HunterByrd

Conservative Ideas Prevail

A trend is afoot. Liberals of all stripes are nervous (they are feeling the 'feel' conservative thinkers and believers have experienced the last 40 years, to wit: their paradigm is a beleagured one). Several times, I have posted about this 'feel'. The posts are in reaction to liberal authors. The left is akimbo these days, because they have managed, in a moment of honesty, to tap into the 'popular' zeitqeist of the day.

The Right Nation and What’s the Matter with Kansas are two tomes that have struck hard - very hard - at the leftist intelligentsia. the folks who wrote these books are left of center. Their readers are of like mind, and they are worried. Worried.

The latest writer to put in his nickle's worth is Michael J. Thompson, a teacher of Political Science at William Paterson University. He is also the founder and editor of Logos. His essay is as well written as it is long. Thompson's learned effort is well worth the read, especially if the reader is prone to an in-depth analysis.

Here is his take on the conservative movement in America:

The Hungarian philosopher Georg Lukács, as far back as 1923, called the phenomenon “reification.” The insight was that as market capitalism continued to develop, and deepen its impact, its mathematical, instrumental, and egoistic logic would increasingly shape all elements of culture and society. Relations between people would become akin to market relationships; the entire way that individuals approached their world would be caste in market form, defined by the matter-of-factness of the cash nexus. The individual would increasingly turn his or her back on political or moral obligations and concerns, and would be recast as a consumer facing an endless fabric of commodities in a world without meaning or spirit. Reification has in this way come to define American culture and politics and it has had a serious effect in transforming our current understandings of liberalism as well.

Yeah, we're denizens of the local Super Walmart and we just don't care anymore...as if liberals cared ever.

But the main aim of thinkers ranging from Hayek to Friedman was, essentially, to redefine what American democratic culture and politics had, by the time of the end of the Second World War, become: not a democracy that was privileging individualism and liberty but, rather, what these thinkers saw as a society bent upon “collectivism,” socialism, and, in time, totalitarian communism. The future was a road to serfdom.

That is about it. Our good professor has laid it on the line -- he hit the nail on the head, in his way -- the thought is anathema to the American ethos, the mass of it, anyway. Middle America wants none of that...not even the unionized Democratic block vote of Detroit or Akron.

Although it is important to discuss ideology, there is also a material component to the story. The ideological transformation of liberalism has found fertile soil in the sociological shifts of the last several decades in American capitalism. From the decline of the industrial working class, the dissipation of unions, the rise of a post-industrial working culture—all have eroded the former political base of the Democratic Party. It has also effected a move away from collectivist approaches to solving economic and social problems. This should be seen in tandem with the gentrification of huge segments of working people—almost entirely the result of the policies that social liberalism had made possible—and the overall erosion of class consciousness. This has allowed a situation to emerge where Republicans and their conservative project have been able to merge the interests of capital with a market populism that uncritically accepts the consequences of markets and which has legitimized the market as the most rational, democratic and fair institution to distribute the “fruits of labor.”

Don't mean to take the good professor's words out of context, but - to give the collectivist devil his due - the social movements of the depression worked well, did what they set out to do, and that was to rescue the working man from his morass. Individual freedom was paramount, communist ends be damned, and marxist means ironically delivered the American citizen back to his long-term goal: individual freedom!

As Louis Hartz acutely pointed out in the 1950s, America’s political culture was wholly defined by the doctrine of liberalism. Irrespective of this is, America has also been able in the past to transform its liberal doctrine into something more progressive and more deeply democratic, “socialized,” than what we know at present as “liberalism.” Without an alternative understanding of American political life, the commitments of government, and the articulation of the moral needs of society over that of rampant individualism, the Democratic Party will scarcely be able to do more than work in the shadow of the machinations of the Republican Party. And the Democrats cannot spark renewal without themselves looking to the rational left, to the social democratic tradition that was itself emerging with the influential ideas of the New Deal and the Progressives and reformulating and rebuilding the one true intellectual and political movements in American political history that would bring any semblance of real equality and social justice to fruition.

I believe the reason why is because the author is engaged in honest reflection and academic curiousity is because he knows - deep in his gut - that social liberalism is but a 'machination', a mere means, to the American end. Those who are writing in response to the above two books are just plain scared. Scared of what, I can't say. Socially, from where I come from, we all love our neighbor, quite a bit actually...

America did not come about because the fledgling national ethos wanted to grow up to be European. Hell's bells, America ran from Europe. Continental Europe was the antithesis of American existence. So why should anyone be surprised when the resulting nation (the most powerful nation in modern history) differs so from 'the norm' of socialist Europe?

One reader pointedly asked me if I'd read 'The Right Nation'. I have to now. If this many leftist academics are so upset by it, there must be something to what they're saying.