Life, License, and the Pursuit of Pleasure

     Contributing editor Rod Dreher, over at the Crunchy Con blogsite, recently wrote an essay attacking the point of view, coming from Jeffrey Hart (alas) and Christine Whitman, that Republicans will never again be the majority party in the United States unless they press the ejector-seat button and sends evangelicals flying into oblivion.  The article should have been, I think, not terribly controversial to people who call themselves conservative, as those people, unless I am deeply mistaken, believe that no political organization can solve the human problem, which is essentially spiritual, and which is sometimes called Original Sin.  Therefore conservatives have affirmed the legitimacy of law as moral teacher, even as they have cast a cold eye upon the bureaucracy of beneficence.  The primary function of law, among such creatures as ourselves, is not so much to build a heaven on earth, a project which usually ends in blood, as to keep our own tendencies to vice from pitching us all into the garbage dump of Gehenna.  There are, besides the use of law to curb vice, secondary functions of law.  All of the great conservatives of the last century, I think, agreed with Thomas Aquinas that it is in the nature of man to form communities, and that such communities, though they must and perhaps should focus mainly upon temporal goods, are good things in themselves and not simply necessary evils.  So we have law not only to prevent or punish murder, theft, and adultery, but to attain for ourselves something of what we see as the common good.

     In any case, it is impossible -- whether we are talking about curbing vice, or securing the common good -- for any conservative to discuss what a society should do without also talking about what it is good for human beings to be.  To put it more practically: if you are talking, let's say, about poverty, or about corporate responsibilities to the community -- about people defaulting on their mortgages, or company executives trekking to Washington with patches on their knees and holes in the finger-ends of their gloves -- and you do not bring up virtue, then I must conclude you are not discussing the creatures among whom I live.  Perhaps you are dwelling on an alien planet, whose inhabitants never overgo the fickleness of Lady Fortune, ruining themselves and others, in case bad luck has not visited them already, with self-indulgence, cowardice, shortsightedness, and injustice.

     The responses to Rod's article, though, were most discouraging.  It seems as if we have flattened our discussion of liberty to two dimensions, namely, what I feel like doing, because I am what is called an "individual," and what large government machines want me to do, in order to secure some ideal like equality or the End of Poverty or Peace in our Time.  Gone is all notion of the community, and of those small groups -- families, fraternities, school boards, volunteer firemen, whatever -- that are essential to a fully human life, and that themselves are the means for the exercise of, and enhancement of, liberty.  We don't have a notion of what I've called in these pages an Individualism of Responsibility, an individualism built upon my competence to perform the duties expected of me by my neighborhood and my community.  That is, we don't have an individualism founded upon the shared expectation of virtue.  If Richard Weaver was right about this, it's because we have inherited the spiritual and epistemological inversion of subjecting the intellect to the will.  For it is impossible to talk about virtue without searching, with the intellect, for the Good that does not change from age to age, although our circumstances from age to age may require us, in prudence, to seek that Good under different forms and in different ways. 

      We do not then really believe either in liberty or in the pursuit of happiness, in any way that Aristotle or Aquinas would have understood it; or the semiskeptical Cicero or (even) Montaigne; or the stoical moralists Seneca or Marcus Aurelius; or the republican Tocqueville.  Or the great poets -- name any.  Even Jefferson, I'd argue, could not have written the phrase "pursuit of happiness" without assuming that his readers would have understood the classical connection between virtue and happiness, to be found among all the ancient pagan thinkers and poets almost without exception.  If Jefferson later described himself as an Epicurean, we should be aware that if Epicurus himself were now alive, or his most able disciple Lucretius, he would be the first to recoil from the madness of our vices; the pursuit of some kinds of pleasure brings nothing but misery.

     None of this requires the considerable insights of Christian revelation.  Boethius would say that because we are ignorant of the end for which things exist, we think that stupid and wicked people are prosperous and happy.  Boethius was a Christian, but that statement could have come from Marcus or Epictetus or Plato.  The corollary is just as potent.  We can never find happiness, or enjoy liberty, if we are stupid and wicked.  It isn't simply that a wicked and stupid people will lose their political freedoms.  They will; but only because they have already lost their last shreds of liberty within.  What good is the franchise, when we are slaves all the same?

