Posted by Geoff M. Beck on Fri, 24 Dec 2004 02:37 | #

Good post, but I’ll be even bolder.

Americans have never been conservative - ever. We’ve always been Whigs, colored by Christian ethics, and we still are.

The last English conservative, to exercise real power was, probably, Lord Salisbury.

I know so little about Australia to comment would be utter folly.

The last conservative statement, in the Western world,  with any force was, probably, Pius X’s statement on Modernism.

(I’m not Catholic)

Mark, over the coming months could you blog a bit about Australia? Its your decision of course. I understand Britain because of all the literature I’ve read, and of course the common history both the US and Australia has with that land. The only Aussie personality I am remotely aware of is Kieth Windschuttle.

Posted by Thrasymachus on Fri, 24 Dec 2004 02:47 | #

We’ve always been Whigs, colored by Christian ethics, and we still are.

There has always been a progressive egalitarianism to our nation.  Over time, the ideologies of equality have morphed until they have very little connection to the natural world.  A large part of that is that Christian ethics—always at the forefront of American egalitarianism—have changed a great deal over the years.

Posted by Mark Richardson on Fri, 24 Dec 2004 03:01 | #

Geoff, I’m interested that you nominate Lord Salisbury as possibly the last English conservative to wield real power. I came to exactly the same conclusion some years ago. Salisbury seems, though, to have been defeatist and pessimistic - he felt it was only possible to slow down the liberal advance rather than score major victories against it.

Of course, I’d love to post comments on Australia. I’ve been looking to review Windschuttle’s latest book, but, unsurprisingly, haven’t been able to find it in a local book shop.

Posted by Geoff M. Beck on Fri, 24 Dec 2004 04:42 | #

Salisbury understood that even the upper-classes had been infected with liberalism and he worked hard to prevent more reform, like that forwarded by Bright and Palmerston.

Salisbury was a person that wanted maximum freedom for all levels of society but constrained by the forces of tradition and order within England.

He was not afraid to stand up to the platitudes of his day and defend the Anglican Church and the Aristocracy. Again, he wasn’t a retrograde, he believed in freedom, for all, but within limits.

(I suppose in our day he would be known as a ‘paleo-conservative libertarian’?).

Frankly, as he knew, liberalism was a faith that put no limits on man and would usurp all that England has accomplished:

“They [radical liberals] believe in a divine right; they uphold a legitimacy; they teach an unquestioning obedience; they look upon force as a legitimate weapon for propagation of their faith…

Lord Salisbury, 1865

——

Windschuttle is awesome, a true maverick talent and thinker.  Is he out of print? It is odd, also, the “Bell Curve”, also a groundbreaking work is now out of print - despite selling millions of copies and generating endless controversy. Incredible.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Fri, 24 Dec 2004 09:18 | #

At least John Ray can’t insinuate this time that Mark makes assertions without documenting the basis for them ...

Posted by John Ray on Mon, 27 Dec 2004 11:19 | #

There seem to be a lot of arbitrary definitions of conservatism above.  For a more empirical approach see here:

http://rightism.blogspot.com/

Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 27 Dec 2004 18:04 | #

Anyone seeking a historically-informed and profound definition of conservatism should visit Martin Hutchinson’s site and order his book, Great Conservatives.

Posted by Matt on Tue, 28 Dec 2004 19:05 | #

There seem to be a lot of arbitrary definitions of conservatism above.

That is because conservatism has no ontologically stable essence capable of resisting ideological liberalism.  Liberalism does have an ontologically stable essence.  This creates a sort of perfect storm, wherein the anti-human anti-nature ideological shibbloleth is opposed by… essentially nothing, or nothing that is capable of mounting a sustained, principled fight.  It is that which has to change, and that change starts with categorical repentance from liberalism.  It goes against natural conservative instincts to take a categorical ideological stance.  And that is generally good, but it is not categorically good: a categorical ideological stance against liberalism is the only remaining hope of the West.

Posted by Mark Richardson on Tue, 28 Dec 2004 22:12 | #

Exactly, Matt.

