The beginning of thought

Bonald threw down the gauntlet to liberals earlier this year in a post titled "Rejecting the Enlightenment is only the beginning of thought".

He began by noting that liberals tend to reduce possible alternatives to either the liberal position or something nasty:

One way that the Enlightenment controls the minds of billions, locking them into a degrading and absurd mental slavery, is by making people imagine they know what’s on the other side. “Without the social contract…tyranny! Without separation of Church and state...religious warfare! Without feminism...rape! Without capitalism...communism! Without cosmopolitanism...Nazis!"

Bonald hits liberals where it is likely to hurt most, by noting that this poverty of vision represents "a narrow, unimaginative, and parochial worldview."

Furthermore, liberals - in claiming to be neutral - evade the task of having to justify their particular conception of the Good as being objectively true:

The key to rejecting liberalism (the political expression of the Enlightenment project) is to realize that it’s a swindle. It claims to stand above every particular conception of the Good, granting freedom to all and favoritism to none, when in fact it imposes its own narrow vision on all of us. Its claims to neutrality just mean that it gets to impose itself without ever being forced to argue (or even assert) that its claims are objectively true, and that it never has to assume the responsibility that comes from being a recognized establishment.

But in rejecting liberalism it becomes possible to take a more sophisticated approach to issues of human flourishing. Bonald gives the example of relations between the sexes:

Now that you realize that gender roles are not inherently iniquitous, you can finally start thinking about the proper relationship between the sexes. Just because you notice that women are being treated differently than men in some context, you can no longer automatically conclude that the women are being treated unfairly, as you would have done when you were a liberal. On the other hand, it is possible that the women are being treated unfairly. What’s more, there is the new possibility–undreamed of by liberals–that the men are being treated unfairly. You must dig into the particulars of the case, the historical context and social functions; you must then apply general principles of natural law (none of which are as simplistic as “gender equality”). You must try to conceptualize the universal masculine and feminine virtues that society should foster, remembering that any given instantiation of masculine and feminine roles will be conditioned by culture and economic organization. Given this background, do the laws and culture provide a path for the achievement of masculine and feminine excellence? Or are the man’s protective instinct and the woman’s nurturing instinct being thwarted or deformed? These are subtle questions.

It's a long paragraph, but it gives a good picture of how traditionalists tend to think about such issues and why traditionalism can't be easily expressed through simple slogans.

Brandis 3

I've been looking at an essay on liberal values by the Australian right-liberal George Brandis. Here's the next section:

Secondly, conservatism and socialism share a theory of social change which owes much to the dogma of historical determinism. Both believe that the forces which shape a society's development - whether those forces are understood according to the conservative's metaphor of society as an organism with its own spontaneous causes of growth and change, or the socialist's more formal theory of dialectical materialism - are impersonal and irresistible. Neither gives any place to human reason as a reconstructive social force. For both, the past determines the present and therefore limits the future. The socialist feels that he is the prisoner of the past; the conservative would like to think that he still lives there.

Liberalism, by contrast, simply rejects historical determinism. It asserts that individuals, acting rationally and with co-operative goodwill can consciously shape the future of their societies so as to avoid the errors of the past and correct the injustices of the present. The reconstructive spirit of liberalism was captured well by Robert Kennedy when he proclaimed that it was 'the shaping impulse' of a liberal society that 'neither fate, nor nature, nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, will determine our destiny'.

What does this tell us about Brandis? It suggests to me that Brandis does not feel a positive connection to the past. What matters for him is the idea of individuals rationally following a principle in order to create a just future. In this sense, the individual can only be acting against the past. The past is a kind of foil against which the rational individual sets himself.

I do think that Brandis has accurately described a liberal mindset in all this. Liberals have set themselves to create a new order based on the rational unfolding of a principle that aims at justice.

But there are major problems in taking this approach. First, a society is not built on the basis of a single, clearly enunciated principle. Any society faces the difficult task of coming to a sense of an "order of being" - an order which brings together the natural, the social and the spiritual aspects of life. There is no single principle which can express all of these things. What (ideally) happens instead is that a society gives rise over time to a culture which represents the best efforts of that society to reach a harmonious order of being.

Things are likely to go wrong if you seek to reorder society along the lines of a single principle aiming at justice. First, there is no such single "rational" principle. Second, the negative effect of adopting a false principle, as liberals have done, is radically heightened. Third, once you adopt such a principle there is no way to provide limits to its effects, as it becomes the sole organising principle of a society. The principle is likely to run to much more radical extremes over time than its originators ever intended.