      

    

Comments

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

Kathleen Parker in "Them Oogedy-Boogedy Blues": How about social conservatives make their arguments without bringing God into it? By all means, let faith inform one's values, but let reason inform one's public arguments.

That was and remains my point. It isn't so much God causing the GOP problems; it's his fan club.

Anthony Esolen: "That is, we don't have an individualism founded upon the shared expectation of virtue."

(1) Pace Kathleen Parker, can the shared expectation of virtue be acquired and argued from "Natural Law" and/or "Natural Theology"?

(2) Kathleen Parker commits an egregious fallacy: Asserting via strong implication that a theist's values aren't informed by reason and that faith doesn't inform a secularist's public arguments.

[Benighted Savage]

Professor Esolen writes:

>>> those people [who call themselves conservative], unless I am deeply mistaken, believe that no political organization can solve the human problem, which is essentially spiritual, and which is sometimes called Original Sin. <<<

Much later, he writes:

>>> What good is the franchise, when we are slaves all the same? <<<

Given that we are all, after the Fall, slaves to sin, I can well ask "what good IS the franchise?" Why should we be looking for a political and this-worldly solution to, as you put it at the beginning of your essay, a human problem which is "essentially spiritual?" Shouldn't we be more concerned with our salvation in Christ, our Redeemer and Saviour?

Another way of saying this: a virtuous path (achieved within the polis) that doesn't ultimately lead to a beatific vision in the next life may have satisfied Aristotle; I doubt it would have satisfied Aquinas.

A final way of putting this would be to say that I find your essay puzzling. I can't decide whether it is addressed to Christians who happen to be conservatives, or conservatives who happen to be Christians.

[Wonders for Oyarsa]

My answer to you, Benighted Savage, would be that spiritual things, rightly considered, are "this worldly". Our salvation in Christ includes the salvation of our nation and institutions - even if they must, like us, die before they can be raised to life.

[Benighted Savage]

Wonders for Oyarsa writes:

>>> ...spiritual things, rightly considered, are "this worldly" <<<

If you mean by this that we must strive to follow natural and divine law in the hope of being resurrected with Christ, I must agree. However, I don't think that captures the point of Professor Esolen's "problematic."

>>> Our salvation in Christ includes the salvation of our nation and institutions - even if they must, like us, die before they can be raised to life. <<<

If you mean by this that we must love our neighbor as ourselves, I must agree. I'd say that the defense of a nation by men of goodwill is praiseworthy to the extent that this commandment is being followed. However, my main worry is that the first and great commandment is too often passed over in silence.

[Stuart Koehl]

A couple of things to point out.

1. Republicans were never the "majority party", if by that you meant the party that consistently wins the popular vote nationally, across all regions of the country. As Kevin Phillips illustrated in his analysis of demographic and voting data from the civil war down to the present day, the Republicans, like the Whigs before them, were a regional party whose base was limited to a specific geographic area. All that has changed since the 1980s is where this region is located. It used to be the northeast and the industrial midwest, but now it is the south, the Great Plains, and the Rocky Mountains.

2. Evangelicals account for 40% of all Republican voters. Ditch them, and there is no party.

3. Despite what everyone things, there was no great realignment in this election, which was truly a one-off. As someone said, you can only vote for the first Black President once. Beyond that, Obama is sui generis, like Ronald Reagan. You can't bottle the elixir, As the runoff and special elections have shown, without Obama on the top of the ticket, voting patterns return to normal.

4. The United States remains a religious, conservative, center-right nation. No party can succeed in the long run that does not have respect for religious voters. No party can claim to be conservative that does not respect religious sensibilities,

5. Evangelicals do need to get their act together and find intelligent, coherent spokesman who can convey the Evangelical message in non-religious terms. This is entirely possible; Catholic conservative intellectuals do it all the time. Evangelicals must do the same, so that their perspective gains wider acceptance than it has, mainly on the basis of its style, rather than its content.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Asserting via strong implication that a theist's values aren't informed by reason and that faith doesn't inform a secularist's public arguments. <<<

Be honest--a lot of them are not, particularly when it comes to making the transition from theololgia to theoria, and from theoria to reasoned policy positions.

