Anti-Climacus

LINK: Say what you will about liberalism, but it'd never face this problem. Taken too far, the optimism that can be a feature of liberalism (and is certainly a feature of contemporary politics that labels itself 'liberal') leads one to the unrealistic expectation that any problem can be solved with the problem application of ideas and energy. In the world of international law, this parallels to the view that, if we could only have an extensive enough legal code and the right set of institutions, all the major problems of world politics would permit resolution. Few would accept that view openly (I think), but it's a not-too-difficult entailment of a number of legal theories. What it does give, however, is a solid theoretical reason to keep trying. The world is a place full of ills, some of which we can solve easily, some of which take time and are, to modify Rilke a bit, handed off from one generation to another, each doing its constituent but perhaps unnoticeable part.

All this to say, I am broadly in agreement with Demophilus in his critique of paleoconservatism, though he does not go far enough:

Many paleoconseravtives seem to have a tendency to love lost causes and narratives of declension, searching for that elusive turning point in which a noble and virtuous people began their long slide towards corruption and tyranny.

and:

And yet...I also believe the language of decline is an easy way out, a way of avoiding hard moral and political choices in the present in the name of condemning all that we see as the manifestation of a more fundamental corruption. Life is always getting better and worse at the same time and the great task, especially for conservatives, is to carefully sift the good from the bad, to learn to revel in the complexity in which we find ourselves. I confess this is not a very emotionally satisfying thing to do. Strident moralism and sweeping condemnation really do feel good now and again. But its not, ultimately, a very helpful or responsible manner of discourse.

My default political setting is 'contrarian,' so one might think I have sympathy for the paleo position, which is nothing if not contrarian. Indeed, at one point, I assumed I had that sympathy. But there's a problem of self-perception: it's possible, indeed likely, to come to believe too much in the myth of one's own noble rejection of the platitudes others are only too happy to accept as truth (if so inclined, as most are, one can view Christopher Hitchens as the apotheosis of this, or the Ron Paul comboxers from earlier this year), and therefore be blind about many things, including one's own position within contemporary politics.

Demophilus identifies one main strand of this, which is the rejection of politics. It would be one thing if politics were rejected in the name of social life, or some other good, but paleoconservatism has no live political agenda. The rejection of politics is instead a coping mechanism for being so far outside the political mainstream. Americans are mostly happy with interventionism, or have been for the last 60 years, grumbling about particular interventions aside. Everyone thinks the Civil War and World War II were good, or as good as wars can be--and there are theoretical reasons to believe that true. No one who understands much about the gold standard wants to return to it. The attraction to declinist narratives, especially of the 'disaster is on the horizon' variety, are a reflection that the only way these views will gain traction is if something very fundamental shifts, and in a catastrophic way.

Alternatively, politics is a realm, for liberals and conservatives, that involves making choices amongst a limited, sometimes undesirable, set of options. One shouldn't hesitate to see the world as it is, including identifying those things that are beyond our immediate capacities, and prudent planning for the future is always needed and rarely done. Where we have consensus, though, is a product of many generations and a lot of wise people puzzling through political issues; a conservative, of all people, should be hesitant to believe he sees something that others haven't seen before.