Seized By A Temporary Insanity
No.126: September 23, 2022
Welcome to The Square Inch, a Friday newsletter on Christianity, culture, and all of the many-varied “square inches” of God’s domain. This publication is free for now, but please consider clicking on the button at the bottom to become a paid subscriber to enjoy this along with Monday’s “Off The Shelf” feature about books and Wednesday’s “The Quarter Inch,” a quick(er) commentary on current events.
Dear Friends,
Today my friend and Center For Cultural Leadership colleague P. Andrew Sandlin published an essay that I suggest you read, entitled “Post-Liberal is Post-Christian.” Today I am going to write the first of two newsletters that will hopefully complement his essay. And coming so soon on the heels of my Square Inch last week on classical liberalism, you’ll surely notice that CCL is taking a rather sudden interest in this topic.
Why? Because there is an all-out civil war going on in American conservatism and we care deeply about American conservatism. In some ways this civil war was presaged by the six-year bickering between the NeverTrumpers and the ForeverTrumpers, but that has been a messy and mixed affair. In recent years the debate has both sharpened and taken what I believe to be an alarming turn. No longer is this simply about politics, with its typical prudential or utilitarian calculations about voting for the “lesser of two evils.” It has morphed into a debate about political ideology as such.
There are self-styled “conservatives” who think the American Founding was a mistake, and that those of us who defend and champion classical liberalism (“Team Liberty”) are naïve and outdated relics of the past. These are “post-liberals,” and by that they do not just mean they are opposed to progressives; they mean they are ideologically and psychologically beyond (“post”) classical liberalism—the foundational orientation of the American Founding. They believe the basic principle that government exists to protect natural, intrinsic, God-given rights—that is, to protect individual liberty in an ordered space in which one might pursue happiness or blessing or flourishing—is mistaken.
For them, government exists to define and to shepherd society toward the “common good.” It does not just protect the liberty of people to pursue some desired end; it protects liberty only insofar as it is used toward the end of which it approves. The government first dictates what “happiness and blessing and flourishing” are, and then protects your right to pursue that happiness, provided you have the requisite stamps on your government paperwork, so to speak. The government is here to protect you from your depraved self and help you become your best version of you. In the pages of The New Criterion (January 2022) Ryan T. Anderson wrote that membership in a political community is a “perfection of man’s nature” and that apart from political communities, with the authority of its laws, “we cannot reasonably attain our end.” I think I read that in Hegel, too.
If this all sounds like a strange brand of conservatism, it should. It is usually progressives who are intolerant of all the structural barriers to ushering in their vision of the “common good,” their fantastical utopia of total equality or “equity” where the government provides for every need from cradle to grave and nobody has to suffer the indignity of being referred to by a pronoun they haven’t themselves invented. Progressives don’t like the fact that our system doesn’t allow small majorities to lord it over minorities—hence, things like the Electoral College and the Senate Filibuster have to go! Get these impediments out of the way so that we can use government coercion to usher in our vision of the common good: to reward our progressive friends and organizations and corporations who are committed to “right-think” and punish and hound out of polite society our bigoted enemies. The people cannot be allowed the liberty to define what is good, because the people do not know what is good for them. They need the State, with its wise central planners and philosopher-kings, to “perfect their natures.”
Post-liberals have the same agenda. Sohrab Ahmari says he wants “to fight the culture war with the aim of defeating the enemy and enjoying the spoils in the form of a public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good.” He’s got a gleaming utopian vision too, you see. Josh Hammer claims that
The moment is critical. Conservatives must get over their fear of actually using government power and wield the levers, as my friend David Azzerad has written, ‘to reward friends and to punish enemies (within the confines of the rule of law).’
I just adore that charming parenthesis, since in this scenario it is presumably Josh Hammer and his friend who get to define what those confines are. “Rule of law” is no limiting principle when you’re in charge of defining it.
Progressives and post-liberals alike hate the constraints. Both desire the State to enact, by coercion and force of law, their vision of the good. What they want is power—the very thing the American Founders so wisely and self-consciously and aggressively diffused throughout multiple and layered institutions (i.e., local, state, and federal) with checks and balances, three branches of government, a bicameral legislature, and so forth, all underwritten by a Constitution designed to shackle the government to very limited spheres of influence. The system was designed to keep Josh Hammer and his hot-headed buddies from rewarding their friends and punishing their enemies, to keep small factions from imposing their will on others, and to keep even small majorities from lording it over minorities.
And the funny thing is that both progressives and post-liberals have convinced themselves that the American system gives the other side an unfair advantage. The progressives lament all the structural roadblocks—a Constitutional Amendment? What a hassle! The post-liberals lament liberty itself (“individual autonomy,” they derisively label it) because by means of that liberty some people live badly and convince others to live badly, and it has been by means of that liberty the Left has taken a long and astonishingly effective “march through the institutions.” Progressives think law keeps them from winning. Post-liberals think liberty keeps them from winning. I happen to think that speaks perfectly to just how awesome is the American experiment. It leaves all power-hungry narcissists unfulfilled.