[W.E.D. Godbold]

Correction to Benighted Savage: Once a person has been baptized, he is no longer a slave to sin, but rather a slave to Jesus Christ. (He can, of course, still act as if he's a slave to sin, though he is one no longer.)

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Correction to Benighted Savage: Once a person has been baptized, he is no longer a slave to sin, but rather a slave to Jesus Christ. (He can, of course, still act as if he's a slave to sin, though he is one no longer.)<<<

That was very good, indeed, Gene. I've always been big on a very literal translation of doulos Christi as "slave of Christ", rather than the watered-down "servant (or handmaiden) of Christ". Even more emphatically, those who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ--at some mystical level, they are become Christ, wear him like a garment, and must therefore grow into that which they have put on.

[Will Fehringer]

>>>doulos Christi<<<

Ahh, you're making my eyes bleed! Where are the Greek police, or is my knowledge of koine confusd with my Attic and my latin?

[GL]

You may want to read The Surprising Origins and Meaning of the “Pursuit of Happiness”
By Carol V. Hamilton, available at http://hnn.us/articles/46460.html.

The following is an excerpt:

In a letter Jefferson wrote to William Short on October 13, 1819, he declared, “I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.” At the end of the letter, Jefferson made a summary of the key points of Epicurean doctrine, including:

Moral.—Happiness the aim of life.
Virtue the foundation of happiness.
Utility the test of virtue.

Properly understood, therefore, when John Locke, Samuel Johnson, and Thomas Jefferson wrote of “the pursuit of happiness,” they were invoking the Greek and Roman philosophical tradition in which happiness is bound up with the civic virtues of courage, moderation, and justice. Because they are civic virtues, not just personal attributes, they implicate the social aspect of eudaimonia. The pursuit of happiness, therefore, is not merely a matter of achieving individual pleasure. That is why Alexander Hamilton and other founders referred to “social happiness.”

[Benighted Savage]

W.E.D. Godbold writes:

>>> Correction to Benighted Savage: Once a person has been baptized, he is no longer a slave to sin, but rather a slave to Jesus Christ. (He can, of course, still act as if he's a slave to sin, though he is one no longer.) <<<

I thought I addressed this issue in my first post. I wrote that "Shouldn't we be more concerned with our salvation in Christ, our Redeemer and Saviour?" For, how can one become saved in Christ without baptism? And, isn't saying one is saved in Christ the same as claiming that one is no longer in bondage to sin?

Once again, I was trying to address aspects of Prof. Esolen's essay that I find puzzling or incomplete. He is the one who brings up the issue of Original Sin. Namely he writes that:

>>> those people [who call themselves conservative], unless I am deeply mistaken, believe that no political organization can solve the human problem, which is essentially spiritual, and which is sometimes called Original Sin. <<<

We're then given a discourse on the zoon politikon, virtue and vice, and the true telos of humans; it is a discussion which, as Professor Esolen points out, lies within the confines of natural political thought:

>>> None of this requires the considerable insights of Christian revelation. <<<

Thus my bewilderment. Professor Esolen ostensibly begins his essay by directing the reader's attention to Republican party intellectuals who call for the *removal* of Christian discourse from the GOP. After he briefly addresses the relationship between sin, politics and conservatism, he then treats us to an analysis of politics, conservatism and virtue from which the notion of sin and other key issues to Christians, such as salvation in Christ, have been *removed.*

That is, after beginning the essay with the expectation that Professor Esolen will soon poke a few holes in the secularist mask, I instead find that he is intent upon trying it on for a while.

Personally, I don't mind a detour through Athens as long as I find myself in Jerusalem before nightfall. However, the secularist mask isn't dropped by this essay's end. Jerusalem is not in sight. My only wish is that Professor Esolen "brings home" what I assume is his dialectic, and re-addresses the Republican secularists from a perspective higher than that of mere pagan political philosophy.

[GL]

The following is an excerpt from Jefferson's letter to William Short cite above:

I take the liberty of observing that you are not a true disciple of our master Epicurus, in indulging the indolence to which you say you are yielding. One of his canons, you know, was that "that indulgence which presents a greater pleasure, or produces a greater pain, is to be avoided." Your love of repose will lead, in its progress, to a suspension of healthy exercise, a relaxation of mind, an indifference to everything around you, and finally to a debility of body, and hebetude of mind, the farthest of all things from the happiness which the well-regulated indulgences of Epicurus ensure; fortitude, you know, is one of his four cardinal virtues. That teaches us to meet and surmount difficulties; not to fly from them, like cowards; and to fly, too, in vain, for they will meet and arrest us at every turn of our road. . . .