Does this mean that Brandis is right when he claims that traditionalist conservatives do not give "any place to human reason as a reconstructive social force"? It's true that we reject the idea of radically breaking with the past in order to reconstitute society on the basis of an ideological principle. But it's not true that a culture, as an expression of an attempt to create an order of being, is frozen in time. Each generation tries to add to it, to improve and refine it, and this is partly an act of human reason (and conscience and creativity). Traditionalists do have a sense of justice and the good, and we do expect society to aim to measure up to this, but not as a singular, rationalistic principle that serves as its own starting point. We aim to carry forward a culture and a tradition and we look instinctively to the best of what our forefathers achieved to inspire us in reaching toward the good.

One final point. Brandis approvingly quotes Robert Kennedy speaking about "the shaping impulse" of liberalism, an impulse which overrides not only history but also nature. A traditionalist would never set reason against nature in a simplistic way. It's not that nature is sacrosanct. Anyone who has had children knows that they don't come ready civilised. Ruder aspects of their nature do have to be overcome. Even so, principle has to have regard for our created nature. You can't formulate principles about the way that human life is to proceed abstractly and without consideration for what humans are, for both better and worse, in their given natures.

The Righteous Mind

Jonathan Haidt has written a book called "The Righteous Mind" which should be of interest to traditionalists.

Haidt is a "social psychologist" who until recently thought of himself as a liberal. He has a particular theory of morality; he believes that what really drives our moral beliefs is a "moral intuition," an immediate feeling of what is right or wrong, rather than our rational intellect.

Haidt studied the moral beliefs held within communities across the world and came to have a greater sympathy for non-liberal moral systems. A reviewer of Haidt's book summarised his position this way:

In the West, we think morality is all about harm, rights, fairness and consent....But step outside your neighborhood or your country, and you’ll discover that your perspective is highly anomalous. Haidt has read ethnographies, traveled the world and surveyed tens of thousands of people online. He and his colleagues have compiled a catalog of six fundamental ideas that commonly undergird moral systems: care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity. Alongside these principles, he has found related themes that carry moral weight: divinity, community, hierarchy, tradition, sin and degradation.

That's interesting. When I read it I immediately thought that liberal morality was very cut down compared to traditional morality. Of the twelve principles and related themes, liberalism only cares about the first three - and as we shall see, this narrower moral focus is recognised by Haidt.

The reviewer, William Saletan, goes on to address his liberal audience as follows:

The worldviews Haidt discusses may differ from yours. They don’t start with the individual. They start with the group or the cosmic order. They exalt families, armies and communities. They assume that people should be treated differently according to social role or status — elders should be honored, subordinates should be protected. They suppress forms of self-expression that might weaken the social fabric. They assume interdependence, not autonomy. They prize order, not equality.

In other words, individual autonomy is not made the sole organising principle of society.

Haidt makes a sympathetic defence of the non-liberal moral beliefs. That's unusual and welcome coming from someone who identifies as a liberal, but unfortunately his chosen defence is flawed:

These moral systems aren’t ignorant or backward. Haidt argues that they’re common in history and across the globe because they fit human nature. He compares them to cuisines. We acquire morality the same way we acquire food preferences: we start with what we’re given. If it tastes good, we stick with it. If it doesn’t, we reject it. People accept God, authority and karma because these ideas suit their moral taste buds. Haidt points to research showing that people punish cheaters, accept many hierarchies and don’t support equal distribution of benefits when contributions are unequal.

The problem here is that non-liberal morality is being defended not because it is rational or true, but because it fits an evolved human nature. Our moral sense evolved to like a non-liberal understanding of justice and therefore this preference has a basis within human nature. That is Haidt's position, according to Saletan, and as we shall see it allows Saletan to reassert the supremacy of a liberal morality.

But first, here is the quote from the book review which recognises that liberal morality is more cut down or reductionist compared to traditional morality:

You don’t have to go abroad to see these ideas. You can find them in the Republican Party. Social conservatives see welfare and feminism as threats to responsibility and family stability. The Tea Party hates redistribution because it interferes with letting people reap what they earn. Faith, patriotism, valor, chastity, law and order — these Republican themes touch all six moral foundations, whereas Democrats, in Haidt’s analysis, focus almost entirely on care and fighting oppression. This is Haidt’s startling message to the left: When it comes to morality, conservatives are more broad-minded than liberals. They serve a more varied diet.

This is what I've argued for many years: it's not that individual autonomy is necessarily wrong, but it needs to be balanced with a range of other goods. It cannot always be the overriding good in society.

I don't think it's right, though, that the Republican Party is committed to a non-liberal understanding of morality to the degree that Haidt/Saletan appear to believe it to be. Some of the Republican Party base might hold to the values of faith, patriotism and valor more than their Democrat counterparts, but there's not much evidence when it comes to policy direction that leading Republicans think all that differently on social issues than leading Democrats.

