Still, one quality that I think perhaps could be ascribed to all the various authors on this site is a one or another form of “a naive idealism” which Aubrey attributes in my case to “a kind of academic distance from reality.” Now, I won’t discount that any “naive idealism” on my part arises from “academic distance from reality,” though I would at least point out two factors to consider: 1. The numerous non-academics among the authors on the Front Porch perhaps also share some variants of a sort of “naive idealism,” suggesting that our idealism is not solely or merely academic; and, 2. I know of VERY FEW academics who share anything resembling my views on many of these matters – if anything, I am an apostate within the academic priesthood – suggesting that my naive idealism, if it arises from any source, is far less likely to be an academic in nature.

But, more specifically: I am a “political theorist,” and a particular kind of that odd species. I study the history of political philosophy, that is, a wide range of ideas that various human beings throughout the ages have thought how we ought to organize our society and our polity in accordance with a particular and often varying visions of what each regarded to constitute the good life. It’s true, then, that this backdrop induces a certain distance from “hard realities of the world,” but that’s in part because my approach doesn’t necessarily accept as given that what we regard as “the hard realities” are necessarily or permanently part of the organization of our human world. Now, at the same time I write that, I also acknowledge that a number of (particularly modern) political philosophers (e.g., Karl Marx) proved to be catastrophic because not only did they refuse to accept the reality of the human world as “given,” but they sought its radical transformation in the name of an ideal alternative vision (not to mention a severely “moralizing tone”!). So, part of the difficulty of anyone seeking to negotiate between what is and what ought to be is an awareness of what Vaclav Havel called “the art of the possible” in both senses – what real and live political possibilities exist which our current age may be incapable of seeing, and what limits are imposed by both circumstance and human nature itself that ought to point to the outer limits of what is deemed to be “possible.”

I strive – doubtlessly often deficiently or excessively – to undertake this negotiation in thinking about what might be possible, in the effort to argue on behalf of what I think would be a better way than the course on which we are now embarked. A great portion of my effort is to engage in a fairly sustained argument against what are now regarded as contemporary orthodoxies. You name several of those orthodoxies here: the orthodoxy of economic efficiency and comparative advantage trumping any other considerations (yes, it’s true what you say about modern business, but it does not have to be conducted always and everywhere in this way); the orthodoxy that cosmopolitan cities are the best loci of our “creative classes”; the orthodoxy that religion is and should be something that we make up and choose for ourselves in ways that best comport with our own inclinations at any given time. Often I invoke some older “orthodoxies” against these (admittedly, quite unfashionable, but no less “real” in their own time): the subordination of economic considerations (and, particularly narrowly conceived ones which stress efficiency and growth) to broader considerations of the common good (these were arguments made long ago by Aristotle, and were also incorporated in Catholic teaching, for instance, banning usury); the centrality of place – with accompanying stress upon memory, obligation, generational inheritance, as well as generational duty, in considerations of what constituted a good human life (This means that there is always likely to be a tension between cities and towns, but that each has a legitimate and honored place in the human built environment, even that there is logical relationship between them that has been captured and described best by Philip Bess in his arguments on behalf of “the Urban Transect.” See his book, _Til We Have Built Jerusalem_ for particulars); or, the older “orthodoxy” that religion is itself a cultural system to which we owe reverence and deference, based upon the transcendent but embodied deeply in the ongoing temporal unfolding of human communities, that teaches us at once the aspiration for knowledge of the divine as well as the central truth of certain prohibitions (the Bible begins with praise of human resemblance to the divine – the _imago dei_ and shortly thereafter, the prohibition against aspiring to become gods). The very idea that we simply “choose” a religion, or change it at will, goes against this older “orthodoxy” that we are called to conform our own will to the teachings of our religion, especially when we are confronted with prohibitions that we may find personally inconvenient or culturally “unprogressed.”

