Obama and Brooks: disciples of Edmund Burke?

Gabriel Sherman discusses the Obama-Brooks bromance in the New Republic today. It turns out both of them are fans of the political philosopher Edmund Burke. (Sam Tanenhaus drew a connection to Obama and Burke in his “Death of Conservatism” article also.) This is surprising because Russell Kirk had crowned Burke the father of modern conservatism. What is it about Burke that could attract these three very different figures?

Burke’s most famous book, Reflections on the Revolutions of France, disavows abstract principles in favor of ‘prescription’ or what we would call tradition. Kirk buys into all of this. Obama and Brooks, on the other hand, are probably interested in the first part-disavowal of principles. President Obama prides himself on being post-partisan and a pragmatist. David Brooks has made a name for himself for NOT being a doctrinaire conservative. Peter Lawler has said about Brooks, “He has the ambiguous title of being the most conservative columnist at the NY Times.”

Burke’s (and Kirk’s) disavowal of principles is the reason why Harry Jaffa has argued against this particular vision of conservatism. Practices presuppose principles and their divorce leaves the former without a guide. The result is the reduction of Burke’s prescription to our current President’s pragmatism. Orginal Burkeans like Kirk opposed innovation; today's Burkeans demand change.

Mad Men are Bad Men

Mad Men is entering its third season and has earned rave reviews from critics. In regards to its cultural commentary, Ross Douthat summarizes a typical liberal view of the show:

Mad Men, she [The Nation’s Anna McCarthy] writes, is "concerned with
demonstrating the progress we've made in gender relations since the alienated
years before the women's movement," and with dramatizing "the disaffection of
midcentury suburbia's 'lonely crowd' and the oppressive expectations of the
feminine mystique," not to mention "the hatefulness of conformist WASP culture.

Since Conservatives usually oppose ‘progress,’ one would expect that they would hate the show; however, Rod Dreher argues, “Surely conservatives don't want to be in the position of defending a social order that degraded women, subordinated blacks…” I hope not. Moreover, Conservatives should contest Gordon Gekko prototype presented in the show. Unfortunately, Gekko is stil popular among many Conservatives today.

The characters in Mad Men want to come across as virtuous (family men who work hard) while in secret they are not (domineering husbands and neglectful parents who are never at their desk). Lacking goodness, they are unhappy too-a point missed by this POMO Cons post.
Don Draper, the show's lead, is an updated version of Fitzgerald's Gatsby. As Thomas Hibbs puts it, he "is the ultimate self-made man, an identity thief who wants to escape from his past." Like Gatsby, we see Draper's divided self as he constantly tries to sustain a myth. The difference between the two is we pity Gatsby, but not Draper. To this point, someone recently told me he stopped watching the show because "there was no one to root for." Whether or not Draper repeats Gatsby's swimming mishap, we can be fairly certain where he will end up.

What's love got to do with it?

David McCullough’s success is the result of his ability to rehabilitate the reputation of Presidents (John Adams, Truman) who have been unpopular for sometime now. His mo is to focus less on their statesmanship, which is controversial, and more on their personal lives, especially their relationship to their wives. Thus, Adams and Truman’s stock with the public has gone up, not because of their handling of public affairs, but because of the love letters they sent their significant others.

McCullough’s book on Adams was made into an award winning series on HBO. The series was actually better than McCullough’s book because it focused more on Adams role in the great events of his time. His relationship with his wife is given less and less attention as the series progresses. And in the last two episodes, which deal with his Vice-Presidency and Presidency, it does not play an important part in the story at all. If McCullough should be praised, then it should be for revealing to Hollywood (and to the Academy) that there is a public who is hungry to learn more about our Founding Fathers. Who knew?

How do you like your heroes?

Whether it is film (Star Trek), television (Battlestar Galactica), or print (Harry Potter), our most recent heroes seem to be made out of the same mold.

1. He is guided by instinct. This isn’t to say the hero is unintelligent. Kirk’s “aptitudes scores are off the charts,” while Starbuck is a flight instructor. Harry does well on his exams, though he only seems to be tested once a year. What is important is that none of them deliberate when they’re in a dilemma. Instead, they instinctively or intuitively react to the situation. Often, they are praised for not thinking. Moreover, they are contrasted with characters who are characterized by their rationality: Spock, Apollo, and Hermione. Notice that none of these other characters are villains. They’re either sidekicks or backups to the heroes. They’re praised for their braininess, but their subordinate status is never in doubt.