Progressives have always been unapologetic about their desire to tear down the thickets and hedges of Constitutional law so as to wield unencumbered the levers of power. Conservatives have always, until about yesterday, unapologetically championed individual liberty and cherished those thickets and hedges of protection. They have always recoiled at the idea of concentrated coercive power in the hands of a few.
Apparently that’s now for has-beens, “Yesterday’s Men” (Josh Hammer’s term), or “Reagan Zombies.”
Frodo looked up. His heart went suddenly cold. He caught the strange gleam in Boromir’s eyes, yet his face was still kind and friendly. ‘It is best that it should lie hidden,’ he answered.
‘As you wish. I care not,’ said Boromir. ‘Yet may I not even speak of it? For you seem ever to think only of its power in the hands of the Enemy: Tirith will fall, if the Ring lasts. But why? Certainly, if the Ring were with the Enemy. But why, if it were with us?’
Thus should Boromir son of Denethor be the patron saint of post-liberalism, wondering why Frodo and his friends “seem ever to think only of its power in the hands of the Enemy.” You silly, squeamish, nervous-nellies, worrying about what happens when the hedges and thickets that protect liberty are torn down and raw power reigns supreme! You only think about what the Enemy would do with such power. “But why, if it were with us?” Boromir thinks that he alone understands the true stakes:
‘It is by our own folly that the Enemy will defeat us,’ cried Boromir. ‘How it angers me! Fool! Obstinate fool! Running wilfully to death and ruining our cause.
That’s exactly what the post-liberals say to classical liberals these days.
If Boromir thinks Frodo only worries about what the Enemy would do with unrestrained power, it seems to me Boromir and his post-liberal acolytes don’t worry or think about it nearly enough. They recognize that the political game they are playing is “zero-sum,” which is what it must be when total power is at stake, the power to define the rules and to fashion a government-approved “common good” toward which all must strive (or else). No wonder these two sides hate the American way. It was built so that political struggles would never be truly zero-sum; but these people want a cataclysmic, winner-take-all encounter. They lust for it. And they don’t worry about what the Enemy would do with such power because they just assume they are going to win. Somehow. They’ll give us a plan or outline the details for us later, or something. As Andrew mentions in his piece today, Father Sirico wryly—and rightly—wondered why First Things Editor Rusty Reno thinks he’s “going to be on those committees” that order public life for the “common good.”
This is all quite a gamble, and I’d rather they not gamble with my liberty or yours. You want the power to limit speech? Assembly? Press? To use government regulations to harm companies you don’t like (e.g., Big Tech)? To funnel tax dollars to causes you like (“rewarding our friends”)? Well, that means you’re also going to be on the receiving end sooner or later.
Boromir had a brother, we should remember. Faramir of Gondor understood the attraction and allure of power: “I can well believe that Boromir, the proud and fearless, often rash, ever anxious for the victory of Minas Tirith (and his own glory therein), might desire such a thing and be allured by it.”
Leave aside Peter Jackson’s unforgivable defamation of Faramir in his version of The Two Towers. Here’s what he really said to Frodo:
‘But fear no more! I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo.’
The kind of power these factions are seeking is a power that the American Founding, based largely on principles of Protestant Christianity, intentionally put out of reach. Alas, the Founders were unable to find a Mount Doom, so they did the next best thing: they diluted coercive political power and limited the domains where it could be exercised. They put up the thickets and hedgerows that protect our liberty, and they thought this was the “common good.” And they were right.
Boromir was seized by temporary insanity during that dialogue with Frodo, for the allure of the Ring of Power had overwhelmed him. I would very much like to chalk up post-liberalism to temporary insanity, too. But it will take something like this:
‘What have I said?’ he cried. ‘What have I done? Frodo, Frodo!’ he called. ‘Come back! A madness took me, but it has passed.’
Thank you for reading this week’s Square Inch! Next week I plan to publish part two: “Illiberalism Is For (Cultural) Losers.” Please consider clicking the button below to become a paid subscriber! You’ll get the Friday edition, as usual, but also a Monday book feature and a Wednesday Quarter Inch, a current events roundup.
"The kind of power these factions are seeking is a power that the American Founding, based largely on principles of Protestant Christianity, intentionally put out of reach."
Unfortunately both major parties have been ratcheting up executive power for decades. The new illiberals seem to be just seeking another click on the ratchet.
The founders knew their machinations were a Rube Goldberg machine. They said as much in their various confessions. Let's face it... liberal democracy, US-style, is technocracy. It's government by technique. Let's design a government that dilutes power.
This was good, applied wisdom, and it remains good, applied wisdom. The only problem...
The founders, alongside their paper barriers, also provided an escape clause. "Alter or abolish".
It was epistemologically necessary for this escape clause to be included; after all, it wouldn't have been a good look to say otherwise, in the aftermath of kicking out George III.
But alteration and abolition require exercises of power, not restraint of power.
As I see it, this is the paradox of our founding.
Oh, what a mess we are. A beautiful mess. But a mess.
I wish I understood it all better. Brian, long time friend since you were a teenager, what do you think of this book: "Letter to the American Church" by Eric Metaxas. I saw it advertised.