Posted by Guessedworker on Tue, 28 Dec 2004 23:27 | #

Martin H argues that Curzon was the last true Conservative.  He also points out that even Salisbury spent most of his later years compromising.

Compromise is the essence of modern Conservatism - although the gentlemen concerned call it relevance, itself a euphemism for electoral expediency.  However expedient it may seem in “normal” times for a Conservative Party to acknowledge social change as a means to power, we are no longer in normal times.  We are locked into a process leading to our racial and societal destruction.

In this century - perhaps in the next two decades - Conservatives must choose between relevance to an increasingly non-white society and the survival of European man through the permanent reclamation of his homelands.  The latter choice canot simply entail racial particularism, for that is mere nationalism.  It must be predicated upon serviceable Conservative principles which, Matt, DID evolve through a long and noble history in England.

Martin explains this perfectly clearly and I repeat the recommendation of my previous comment.

This blog can do worse than tease out a serviceable M.O. by which a nationalist Conservatism might, in theory at least, contribute to our survival.  I can think of no more vital or engrossing endeavour for a bunch of semi-intellectual, semi-nationalist, wholly stubborn white guys.

Posted by Niki Raapana on Thu, 30 Dec 2004 02:34 | #

Mark Richardson wrote: “I believe that both the left and the right wing of politics have adopted the same underlying political principle and that the logical unfolding of this principle explains the course of Western politics.”

Could someone explain this further? Would this “same underlying political principle” be communitarianism?  The merger of the left and the right is all but complete in the U.S. How does it appear to be “logically unfolding” in other countries?  Has anyone here reviewed Amitai Etzioni’s newest book “From Empire to Community?”

Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 30 Dec 2004 10:11 | #

Niki,

My take on Mark’s consistent and elegantly argued thesis is that modern liberalism’s understanding of “the self” has its origins in Hobbes and Locke, and that both left and right in politics have watered at that hole.

For the right, individual liberty was the attraction.  But the left drew heavily from Locke’s Tabula Rasa (against which the right was innoculated by its love of a stable social order).

However, out of these misty, twisting paths has emerged a modern left with a Messianic attachment to self-definition as the measure of the truly free man.  The right, meanwhile, having no means by which to fight the self-exultation and indulgence of this vision with mere social stability (or Nature), has found itself dragged along to the point where it, too, mouths the same pieties and proposes the same social policies.

Now, Marx claimed that all Western political philosophers were the children of Thomas Hobbes.  But Marxism, classical economic and cultural, did not enter the equasion in the West through the agency of political philosophy or conventional political action, but through almost exclusively Jewish political philosophers and actors.  It’s goals were class war and culture war.  Its modus operandum was not social evolution but a permanent economic and cultural revolution.  The latter, especially, signifies the destruction of gentile society.  Whether that is so intentionally (the war on Christendom) or unintentionally (Tikkun Olam) makes not a lot of difference.

Therefore, I personally do not accept that marxism grows from the same roots as liberalism.  But liberalism has been marxised since the 1960’s when its principle goals were substantially achieved and the emerging goals of cultural marxist equality beckoned.  This leftward shift of liberalism has dragged the debate wholesale to the left and, thereby, Conservatism still further towards the great myth of the Tabula Rasa - which, alas, is where we are today.

Now, Mark may wish to make his own case, much of which may disagree with mine.  But that, anyway, is my “thumbnail” history of right and left.

As I understand it, Communitarianism is at the cutting-edge of these developments, since it draws the unified whole which is liberal-marxism into an active but diffuse, unelected oligarchy operating on a global scale.  But this is an area that needs explaining at MajortyRights, Niki, and no one is better qualified to do so than you.  Give us a post.

Posted by Matt on Thu, 30 Dec 2004 16:28 | #

I think Marx was perfectly liberal.  He just didn’t think that capitalism was the right instrument to achieve freedom and equality for the new man.  Communitarianism for Marx was like racialism for Hitler.  In neither case was it adopted as a genuine embrace of nature or of traditional modes of being as good in themselves.  No.  In both cases they are simply technique; technique applied to bring about the free and equal new man, self-created by reason and will.

Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 30 Dec 2004 21:17 | #

Matt,

I can accede to messers Marx and Engels’ place among those of Hobbesian/Lockean descent.  They only thought thoughts.  Others took them and put them to their own purposes.  Do you believe that Lenin in Russia and the Frankfurt warriors in the West were fundamentally liberal?

Posted by Matt on Thu, 30 Dec 2004 21:43 | #

If by “liberal” you mean were they loyal to the freedom and equality of the new superman as a primary transcendent political good, sure.  Most of the conflict in the past century or two has been between people who share a fundamental political committment to the free and equal new man, self-created through reason and will, but who differ as to how the end of history is to be brought about and what it will look like in its concrete particulars.  Even the religiously oriented on the modern right share this loyalty, inasmuch as Christian values have a legitimate authoritative place in public life if and only if they are expressed solely through liberal institutions via the consent of the governed, etc.  Most on the right are still liberals (they would balk violently at the notion of abandoning liberal principles), they just tend not to be as consistent in their loyalties as those on the left.

Posted by Guessedworker on Thu, 30 Dec 2004 23:40 | #

Then we have an additional point of divergence, Matt.  I see Conservatism as a genuine polar opposite to liberalism - at least, it is in its earliest and most pure form. For example, it was an incorporator of personal liberty within the bounds of a stable social structure.  At no time before the first World War was Conservatism driven by the vision of liberated Man as the end of history.

The oldest roots of Conservatism are to be found in “the beginning of the end” of what later was termed feudalism.  Thus it was a politic of Kings, not the peasantry of whose political expression was there none.  I speak here of English Conservatism, of course.  I am unconvinced that there is a wholly Conservative politic in America, since the Constitution is anti-Conservative in the original English sense.

As regards Lenin’s Soviet and the cultural monstrosity of Frankfurt, I do not accept that liberty and equality of the self mean what we think they mean when they are contemplated with at least one eye on identity of an entirely non-self-defined variety.

Posted by Matt on Fri, 31 Dec 2004 07:10 | #

“I am unconvinced that there is a wholly Conservative politic in America, since the Constitution is anti-Conservative in the original English sense.”

I suppose it is sensible to emphasize those areas where we have common ground.

“I do not accept that liberty and equality of the self mean what we think they mean when they are contemplated with at least one eye on identity of an entirely non-self-defined variety.”

I am honestly not at all sure what this means.  It is possible that the labels “liberty” and “equality” might be applied coherently to morally good political concepts which are consistent with understanding human beings as created rather than as self-defined, as fallen rather than as naturally good, and as naturally heirarchical in social arrangement.  As long as we treat them merely as labels, that is.  But I don’t think as a practical matter using those labels to denote primary transcendent political principles leads to a univocal understanding of what they imply (let alone an objectively good univocal understanding).

Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 31 Dec 2004 13:12 | #

Matt,

“Objective good” is surely not a candidate for agreement between any two people anywhere.  So I’ll avoid that tarpit and pursue a more historical line of reason. 

Conservatism is NOT part of the politics of liberalism, though it has come to be seen as such (and in America has always been seen as such).  Conservatism is responsive to the natural order, one part of which is the desire of Man to be free.  This establishes its relation to a politic entirely predicated on that desire, and thus its transcedence of that politic.

Traditionally, how it responded to the desire for freedom was, of course, dependent on the character of the times.  But some balance between the desire for freedom and acceptance of one’s circumstance and possibilities had to be struck for the common good as it was understood.

The very need itself had a certain permanence that flowed for the natural order - it was always so.  The dispensation of circumstance flowed, not infrequently of course, from the accident of birth and had to deal with the inevitably contrary accident of talent.  The balance of these things to the general increase is the goal of Conservatism.

Thus, the great Conservative principles such as a laissez-faire economics, respect for rights of private property, a general emphasis on the individual rather than the group, the rule of law, a constitutional balance of interests, the encouragement of meritocracy, religious tolerance and, always, a stable social order guided Kings and courtiers and, later, politicos in the maintenance of that balance in all circumstances.