That doesn't sound too much like the ideas which are today, sadly, identified with "the pursuit of happiness."

"The pursuit of happiness," then, to Jefferson appears to mean that which is in the long term good for oneself and his community, not what is pleasurable for the moment.

[Steve Nicoloso]

Pace Kathleen Parker, can the shared expectation of virtue be acquired and argued from "Natural Law" and/or "Natural Theology"?

Of course, TUAD, it can. But Stuart largely (and Parker a teeny bit) is right: Evangelicals have a very hard time articulating the argument that way, namely through natural law and common reason. When the Bible calls something an abomination, what further need have they of proof?! Well, as with any religious text, the Bible can (and is) made to say all sorts of things that God didn't mean it to say. Skeptics, secularists, lifestyle libertarians, and even a few Christians are well aware of this.

I have often said that you cannot make a natural law argument (without appeal to Divine Revelation) against homosexuality without also condemning contraception. Since evangelicals are largely sold on the latter, they therefore are left only to argue against the former in "fundamentalist" sorts of ways. So no. They (by and large, and most current company excepted) cannot not bring God into it.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

Another perspective from "Is Natural Revelation Sufficient to Govern Culture?"

Excerpt: "But arguments actually developed from natural revelation premises (“natural law arguments” as they are called) are rarely cogent. Roman Catholics, for example, often argue that birth control is forbidden, because of the natural connection between sexual intercourse and reproduction. That connection obviously exists, but the moral conclusion is not a necessary one. Indeed the argument (like many natural law arguments) is a naturalistic fallacy, an attempt to reason from fact to obligation, from “is” to “ought.”

Cogent and persuasive ethical reasoning presupposes a world view and standards of judgment. It is not easy to argue these from nature alone. For Christians, these standards come from Scripture. So apart from Scripture ethical argument loses its cogency and often its persuasiveness. Nonbelievers, of course, won’t usually accept Scripture as authoritative. But they may at least respect an argument that is self-conscious about its epistemological and metaphysical presuppositions.

In public discussion, it may sometimes be desirable to argue a position without directly referring to Scripture. We may, for example, point to the cultural consequences of China’s one-child policy, or to the general indifference to human life encouraged by legalized abortion, or to the societal consequences of secularized education. Arguments like these will be persuasive to some non-Christians. They appeal to that knowledge of natural revelation that they are unable fully to suppress. But when someone presses us to ask, for example, why we think that indifference to human life is a bad thing, we must in the end refer to Scripture, for that is the ultimate source of our values.

...

Too often, in ethical debate, Christians sound too much like unbelievers. They reason as if they and their opponents are both operating on the same principle: human rational autonomy. I believe they almost inevitably give this false impression when they are reasoning according to natural law alone. Only when the Christian goes beyond natural law and begins to talk about Jesus as the resurrected king of kings does his witness become distinctively Christian. At that point, of course, he is reasoning from Scripture, not from natural revelation alone.

So I conclude that Christian reasoning about ethics, whether public or private, should never be based on natural revelation alone. Natural revelation is important, certainly, in applying the principles of Scripture. And observations of natural facts may make the difference in some cases (e.g., when a public policy choice depends on a statistic). But a complete ethical argument must appeal to the ultimate source of moral authority. And for Protestant Christians that is Scripture and Scripture alone. A further consequence is the conclusion given in the title of this article: natural revelation is not sufficient to govern human society or culture.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>natural revelation is not sufficient to govern human society or culture.<<<

Strange, then, that it has done a pretty good job for most of human history, and continues to do so in those countries which have not heard or received the Gospel.

[Steve Nicoloso]

What Stuart just said, TUAD. It is practically a tautology that most societies in most places, most of the time, have gotten along just fine without "special" revelation. Moreover, most of those societies most of the time managed to come up with a moral code strikingly similar, in broad strokes, to that developed by Jews and Christians. No amount of mental gymnastics can change these facts.