What follows next is a more detailed defence of traditional moral norms. Haidt agrees that for a society to hold together there has to be a level of cooperation (the moral capital of society) in which individualism is constrained:

One of these interests is moral capital — norms, prac­tices and institutions, like religion and family values, that facilitate cooperation by constraining individualism. Toward this end, Haidt applauds the left for regulating corporate greed. But he worries that in other ways, liberals dissolve moral capital too recklessly. Welfare programs that substitute public aid for spousal and parental support undermine the ecology of the family. Education policies that let students sue teachers erode classroom authority. Multicultural education weakens the cultural glue of assimilation. Haidt agrees that old ways must sometimes be re-examined and changed. He just wants liberals to proceed with caution and protect the social pillars sustained by tradition.

Here traditionalists would certainly agree with Haidt. Again, I've argued many times that the more that the state steps in to provide for women, the more that the role of husbands within a family is undermined, leading to greater instability within family life. This is also a better defence of traditional morality than the "it fits evolved human nature" one, as it is effectively an appeal to reason and truth. What Haidt is really arguing here is that the logic of liberal morality is to dissolve forms of cooperation that are important for the functioning of society.

Haidt also puts the case for particular loyalties or what he calls parochial altruism:

Another aspect of human nature that conservatives understand better than liberals, according to Haidt, is parochial altruism, the inclination to care more about members of your group — particularly those who have made sacrifices for it —than about outsiders. Saving Darfur, submitting to the United Nations and paying taxes to educate children in another state may be noble, but they aren’t natural. What’s natural is giving to your church, helping your P.T.A. and rallying together as Americans against a foreign threat.

Whilst I agree that it is natural to be more focused on serving those you have particular connections to and specific responsibilities toward (your own children, spouse, friends, ethny, conationals etc), I don't think it's sufficient to leave the argument at what is natural. The argument needs, at least, to be elaborated: what we feel particular loyalties toward, such as our family or ethny, have a distinct character and value - a goodness - that rightly inspires our love and attachment, and which it is therefore reasonable for us to want to uphold. We cannot easily substitute one loyalty for another, as (for example) my place within the larger Anglo tradition (my sense of ancestry, of a shared history, of language and culture) cannot be replicated within any other randomly chosen tradition - say the Chinese one. The Anglo tradition will necessarily be more meaningful for me than the Chinese one. Whilst I might like the Chinese tradition and wish it to endure, it is reasonable for me to want to primarily serve the tradition that is most meaningful for me; to which I am most closely connected; which forms a significant part of my identity; which most inspires my love and attachment; which I am best in a position to help reproduce (through children, contribution to culture etc); which is most likely to carry on what I love as distinctive features of my own ancestry and character and culture; and to which, therefore, I feel the greatest sense of duty and responsibility.

It's important to elaborate the sense in which it is reasonable to have particular loyalties rather than global ones, because otherwise it leaves things open for a liberal like Saletan to argue that we should transcend what is natural in order to adapt to the different conditions of the modern world:

Traits we evolved in a dispersed world, like tribalism and righteousness, have become dangerously maladaptive in an era of rapid globalization...

If we can harness that power — wisdom — our substantive project will be to reconcile our national and international differences. Is income inequality immoral? Should government favor religion? Can we tolerate cultures of female subjugation? And how far should we trust our instincts? Should people who find homosexuality repugnant overcome that reaction?

Haidt’s faith in moral taste receptors may not survive this scrutiny. Our taste for sanctity or authority, like our taste for sugar, could turn out to be a dangerous relic. But Haidt is right that we must learn what we have been, even if our nature is to transcend it.

See? It hardly makes a dint in Saletan's commitment to liberalism to argue that traditional morality fits better with human nature. He has an easy "out" which is to argue that we are to use reason to transcend an evolved nature. If it's just a question of what "fits" he can argue that what fitted a premodern society no longer fits, or may even be maladaptive to, a modern society.

We challenge liberals more effectively by exposing the arbitrary underpinnings of their own morality, on which their sense of what is just is based, and by defending our own positions as being not only true in the sense of being objectively moral, but as being rational and necessary for the long term functioning of society.

So what did Georgiou the compassionate moderate think about Anglos?

Last year I wrote a couple of posts about the so-called "moderates" within the Liberal Party (in Australia, the Liberal Party is the major right-wing party).

My argument was that the moderates should really be termed the "radicals" or the "purists" because they want a pure form of liberalism rather than one fused with anything conservative.