Re-reading that I don’t know whether I have done it justice or made it very clear.  The point, really, is that this great and truly unifying idea began to fade with Burke and had completely quit the stage by 1914.  Since I believe that liberalism tends to self-destruction I am intrigued by a politic that treats of both permanence and increase.  I think it’s worth some philosophical archeology.

Now the troubling issue of class and culture war and Jewish ethnic interest ...

I will illustrate my case, socially disreputable though it is, with this list of senior members and associates of the Frankfurt School.  I can find no others, excepting students - one of whom, the Spanish-German Jeurgen Habermas, was raised a Catholic.  The list, all Jews, is:-

Walter Benjamin, Georg Lukacs, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, Leo Lowenthal, Norbert Elias, Friedrich Pollock, Karl Mannheim, the non-Marxist socialist Julius Kraft, the economist Gottfried Salomon.

The product of these thinkers we now call Cultural Marxism.  Their method we know as Culture War.  The question, then, is: did these thinkers and philosophers mentate dispassionately and without cognizance of their own ethnic identity and the well-understood, uniquely ancient and powerful pull of that identity’s interests?

If the answer is “yes”, then Cultural Marxism has its place in the liberal canon.

I should add that the cultural question is the harder of the two to establish as an ethnic ramp.  Lenin’s Soviet is much the easier because its huge preponderance of Jews in executive authority involved few intellectuals, of whom dispassionate query can, in theory, be expected.

Posted by Matt on Fri, 31 Dec 2004 17:59 | #

“Conservatism is responsive to the natural order, one part of which is the desire of Man to be free.  This establishes its relation to a politic entirely predicated on that desire, and thus its transcedence of that politic.”  [emphasis added]

For myself, I would reject any conservatism of that sort, if I understand correctly.  My conservatism would entail the recognition of a great many particular goods, truths, and beauties, of which a properly contextual freedom is only one.

“The question, then, is: did these thinkers and philosophers mentate dispassionately and without cognizance of their own ethnic identity and the well-understood, uniquely ancient and powerful pull of that identity’s interests?

If the answer is “yes”, then Cultural Marxism has its place in the liberal canon.”

Another apparent area of difference between us, then, is that in your (apparent) view a thing is not categorically liberal unless it is purely, consistently liberal in every respect.  In my view a pure consistent liberalism is not possible, even in principle.  I would call something or someone “liberal” if it demonstrates a strong loyalty to liberal principles, irrespective of the question of consistency, since in my view consistent liberalism is not possible even in principle.  There are no “good liberals” in the sense of those who make no unprincipled exceptions to liberalism; because it is not possible (even in principle, let alone in practice) to make no unprincipled exceptions to liberal principles.

Posted by Guessedworker on Fri, 31 Dec 2004 19:02 | #

Thanks for the response, Matt. 

Conservatism is what it is.  It is an object once made, not one capable of constant reformation or personal re-interpretation.  That way it is killed, as we have seen.  Our discussion, therefore, centres not on which Conservatism is personally acceptable but on the real nature of the beast.

To avoid any confusion between principle and application I accept, obviously, that interpretive differences will arise out of the effort to apply Conservatism to the real world.  But, at risk of looking too like a bearded Tory fundamentalist praying five times daily at the tomb of Henry VII, I don’t believe that one can amplify liberty too far in the direction of libertarianism or religious tolerance of egalitarianism before the resulting “Conservatism” is definitely something else.  People do it, of course.  I will vote for just a Conservatism when Blair sends me to the polling booth this Spring.  But I have no choice and I know what to expect.

On the marxian problem, obviously I do look very like Henry’s biggest supporter.  I’ll try to dispel that.

Liberalism does not require to be absolute since it is a dynamic - and one, at that, which requires the denial of human nature.  Liberalism does not stand still because it follows a lodestar that permits of constant redefinition of what liberty actually is.  There are marxist intellectuals hard at work on transsexualism right now!  Liberalism has no boundaries.

My, I think, justified suspicion is that Cultural Marxism arises as a systematic advancement of one ethnic interest through the degredation of the host ethnie.  It has nothing to do with liberalism, beyond the disguise the latter offers.