[Thomas]

TUAD,

One must be very careful in drawing a sharp distinction between natural reasoning and revelation; the practice of sharply dividing the two is a very modern occurrence and has greatly diminished both philosophy and theology. Part of the problem is that natural revelation gets interpreted as a sort of Cartesian rationalism or Lockean empiricism--both of which are rather poor philosophers when compared to ancients such as Aristotle and Plato as well as many modern philosophers in the continental tradition. The fact that some philosopher's projects -- which attempt to set up an irrefutable metaphysical structure on the basis of deductive and inductive reason -- fail on their own terms does not indict all of philosophic or ethical thinking.

The irony here is that although rejecting this sort of rationalism, very many evangelicals get completely taken in by its presuppositions. An obvious example: the claim that all certain truths must be deduced from the Bible does nothing more than adopt most of the Cartesian project in the Meditations and simply substitute the Bible for the cogito. A different Archemedian lever and a noticeable loss of methodological rigor and we have the popular formulation of Sola Scriptura. This properly qualifies as neither revelation nor natural reason. Attempting to appeal to one without the other results in incoherency.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

Thomas: "Attempting to appeal to one without the other results in incoherency."

Frame: "So I conclude that Christian reasoning about ethics, whether public or private, should never be based on natural revelation alone."

Both are basically saying the same thing.

[Thomas]

Tuad,

"Both are saying the same thing."

Probably, but I would like to add a difference in emphasis: the scope of revelation is restricted culturally primarily to the Christian West, whereas natural revelation extends more widely both geographically and back through history. However even in saying I have to be careful to recognize that both forms of revelation take place on a single continuum.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

Life, License, and the Pursuit of Pleasure

Indeed.

"The Roman Catholic Church is facing a barrage of protests and searing editorials for opposing a French-sponsored decree that calls for an end to discrimination based on sexual or gender identity. The U.N. hopes to abolish summary executions, arbitrary arrests and "the deprivation of economic, social and cultural rights" of gays.

The Church's opposition to the measure has enraged gay-rights activists, who are mobilizing nationwide protests at Catholic sites in Italy. Members of Italy's largest gay-rights group, Arcigay, gathered inside the Vatican on Saturday, hanging nooses around their necks as they accused the Church of being an "accomplice in the martyrdom" of homosexuals."

Excerpted from: Vatican Under Fire for Opposing U.N. Declaration on Sexual Rights.

IMHO, whether or not one makes a "natural law" argument against same-sex marriage, it still won't persuade the GLBT agitators. Eg., appeals to the Church aren't persuasive either:

"But critics have seized upon the Church, assailing it for not taking a stronger stance on rights for gay men and women. "I find it very disturbing that the Vatican ... is not willing to speak out about LGBT people being jailed or being tortured," said Scott Long, director of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Rights program at Human Rights Watch."

[PC Student]

Professor Esolen brings up a vital point within the modern discussion of relativism, and its effect upon the social and political spheres by which we live. Upon reading this post, I was struck with a quote by Kierkegaard that was later used by Pope Benedict in conjunction with the perversion of truth seen within individual perception and interpretation of the words 'happiness', 'good', 'virtue', etc. The quote says, "A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The Clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.” Yet, little does the audience, or modern society, know, that one day in the future, someone will return, with a hammer and vise, to shatter the false and fabricated lens of today, bringing clarity to truth, to good, and to happiness, once more.

[labrialumn]

Once you say that Scripture can be made to say anything, you have to agree that natural law can be made to say anything.

The hermeneutic of despair is a double-edged sword with no pommel.

[labrialumn]

Now, I think that natural law philosophy is the best human philosophy there is. I think it is extremely value. But since it is possible to understand accurately from reading and writing (we do it all the time), therefore God's very words have greater authority than man's speculations and traditions. Thus the reforming principle of sola Scriptura supra omne.

Stuart, I would not call the natural condition of urban government - fascism - oriental despotism - to be a 'very good job'.

[Joe Long]

It seems to me, despite many good points well-made in this interchange, that there's a certain futility to it: the Left and the all-important "mushy middle" of impulse-voters and media-consumers, are generally just as impervious to reason as they are to revelation. Ms. Parker is madly optimistic on that point.