2. He has a propensity to break rules. The hero is not a rebel, but he is not an establishment man (e.g. Percy) either. He works within the system-until an emergency arises. This usually annoys the establishment to no end. Spock tells Kirk, “I would cite protocol, but I know you would ignore it.” Starbuck has to be thrown into the brig a few times and Dumbledore actually praises Harry for his rule-breaking. Of course, the rules they break are never moral principles, only legal ones. Legal rules, the product of finite minds, cannot cover all cases. Emergencies reveal the need for practical wisdom or prudence-the ability to judge what solution will work in a unique situation. And it is this ability to think outside of the box which distinguishes the heroes from their supporting cast.

3. He is very young. All of the characters know someone significantly older than them who you would expect to be the actual hero. The cult of youth is at work here, but not in its most pernicious form. Captain Pike, Commander Adama, and Professor Dumbledore are all portrayed as venerable, yet they are never on center stage. Pike’s self-sacrifice is noble, but Kirk has to rescue him. Adama orders others around while Starbuck is in the battle. Dumbledore usually shows up at the end of the final scene to clean things up. They’re never in the thick of it, like the youngsters are. The celebration of youth is clear, although mild.

The “If only” school

Its tough being a Commie because the most famous instantiation of your philosophy, the Soviet Union, produced the Show Trials, Gulag, and Berlin Wall. You’re not going to win any popularity contests that way.

Consequently, the Red strategy is to argue that Stalin’s Russia was a distortion of Marxist-Leninism. “If only,” they say, “Trotsky had been in charge, then we would have seen the humane face of Communism.” The thuggish Stalin had the sophisticated Trotsky killed so the true teaching was never implemented.

Robert Service and Christopher Hitchens look into this claim on Uncommon Knowledge. Service argues that Trotsky would have been more aggressive than Stalin in pushing Communism globally. For Trotsky, the Cold War would have heated up as he would have disposed of the proxies and just invaded the countries directly. The topic is an interesting one because it bears upon the question of whether Communism should be taken seriously as an option today. And Chavez seems to be persuading many Latin Americans that it is viable as they “lurch to the left.”

Internet's porn problem

That it is a problem is not a self-evident proposition to readers of The Atlantic Monthly. Fortunately, Ross Douthat is brave enough to engage them on this issue. He makes a series of arguments obliterating the fantasy-reality distinction which Libertarians hide behind. Unfortunately, his attack stops there as he concludes the piece taking a realist “put-up with it” position.

I wonder, however, if his realism is really just a form of resignation. He concedes too many arguments in the second half of the article. For example, he thinks that there is no correlation between porn use and violence. But Paul Hunker, an U.S. government attorney, has reported that thousands have been arrested because of this very thing. Douthat also seems to think that the Internet cannot regulated. Like David Rowan, he thinks censoring the Internet is “like trying to catch the wind.” Yet Michael Cook has discusses how many countries are working on the problem. Australia’s “internet traffic has to pass through a handful of “pipelines” which could be filtered.” Malaysia recently signed a contract with Internet Traffic to filter their websites. And Harvard Law School reports that Iran “has one of the most sophisticated government filtering systems in the world.” (Usually, I do not cite Iran for examples of good governance, but just because it is bad in some things, that doesn’t mean its bad in all things. Thinking only in black and white categories, like U.S. is the Great Satan, is exactly what we fault Muslim Fundamentalists for.)

Anyway, this is where the debate needs to go. Constant technological innovations suggest an effective filtering device could be created. There just has to be a market for it. The only reason there isn’t one is because of the fatalist tendency of good guys like Douthat on this question. Where there is market, there is way.

Tocqueville on the recent Town Hall Meetings.

The debate over National Healthcare took a new turn as a series of Town hall meetings heated up as constituents challenged their representatives over the matter. Tocqueville would have been delighted to see these meetings being used a vehicle to express public opinion and encourage citizens to engage civic affairs:

Town meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it
within the people's reach, they teach men how to use and how to enjoy it. A
nation may establish a free government, but without municipal institutions it
cannot have the spirit of liberty.

Policymakers should take these episodes seriously in regards to discerning the public mood on the Health Care issue, especially if they want to get reelected next term.

