A New Humanism in Europe
An international conference took place on June 22 at the Libera Università degli Studi “San Pio V” in Rome to consider the nature and evolution of “European political thought after 1989 between globalization and new humanism.” Among the issues discussed, the most important was an examination of how the various political and philosophical cultures have come back to questions about God or, at least, religions’ role in public sphere. Together with the problem of identity, this is the central intellectual question of our times. Major events during the last twenty years, such as the fall of Soviet Empire and the 9/11 attacks on the United States, encouraged this profound transformation. We reported on some of the papers presented at the conference at the Telos blog and in the printed journal.
Michael Novak (American Enterprise Institute, Washington D.C.) talked about “The End of the Secular Era.” The starting point of his analysis was that 9/11 marked the collapse not only of the Twin Towers but also of secularism, to the extent that it represents a way to use reason as an autonomous instrument of knowledge without any reference to other perspectives. On the contrary, both individual existence and group life, that is politics and society, display a profound need for new foundations and answers, probably as ancient as the questions about human destiny. Arguing for a transformation of secular thinking, Novak predicts a coming end to secularism.
In Novak’s opinion, after Jacques Derrida’s death in 2004, Jürgen Habermas must be considered as the most important philosopher in the world. After decades of professed atheism, during the last seven years Habermas has started to raise questions about the limits of secularism, while also conceding some appreciation for aspects of religions that offer a dimension of transcendence and which, at the same time, defend every human being’s dignity, liberty, and responsibility. He seems to reference, implicitly and not often expressly, religions such as Judaism and Christianity. Habermas is more and more sceptical about the thesis of an unstoppable secularization of the West, if not of the entire world. On the contrary, the last years have shown how secularized Europe is much more of an exception than a rule.
For this reason Habermas engaged in a discussion with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 2004. After that meeting, the German philosopher was even more persuaded that modern notions of equality and justice are secular distillations of Jewish and Christian religion principles. As Pierre Manent underlined, the history of the last six or seven generations seems to show that Christianity, ultimately, had few difficulties in its meeting with democracy. Novak also asserted that a language that only uses secular categories has totalitarian tendencies because it denies political and social legitimacy to a religious public discourse. Moreover, secularism does not seem capable of persuading religious people to change or leave their creed. The relativism offered by secular culture does not seem to amount to an attractive alternative. Following Habermas’s more recent reflections, it is likely that we are going to face a kind of “secular-religious pluralism.” Nowadays we are increasingly aware of the importance of a substantive dialogue between secular and religious communities. The principal benefit would be for civil society and public opinion in the western democracies.
According to Eric Kaufmann (Birkbeck College, London), we are witnessing “the demographic revival of religion in Europe.” Current commentary juxtaposes the religiosity of America and the Muslim world against a secular Europe. “But is western Europe still secularizing?” Kaufmann asked. Scholars have failed to pay attention to the role that demography—notably fertility and immigration—plays in the secularization story in Europe. Kaufmann concentrated his analysis on privately held religious beliefs, using data from major European attitudes surveys for the period 1981-2004. These show that secularization is taking place primarily in Catholic European countries and has ceased among post-1945 birth cohorts in northwestern Europe. Kaufmann also projected the proportion of religious to nonreligious population to the year 2100. Together with data on religious retention among European-born Muslims, these suggest that Western Europe will be far more religious at the end of our century than it is now.
Larry Siedentop (Keble College, Oxford) started from a different question: “Why do Europeans feel happier referring to the role of ancient Greece and Rome than to the role of the Church in the formation of their culture?” The answer can be found in the way that secularism has come to be understood—and misunderstood—in Europe. Attitudes towards secularism were shaped by anti-clericalism in the 18th and 19th century. The French Revolution, in particular, had a decisive effect on attitudes. It created two hostile camps. On the one hand, the followers of Voltaire sought to “ecraser l’infame,” as they described the Church. On the other hand, their opponents considered the separation of church and state as an insurrection against God. Of course, the last two hundred years have overlaid the hostility between the two camps. The religious camp has come, by and large, to accept civil liberty and religious pluralism. The anti-clericals have—with the exception of hard-line Marxists and writers such as Richard Dawkins—given up on the attempt to extirpate religious belief. But the old antagonism still lurks under the surface. This is Europe’s undeclared “civil war.” It is provoked by a misunderstanding of the nature of secularism: it is not indifference or non-belief, but depends instead on the firm belief that to be human means being a rational and moral agent, a free chooser with responsibility for one’s actions. It joins rights with duties to others. Yet this is also the central, egalitarian moral insight of Christianity. Facing the challenge of Islam, Europeans should come to understand better the moral logic that joins Christianity and civil liberty.
Klaus Eder (Humboldt-Universität, Berlin) underlined the emergence of a “post-secular modernity.” He started with the premise that any society is necessarily embedded in traditions, which allow people to act. Even the individualistic societies of modernity, which believe they have emancipated themselves from tradition, cannot escape the force of tradition. Arguing that the individualistic type of modernity is just one type of linking tradition with modernity, Eder presented a conception of multiple modernities that provides an analytical framework for making sense of the particular case of European secularism through a systematic comparison of European modernity with other modernities. The most important aspect, however, is to show the increasing interaction of these modernities, which has started to change the secular as well as the non-secular world. The society emerging from this kind of interaction can be conceived as a “post-secular” one.
Philippe C. Schmitter (European University Institute, Fiesole), explored two accounts for a sketch of what a post-liberal democracy might look like. The first model is that, whatever the standards chosen, established liberal democracies will be judged severely by their respective citizens and, hence, will suffer increasingly from problems of legitimacy. The second version is that when citizens get around to examining what dissatisfies them most about the performance of “self-proclaimed & real-existing” democracies, they will tend to focus attention on their liberal (and not their democratic) characteristics. In Schmitter’s opinion, a possible solution could be to combine pre-liberal political institutions with democratic ones, in order to enforce old liberal procedures.
Robert Darnton (Harvard) ended the LUSPIO conference with a speech about “Voltaire, Rousseau and Us.” The opposition between Voltaire and Rousseau provides an extraordinary example of conflict over the symbolic capital at the heart of the Enlightenment, as Pierre Bourdieu might have put it. But it also reveals a great deal about how the Enlightenment is now being rediscovered as a crucial ingredient of the new Europe that has come into existence since the Treaty of Rome. Europe’s identity derives from a common culture, not from the Euro or from tariffs and trade. The Voltaire-Rousseau debate turned on the nature of culture itself. It gave rise to an anthropological conception of culture as a form of power, one that could tear apart or pull together a political system. This issue became a matter of political urgency during the French Revolution. A reassessment of Enlightenment and the Revolution therefore promises to open up a fresh perspective on the history that is shaping Europe into a cultural community.
These observations suggest some reflections. Europe’s nature seems to be destined to change deeply within a few decades. First of all, it is highly likely that nationalist parties will grow, becoming increasingly relevant in the single Europe’s political systems. Nationalist in this sense: parties that will claim exclusive rights for people of the same ethnic group, not only the native citizens but every community that is big enough to expect a special treatment for itself: not only European racist parties, but also racist or xenophobe parties of other nationalities. The “Other” you hate or detest and do not accept can be anyone, even the old white Frenchman for new French citizens who are African Blacks or Middle East Arabs, etc. In Kaufmann’s opinion, we will probably have in Europe many traditionalist parties as well. Tradition could be a link between different religious groups. A traditionalist Catholic party could probably come to terms with a traditionalist Islamic party, more than it could with a progressive Catholic party. One might object that there are a large variety of really different traditions. Thinking that the role of woman for an orthodox Catholic is largely the same as for of an Islamic conservative is deeply wrong. Finding agreements between different traditionalists will be less easy than one might think.