[Stuart Koehl]

R.R. Reno deals with the underlying issue in today's First Things:

December 11, 2008
Conservatism and the Culture Wars
By R.R. Reno

Politics is an arena of conflict. I want a certain set of policies and laws. You want something different. We fight it out in public debate and in the electoral process. Welcome to the rough-and-tumble world of sound bites, negative advertising, and hardball tactics.

It’s wrong to wring our hands over the shrill and intensely competitive nature of politics. The alternatives are so much worse: tyranny or indifference. But there also needs to be something that prevents significant political disputes from turning into civil wars. Today, the red state vs. blue state divide has people anxious. Are we careening toward an ever-deeper split, one that threatens the underlying unity of our nation?

My short answer is yes. We are entering a time of ever increasing cultural tension, and the cause should be plain to see. As Edmund Burke observed, “A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper, and confined views.”

In the main, we don’t see the obvious fact that progressives are socially divisive. We forget that revolutionaries seek revolutions, because we tend to think of progressives as idealists, people who just want to make the world a better place. That’s why communism, unlike fascism, never becomes the emblem of evil. Tens of millions may have been killed by commissars, but we continue to give the left credit. They’re morally serious folks. Communism was just idealism gone astray.

In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke helps us see beyond our usual moral sentimentalism. He recognized the way in which abstract principles can become objects of devotion. The great patrons of liberty and equality in revolutionary France loved their ideas of justice, so much so that they would willingly destroy the actual goods of their imperfect society in order to implement an imagined state of perfection. Nothing is so selfish as to attack reality—and to do so on the basis of one’s own ideals.

Burke had an epithet for these selfish idealists. They were “men of theory,” and they so often seem to have the rhetorical advantage. The imagined world is shiny and spotless, unlike the real world and its hopelessly compromised institutions. It’s easy to compliment your moral insights when you juxtapose the ideal with the real.

“The pretended rights of these theorists are all extreme,” he wrote, “and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false.” And more than false. Reflections on the Revolution in France is a very passionate book, urgent and strident in tone, because Burke thought the “men of theory” wicked.

The wickedness comes from a crucial fact about progressive politics: Our social world needs to be destroyed in order for moral and political ideals to be realized, unsullied by the past. It is a simple fact that every real society gives men and women social roles, and these roles fit into a hierarchy, a preconceived order justifying social arrangements. We can ascribe specific rights equally. We can say that every adult has a right to vote, or that every citizen has a right to trial by jury. But we can’t say that everyone has a right to be equal—unless we’re prepared to destroy the cultural forms that give people their diverse roles and identities.

Of course, that was exactly what the progressives tried to do in France after 1789. With increasing violence, the revolutionaries used the power of the state to destroy the old system of society. The destruction was not just a matter of abolishing aristocratic titles, confiscating church property, and executing the monarch. The revolutionary project in France, like every modern revolutionary project, sought to destroy the sentiments that give inward form to the outward system. It’s not enough to throw down the mighty and lift up the lowly. One must drive out all thoughts of inequality, extirpate the arrogant sense of superiority, reverse every cowering feeling of inferiority.

Enlightenment philosophy played a crucial role in achieving the ideals of the French Revolutions. “All the pleasing illusions,” Burke wrote, “which made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments that beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason.” Thus the pattern was set: For every progressive political agenda, a culture of critique must replace a culture of loyalty.

The conquering culture of critique works with cold determination: “All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of the moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature. . . , are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.” Unmask, disenchant, critique—these are important, foundational political acts, as our university professors now openly champion. They undermine the sentiments and convictions that make men feel old moral sentiments, even after the old system is swept away.

Burke’s insight in the imperialism of theory helps explain why culture wars seem to be escalating. Economic progressives are not terribly influential, as Obama’s cabinet appointments demonstrate. But the cultural progressives are very much in ascendancy. Every desire has an equal right to its fulfillment. And this ideal can only be realized if every desire feels free to speak its name.

Therefore, establishing an empire of desire requires more than political triumph, more than legal protection. Like all progressive ideals, it requires the destruction of the sentiments and pieties that lead people to think otherwise. This ideological project takes on the familiar distortions of all modern propaganda. “Words take on new meanings,” James Kalb writes in The Tyranny of Liberalism, “hatred comes to include opposition to liberal initiatives, while inclusiveness requires non-liberals to abandon their principles and even their identity. Tolerance treats objections to liberalism as attacks on neutrality that are oppressive simply by being made.”

