The Left, in their dishonorable corruption of language, have misappropriated the term. It now is a cover for them to hide behind. This is true as well of the term “progressive”. In the doublespeak of the left white is black and black is white. But the last thing that the Left could ever is liberal, the very thing that they will destroy is progress and they mpst passionately hate liberty. They are berserkers and destroyers: A menagerie of collectivist errors–Stalinists, Leninists, Maoists, Fascists and everything in between. They have willfully embraced a complete inversion of all values, which is to say they are wholly immoral.

It is time that decent Americans come to terms with this and call them by their true names.

The crisis of today is not between Liberalism and Conservatism; it is between Communism and Neo-National Socialism on the one hand and Classical Liberalism as articulated by modern conservatives on the other. Any other take on the is a bucket of pseudo-intellectual hogwash and the wort sort of sophistry.

http://www.seattlecatholic.com/a050928.html

That’s the capital L.

What blogger at FPR is engaging in “liberal bashing?”

1.) You’re right about keeping the essay clean, but I’d be a bit warier than you are about arguments that too easily lump the Straussians together, given certain widespread idiocitic ideas about them.

2.) Your characterization of Peter’s stance is useful enough, no need to go into my quibbles with it here…he can and does defend himself…

3.) Related debates here about “blending” and such; for now, I’ll stand by what I wrote and address your curiosity about my motivations for writing these insanely long comments on and about FPR. They are:

a.) loud “AMENS!” that came forth from my soul, followed by a couple of muffled quizzicle “buts,” both when I read Berry’s “Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community” essay when younger, and when I in my later Strauss-influenced days I read McWilliams’ seminal “Democracy and the Citizen” essay. ..the buts concern the 2009 question of, “and how do we extricate communities from their subjection to the market economy?” (see my current “Porcher Localism” post on Pomocon) and the 1789 question of, “but wasn’t the proper vote nonetheless for ratification?”

b.) A desire for FPR to better “win friends and influence people” over the long term. Again I say it, Pat: I sincerely think the FPR emphasis might well help, as Toc. would say, “prop us up on the side where we lean.”

c.) My worries about FPR, then?

First, that its capital L-Liberalism bashing, might not allow the Americans who need to hear FPR to do so. That’s why I say you “can’t run directly against TJ,” or more to the point, directly against the Declaration and the Constitution. I don’t want people to dismiss y’all as a bunch of cranks! Simple as that!

Second, and much more secondarily, I fear that FPR’s capital L-Liberalism bashing could become a largely literary politics that for various reasons helps the Democrats more than the Republicans. The easiest way to explain why I think this would help the Dem side more is to share that I was a long-suffering Pro-life Dem who around 2001(pre-9/11) concluded, partly under the weight of my Tocquevillian and Strauss-influenced education, that that position couldn’t be maintained anymore. And once I learned more about what the basic conservative positions really were, I was not pleased with myself for having tarried so long in my “cool” semi-Demi moderation. So I egotistically worry that FPR might be a place that keeps folks with my basic make-up content with relatedly unrealistic political positions, if its more theory-centric and apolitical tendencies become dominant. But again, all this is very secondary, and even marginal, given the HUGE legions of FPR partisans out there waiting to swing elections.

All in all, I think because I’m probably more susceptible to the FPR frequency than most other Pomocon folks, my criticism gets more spirited, and long-winded! But Pat, my thanks for keeping up the good and necessary work that is FPR.

And, you’re right to thank Carl (and others) for their valuable contributions; let me add my note of thanks. I’ll be posting Pt. II on Friday.

1. It seemed a bit messy, and probably self-indulgent, to get into these academic intramural distinctions in a 35 minute talk. I’m happy to amend to say “many Straussians” or even “a number of Straussians.” I don’t mean the point to be a distraction – my main interest was in discussing some of the more interesting implications of Strauss’s essay, and I think that one would be hard pressed to find ANY Straussian, or more than a few exceptions, that see the radicalness of Strauss’s point about the succession of the three waves.

2. Peter has had similarly to account for the problem of the Founding in relation to what America has become, as does any conservative who thinks we aren’t what we were supposed to be. His version is more creative than most – I’ll give him that. He argues that the Founding was verbally Lockean but actually Thomistic (hence why he is the Dean of the “Built Better Than They Knew” School). It’s an intriguing argument, but it doesn’t really account for why America has become more Lockean over time. Unless it’s for the reason that people begin to conform acts to their explanations, in which case it’s probably not quite accurate to say that the Founding wasn’t really Lockean after all. If it really were Thomistic, one might suspect that we wouldn’t be so prone to employing Lockean explanations for our actions. We might instead employ Thomistic explanations. If we weren’t actually Lockean at the Founding, then Peter’s just pushing the foreign contagion thesis back one step.