No one said that Christian Democratic parties will have a new success thanks to this change in perceiving the public role of religion. The Catholic Church and the present Pope, Benedict XVI, will probably have an increasing influence in European public opinion. The many attacks Benedict received from both secular and Muslim elites inside and outside of Europe since his appointment testify to that. Surely, immigration is the central problem of Europe’s future right now, and for the next few decades. It also highlights how far Europe has to go to become a unified political system. The immigration problem is also a matter of managing boundaries; without a political unity, no decision can be made.
One European country can decide on an immigration policy, but if it is isolated, the decision (whatever it is) will be ineffective. The enormous dimensions of these immigration flows make any politics of restriction practically impossible. The only political answer would be to secure the rule of law inside all European countries. It would be an answer compatible with the principles of western liberal-democracies, but it needs a political will and a strong conviction regarding the European political heritage. But precisely this conviction seems to be lacking, according to many of the speakers at the conference. Formulas such as “post-secular” or “post-liberal” define instead what European cultural and political systems have ceased to be: these “post” terms hardly explain to us what it is and what it will become. As Schmitter said, it is likely that present liberal-democracies will have to modify their liberal components. Individualistic perspectives could be deleted by collectivistic ones; collectivist at least from an ethnic and/or religious point of view. Beyond the political problem of understanding whether collectivism (or corporatism) is compatible with human rights (since Rousseau’s ghost and Jacob Talmon’s alarm are always roving Europe’s streets), there is another question: how can these new political transformations be compatible with the European (and Western) economic system which is, and will remain for a long time at least, based on an individualistic prime mover? Consumerism as a collective practice could be the great revolution of the twenty-first century, but capitalism remains the great force which dissolves everything solid and traditional.
Comments
There are some interesting parties growing in Europe: Attack Coalition (Bulgaria); British National Party; Freedom Party (Austria); Front National (France); Greater Romania Party; Social Alternative (Italy); UKIP (UK); Vlaams Belang (Belgium).
And they are conservative in the true sense of the word: they want to preserve Western Man and his ancestral traditions.
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Without an aggressive defense, we will VANISH.
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Although I would like to believe in Danilo’s well-
presented case for a traditionalism that is free of
ethnic associations and which is compatible with
continued immigration into Europe of Third World
populations, the vision strains my capacity to believe.
. Traditionalism only works in settled communities,
where there is a recognized sense of the general
good. It cannot operate in Europe as an expanding
multiplicity of ethnic minorities, whose members have
come from non-Western countries. And the experiment
seems less promising where European core cultures
are growing weaker.
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For the first time, I’m giving a standing ovation to a printed page. One for the files. Makes me wish to move to Europe. Makes me more resolved than ever to fight both racialist-nationalism and Cultural Marxism. Makes me glad to return to this website daily. As the best thinking in the Lincolnlands is coming from Paleolibertarians and Dixie Patriots, so in Europe from Christian Democrats. The union of Real Conservativism purged of the “far right” and of Christian Democracy purged of both clerical Fascism (Dollfuß, Tiso) and the Liberation Theologians is the way forward. (see the Wiki q.v. “clerical fascism”. I fear that “clerical fascism” – not so much of clerics as of certain laymen – is gaining ground in Lincolnlands. “Grace-ful-ly” Europe is spared this.)
after that meeting, the German philosopher was even more persuaded that modern notions of equality and justice are secular distillations of Jewish and Christian religion principles.
And racialism and nationalism, emerging first in the later 19th C., the movements Bede sees as “interesting”, are anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, and are thus neopagan and blasphemous. (The French New Right have identified themselves as neopagan.) Obviously, far from Real Conservatism. Or Real Catholicism, as Pius XI made explicit. John Lukacs is right: nationalism is the once and future enemy. Bede, surely you must hate everything Danilo Breschi has written here?
Larry Siedentop (Keble College, Oxford) started from a different question: “Why do Europeans feel happier referring to the role of ancient Greece and Rome than to the role of the Church in the formation of their culture?” The answer can be found in the way that secularism has come to be understood—and misunderstood—in Europe. Attitudes towards secularism were shaped by anti-clericalism in the 18th and 19th century. The French Revolution, in particular, had a decisive effect on attitudes. It created two hostile camps. On the one hand, the followers of Voltaire sought to “ecraser l’infame,” as they described the Church. On the other hand, their opponents considered the separation of church and state as an insurrection against God
Burke was the first to see this, the reason Christian Democracy needs a Burkean element. Siedentop also suggests that the idea that there would be only “Right” and “Left” is another moronic idea from the French Revolution. The early Christian Democrats took a step in the correct direction by calling their parties “Centrum”. We need the next step: get rid of the axis “Left/Right” altogether.
Even the individualistic societies of modernity, which believe they have emancipated themselves from tradition, cannot escape the force of tradition..
Note: tradition, not race. Traditions can be shared. The “Mediterranean Basin Mass”, for example. I would remind the very wise Paul Gottfried of this. Forget for a moment that stressing “settled communities” and and an “ethnic core” gave us two world wars and the attempted genocide of serveral good folk, Jews among them. And was the Orange Netherlands of the 17th Century, England of the 18th, America in the 19th, or Venice earlier “settled communites”?
In Kaufmann’s opinion, we will probably have in Europe many traditionalist parties as well. Tradition could be a link between different religious groups.
For traditionalist parties read the confluence of Real Conservatism with Christian Democracy. The choice, Taki Top Drawer friends, is twofold: (1)to embrace this fusion. (2) OR pay our respects to Fascism, Naziism, racialist-nationalism, and neopagans – all spittle in the face of Christ.
Finally, my beliefs are getting coverage, and my program points. Just who is Danilo Breschi? I like him. My day’s reading program he’s served, on a golden platter.
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Paul Gottfried is quite correct: Catholic and
conservative Traditionalism operates successfully in
those nations (or regions) where there is the existence
of what the late (and much lamented) Catholic philosophy Frederick
Wilhelmsen called “public orthodoxy"--that is, at a
minimum, a shared sense of the the public weal, an
understanding of the limits of the common good, and
a recognition of certain broad principles that must direct
society. Thus, a (formerly) Catholic Spain or Ireland
(and perhaps a Catholic Poland) might or might have
possessed such a “public orthodoxy,” and thus the
grounds for the success of Traditionalism.
Christian Democracy has been, let’s face, a terrible
solvent, an experiment that not only did not strengthen
these societies, but acted to destroy them, first
internally, and then externally. Even Jacques Maritain
recognized towards the end of his life the inherent
problems in “la democratie chretien.”
In contemporary Europe, Traditionalism, if it is to be
reborn at all, must recover those principles, and to do
so, the most effective means is through a reinvigorated
regionalism (e.g. in Belgium, the Balkans, perhaps Italy
and even Germany), and a nuanced nationalism and appeal
to ethnic pride. Over all this, there must be an
adherence to the Faith, and a commitment to justice
and those restorative measures necessary to correct
some sixty years that can only be described as “a
mistake.”
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Engelbert Dollfuss was NOT a “clerical fascist”!! To
place him in the same catergory with Msgr. Tiso is
to ignore both history and the fact that he was
assassinated BY NAZIS, and NEVER COLLABORATED WITH
THEM! Mr. Cundiff, your history is way off here. Chancellor
Dollfuss was forced into a violent confrontation with
the “Reds” in Vienna; he was not per se “antisemtic”
(although in your view apparently anyone who disagrees
with Abe Foxman is an “antisemite"); he (and later
Chancellor Schussnigg) were heroes and continue to be
so to Catholics, and Dollfuss was a martyr to both
the Faith and to Austrian independence. You, sir,
should ashamed for your calumny.