Recently, I wrote that Barack Obama won in November largely because he convincingly represents stability in economic affairs and foreign policy. On questions of culture, however, he will have a very difficult time. The progressive ideal of liberated desire—like all progressive ideals—requires us to fundamentally remake culture. This means aggressively intervening into education and the family in order to destroy the sources of traditional sentiments about sex, gender, and religion.

Social conservatism is different. It wishes to use the power of the state to prohibit certain forms of vice. Criminalizing abortion is an obvious example. I’d also like to see a reassessment of no-fault divorce. This political agenda is not surprising. It’s the nature of laws to embody moral principles (such as the protection of innocent life).

Yet, because conservatism is based in traditional realities rather than progressive ideals, it need not revolutionize culture and suppress dissent. Put concretely, nobody who wants to change our laws about abortion needs to censor the pro-choice idea. Nobody who wishes to prohibit gay marriage wants to prevent anyone from feeling offended or oppressed by the opinions of those who think otherwise.

Because conservative political goals are limited, they don’t require trying to take control of the San Francisco school system. A conservative would like for everyone to adopt his outlook. That follows from believing that something is true. But the conservative is not selfish in the sense Burke identifies. He does not love broad, abstract ideals at the expense of actual social realities. Instead, he draws his strength from real, living traditions, encouraging focused, lasting reforms that fulfill and purify rather than critique and erase. The conservative has no need to gain control of the state in order to remake culture—a shockingly arrogant, willful, and invariably tyrannical project. He already has one.

I’m not naive. There are obviously social conservatives who have a modern cast of mind—conservative revolutionaries with Stalinist tendencies. And there are certainly many American liberals with a deep commitment to our traditional constitutional constraints on the use of governmental power. People do not exist to represent “isms.”

Nonetheless, conservatism and progressivism have fundamentally different tendencies as ruling principles. Conservatism wants to protect, nurture, and perfect aspects of the social norms we already have. Drawing its strength from what exists, it has room for dissent. Progressivism pours Agent Orange on the cultural landscape to make space for something new, something it imagines to be better. Seeking what is ideal, it often excludes dissent as a matter of moral principle.

I hope my moderate liberal friends will concede that social conservatism has the capacity to create social and political stability in our pluralistic society. It wishes to win the culture war, but unlike the progressive cultural politics of the present day it does not demand unconditional surrender and complete submission. But I’m not holding my breath. One principle seems to be a constant for American liberals: no enemies on the left.

R.R. Reno is features editor of First Things and professor of theology at Creighton University.

[Michael]

Stuart,

Thanks for the Reno piece...though I'm sure a simple hyperlink to First Things would have sufficed for reading. It's enlightening, while simultaneously being close to statements-of-the-obvious for those already caught up in the "culture war." I have a tiny dispute with this section, however:

Because conservative political goals are limited, they don’t require trying to take control of the San Francisco school system. A conservative would like for everyone to adopt his outlook. That follows from believing that something is true. But the conservative is not selfish in the sense Burke identifies. He does not love broad, abstract ideals at the expense of actual social realities. Instead, he draws his strength from real, living traditions, encouraging focused, lasting reforms that fulfill and purify rather than critique and erase. The conservative has no need to gain control of the state in order to remake culture—a shockingly arrogant, willful, and invariably tyrannical project. He already has one.

I’m not naive. There are obviously social conservatives who have a modern cast of mind—conservative revolutionaries with Stalinist tendencies. And there are certainly many American liberals with a deep commitment to our traditional constitutional constraints on the use of governmental power. People do not exist to represent “isms.”

Nonetheless, conservatism and progressivism have fundamentally different tendencies as ruling principles. Conservatism wants to protect, nurture, and perfect aspects of the social norms we already have. Drawing its strength from what exists, it has room for dissent. Progressivism pours Agent Orange on the cultural landscape to make space for something new, something it imagines to be better. Seeking what is ideal, it often excludes dissent as a matter of moral principle.