This I construe from the circumstantial evidence of its arising, of its application through sub-philosphies and associated pressure groups and by observation of its action and effects in society.

Posted by Matt on Sat, 01 Jan 2005 03:18 | #

“My, I think, justified suspicion is that Cultural Marxism arises as a systematic advancement of one ethnic interest through the degredation of the host ethnie.  It has nothing to do with liberalism, beyond the disguise the latter offers.”

I won’t argue against the possibility in principle, but I will argue against its relevance.  A tiny minority ethnic group cannot lord it over a vast majority without that vast majority’s complicity, and if the engine of complicity is liberalism then the priority is its eradication.  The putative tiny parasitic ethnic group is an irrelevant distraction. The enemy who has no power in himself is not the true enemy.

Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 01 Jan 2005 10:52 | #

Matt,

I am not a WN.  I am a lost soul feeling for the shape and meaning of Conservatism and, in the context of this discussion, merely suggesting that Leninism and Cultural Marxism operate(d) in a non-liberal cause.  How generally influential they have been is a different matter on which I have no fixed view.  One can watch the CM process unfolding, though.  As well as transsexualism the Post-Nation of civic values is an upcoming hotspot.

Posted by Matt on Sun, 02 Jan 2005 17:34 | #

Well, liberalism is fundamentally about destroying oppression and emancipating the free and equal new man: putting down the oppressor-untermensch and making the way clear for the ubermensch.  It manifests itself in many ways; often in ways which come into direct conflict with each other.  In part this is because liberalism is rationally incoherent, and in part this is because the “new man” admits of an inherently shifting definition.  This has to be the case, as he is self-created through reason and will.

Now Jews as an ethnic group have without doubt held particularly ironic and extreme roles in various liberalisms.  In some cases Jews have been extreme victims because they came to be viewed as the oppressor-untermensch; in others they are seen as perpetrators, using liberalism’s power to disintigrate the ties of nation, people, and faith which are inherently threatening to a diaspora, a displaced people who must live as a minority among other peoples.

But the Jews aren’t magical.  They can’t breathe power into liberalism, they can only try to take advantage of it in support of their own ends, even if we presume their liberalism to be a sham conspiracy rather than a manifestation of true belief.

In general I’ve found the world of politics to be far more explicable when you simply take people at their word.  Information is too fluid in the modern age for a true conspiracy of vast scale to hold up for any great length of time.  It may be true that many ethnic Jews have become liberals because they (incorrectly) perceive liberalism as in their own best interests over the long term.  But that doesn’t make their faith in liberalism any less real.

Posted by Guessedworker on Sun, 02 Jan 2005 20:05 | #

I agree with all you write about the purpose of liberalism.

As for the other matter I would note only that conspiracy is a strawman.  Nothing so crude is required.  You are I know the interests of our own people - that’s why we are talking as we are right now - and it goes without saying that we wouldn’t do anything to harm those interests.  We would not, for example, pursue liberal politics. 

Furthermore, we would certainly contemplate advancing our people’s interests at the expense say, of the French or Russians.  Conversely, we are aghast that progressive internationalists are deconstructing the nation state in the name of peace, profit and liberalism.  Why?  Because our people’s interests are sovereign in our hearts and lie in their nationhood (even if it does bring us into conflict with Frenchmen or Russians).

All that and we are not an average IQ 115 Arabic people with a 4,000 year history, living as a diaspora in frequently hostile lands - a people who, in the perfect “salad bowl” conditions of science produce a pretty magical 40% of Nobel physicists.  Well, if they can achieve that in an area where no racial interest attaches, what might be possible in one that does?

I don’t know the answer.  But it isn’t that there’s no conspiracy.  There is no conspiracy.

Matt, have you considered a move up from commenting to blogging?

Posted by Matt on Sun, 02 Jan 2005 22:35 | #

Hmmm, I have to recall what we were disagreeing about .  Ah yes, whether or not cultural marxism is a genuine form of liberalism given the (stipulated, since you know more about it than I) ethnic composition of its particular driving elite.