It is “Christian Democracy"--largely post-World War II--
that is greatly responsible for the “apertura a la
siniestra” and the weakened defense of Christian and
Catholic institutions and culture in Europe. Compromise,
which is the hallmark of Christian Democracy over the
years, has a trail of disasters, just as the “fruit”
of Vatican II has been secularization, de-Catholicisation,
and the end of Catholic states and societies. All of
this, by the way, violates in the most severe fashion
the constant teachings of the popes on society and the
constitution of states and government, especially but
not excluding Gregory XVI (in Mirari Vos), the Blessed
Pius IX (in Quanta Cura and the Syllabus), Leo XIII
(in Libertus, Diuturm, Immortale Dei, etc.), St. Pius X
(in Pascendi and Notre Charge Apostolique), Pius XI
(in Quadragesimo Anno), and Pius XII (in various).
You prescription is a prescription for more of the
same...NO thank you!
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Christianity and democracy are incompatible as the history of modern Europe demonstrates. Both God and “the People” cannot be sovereign. You cannot serve two masters.
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I’ve having trouble linking to the papers given at the conference about which Danilo Breschi reports. Does anyone have a link?
Now that he has addressed my points, I wish Dr. Cathey would address the issues that Danilo Breschi and his speakers have raised. I wish he would also read Mit Brennender Sorge.
In a nutshell, you can’t be both Brown and Blanc, however hard Maurras tried.
It’s the economics of Dollfuß that I don’t care for, economics he got from Benito. Benito was a Fascist. Y’all complete he syllogism.
The Christian Democrats Wilhelm Röpke and Ludwig Erhart had better economics, economics that gave us the German Wirtschaftswunder. Another German Christian Democrat gave Germany her first good Constitution, one that’s held up brilliantly. He and another giant also brought to an utter end the 600 years War between Germany and France. Some “terrible solvent”! Some “destroyed societies”! Some Some “trail of disasters”!
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It’s fallacy day on parade in the writebacks. Theodore M. Van Oosbree offers a fine textbook example of begged question, false dilemma, and confused terms—the old “apples are oranges” fallacy—("sovereignty" is a political concept; “omnipotence” and “spiritual confession” are a religious).
Those who know nothing about Christian Democracy , its ideology, and its history,—in otherwords, most Gringos—should stay silent and read Danilo Breschi. At the very least they should direct their comments to his article and its statements.
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Again, I must offer a correction. Dollfuss di
not get his economics from Mussolini; he was
a student of Othmar Spann, Karl Vogelsang, and
Bishop Kettler (Mainz). In the biographies of him,
one clearly sees that the same theories of society
developed in Rerum Novarum and later in Quadragesimo
Anno, not to mention Father Heinrich Pesch (S.J.)’s
Lehrbuch, are at work. To suggest that Dollfuss and
the “Austrian solution” is a copy of Mussolini’s
idealization, is false, and once again a calumny
against a man who was, let me remind you, killed by
the Nazis and a martyr to the Faith.
Once again, an apology is owed to a very noble man, a
defender of the faith, and one who attempted to implement
true Catholic social principles, NOT the laic pseudo-
Catholicism of “Christian democracy.”
By the way, inherent in both the German constitution
(post war) and the Italian one, both dreamed up in’
large part by Christian Democrats, are the seeds of the
present dilemma those nations face...that is what I
was saying.
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This article does nothing but promote left-wing political correctness and multiculturalism. Why is it even printed here?
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First, there is no “Muslim threat” - not to Europe; not to anywhere. And even if there was, why should I be upset if a Muslim Europe overtakes an atheist Europe?
The idea that a new Christian traditionalism may rise in Europe is one of those nice fantasies in which I’d like to believe. Like Santa Claus.
Next, I wouldn’t worry too much about democracy. Democracy is a self-correcting historical aberration. It is terribly unlikely that democracy will still be a major force in the west 200 years from now. Probably not even 50 years from now. There may or may not still be an outward pretense of it for some time, but that wil be the kabuki that is presented to mask the real power. America is essentially that way now. You didn’t really think that voting Democratic in 2006 would end the war in Iraq or prevent a war with Iran, did you?
Remember that the Roman Senate survived into the reign of Justin II, for all it was worth then.
Lastly, secularism is in fact worse than the enforced atheism of places like China and Albania. It is worse because it presents the most dangerous of all possible ideas - that one can have one’s cake and eat it too. It teaches that you can have God, but ignore Him when it’s really important. “God is great - but just ignore Him when He goes on about abortion or pornography or family” is worse than abolishing God - it’s trivializing Him. It never forces people into the Nietzsche position of agonizing over what man is, or morality is, or good and evil might be, without God. It never forces one to make hard choices. It’s the easy choice of saying that God can exist but have no consequence in the decisions that one makes. It turns God into just some schmoe. At least Nietzsche knew that he was shaking the earth.
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Again: Thomas L. is not to be found blameworthy, for almost all Gringos know nothing about Christian Democracy and can only think in left/right terms.
Dollfuß had his strong points, I can’t deny, and like me, he fought both the Racialist-Nationalist and the Reds. As for his economic views I might indeed be guilty of the post hoc fallacy: Dollfuß came after Benito. Both were all the same corporatists.
Also Dollfuß’ regime after 7 March 1933 was by and large the way Mussolini ran things. And it was the Social Democrats whom he shut down. Check out his “Roman Protocol” with Benito and Dollfuß’ May Constitution. The German Wiki gets him right:
“Nach der Ausschaltung von Parlament und Opposition regierte Dollfuß diktatorisch per Notverordnungen. Dem italienischen Faschismus und der katholischen Kirche nahestehend, lehnte er den Nationalsozialismus deutscher Prägung, die durch die Verfassung garantierte pluralistische Demokratie, den demokratischen Rechtsstaat und die Sozialdemokratie ab.
“[iii] Während Dollfuß von manchen wegen seines Widerstandes gegen den Nationalsozialismus als „Heldenkanzler“ und „Märtyrer“ gesehen wird, bezeichnen ihn andere als „Diktator“, „Arbeitermörder“ und „Faschisten“, was sich auch in der Diskussion um die Bezeichnung dieser Ära als „Ständestaat“ oder „Austrofaschismus“ niederschlägt.”
In short, the wrong and impossible confluence: Fascism and Catholic Social Teaching. Breschi has the better confluence. The confluence of the Blancs and Christion Democracy is just what I’m advocating, for each can learn from the other. Call it the (potential) Cathey-Cundiff confluence. I thank Dr. Cathey.
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The fallacy here is to assert that because
Chancellor Dollfuss was attempting to implement an
economic form for Austria that indicated the use
of “intermediate bodies” (corporations) and that
Mussolini claimed to be doing the something similar, that,
voila, they somehow where doing the same thing. But
this is unhistorical and incorrect. Dollfuss carefully
read and digested Quadragesimon Anno (given by that
same pope who issued Mit Brennender Sorge), and with
the assistance of the Catholic faculties in Vienna AN D
Rome, attempted to implement subsidiarity in Austria.
You will recall that Mussolini, in his authored definition’
of Fascism in the Enciclopedia Italiana, made the
statement--I paraphrase--"nothing outside the state,
nothing without the state...” This was the antithesis
of what Dollfuss attempted to do in Austria.
Be aware that corporativism as both an economic AND a
political system can be (and has been) completetly
compatible with Catholic social teaching [go back and
read Quadragesimo Anno again, plus the commentaries
that accompanied it]. Indeed, certainly in the formal
encyclicals of both Leo XIII and Pius XII it can be
considered the preferred mode of economic organization.
Of course, the Church theoretically has no preference
as to a republic or monarchy or even a dictatorship,
as long as the rights of the Church are acknowledged.
Dollfuss and the Austrian solution were praised by
Pius XI and Catholic writers generally of the period.