Are my “orthodoxies” (these are just a few, anyway, in response to your query) based in unreality? According to our modern orthodoxies, yes, they are. But they are not outside the range of possible human realities – indeed, they have been and may yet be ideas that deeply shaped human reality for many centuries. I don’t gainsay that my arguments now may strike many as deeply impracticable, and they are not intended to be action programs for the next 100 days of Obama’s presidency. Rather, they are intended to be arguments that seek to promote a different way of thinking about our current reality – that may even suggest the “unreality” of our reality, particularly to the extent that our current reality seems to contradict, even pose itself as antithetical and hostile toward, a deeper reality that the natural world and human nature reflect and reveal. Our contemporary assault upon the natural world and human nature suggests to me that we are living in deeply “unreal” times, and lest reality bite us in the ass – as I think it’s now doing in the economic realm, has been doing in the environmental realm, and will be continuing to do in the realm of resource depletion and moral depletion – then we had better reassess how “real” we think our current way of life really is. So – I hope you will forgive me an occasional or even frequent foray into “unreality,” but it’s intended not to depart the shores of sensibleness, and even aspires to the notion that need to get real.

Take your discussion of local production for local consumption. If I can get a loan from someone far away at a better rate, I would be an idiot not to. As a businessman, I can tell you I will seek the lowest cost all over the world for my purchases and will ship my products anywhere in the world where the price is highest. If I don’t, my competitor will and drive me out of business. My uncle in the apparel business buys from a wholesaler in LA who in turn buys from Vietnamese and Indian garment producers. The apparel is then retailed to mostly Latinos in New Jersey. You make all this sound immoral. If not impose huge tariffs, would you want Obama to publicly classify these local “global” businessmen as morally unworthy?

Can you clarify what your views are on cities versus small towns? On the one hand, you seem to be saying you think small town values are superior to city values. But on the other hand, you seem to want policies that will lead to further urbanization. Maybe cities with small town values? As much as I too am nostalgic for the small town where I grew up, I left for the cities for college and then for work. Cities small, medium, and large are where people gather and meet and live and exchange ideas and create things. Cities are centers of learning and human flourishing as well as a lot of bad things that come with a mass of humanity coming together to live, love, inspire, compete, fight, and all the other things men and women always do. I love cities. I love small towns. But most of all, I love the quintessentially American mobility that you think should be discouraged that allows me to choose where I want to live at any given time.

By the way, Obama returned to Chicago to work in the community that he lived in before he went off to law school. His wife also returned to her hometown and worked in the community after quitting her job as a corporate lawyer. They seem to have lived your ideal. Except it was Chicago, and not Attica Michigan. And I find your pining for traditional religions odd. Wasn’t America all about self-made religions and sects? Hasn’t there been a consistent history of new doctrines and “cults” popping up every couple of decades throughout our history to renew the vibrancy of our community’s religious lives?

I do love your publication. It’s truly unique.

Btw, those CAFE standards are one of the worst culprits in encouraging sprawling, disconnected communities. They make it possible for people to buy gas-guzzling cars and live far from work. As long as the car manufacturer meets the fleet standards, the person who can afford a gas-guzzler (or even a gas-efficient car) has no particular motivation to reduce the amount of time the vehicle spends traveling. A gas-tax, preferably a net-zero gas tax, would be different. It would motivate people to live and work in communities.

“What is above all missing in the various proposals relating to energy is even the passing suggestion that we should consider policies that encourage us to change our behavior – living closer to the places where we work and shop, driving less, being more invested in our particular places and communities.”

That sounds a wee-bit ridiculous as Obama and Biden are the first two presidents in years to come from urban areas, and there seems to be some initiative on their part to encourage a change in how urban space is designed. Of course, that would be cold comfort for those who consider rural, small towns as the only center of community, and theres been rumbling that the much touted Office of Urban Policy hasn’t gotten off to the greatest start. Either way, the general move seems to be towards constructing better designed, community-oriented cities by changing regulations and zoning problems that have discouraged urban planning that actually takes people into consideration i.e. the rise of people like Robert Moses, who bulldozed NYC’s once bustling ethnic communities with super-highways.

I don’t know if urban community will get stronger or weaker in the coming years, but from my vantage point of living in a modestly sized south-eastern capital (Columbia, S.C.), it seems to be heading in the direction of stronger. Hell, I can’t walk around the city, shop, or eat without running into someone I know, or having additional guests at dinner as people walk in. And the move towards a greater mix of housing, both class-wise and racially, has improved that sense.

Not if the national goverments have anything to do with things. Which they do.

