On liberalism and two-headed coins
December 2, 2015 § 25 Comments
Political freedom/autonomy and equality are two modes of the same idea. You can’t have one without the other, and embracing one necessarily implies embracing the other, just as picking up a coin entails picking up both sides of the coin even if you happen to be looking at Heads.
There is no essential difference between liberalism and leftism: they are different baskets of unprincipled exceptions overlaid on top of the same basic commitment to the political philosophy I call liberalism.
Failure to recognize this keeps ‘conservatives’ locked in the mind trap. They naturally, as conservatives, feel loyalty to their ancestors and the thoughts of their ancestors — who happen to be classical liberals. And because conservatism entails a certain acceptance of how things are without thinking them all the way through, conservatives never accept that their revered classical liberal ancestors and the hated leftists/progressives just are the same sort of thing.
As a result, the function of conservatism in society is to preserve and protect liberalism from its own excesses. Conservatives are the abused enablers of progressives and always will be, mopping up the vomit and excrement after the drunken binges to make sure that they can continue.
The only way to put an end to the self abuse is to fully realize and accept the truth: that liberalism and leftism just are the same thing. The conservative disposition, with its built-in tendency to accept things as they are and not think them through to the point of critical insanity, screams against this.
But there are times when it is necessary to peel back some more layers and figure out what is really happening: to understand when certain things are built on a lie and not just accept them as given. There are times when the only option is a sociopathic option.
And if there has ever been such a time, that time is now. When society has gone insane, the place to find sanity is outside the padded walls.
Zippy Catholic 
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I think classical liberalism is attractive to conservatives because classical liberalism represents the only period of liberalism in which it put forth a lot of positive ideas. The Bill of Rights is a product of classical liberalism and is an excellent political document, even with its shortcomings. The US Constitution is similar in that respect, as in its pre-14th amendment form it codified a formal system of subsidiarity that actually put higher and lower authorities into a healthy relationship that left little ambiguity on who held what authority and when it could be exercised.
For that era, these were radical political changes. Indeed, aside from aspects of the first amendment, even most tradcons should be deeply bothered by a political thinker or leader who chafes at the Bill of Rights. Why should the legislature of our federation that spans a continent and several regions the size of nation states in their own right be allowed to impose “community standards” on speech? Disarm the people? Search and seize with great freedom? Greatly disadvantage the defendant in trial?
Liberalism may have not been necessary to get us there, but it did get us there which is why I think conservatives are grateful for classical liberalism.
WRT the due process rights of the Bill of Rights, liberalism is certainly not required to get there. The Mosaic Law is actually a model of good law for protecting the rights of the accused. There is probably no legal system in Christian history that is as protective of the defendant as the Old Testament law.
Mike T:
I may not have technically LOLed, but I definitely made actual sound. Maybe a chortle.
The faith classical liberals (and the conservatives who love them) have that making a supreme dictator out of codified documents will save us from the tyranny of a wayward ruling class is precious. And the relationship of the Bill of Rights to good governance is like the relationship of daycare under standard bureaucratic procedures to good parenting.
Alexander Hamilton on how tightly (HAH!) the Constitution limits federal power to spend on pretty much whatever it wants, arguing against his own previous incarnation in the Federalist Papers (when he was trying to sell the Constitution to skeptics rather than, post ratification, spend whatever he bloody well wanted to spend on whatever):
Sacralizing the Constitution, and vastly overestimating the political power of text written on paper taken in itself, is a basic mistake. Conservatives may well admire that mistake; but that again is because it is the nature of conservatism to sacralize ancestors and put the brakes on thinking things through when it comes into conflict with the traditional thinking of secular saints.
Heck, even Divinely inspired Scripture gives rise to countless interpretations, most of which beg the question. How much more true must this be of the Constitution?
I think I’m finally beginning to understand this positivism thing that you harp about so often.
A wrong act is wrong not because the law says it is, but because it is wrong per se. Under legal positivism, offenses can defined out of existence once the statutes change. Under realism, the law is a description (however flawed) of right and wrong. Even if the law is “wrong” what it’s trying to describe never will be, and by definition cannot be.
Most serious people don’t expect the Constitution to protect them. Rather, they understand that when the feds or states fundamentally step outside of it, there is a case to be made for just disobeying them outright on those matters. The federal government, for example, has no lawful right to ban guns or require a government permit to speak in public. Were it to do such a thing, that statute or executive order would carry no obligation of obedience within the context of our constitutional system.
And actually these things do have value in ways you ignored such as how the Supreme Court has been progressively rebuilding the right to keep and bear arms via the 2nd and 14th amendments. The ruling class is being partially checked by having a non-democratic body enforce the constitutional law, however imperfectly, on the legislature and executive.
As I see it, the value of the Constitution is that it helps to define the Overton window. It needed to be amended before Prohibition or an income tax could be successfully implemented because doing so otherwise was a bridge too far.
It’s hardly foolproof because there are always penumbras and emanations, but even then you have to go through the exercise of demonstrating that this or that right is “really” in there.
There is nothing wrong with written law, as something which publicly clarifies expectations. But written law is orders of magnitude less important than a good ruling class and ruled class; and some written law perversely encourages the development of ungovernable people and a dishonest ruling class.
What do good ruling and ruled classes look like?
Asking what good leaders and followers look like is like asking what good fathers and children look like. If I have to explain it we are already having the wrong conversation.
Despite the prejudices and false dichotomies of liberalism, some people are more governable than others. Some ruling classes are better than others. And this has very little to do with letters scratched on pieces of paper.
Despite the prejudices and false dichotomies of liberalism, some people are more governable than others. Some ruling classes are better than others. And this has very little to do with letters scratched on pieces of paper.
Which raises an interesting question about what you mean by governable. You said in a previous thread that southern whites are one of the least governable groups of whites in the US, even as most evidence points to southern states being some of the best run, most peaceful, and governed with the least heavy hand of most of the country except maybe some of the Rocky Mountain states.
Mike T:
The comparison you are trying to draw between the relatively rural south and places like NYC is apples and oranges, as is a comparison between the Civil War era and the present day. The Civil War was a result in significant part of the fact that southerners were ungovernable, prone to preemptive violence (Fort Sumter), and believed in a non-government theory of governance (arbitrary right of secession).
I don’t know about southerners in general today. The South today is pretty much like everywhere else: the race-homogenization, ethni-homogenization, and region-homogenization of liberalism has been at work for a long time since the Civil War. Liberals in general are ungovernable, and non serviam is pervasive in modern society, so I wouldn’t say that the South today is uniquely ungovernable. To the extent it is equivalent to or better than other places that is because it has become less of what it was, and the liberalism prevalent everywhere has become more advanced.
And people who are ungovernable deserve the kind of ruling class they cultivate. Why would any self-respecting aristocrat want to be your king? What attitudes and beliefs do you express that would motivate a self-respecting king to take you on as a subject, rather than leaving you to stew in your own rebellious juices?
Aethelfrith:
I would just add that there are still ‘positive’ laws under the natural law (realism), because there is such a thing as authority, which derives from natural law. So the sovereign has authority to require people to pay 3% sales tax (or not), to drive on the right side of the road instead of the left, to prescribe specific penalties for theft, etc. But the authority of the sovereign (or other people with authority) derives from the natural law, and so literally cannot come into conflict with it.
An attempted assertion by the positive law which conflicts with natural law has no authority (that is, it does not morally oblige): how could it, when the authority of positive law itself derives from natural law?
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