Yes, he made an alliance with Mussolini (that was, let
it be stated, more directed AGAINST the Nazis, and
recall that that alliance was invoked when Hitler
threatened in the early 1930s). But so did Britain with
Mussolini (the Stresa Front), and Churchill praised
Mussolini publicly, and repeatedly. At least Dollfuss
never did that.
The situation posed of “browns” vs. “christian
democrats” is a false dichotomy. There are and have
been historically other options. A Catholic state,
organized on the principle of subsidiarity and with
“intermediate bodies” that both function economically
and, even, politically is compatible with the historic
teaching of the Church
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Well, other forms of economic organization might be also compatible to Catholic Social Teaching as well. The author of this piece and those whom he summarizes think so. Dr. Thomas Woods thinks so, for the libertarians. So does Michael Novak for the Hamiltonians. So did Clean Gene for the USA version of Social Democrats. So did Röpke, for the Christian Democrats. It remains: Corporativism was the economic view of Mussolini and Dollfuß, however they got those views. And the May Constitution looks pretty Fascist, to my eye.
Moreover, John Lukacs is quite correct that Fascism and Naziism are rather different movements. Dollfuß indeed hated Naziism, and paid for it with his life; but Fascism ....? Keep in mind the historical context. At the time, lots of atrocity reports were coming out of the Soviet Union, atrocities against Christians. The Church and many other Christians thought “the Right” would help fight this. How wrong they were. All the same, Dollfuß is no saintly martyr to me. My hero: Don Luigi Sturzo.
Yet this is just a quibble between Dr. Cathey and me. Strike Dollfuß from my first writeback, if you will. Tiso remains as the the textbook example of clerical Fascism. So are others. Let’s just say that Christians who didn’t join with Pius XI in his condemnation of racialism, Judeophobia, Naziism, and Fascism, have a lot to answer for.
Much more to my liking would be comments on Mr.Danilo Breschi’s arguments, arguments that I endorse. I have addressed some of those arguments. Don’t make me the topic of conversation.
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What, exactly, is “fascism”?
I’d like to get Sid Cundiff’s definition so we can
know what he’s against!
Webster’s definition is: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
Well, other than the notion of a “political philosophy”,
it sounds a lot like the Catholic Church, if you ask me!
Well, then call me a “spiritual fascist”!
The mistake that the “fascists” make is taking the
strengths of the Catholic Church and trying to turn them
political, believing they can “save mankind” with
their government. Truly, almost every person in the
history of the world that supported ANY type of
government power could be considered a “fascist”. If
you don’t honestly believe a government programme can
improve the world, you wouldn’t support it.
The Church’s position is that only Grace can improve
the world, and if and when that Grace works through
government is unknown to either you or I, and there’s
no real point in struggling over it. This is an
imperfect world, and every government will be imperfect,
that is, no government brings with it salvation, thus
no faithful Catholic can support any government
programme on the idea that it will “do good”. Catholics
may embrace government programmes because they like
them (for example, a Catholic may like to drive his
car, so supporting road building is quite
understandable), not because of the salvation those
government programmes [don’t] deliver.
Dollfuss was a “fascist” in that he believed
his government alone could save Austria, just as
Jesus saved the world Himself.Hitler thought the same
regarding Germany, Mussolini of Italy, Roosevelt of
the United States, and GW Bush of Iraq and the United
States today.
Being a fascist doesn’t make one an “evil person”
necessarily, but it is an indication that the person’s
faith is in something that is false.
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This article is just silly. There’s no better word for it. It is nothing but vile hatred of Europeans, Euro-Americans and Western Civilization. Sounds like something neocons at the National Review would publish.
Sid,
A while back I had one of those DNA ancestry tests done. It showed that I am 100% Anglo / European.
If you were to take one of these, what do you think it would show?
Are you white? Black? Mestizo? Amerindian?
Just curious, especially since you denounce all whites as “gringos.”
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Mr. Capp, I’ll grant that “Fascism” is a slippery creature. For lots of people for whom hatred is their principle pleasure in life, “fascism” just means anyone one who is of a different ideology than themselves. Others use it loosely for any coercive act. These are poor definitions.
I follow the thought of Roger Griffin and John Lukacs. Wiki “Roger Griffin” and see his idea of Fascism as “palingenetic and populist form of ultranationalism”. Then get a hold of his books. There are problems with his views. He doesn’t distinguish between Naziism and Fascism. Lukac’s does in his Democracy and Populism (2005). (Lukacs also, correctly, knows that Maurras was no fascist, just an extremist conservative. The Wiki on “clerical fascism” is a bit short, but somewhat useful on “Jozef Tiso”.
no faithful Catholic can support any government programme on the idea that it will “do good”.
That a government will do good is the only reason a Catholic can support any government.
I’ll not get into the grace/nature debate. There is a sense in which anything good is grace because its creator is Utter Grace.
No one seems to wish to talk about the main article. So I shall again in a later writeback. Folks, this article is one of the best that I’ve seen on Taki Top Drawer. And it has brought out an important observation by Paul Gottfried—an observation that I’m not in full agreement with, but important all the same. I’m a member of the League of the South, The Catholic Church, and invest internationally. So along with the rest of y’all Real Conservatives—Burkean or Blanc—and Christian Democrats, I feel the tension between the centripetal pull of home, locality, history and the “small platoon”; and the centrifugal pull of both the world market, high and low tech, easy geo-communication,quick international travel, and the universalism of the Gospel.
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Sid,
A while back I had one of those DNA ancestry tests done. It showed that I am 100% Anglo / European.
If you were to take one of these, what do you think it would show?
Are you white? Black? Mestizo? Amerindian?
Just curious, especially since you denounce all whites as “gringos.”
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Liberals and respectable conservatives say there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.
The Netherlands and Belgium are more crowded than Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them. Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites.
What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries? How long would it take anyone to realize I’m not talking about a RACE problem? I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem? And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this?
But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree that I am anaziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews. They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white. Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.
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This article is just silly. There’s no better word for it. It is nothing but vile hatred of Europeans, Euro-Americans and Western Civilization. Sounds like something neocons at the National Review would publish.
As “fallacies on parade” continues, we now have name-calling, straw man, and a contradiction of sorts: “silly” vs “vile hatred”. The article also say nothing of the sort.
Indeed, and to return to the main article, I was at first surprised that the name “Michael Novak” the “American Enterprise Institute” were not greeted with screams of piercing pain from some of our hysterical and petrified paleoconservatives. Then I decided that these poor souls first fell on the floor in an epilectic fit of rage, and haven’t recovered. Now I think that Taki Top Drawer readers and writebackers – a least most of them – aren’t in any real disagreement with what Novak is actually quoted as saying.
The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982) and The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1993) might not totally rhyme with Catholic Social Teaching. If memory serves me right, they are a Hamiltonian/Whig read of this Teaching. Still, conservatives know that the historical context is important. Novak had in his cross hairs the Latin American Marxist Liberation Theologians – the views of whom are utterly un-rhyme-able with Catholic Social Teaching. And though JPII and his sidekick Ratzinger anathemized this bunch, and though Boff might now be an aging hippie, still lay Liberation Theologians are now the power in Venezuela and Boliva, so Novak’s work might still be useful. And maybe Novak’s now changing his colors again, and again for the better. He changed once before.
Turning to his reported remarks: The starting point of his analysis was that 9/11 marked the collapse not only of the Twin Towers but also of secularism, to the extent that it represents a way to use reason as an autonomous instrument of knowledge without any reference to other perspectives. On the contrary, both individual existence and group life, that is politics and society, display a profound need for new foundations and answers, probably as ancient as the questions about human destiny. Arguing for a transformation of secular thinking, Novak predicts a coming end to secularism..