They reject pluralism. They do not want to balance a range of goods together within a coherent framework. Instead, they insist that there is one overriding good, that of individual autonomy.

This makes them the more ideological wing of the Liberal Party and it means that their social policy will have more radical effects on society, as it means that society has to be reshaped to fit just one primary good.

I quoted one of the leading "moderates" (i.e. purists) Senator George Brandis, in support of my argument. Brandis identifies the one goal as "individual freedom" but he makes it clear that he means "freedom as individual autonomy":

the sovereign idea which inspires our side of politics has always been the same: our belief that the paramount public value is the freedom of the individual ...

the most important single thing we must do is renew our commitment to the freedom of the individual, and restore that commitment to the very centre of our political value system: not one among several competing values, but the core value, from which our world view ultimately derives.

in qualifying the Liberal Party's commitment to the freedom of the individual as its core value, and weighing it against what he often called social cohesion, Howard made a profound departure from the tradition of Deakin and Menzies.

Liberalism ... has such a central guiding principle - respect for the freedom of the individual, his dignity and his autonomy; his right ... to be the architect of his own life [i.e. to be a self-determining, self-creating autonomous individual]

Every one of those reforms extended the bounds of human freedom, gave individual men and women greater autonomy ...

Brandis does not allow for competing values. He is not a fusionist but a liberal purist. As such he is not a moderate liberal but a radical one.

But they like to think of themselves as moderates, and as the "compassionate" liberals, and are treated as such in the media. For instance, when one of the leading "moderates" in the Liberal Party, Petro Georgiou, retired last year, we had letters of praise in the papers such as this:

Farewell Petro, your honesty and compassion to all humans will surely be missed. Here passes the last great 'liberal' leaving the party...

Compassion to all humans? Well, he didn't extend much compassion to the majority of the population when he wrote back in the 1970s:

We as Liberals are committed to encouraging and supporting diversity in our multicultural society. We reject the sterile Anglo-conformity of past days.

Sterile Anglo-conformity of past days? So we are to treat the culture that came before 1970s style multiculturalism as sterile?

That is not a moderate or a compassionate view. It is a radical recasting of society and one which is cold to the consequences for those belonging to the Anglo tradition.

The quote comes from an Andrew Bolt column in today's Herald Sun. Bolt does a good job attacking the claims that Australia was always multicultural, but he himself only puts forward assimilation as an alternative.

Neither option is appealing or coherent. The multiculturalists believe you can have open borders and that the immigrants can all live harmoniously in their own cultural groups. It doesn't work out well. If you put 140 ethnic groups into Melbourne and Sydney, it becomes difficult for a traditional culture to maintain itself. People tend to become deracinated and end up adopting a pop culture lifestyle based on entertainment and consumerism. 140 cultures stuck together effectively means no culture, just shopping malls. You need a bit of distance and continuity to maintain a real cultural tradition.

In Europe the outcome has been even more problematic. There you have Muslim immigrants in large numbers, some of whom express non-liberal values. So the liberals in power decide the solution is to pull the plug on multiculturalism in favour of assimilation.

But can assimilation work? Maybe if numbers were small. But the liberal commitment to open borders means that numbers are constantly growing. So how then is it assumed that there will always be a confident Anglo majority culture for the immigrants to assimilate into? The Anglo population will necessarily lose its confidence as its numbers and its sense of place recedes. As it declines, the newer immigrant groups will lose their desire to assimilate into a culture which is in retreat.

It hasn't been thought through. It's not enough for Bolt to call for assimilation. He needs to rethink the whole liberal framework which has brought about such unworkable options. In particular, he needs to consider why liberals are so ideologically committed to open borders.

Does liberal purism make you a moderate?

Last year Senator George Brandis gave an impressive speech setting out his political philosophy. I disagree vehemently with this philosophy, believing it to be utterly ruinous for Australia. But I admire the fact that Senator Brandis set out his fundamental, principled beliefs. How else can the really important issues in politics be debated?

Senator Brandis is a so-called "moderate" liberal. In my last post, I criticised the idea pushed by the media that Liberal Party members like Brandis, Malcolm Fraser, Petro Georgiou, Joe Hockey and Marise Payne are the moderates within the party. Why?

The so-called moderates are really the liberal purists. And that makes them more radical than those in the party who want to fuse liberalism with some aspect of conservatism.

In other words, the division is between purists and fusionists. The purists want to hold to a radically reductionist philosophy in which there is only one supreme value: individual autonomy. The fusionists are confused (in thinking that there is no opposition between liberalism and conservatism), but they are dimly aware of other values.

If you are a reductionist pushing a single value on society you are inevitably going to be more radical than someone aware (at some level) that other values might also need to be considered.