I’ve had the same sort of discussion any number of times with respect to Naziism: that is, doesn’t its ethnic composition and its alignment with the interests of a particular ethnic group disqualify it as a form of liberalism?  I am not sure why the ethnic composition of a particular form of liberalism ought to be expected to disqualify it as a liberalism.  After all, the superman is simply the former victim class freed from oppression and empowered by technology: former slaves of history now liberated to become the free and equal new man.  And often ethnic groups do come to see themselves as victims.  As Naziism developed ethnic Germans saw themselves as an oppressed ethnic group, and viewed the Jews in a way similar to how white males are viewed today by self-proclaimed victim classes and their champions.

Still, there is a potentially key difference in the case of Naziism inasmuch as Nazi racism was eugenic in nature.  It did not reflect a traditional ethnic loyalty, but rather, in the creation of the myth of the Aryan, it represented an application of technology to liberate the superman from the bonds of history.  If that makes a categorical difference then it is possible that Naziism is a form of liberalism while CM is not.

But I don’t think a particular instance of liberalism is disqualified as being a liberalism simply because of its ethnic composition or alignment with particular ethnic interests.  If the CM’s really do believe in all this freedom and equality, emancipation from the traditional oppressor stuff then they are liberal, full stop.  As individuals they may belong to other categories, but a strong loyalty to liberalism makes one a liberal irrespective of what other factors may come into play.  One can’t be disqualified as a liberal, as a categorical matter, without abandoning loyalty to liberalism.

You might reply in turn that I am a conservative whether I accept the label or not, and you would be absolutely right at least inasumch as the label and my personal acceptance of it are irrelevant to the ontological fact, whatever that ontological fact may be.

As for blogging, well, I am flattered.  So far my sporadic level of interest and the quality of available comment spaces have combined to keep me away from starting my own blog, but perhaps at some point that will change.

Posted by Guessedworker on Sun, 02 Jan 2005 23:44 | #

I apologise for dragging you off-topic with my last comment.  I was attempting to counter your previous assertion that Jews would have to be “magical” to execute a conspiracy.

My knowledge of Weimar may not be as good as yours.  But, surely, the injury that Germans felt was not an overt Jewish supremacism but the burden of the Treaty of Versailles.  National honour required the abbrogation of the Treaty and the unification of German lands.  Any German nationalist party of that period, right or left, would doubtless have nurtured those same objectives.

This, of course, was the National in National Socialism.  It is the Socialism that stands in the liberal tradition - I accept that.  But it is, as you say, a strange kind of promised liberty that treats of the free Ubermenschen of a future Aryan Master Race.  Strangeness, though, does not disqualify it as liberalism.

It’s worth noting that the German sense of oppression was justified.  Under Versailles millions of Germans had no work by which to earn the money - which anyway had virtually no intrinsic value - by which to buy sufficient bread to feed their families.  Just as the Bolsheviks were the Party that spoke the magic word “peace” first in 1917, so it was Hitler who said “work” and “national honour”.  The Jews weren’t prominent in the public mind at all at this stage, except that they were politically active among German Communists - successfully for a while in Bavaria.  Indeed, even in 1943 Himmler, in his Posen Address, regretted the fact that ordinary people did not have the stomach for liquidating the Jewish problem.  The notion of German national guilt, incidentally, was invented and passed down (with some regret for its supposed necessity, it must be said) from the Oval Office and through to the Local Commanders of the Occupation.

However, I’m drifting off-topic again.

On the original matter, I am somewhat aggrieved at the elegance with which you have danced around my question which, to refresh your memory, was: did the thinkers and philosophers of the Franfurt Group mentate dispassionately and without cognizance of their own ethnic identity and the well-understood, uniquely ancient and powerful pull of that identity’s interests?

Whereas I was satisfied that a “no” would get me to the baseline I now find you have stolen the ball.  Ethnic interest - that is the freeing of one ethnie amid the enslavment of the others - is suddenly not illiberal.  Beyond weakly complaining that this is the National again, and the Socialism is simply not there I don’t think I can catch your ankles.

I’ll think on it, though.  Meanwhile, let’s declare the thread closed and thanks for the contest.

Blogging-wise, if you ever want to guest here, let me know.