This is tantamount to saying that the Enlightenment project is dead, and confessional parties are the order of the day. Most of the men of the Enlightenment were not atheists, but Newtonian Deists, arguing the metaphysical structure of the universe proved a creator. Find a watch, see how organized it is, and you realized (so it was assumed) that there must be a watchmaker. Kant’s first Kritik brought this argument into question, and Kant turned to a moral proof for God. That too fell apart in the course of the 19th Century. The Enlightenment and the subsequent age of “Progress” (Christopher Hitchens is so old fashioned) didn’t keep their promises. They promised enlightened, reasonable, and kind, gentle men once the shackles of “superstition” and “oppression” were gone. What we got was gas chambers and atomic bombs, followed by Hollow Men in the Lonely Crowd in the Waste Land of a botched civilization waiting for Godot while Amusing Themselves to Death.
So, is Novak correct? Does 9/11 mean the end secularism, the autonomy of reason, the foundations and answer of the Enlightenment, just as mindless bloodshed of The 30 Year’s War and the English Civil War ended a religious based world? Exactly what kind of “transformation of secular thinking” needs to be done? Meanwhile, the latest books on atheism this year are so bad that we can assume atheists are getting desperate.
I’ve said before, we haven’t had a religious war in the West since the Battle of the Boyne. Now were in one, and likely will remain so even if the Iraq war is abandoned. Our leadership, in and out of the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom, and our intellectual elite just don’t know the man of religion, how he thinks and how he fights. They better learn. Newman said it best in “The Tamworth Reading Room”, and I’ll rescript: A man will live and die for his God, his king, his mother, and all three; but no one will be a martyr to the conclusion of a syllogism.
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I am still deeply troubled by Mr. Cundiff’s dismissal of
Dollfuss and Mussolini as somehow “bobbsie twins” of
Fascism, which was indeed the term he first used
when this particular line of discussion began. I have
stated, albeit briefly, some dramatic differences
between Mussolini’s conception of Fascism (as explained
in his long article from the Enciclopedia Italiana), and
Dollfuss’s reliance on a very long and rich Catholic
tradition socially, economically, AND politically.
I would be most pleased to quote from Pius XI’s famous
encyclical Quadragesimo Anno where the pontiff, himself,
endorses the idea of “intermediate corporative bodies”;
I would be most happy to cite the literally dozens of
orthodox Catholic theologians and social and political;
writers who endorsed and wrote at length about Catholic
corporativism---not to mention the implications of
Chesterbelloc “distributivism” (see for example the
works of Father Cahill SJ or Father Denis Fahey CSsP).
And, of course, there are the warm messages of support
from Pius XI, himself. Would Mr. Cundiff suggest that
this pontiff, whom he praises for Mit Brennender Sorge,
was also a “fascist” because, to phrase it as Mr.
Cundiff did earlier: Mussolini and Dollfuss had the
same economics; but Pius XI praised Dollfuss’s
ideas; therefore, voila!, Pius XI, must be...a FASCIST!
Indeed, in the world today there are numerous polities
that claim to be “democracies.” To read their written
constitutions one might find phrases that would appeal
to Americans; but there is a world of difference in the
“democracy” practiced by some states and that that
exists in others....As I pointed out earlier, there
is a world of difference between the corporative state
that Dollfuss attempted in Austria and Mussolini’s
“Stato Nuovo.” There is a fundamental difference in
the conception of the state, its role in society, the
rights of lesser communities and organs within the
society, etc.
I repeat: to have called Dollfuss a fascist is a calumny
that demands an apology. And, yes, he did indeed die
a martyr’s death, as the accounts of his death all
agree.
The sooner those on the so-called “Right” give up the
failed pipe-dream of “Christian Democracy” [read, by
the way, both the studies of Charles De Koninck and
Ernesto Palacios which literally shred to pieces the
post-1930 Maritain advocacy of “Christian Democracy”
as inevitably leading to the destruction of Christian
states and society---which has indeed happened], the
better we all shall be. It is time that we looked
again at Dollfuss’s Austria and the Portugal of
Antonio Salazar (see for instance, Michael Derrick’s
superb study of corporativist Portugal,from a very
Catholic point of view).
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Antonio Salazar’s Portugal, Tiso’s Slovakia, and Petain’s Vichy were more prosperous, lived better in peace with their neighbors, better overcame old antagonisms with neighbors, defended better personal rights and freedom, and enable their citizens to overcome their dark pasts with a new ideological stability than Roepke’s, Erhart’s and Adenhauer’s (all Christian Democrats) Germany? Now that’s a pipedream.
</i>Would Mr. Cundiff suggest that this pontiff, whom he praises for Mit Brennender Sorge,
was also a “fascist” because, to phrase it as Mr.Cundiff did earlier: Mussolini and Dollfuss had the same economics; but Pius XI praised Dollfuss’s ideas; therefore, voila!, Pius XI, must be...a FASCIST!</i>
Fighting Joe needs a course on how to construct a syllogism.
Dollfuß was against Naziism and racialism, not Fascism. I’ve told Joe where he can go read about Dollfuß. JOe’s argument also has nothing to do with my argument, that a Christian Democracy purged of clerical fascism, including fascism’s love of corporatism, is what we need, and what Roepke and other Christian Democrats provided. Did Joe read the Maiverfassung? Were he to do he would know that it is rather Fascist. So, no calumny, no apology, and get back to Breschi.
By the way, the Mises institute had a fine series of lectures on Fascist economics a year or so ago, and the the audio media is available on their website. Dr. Woods in his book The Church and the Market, whatever its limitations, does a splendid job of demolishing Corporatism and Distributism from a libertarian perspective. It’s not the only perspective. The Libertarians are doing the best thinking this side of the Atlantic, the Christian Democrats on the other.
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Postscript to my last message: While there are
numerous references by Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo
Anno to the preferability of a corporative organization
of the social order, none is perhaps more explicit that
Para. 83, which reads, in part, as follows:
“Ast perfecta sanatio tum tantum efflorescet, cum,
oppositione illa e medio sublata, socialis corporis
membra bene instructa constituentur: <ordines> nimirum,
quibus inserantur homines non pro munere, quod quia in
mercatu laboris habeat, sed pro diversis partibus
socialibus, quia singuli exerceant. Natura enim duce
fit, ut sicut qui loci vicinitate coniuncti sunt
municipia constituunt, ita qui in eandem artem vel
professionem incumbent--sive oeconomica est sive
alterius generius--, collegia seu corpora quaedam
efficiant, adeo ut haec consortia iure proprio utentia
a multis, sin minus essentialia societati civili, at
saltem naturalia dici consuerverint.”
My translation reads:
“The solution (cure), nevertheless, comes when the members
of the social body receive proper organization, that
is, when they constitute various <orders> in which
men no longer conform to the categories assigned to
them by the free market, but rather are in conformity
with the social function (role) that each one exercises.
Just as, by nature, those are connected to a
municipality by propinquity, thus also those connected
by the same profession or role in society---either
economically or in other areas--would constitute certain
colleges or corporations, to the point that such
organs, ruled by their own proper laws and regulations,
come to be considered, if not essential, at the very least
coterminous with civil society itself.”
There are various other passages of a similar nature.
As I said earlier, Dollfuss was in the Catholic
mainstream. To term him a “clerical fascist” is to
copy (and copy very poorly) the terminology of the
politcal and social Left, and to think in slogans,
which unfortunately we see enough of...too bad it
makes its appearance on this site, as well.
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<<Antonio Salazar’s Portugal, Tiso’s Slovakia, and Petain’s Vichy were more prosperous, lived better in peace with their neighbors, better overcame old antagonisms with neighbors, defended better personal rights and freedom, and enable their citizens to overcome their dark pasts with a new ideological stability than Roepke’s, Erhart’s and Adenhauer’s (all Christian Democrats) Germany?>>
In the long run, as a Catholic, I vote YES.