“Over the last seven years, with the Soviet bloc books now open, we of course have learned much about how communist economics worked, or, more to the point, did not. But the biggest surprise is what the aftermath of the four-decade experiment has been teaching us about how and why our own Western economies and societies function, or, perhaps more exactly, refreshing our own long-dormant memories of the process.

Economists have had considerable experience this century in observing how market economies converted to centrally planned ones but until recently have had virtually no exposure in the opposite direction. Ironically, in aiding in the process of implementing the latter, we are being forced to more fully understand the roots of our own system.

Much of what we took for granted in our free market system and assumed to be human nature was not nature at all, but culture. The dismantling of the central planning function in an economy does not, as some had supposed, automatically establish a free market entrepreneurial system. There is a vast amount of capitalist culture and infrastructure
underpinning market economies that has evolved over generations: laws, conventions, behaviors, and a wide variety of business professions and practices that have no important functions in a centrally planned economy.”

There’s a kernel of an important thought there, if the libertarians could throw off their self-imposed intellectual shackles long enough to see it.

Good for you Deneen, for pushing the new President on his rhetorical flights. This is the M.O. of a Washington averse to cause and effect. They lay out a romantic premise or some manic scream of “Boo!” and then craft a policy that contradicts the earlier claim …and then pervert that policy further in execution. The camel becomes a three-legged land beast with fins instead of humps. By all accounts, President Obama is fast appearing to be a real player in this tired Beltway Bait and Switch. Really, the hoary denizens of Foggy Bottom have no choice now because the imperial over-reach and feral policies of the lapsed-Republic run square up against the prevailing mythology and it aint a pretty sight. Cognitive Dissonance can only be carried on at a fever pitch for so long before the civic body swoons. The only hope is that the public’s somnolence and gullibility remains the same. So far, so good for Washington D.C., that Multi-Cultural Cosa Nostra with the most talkative Omerta in the history of organized Bunko.

Generally, it is best to add all statements, average them and then assume the opposite of what is said. This is the chief bi-partisan initiative of our two erstwhile political parties.

Mr. Scott is perhaps right, maybe there is a dimes worth of difference between parties…but it’s only a dime and with the bi-partisan budget busting going on now, that dime will be two penny soon enough, hence the phrase “give you my two-cents worth”.

And, yes, I do exaggerate when I state “the song remains the same” if that’s taken to understand that there are not important differences in many respects between the respective parties. I wouldn’t argue with that. But when it comes to certain fundamental commitments having to do with an embrace of the modern regime – with its emphasis on economic growth, expansion, centralization of power, consolidation, mobility, meritocracy, bigger is beautiful, a “culture of choice” – then I say, a pox on both their houses.

Now Deneen is too hard on President Obama suggesting that “the American way of life is non-negociatable.” From my ‘lil seat within the Republican big tent, I’d have to say that’s a sin my side is much more inclined to commit. Obama did have the guts to make his (infamous among many conservatives) remark about Americans assuming they can keep their thermoters at 68 degrees year-round.

And I roll my eyes at these predictable “same as the old boss” “not a dime’s worth of difference” Front Porch Republic rhetorical tropes as hyperbolic and silly. Slogans perhaps somewhat excusable if ever a serious political movement could get afoot…but otherwise…

But I quibble. Because here I see the Front Porch Republic getting down to brass tacks. Against ethanol. For a modern version of “trust busting,” especialy in financial markets. Incentives for localized mortage holding. Even incentives for smaller businesses and penalties for larger ones! And, in some undefined way, against Free Trade. That is, against an unqualified commitment to Free Trade. Probably for a gas tax, or at least for other incentives to those who don’t commute far. Some politicallly bold stuff there, but sounding quite good at this moment.

Here, Deneen’s theoretical and practical sides are working together quite well. Again, kudos!

I really think the time has come to think more movement-wise. I stand loyal to the Republicans, because my Tocquevillian realism about modern commerce won’t allow me to make the sort of sweeping condemnations of corporate capitalism and liberalism that many of you here are way too ready to indulge in. But, man, we need the Front Porch Republic type voice out there. Make the Republican and Democratic candidates/parties have to compete for Front Porch Support, as they once upon a time had to do for Progressive support.