In his speech Senator Brandis makes his criticism of fusion crystal clear. He describes the original coming together of liberals and conservatives in the early nineteenth century as a "political fault line". He then argues that the most significant liberal leaders prior to John Howard always identified as liberal rather than as both liberal and conservative. He quotes, for instance, Alfred Deakin's declaration that "we are liberal always, radical often and never reactionary".

He believes the more recent leadership has tried to "dilute" the commitment to liberalism within the Liberal Party by fusing it with conservatism. John Howard, for instance, was committed to a "broad church of Australian Liberalism" in which it was possible to be a devotee of both Edmund Burke and John Stuart Mill. Tony Abbott too has argued that the Liberal Party is "not just liberal in nature".

Let me repeat: for Brandis the battle lines are between liberal purists like himself and fusionists. Which then brings us to the second issue at stake: reductionism.

Brandis asserts very clearly that there can only be one overriding, organising value in society. He calls that value "individual freedom" but he makes it clear that he means "freedom as individual autonomy". He writes, for instance,

the sovereign idea which inspires our side of politics has always been the same: our belief that the paramount public value is the freedom of the individual ...

the most important single thing we must do is renew our commitment to the freedom of the individual, and restore that commitment to the very centre of our political value system: not one among several competing values, but the core value, from which our world view ultimately derives.

in qualifying the Liberal Party's commitment to the freedom of the individual as its core value, and weighing it against what he often called social cohesion, Howard made a profound departure from the tradition of Deakin and Menzies.

Liberalism ... has such a central guiding principle - respect for the freedom of the individual, his dignity and his autonomy; his right ... to be the architect of his own life [i.e. to be a self-determining, self-creating autonomous individual]

Every one of those reforms extended the bounds of human freedom, gave individual men and women greater autonomy ...

Most revealingly, Brandis argues that you need a single value by which to decide political outcomes. There has to be a "higher common principle" or else there is no basis for deciding between competing claims:

But when one tries to bring both liberal and conservative values together, there is no anterior or higher common principle, according to which we can determine whether the question is to be decided according to the outcome dictated by liberal values ... or conservative values ...

For Brandis it is always the liberal value of individual autonomy which is to determine the question. He does not accept the idea that politics might involve the weighing up of many different considerations, purposes and values, with wisdom and prudence being key political talents. Brandis makes it sound as if a radical reductionism is the only possible solution to the fact of competing claims in society.

Of course, as a liberal Brandis portrays the influence of individual autonomy as the sole organising principle of society in wholly positive terms: as creating less uniformity, more freedom, more dignity, more progress, more choice and so on.

But this is not a reality that liberalism could ever have achieved. There is an incoherence to the idea that autonomy alone can bring greater choice and freedom. What, for instance, if the things that matter most to people require a distinct social setting in which people cooperate to achieve certain outcomes? There is no principled basis within liberalism for these social settings to be defended. Therefore, the choices that matter most to people will be lost. Choice will be limited to more trivial affairs, ones that are within the power of an atomised individual to self-determine, such as choice of entertainments, cuisine, travel and hobbies.

And what if the aim of society is always to maximise individual autonomy? Then whatever cannot be self-determined will be looked on negatively as an impediment to individual freedom. But there are many important aspects to life that aren't self-determined, including core aspects of our identity. Liberalism therefore ends up not so much liberating the individual to fully realise himself, but abstracting or alienating the individual.

These, at any rate, are the kinds of arguments which can be levelled against liberal reductionism. Unfortunately, the fusionists have only made more limited arguments against autonomy as the sole organising principle of society. Howard, as mentioned already, claimed only that "social cohesion" also had to be considered as a value. Which is true, but not really the most substantial value to set alongside autonomy. If the political situation is quiet, it leaves little objection in practice to autonomy as the sole consideration.

Tony Abbott for his part has stated that,

Perhaps it's enough to say that in some circumstances freedom and in other circumstances a set of rules is the most effective way to encourage people to be their best selves.

At least Abbott has made some sort of break with the idea of autonomy as the sole organising principle. But, again, he needs to develop the idea much further. It's not just a "set of rules" that needs to be weighed against autonomy. What about a commitment to family life? To a communal tradition? To an ideal of manhood or womanhood? To creating a pleasant and beautiful urban environment? To a standard of manners and morals?

It's not that any one of these values will then become an organising principle of society. Instead, it's up to a society to try to get the balance right between many values, including autonomy. That is what the liberal purists cannot and will not do. They are reductionists, committed to organising society along the lines of a single value, and they therefore constitute the more radical element within the Liberal Party.