But not because those governments were “better” than, say, Adenhauer’s Germany, but because they allowed a Catholic to remain a Catholic for longer. Eventually, in the longER run, every government destroys every man and his Faith.
Only Jesus can save us, not the governments of man.
Evil offered God all the kingdoms of the world if He were to bow down and worship him. God refused, because He knew there was nothing good that could come of government.
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Once again...and again...I repeat what I have said
(and I think amply demonstrated) in past messages:
Dollfuss’s Austrian solution and Mussolini’s Fascism
are two different birds; Mr. Cundiff wants to continue
to group Dollfuss as a “fascist,” and frankly, he
continues to either misunderstand what I’ve
painstakingly stated, or else he just doesn’t
understand that there are fundamental differences.
I let the reader decide. The literature is ample on the
topic, and we can continue to discuss it ad infinitum,
but the basic factual content is there for anyone
interested to see. I am quite ready to stay on this
topic until the point is taken....Now, I can recommend
at least three fairly detailed biographies of Dollfuss,
and a couple of studies of the Austrian solution
attempted in the 1930s, if anyone is interested.
In this instance, Mr. Cundiff has constructed a straw
man called Fascism, and since he does not apparently
sympathise with Dolfuss or other Catholic
traditionalists, he wants to place them in that
category. But it doesn’t work, and not only that, he
refuses to acknowledge even that Engelbert
Dollfuss died an heroic death, killed by Nazis.
Finally, I was not constructing a syllogism (I do know
how to do that, thanks so much); rather, I was
copying Mr. Cundiff’s very own line of logic:
that Mussolini was a fascist, and that since, he stated,
Dollfuss copied Mussolini’s economics, ergo…
Go back and read the post; I have used the same
format that Mr. Cundiff used, only substituted the
name of the sovereign pontiff (the same one who
issued Mit Brennender Sorge).
Lastly, concerning Michael Novak and the AEI: I didn’t
find anything of his quoted in the essay to be either
original or profound. His shilling for democratic
capitalism I find puerile and uninformed; and despite
my admiration for Thomas Woods when it comes to
defending the South and his defense of the traditional
liturgy, his rather strained defense of democratic
capitalism rings hollow, as recent critiques in such
journals as Culture Wars make clear.
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Socrates and Plato were called “misodemos"--Haters of Democracy. Their favorite forms of government was the mixed form of government called Classical republics created by the Doric Greeks on Crete and Sparta. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle all noted that tyranny comes out of democracy. It was the worst form of government. Polybius called Democracy--Ochlocracy or “mob rule”. Maritain is quite decieved in pushing for democracy. “Democracy is the road to socialism.” Karl Marx
“Democracy is indispensable to socialism.” Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
“Modern Socialism is inseperable from political democracy.” Elements of Socialism, pg 337.
“The view that democracy and Socialism are inwardly related spread far and wide in the decades which preceded the Bolshevist revolution. Many came to believe that democracy and Socialism meant the same thing, and that democracy without Socialism or Socialism without democracy would not be possible.” Socialism, Ludwig von Mises, pg 67.
Democracy is the vehicle for Socialism. There are tons of decieved individuals out there especially in the Church about “democracy” whereas St. Robert Bellarmine and St. Thomas Aquinas all advocated the classical republican form of mixed government. No true conservative says anything good about democracy and all conservatives, like our spiritual father Socrates, be called Misodemos.
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I think we can all agree that democracy breeds evil, when practiced by Protestants.
I believe Sid Cundiff’s support of Christian Democracy is based upon it being practiced by fellow devout Catholics. If every person voting on issues were a devout Catholic, I would trust democracy.
Unfortunately, in the real world, the people voting are, at best, mostly Protestants, and, typically, more or less, Satanists.
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I had trouble getting past Michael Novak, and finally threw in the towel with Habermas’ rather lackluster conversion experience.
So it seems the current crop of philosophes is having doubts about the Enlightenment project. Why should I be interested in their intellectual struggles when there are so many other who have understood this much deeper, much earlier, starting with Maistre, for example?
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Scrolling up, Sid quoted Newman
who said,
“A man will live and die for his God,
his king, his mother, and all three;
but no one will be a martyr to the
conclusion of a syllogism.”
Yep, and that’s exactly why Marxist-Leninist
ideology was doomed from the start, stillborn
in the cradle, and why America’s greatest waste of
blood and treasure in the past century was
the Cold War. Nationalism, on the other hand,
just lives on and on.
By the way, perhaps peculiarly for an
international law scholar (or academic,
or whatever my “guild” is supposed to be),
I’ve read very
little political philosophy and deliberately
forgotten most of the bits I’ve read. Shakespeare
has taught me more about political philosophy
than any poli sci curriculum could ever do.
So, for that matter, have Monty Python and
South Park.
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To return to the article by Breschi, I would submit that the politician in this century must answer a number of pressing questions, many of which are mentioned by Breschi and the authors whom he discusses. To list them, and to name good and bad ideologies that try to answer them:
1. How can a modern society (Gesellschaft) overcome anomie, atomization, anonymity , alienation, rootlessness, identity-lessness, purposelessness, decadence, the paucity of mass culture, the resulting low birth rates, etc. and still maintain personhood? good : Real Conservatism; bad: nationalism, racialism, Fascism, purgative retribalization
2. How can we be both international (a requirement if one is to have economic well-being in a high tech world) and local (needed to overcome the concerns of #1)? No good ideology to date
3. How can we be both economically prosperous and maintain individual liberty and individual empowerment? good: libertarians of the “Austrian” school. bad: Hamiltonian Whigs
4. How can a constitution maintain a democratic element – essential to protect civil and human rights – and at the same time protect property holders from the despoliation of those who would, through taxation, vote themselves a paycheck? How can this necessary democratic element coexist with the demands of distributive justice, among which is the encouraging of special talents (“elites”)? No good ideology to date
5. How can the demands of universal morality be satisfied? good: Christian Democracy, bad socialism; mixture of good and bad: Social Democracy and Greens
6. How can we maintain the dignity and integrity of person in Gesellschaft yet maintain a community (Gemeinschaft)? Good personalism, bad: both individualism and retribalization.
Not only do these questions have good and bad answers, but the modern politician must address all of them, not just anyone in isolation. Single-issue isolation is the weakness of all the good ideologies listed. Burke knew that the political leader must do a very delicate balancing act between liberty and power. The six questions above suggest that this act has become even more complicated. I have suggested the solution that I think Breschi is offering: the confluence of Real Conservatism – what Breschi calls “traditional parties” – and Christian Democracy with Personalism.
As time permits, I’ll return to #1, the most pressing issue for Real Conservatives by addressing the concerns mentioned by Paul Gottfried above.
A footnote: Culture Marxism I have not listed because of my own version of “the strange history of Marxism”: It tipped over unintentionally but logically into what it says is its real opposite: neo-nationalism. Celebrate “diversity”, “multiculturalism”, poly-ethnic, poly-religious social orders, and soon you will have a society resembling Lebanon and the Balkans. If “pride” and ethnic revelry are good for the First Blacks, American Indians (I’ll avoid the fatuous “Native American”), Near East Arabs, Oriental religions, etc., then the same would be good also for “Scots Irish”, Germans, Celts, and Christians. The Culture Marxist protests that he is interested in “oppressed” and “left out groups”, but this nuance is quickly lost. Thus “Black Leadership” and La Raza sound like the “white” racialists-nationalists around here, with just he color changed. Breschi gets it right: ”The ‘Other’ you hate or detest and do not accept can be anyone, even the old white Frenchman for new French citizens who are African Blacks or Middle East Arabs, etc.