3. I think this is the real crux of whatever debate we may have been having, though I think it’s really simply a case that we just agree to disagree. What is described here by Carl as a “blending” I would argue is a relationship of profound tension and even antagonism. The official Lockeanism/liberalism of the Founding is imperialistic, and its logic has worked itself out through the regime that was founded according to its basic premises. The “alternative” inheritance has existed uneasily alongside the dominant liberal tradition – indeed, as I argue in Part II (though Carl has basically given it all away!), that pre-modern inheritance has even given liberalism sustenance that it has gladly “used” but hardly replenished (e.g., families, virtues like charity and frugality, self-government, etc.).

The regime has become “more itself” over time. What Carl regards as a “blending” I understand to be a routing. I think the people writing here differ quite a bit in how this situation is to be redressed, but in general there’s a degree of agreement that the the “status quo” cannot be maintained, above all because the status quo is leading us toward ruination and catastrophe. I disagree that what we are witnessing is ongoing happy “blending” of our several traditions. I see a ruinous embrace of a dominant ethic that portends a bad future for future generations, not to mention the current one.

I also disagree that the “alternative” I’m seeking to tease out is somehow insufficient to the task or wildly foreign to our native soil. While attenuated, there is a tradition of more local self-governance built into the American DNA (the earlier discussions of “boomers” and “stickers” applies. The two are distinct and mutually exclusive, and while the “Boomers” have been dominant, I do not think that must necessarily be the case. At least I’ll go down fighting for the “Sticker” cause). I agree that it does not seem politically feasible that we will see its realization tonight or tomorrow or next week or next year. But, as I said elsewhere, small changes, accumulated over a period, can have a significant effect on the course of a regime with the passage of time. You seem impatient for a political platform (maybe you want to vote for it?), but before there can be anything that concrete, there has to be the working through of ideas and arguments and tempers flaring (yes, mine did recently), and late nights on or off or near or far from a porch where ideas and schemes and wild crackpot ambitions are hatched. And, most importantly, there needs to be persuasion. You seem to be demanding either a revolution or that we all stand down and join the PoMoCon team in acknowledging that there’s nothing really to be done – everything is getting better and worse, after all. I disagree.

Given the thrust of your argument, I’m actually puzzled as to why you care enough to make several lengthy contributions to the discussion. If you’re right, there really is no chance that any of the arguments here can have any significant political effect. After all, “thank God, this is America, a PLACE in which you cannot run directly against Jefferson and Locke.” So, either you’re being charitable and warning us not to waste our time (though it’s puzzling that you would waste your own time in warning us thusly), or you’re worried that we’ll cause mischief. I suspect that it’s the latter (and if so, perhaps things aren’t as wholly unchangeable as you suggest), but if it’s the former, thanks for your concern, but I don’t mind wasting my time here. The company’s good.

2) The Strauss-influenced strain Deneen is most engaged in discussion with, the “post-modern conservatives,” likewise have a much more complicated relation to liberalism than this would suggest–many of them are in broad agreement with the rather Catholic and by-no-means-West-Coast thought of Peter Lawler and Pierre Manent.

3) Since I heard the original talk in full(you’re in for a treat), I know that (spoilers ahead!) the Alternative American Political Tradition includes Puritans, AntiFederalists, agrarians, and others that Carey Wilson McWilliams liked, passing down to Berry and FPR. It’s a fine talk that has influenced my own thinking. I do think Pat pays too little attention to how this tradition at important points blends with the dominant American tradition, which I would label the (Prudential) Protection of Natural Rights. Especially with most Puritan defenders of liberty and Anti-Federalists, this blending is really undeniable. So many talk of township liberty, but also of natural rights. So why not try to honor and work with this blending? That is, to try to do so now, and in explicit opposition to the progressivist and libertarian traditions that have developed since the founding?
For Pat to label the strain of American political thinking he identifies as ALTERNATIVE makes it sound like it really IS an alternative. But it cannot politically stand alone; it can only so stand as a supplement to and partial corrective of the dominant tradition, let’s say, as a broader understanding of what the Declaration’s reference to “Prudence” and “such principles” entails. (I detail why we cannot conceive of how it would stand alone on Postmodern Conservative today.)
From a Pomocon perspective, for us to talk of an Alternative Tradition is like saying, “Oh, we tried liberalism and natural rights, we tried like bad Straussians to separate the first wave of modern liberalism from the second wave of progressivism, and all that failed and was shown to be incoherent by Deneen, and so now, we’re going to try the ‘alternative.’” But alas, or rather, thank God, this is America, a PLACE in which you cannot run directly against Jefferson and Locke, nor surgically remove them from the patient.