probably Singapore. Which breaks many libertarian shibboleths and yet nobody cares because it works.
I've sometimes wondered whether he is more conservative or libertarian.
The closer you get to a "war of all against all", the harder it is for people to be "free to choose". Libertarianism implies a certain amount of order--a lot more than many libertarians realize. But I think Arnold, at least today's Arnold, does realize it.
Freud's wretched Civilization and Its Discontents was part of a long line of thinking that civilization made people unfree, squashed their desires. And of course, it does take away some possibilities. But it opens up many more. To go from The Three Languages of Politics' civilization to barbarism takes away so many possibilities, makes people much less free. So a thoughtful libertarian has to be somewhat conservative.
It seems to me a "war of all against all" would result in a freedom of a sort. Essentially, nobody can do right now matter what they choose.
I don't think libertarianism implies any amount of order. A libertarian can be an anarchist, or not. Success is most likely with some amount of order though.
One benefit of civilization can be increased opportunities but this is not assured, definitely not assured for all.
Freedom to live a life that is "soliltary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". That may be freedom of a sort--hell, anything is freedom of a sort; there's always Camus's freedom to commit suicide--but its pretty crappy.
I think one of the contributions of libertarianism is that you can have a lot of order without top-down direction, that a lot of order can be spontaneous, bottom-up. Freely agreed upon, or at least as freely as one can in this world.
I believe the point was that, in a "war of all against all", you probably won't live very long to enjoy whatever "freedom of a sort" you have. Or maybe you live by paying off or joining the local strong man, but that doesn't leave you very free, either.