Post Script for Fighting Joe Cathey: All thugs, gangsters, murderers, fist-in-the-face slave masters, and those who would deny economic prosperity – whatever label fits them, and especially when they veil their crimes with the Gospel – merit prison, not political power, in this world, – and damnation in the next.
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At the notorious Battle of Pecker Point, which has disappeared from history books thanks to Southern Nationalist Gringos, the gringos proved to be big cowards, and the blacks and Hispanics, the true confederates, saved the day. The whole affair culminated in a two-hour sword fight, and you couldn’t find a gringo in sight!!!
All you Paleoconservative-Kirkian-Illumunti-Split-Pea-Sucking-Yellow-Bellied-Carp-Smoking Gringos have been brainwashed. It’s that simple.
Real conservativism is about equality, human rights, multiculturalism, mass immigration, and white self-hatred. The Real South was like this, well, until Gringo Southern Nationalists wrote their revisionist history and hid the fact that it was patriotic Hispanics, Blacks (and even some Hindus and Cambodian Buddhists) that fought patriotically for the South, not cowardly gringos.
When I start my Perfect State in the South, Sidville, my first act will be to drive out all the damn gringos, which are like cockroaches, and import 23 million Asian PhDs into my state. Asian PhDs are the true confederates, not gringos, as attested Dr. Wong Dong, the only man qualified to write on the real contributions to the Real South (which prior to the revisionists was called “Little Asia").
I’m getting sick and tired all all the rantings of you cursed Browns! I bet the lot of you are controlled by the German-Southern-Gringo-Nationalist Illumunati. (Luckily the brains of Asians are larger and cannot be controlled by such devises, and I had one partially implanted thanks to the folks at Area 51, some of the only folks truly sympathetic to the Real Southern Cause (not the one dreamed up by gringo transplants)).
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I see that Mr. Cundiff, rather than address the
specific points I raise (and also that were made by
Pius XI, who, remember issued Mit Brennender Sorge),
now would rely on sweeping (and totally unjust, at
least from a Catholic point of view) statements, to
wit, “that those...who deny economic prosperity would
merit prison, not political power, in this world--
and damnation in the next.” [Frankly, I don’t know of
any national leader, including the Soviets, who
actually desires to deny their peoples economic
prosperity...but then maybe Mr. Cundiff knows a few?]
I can only assume that Mr.Cundiff was somewhat
fatigued when he authored this statement. Still, it
presents a number of fairly interesting questions:
first, there is his conjunction of “thugs, murderers,
gangsters, and fist-in-the-face slave-masters” with
those “who would deny economic prosperity.” Now that
is like placing in the same prison those who commit
a speeding offense, with class A Capital offenders.
I don’t think the conjunction works very well.
Secondly, just who is he trying to inveigle in this
tangled web? Who are these “thugs,” these “murderers,”
and..."those who would deny economic prosperity”?
I would assume from earlier exchanges that Mr. Cundiff
is attempting, alas! once again, to tar and feather
noble Catholic traditionalists like Engelbert Dollfuss,
perhaps Antonio Salazar, and others, although he only
leaves it for the reader to infer. Yet, this is not
a very good argument, not very transparent, and fails
utterly to answer any of the commentary offered earlier.
So, one is left with the result that Mr. Cundiff, if
he does not wish to discuss a point in detail, simply
begs off, and casts forth magisterially a solemn curse
and damnation on those whom he (1) either does not
like, or (2) refuses to understand.
Neither course is upright; neither course is helpful.
Too bad, too bad…
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Sid,
Universalism means that your family will be black and brown 200 years from now. If you are not racist you and your god will racially disappear. Maybe that is what you are after? Your version of god is more important than survival?
Your version of Christianity is dead in the West because all those that practice it are brown or they are going to be.
European people are way too spread out around the world and someone is going to open up White only immigration to grab’em. That is where the action will be. Race will be the main consideration because that is always the only consideration to the rest of the planet......with the exception of self hating white men who put their god before their race.
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Europe is the faith… and what is that if not our pagan, classical, christian, enlightenment past. We need to embrace the whole not any one part.
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Also embrace the distinct ancestory that was forty thousand years in the making. That’s how far back the genetic patterns of Europe can be traced. Don’t let the racists have a monopoly on proclaiming your identity.
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To continue my reflections on this outstanding article, I’d like to ponder my first question: How can a modern society (Gesellschaft) overcome atomization, anomie, anonymity , alienation, rootlessness, identity-lessness, inauthentic-ness, purposelessness, decadence, the paucity of mass culture, Hollow Men in the Waste Land lost in the Lonely Crowd and still maintain personhood? The solutions: good : Real Conservatism; bad: nationalism, racialism, Fascism, purgative retribalization.
In considering this question I’d like to use two dichotomies. The first is that old sociological dichotomy, Gesellschaft (“society”) and Gemeinschaft (“community), and I lift most of my analysis from Guido Dierickx, “Christian Democracy and Its Ideological Rivals: An Empirical Comparison In the Low Countries” in David Hanley, ed., Christian Democracy in Europe: A Comparative Perspective, 1994, pp. 15-20.
A Gesellschaft is a loose, disintegrated gathering of people who have different ends and identities yet have a common law and legal authority. A Gemeinschaft is a highly integrated group, which, at the family level is held together by bonds of affection and beholden-ness, and above the family offers an ideology that provides goals and strategies, principles and applications, an identity and purpose to the individual’s life.
Gesellschaft only emerges in social orders first in the 19th Century. To run though various ideologies, Liberal Democracy/Libertarianism, and Social Democracy are Gesellschaft theories. Liberal Democrats promise to emancipate the individual from all imposed Gemeinschaften, be it the Established Church, the village or small town, the family, the farm, the manor. The emphasis was upon how the market, the city, the cosmopolis, and free association would free and develop the individual. Just follow the traffic rules as you pursue your private interests, and all will be fine. Social Democracy builds on Liberal Democracy, just adding how certain requirements that everyone supposedly needs to reach private goals would be satisfied by the welfare state, e.g. education, health, high wages, etc. Rawls, of course, is the chief theoretician of Social Democracy. Paul Gottfried correctly attacked this model in his work on the Therapeutic State’s effort to cure folk of supposedly bad Gemeinschaft ideology.
Yet Gesellschaft, for all its advantages, seems deeply unsatisfying. I have listed the effects of this discontent in boldface above. Libertarians and Social Democrats reply that their Gesellschaft allows a myriad of small Gemeinschaften, which the individual can freely enter or leave. The problem is that this might trivialize Gemeinschaft: a community of stamp collecters, a community of pizza eaters, etc. Allan Blooms demolition of Rawls reaches it’s climax in just this criticism: We want some sense of meaning and direction to our lives, the key to how we ought to live; Rawls suggests we take a vacation. “Rawls speaks to men with souls of tourists.” (Giants and Dwarfs [1990]p. 337)
Thus enter Gemeinschaft theories of society: Real Conservatism, Racialist Nationalism (or any nationalism), Socialism, Cultural Marxism, and the Greens – all decrying the disintegrating process of Gesellschaft. (Christian Democracy is both a Gesellschaft and a Gemeinschaft theory, which may be the secret of its success.) I shall discuss only the first two.