Political Science, Ancient and Modern

Peter Robinson’s recent interview with Harry Jaffa has inspired me to reread his magisterial work, Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. In the work, he practices a political science in which the purpose is to study the words and deeds of statesmen. For Jaffa, a student of politics should study the rhetoric, oratory, and diplomacy of the great figures of the past. Anyone who has taken a course in political science will tell you that this is NOT what you will do in a typical course in the subject today. That doesn’t mean Jaffa’s method is new, but rather old, or better yet, classical. He wants a return to classical political philosophy.

This approach was rejected by Alexander Hamilton in favor of our current science:

The science of politics, however, like most other sciences, has received great
improvement. The efficacy of various principles is now well understood, which
were either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients. The regular
distribution of power into distinct departments; the introduction of legislative
balances and checks; the institution of courts composed of judges holding their
offices during good behavior; the representation of the people in the
legislature by deputies of their own election: these are wholly new discoveries,
or have made their principal progress towards perfection in modern times.

Hamilton is overstating his case in regards to the ancients being unaware of procedural devices; nevertheless, it is true the emphasis was not on ‘mechanisms’ like Checks and Balances.

After two hundred years though, there have been plenty of events to suggest the classical method should still have a role in political science. Every great crisis (The Revolutionary War, Civil War, and the Great Depression etc) required a great statesman to steer us through it. Even our current dilemmas, Iraq and the Fiscal Crisis, reveal the consequences of poor leadership. A return to study of statesmanship might be in order.

Is John Rocker mad or bad?

This MercatorNet article talks about how the APA (American Psychiatric Association) plans to expand the category of mental disorder to include lust, greed, and gluttony. These habits were traditionally considered to be vices to be reformed and not disorders to be treated.

Another example which illustrates the author’s thesis is when the racist baseball player John Rocker was asked by the MLB Commissioner to see a psychiatrist i.e. racism is a psychological, not a moral, problem. Whether his comments were mentally disturbed or immoral will affect how we perceive, and thus evaluate, his words: Should Rocker lie on a couch, pop pills, or be held accountable for his actions?

'National Greatness' Conservatives and their Golden Calf

Patrick Deneen has noticed that many conservatives of late have been talking about reigniting our space program and sending someone to Mars. He sees all of this talk about grand projects as mistaken because it diverts attention away from our inability to live together here.

Besides the current Mars talk, another example that people have become enamored with 'grand' projects is David Brooks' notion of national greatness conservatism. Fellow Neo-Cons followed suit and after 9/11 put forward the project of democratizing the Middle East.

I wonder if the desire to undertake grand projects is the result of Michael Novak’s “empty shrine.” Proponents of Liberal Democracy argue that the shrine (society’s governing ideal) must be empty because we live in a pluralistic society. But if the desire to worship or at least submit oneself to an ideal is natural, then we shouldn’t be surprised to see the shrine filled with all sort of extravagant projects. If Moses does not deliver God’s commandments in time, then the people will have their Golden Calf in his stead.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates on moral relativism

Walk into any Barnes and Noble and you are bound to run into a book display celebrating the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth. Unfortunately, a book you will not find in that collection is Harry Jaffa’s Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, which was published fifty years ago. Jaffa was recently on Uncommon Knowledge and he talked about what originally drew him to him this debate. What Lincoln and Douglas are ultimately arguing about is whether morals are relative or absolute. Or to put it in Jaffa’s words, “Do the people make the moral law or does the moral law make the people?”

Take Douglas, for instance. His “popular sovereignty” argument is that slavery’s existence is simply a matter for the people in each state to vote up or down. And since the people's will is never unanimous, might or the majority makes right. This is just a variation of the doctrine of moral relativism which states that moral principles are a product of the people’s will. Thus morals are subjective and will vary from place to place which is why Douglas believes popular soveriengty is the solution to the slavery issue.

In contrast, Lincoln argued that the equality principle, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, is made by God, not man. The approval of slavery is a failure to live up to the moral law. This is a textbook presentation of moral absolutism.

What is especially interesting is how moral relativism is applied today. Cultural Liberals, who believe history is moving toward greater and greater freedom, usually presuppose moral relativism when arguing for their causes: abortion, gay marriage, etc. Yet they would think Lincoln, not Douglas, belongs in their pantheon of heroes. If the L-D Debates reveal anything, it is that such Progressives should reevaluate their first principles. The rock of moral absolutism can better secure human rights than the shifting sands of moral relativism.