As Chesterton noted, conservatism works towards an ideal just as much as progressivism does. We believe that tradition ought not to be thrown out, of course, but ultimately we recognize that on a fundamental level we derive those social hierarchies from a source--indeed, for the Christian conservative, it is all in fidelity to The Source. Therefore, it is well within our proverbial bag of tricks to destroy something to recreate it in a more perfect image. A fence that is crooked cannot be made straight unless it is dismantled and reassembled in a straight line.

I think the crucial difference is that this is not the sole underlying strategy of conservative social movements--it is a last resort. We want to change minds, but not by seizing institutions and brainwashing the populace that uses them (schools, libraries, media). But Reno cannot seriously believe that conservatives don't want their ideas in the public institutions. Why else would there a push for abstinence education?

[Stuart Koehl]

However, the conservative mind understands that perfection is not attainable through human means, but can only come through a divine restoration of the universe. Therefore, the conservative, in contrast to the progressive, does not chase after utopian schemes, even if these are based in faith or tradition. he does not make perfection the enemy of the good, which is often the case with progressives. Progressives hate the imperfections of the world, and would destroy the world if it meant tearing down those imperfections (mind you--much of what they consider its imperfections would themselves be regarded as imperfections by conservatives). No conservative would act like Samson for the sake of seeing the rubble bounce.

[Michael]

>>However, the conservative mind understands that perfection is not attainable through human means, but can only come through a divine restoration of the universe.<<

Point taken. But we do try to achieve perfection, even with the knowledge that we cannot do it without God. Else our faith would be without works to that end--and therefore dead.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Point taken. But we do try to achieve perfection, even with the knowledge that we cannot do it without God. Else our faith would be without works to that end--and therefore dead.<<<

That's why I keep going back to this line from Lord of the Rings, which I think sums up the rationale for and the limits of conservative idealism:

"It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule" (Return of the King, Book 5, Chapter 9)

Who am I to argue with Gandalf the White?

[Rob G]

"But we do try to achieve perfection, even with the knowledge that we cannot do it without God."

I don't think this is true. Knowing that earthly perfection is impossible, conservatives don't try to achieve it, either with or without God.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I don't think this is true. Knowing that earthly perfection is impossible, conservatives don't try to achieve it, either with or without God.<<<

It would be more correct to say that a conservative will carefully balance the costs and benefits of any particular move towards perfection before taking that step. Since every problem began as a solution, this is usually a wise step. The conservative recognizes the limitations of human knowledge and prescience, and therefore is always aware of the law of unintended consequences, as well as the nature of the pavement of the road to hell.

To the extent that conservatives strive towards perfection, it takes the form of the cultivation of virtue as that term was understood classically.

[Michael]

>>I don't think this is true. Knowing that earthly perfection is impossible, conservatives don't try to achieve it, either with or without God.<<

Hogwash. We try to achieve personal perfection--we don't go on sinning (at least not without the fitting personal repentance to follow), but rather pursue that which has been laid out before us. As Stuart points out on the Mohler (referencing Schemann) thread, the Church carries the Kingdom of God into the world. We may not try to do it top-down with brainwashing institutions, but don't tell me that we don't try to transform the world to be more in line with God's will. That is right and proper transformation.

>>To the extent that conservatives strive towards perfection, it takes the form of the cultivation of virtue as that term was understood classically.<<

Much fairer. One life at a time, but we do strive toward it. And as the Reno article says, not all conservatives do it in this manner; indeed, strategically some don't see qualms with using institutionalized authority as a means of cultural transformation. But fundamentally we preserve what is good and continue after what is greater--this by itself requires the destruction of the bad.

[Steve Nicoloso]

Progressives hate the imperfections of the world, and would destroy the world if it meant tearing down those imperfections...

Or tear down the law to get at the Devil!

[Rob G]

"Hogwash. We try to achieve personal perfection"

Which will never translate into institutional perfection.

"don't tell me that we don't try to transform the world to be more in line with God's will."

Realizing, of course, that perfection along these lines is impossible. If you believe it is, I don't know what you are, but you're no conservative.

[W.E.D. Godbold]

It's a strange thing, but I don't think that liberal or socialists could have possibly existed without the coming of Jesus Christ. They possess shards of the truth that they have found broken off from Christendom and attempt to use these as cornerstones for their own little philosophies, which they account better (or at least more amenable to their sensibilities) finding the real Cornerstone to be a rock of offense.