I would ask, Does Nationalism or Racialism really address the problems of Gesellschaft (boldfaced above) at all? Does it really care about the nurturing of a person, as, say, the Gemeinschaften of family, or Church? Does it not instead utterly suppress and annihilate personhood, the individual, the stuffed man, only a part (and an insignificant expendable part) of a whole, a (replaceable) means to an end, with no person sui juris, and all individual significance coming from the whole? One thinks of the oceanic masses at Nazi rallies. And what is this whole for nationalism?: an abstract concept, not a reality, called “race”, a future purified race achieved by purgation, genocide, and eugenics. Richard Sennett’s The Fall of Public Mann discusses what happens in the “tyranny of intimacy” within “retribalized” national cells: no debate, discussion, exchange of ideas, or even education takes place. The sealed group only engages in three activities: propaganda of new members, purgation of thought crime and those who hold it, and otherwise a non-verbal sense of a faux intimate feeling, of “being together” with one’s supposed own. This faux intimacy becomes depersonalizing, as if everyone of my “race” (whatever that is) I am obliged to call bro’ and sister. So fake, so inauthentic is nationalism (and nationalist aren’t the only ones who are so guilty), that it magnifies the pathologies of the Gesellschaft which it would cure.
Real Conservatism is quite different. The Gemeinschaft it offers is a culture based on history, habit, custom, tradition, ceremony, religion – fertile grounds that nourish, rather than crush, the person. Without these grounds and this grounding, humans quickly become simian, exactly the fruit of Gesellschaft. The person’s participation in family, village, neighborhood, polis, and Church makes for strong, stable, deep, and wide persons. Real Conservatism develops Sennett’s Public Man in settings with many unknown people (the city), a traditionalist strategy to meet unknowns without revealing intimacy. Real Conservatives know also that historical culture can also be shared with strangers. It welcomes strangers of other cultures, provided one of two conditions can be met: (1) the stranger has to offer something of such worth that it would ultimately and deeply enrich the social order, or (2) the historical thread, running back 1000 years ,can still be maintained. Thus my problem with immigration in large numbers isn’t racialist or a depreciation of the immigrant’s culture, but rather that he knows little of our tradition English rights and liberties, and too many immigrants makes it hard for them to learn about this patrimony.
Of course the Real Consevatives begs the question about bad history, habits, customs, traditions, ceremonies, religions. This is why Real Conservatism needs Christian Democracy.
I can’t help but by sketchy. I’ll discuss my second dichotomy, blueprint/existing structure, tomorrow.
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Dear Lurker, Taki’s Top Drawer web site has enemies. But the ideas expressed here cannot be outright banned (yet). Therefore the opposition concentrates on the next best thing: framing and shaping each thread discussion to politically correct standards.
Sid Cundiff = Frame & Shape
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To finish (and yes there is a correct an incorrect understanding of Conservatism [funny how fascists, trying to stop discussion, like to pose as defenders of openness and not following the party line]), Real Conservatives look an an existing structure. Racialist-Nationalist (and all Nationalists) look at a blueprint.
Racialists-Nationalists are not alone in so doing, joined by Liberal Democrats/libertarians, Social Democrats (“liberals” for Gringos), Cultural Marxists, and Hamiltonian Whigs. (Christian Democrats and Greens look at both an existing structure and a blueprint – again suggesting the compelling nature of their arguments.)
Said differently, Real Conservatives approach problems from behind. Nationalists (and others) start from the front, the future – a rather dubious idea, by the way, because the future is fantasy; the past is real . The difference is even starker: Real Conservatives, ironically, look first at the present, and then see it as the growth from a long historical process. Racialists-Nationalists start with their utopian future, and then see the present as only a perverted sickness (if Paul Gottfried will pardon the therapeutic lingo) in need of violent purgation, aiming at their “racially pure” future.
Finally, to justify what can only be called a utopian scheme – a future of a purified race –, nationalists set up a fake past, a “romantic” past that never existed, in order to take over the Real Conservative program and sucker in Real Conservatives. (Not once in the past have Conservatives [and Christians] been the frightened and useful idiots of racialist nationalists.). We know Adi’s and Benitos respective fake pasts (though Naziism and Fascism, I say again, are different movements). In Dixie I see the assertion of a fake Celtic nationalism, complete with bagpipes and kilts. But not only are most of Dixie’s European people Borderers, not only were the Borders neither “Scots” or “Irish” or even really much of a Celtic group in genes (an trivial factor) or culture at all, not only were their no Confederate bagpipes or kilts, but also these accouterments and equipage of supposed Scottish culture are at best Highland Scot, and in fact are an 19th C invention, influenced by the windy Sir Walter Scott, invented as a consolation prize for incorporation into the British Empire and the loss of a Stuart King.
Paul Gottfried: Forget for a minute my theory in this and the previous posts. Isn’t the concrete historical record of the kind of “ethnic associations” and “core cultures” (and I’m sorry, but these are euphemisms) pretty sorry: Two World Wars, numerous pogroms, “ethnic cleansings”, and genocides, Reichskristalnachts – all caused by nationalism? Don’t nationalists have a pesky and tiresome irredentist habit of not leaving their neighbors – interior and exterior – alone? Where in your vision is a safety device to keep such “ethnic associations” from turning into social orders identical to the Balkans and Lebanon? In such orders I’d rather not live.
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Cheers ConnorL. Fantastic comment! Respectable conservatives are too frightened to acknowledge the truth contained in your post, which is why they will be replaced by us unrespectables very soon.
Any ideas on which country may be the first to take advantage of a white-only immigration policy? Estonia perhaps?
Africa for Africans.
Asia for Asians.
White countries for Everyone?
You do the math.
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In his “Study of Sovereignty, Maistre points out, “It is one of man’s curious idiosyncrasies to create difficulties for the pleasure of resolving them. The mysteries that surround him on all sides are not sufficient for him; he still rejects clear ideas and reduces everything to a problem by some inexplicable twist of pride, which makes him regard it as below him to believe what everyone believes.”
The conference—as well as the more prolix comments on this forum--seem to encourage that idiosyncrasy. So Habermas now suspects that man is a religious being? Well, stop the presses for that insight from the most important philosopher since Derrida. Wake me up in 10 years or so when he makes another such profound discovery.
Everything that is has a nature, and the nature of man, as Maistre pointed out a couple of centuries before Habermas, is to be a “cognitive, religious, and sociable animal.” The term “conservative” no longer means much, perhaps “Traditionalist” is better despite its nominalist usage by a poster. The Traditionalist does not repeat the past simply because it is the past, but only insofar as the past embodies the “permanent things”, that is, insofar as it is in accordance with the true nature of man. We could say that authentic Tradition is not simply historically prior, but rather ontologically prior.
Maistre objects to Rousseau who denied that sociability is from nature and claimed in opposition that it is simply a matter of convention. In other words, as conventional, it is a creation of man, and thus, not a creation of God who created the social arrangements that a man is born into. Hence, it is a rebellion against God.
The political thinker must be able to discern universal and natural social arrangements from the truly conventional customs that arise in different times and places. Not that even conventional customs should be casually tossed aside, but natural arrangements, never. The latter used to be obvious to sane and normal men, but apparently not to those who prefer to create difficulties.
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M.Maurras, vous avez bien explique’ notre probleme, ici
dans cette ligne electronique, mais aussi entre les
personnes qui reclament le nom <<conservative>>.
La democratie moderne n’est pas compatible avec la nature
fondamentale de l’homme.
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“Charles Maurras” I thank for his wise comments and welcome his future writebacks.
As a Dixson partisan, I recall Maurras support for local regions confederated under the King. I’m a bit more Legitimist than Orleanist. As for Habermas, as a Christian, I’m happy for whatever enlightening of the intellect that Grace can do.
Leon Bloy: Polybius is correct that the good constitution, the mixed constitution, needs a democratic element to protect the commons. It needs other elements as well.
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“So Habermas now suspects that man is a religious being? Well, stop the presses for that insight from the most important philosopher since Derrida.”
heheheheheeheheh that was funny...After 40 years regurgitating irrelevant marxist theses Habermas woke up to the religious element in “Gesellschaft"…
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