Who is John Lukacs?
Anti-anticommunist Hungarian Catholic elitist romantic father figure Russophobe Anglophile
of Jewish origin on his mother’s side?
Do we have a winner?
The envelope please…
“Medieval Tory”?

The American populace will be blamed again (especially around here) for sweeping Obama and even more Democrats into power this November.  The only saving grace will be that it will entail jumnping out of the international fire and into a largely domestic frying pan.

Mr. Havers,
Neither the American religious right or English puritanism =
“unrestrained spiritualism.” What poses as spiritualism in America today is simply a conglomeration of confused emotional reactions of an unrooted culture. Like lost and stunned passengers groping in the dark after a train wreck.  It was the same for the English puritans once they cut themselves loose from the ancient faith of their Fathers. Yet, not the culture. The diminishing culture cut from its life of grace, limped along for another four centuries.Thus today there is not a dimes worth of difference between the caterwailing of a Rev. Hagee, Rev. Wright, Al Sharpton or their look alike cousin of the Catholic variety in
Father Michael Pfleger. The Christian Tradition is contemplative in its essence and thus even the greatest of the medieval Order of Preachers were always contemplatives before anything else. 
Dr. Lukacs is justified in his fear of what passes for spiritualism in America: The herd mentality in emotional frenzie. Something along the lines of watching old films of the Third Reich rallying the masses. My disappointmet in Mr. Lukacs analysis (and yours) is the lack of wisdom in knowing or at least recognizing the difference between these husks of unbridled emotion and what Moses described as the “silent shout” of the spirit that dwells within.

Rob: what you describe as the contemplative dimension of the Christian tradition is interesting, although Lukacs (and I) would doubt that this version of Christianity ever existed in America (despite his confusing association of “medieval” with “unrestrained spiritualism").  Kurth’s notion of a “Protestant Deformation” is probably closer in spirit to what Lukacs and I deplore about American religion today.  You are right that these pathologies of shallow emotion and anti-traditionalism don’t exclusively apply to the Religious Right; I focused on the RR because it was most relevant to Lukacs’ critique of populism in the US.

I enjoyed your comments. You are probably right about Lukacs as a “Tory” and that he probably more European than American in terms of his perspective. At the same time,I think that the views of the “elites” and the “public” are more intertwined than you make them to be. The Religious Right is a very powerful political force that includes top leaders, lawmakers, opinion makers, interest groups, think tanks,, local churches, etc. who seem to subscribe to the foreign policy of this administration and the war against Islamo-Fascism. There are elements in Orthodox Judaism and Catholicism that ally with the Religious Right on many issues.

Isn’t this article itself just the flip side of what Lukacs is accused of doing?  Mr. Havers, too, says, “No, it’s not those, it’s them!”.  He just switches the places of elite/masses in the blame game.  He concedes that some of those (the “Religious Right") do share the “blame”, but that’s as far as he goes towards exploring a complex relationship between rulers and ruled.  “Monocausal” is probably an over-used swear word these days, but if the shoe fits…

Mr. Havers says that he deplores the Protestant Deformation described by Kurth and others, but who subscribes to that Deformation?  The elite?  A class called the “Religious Right”?  And from where was this Deformation declined?
Kurth, Jenkins, and others make the point that the Protestant Deformation, which is just the latest stage in the declination of a national religion, is pervasive.

Finally, it’s ironic that Mr. Havers appeals to the “elite theory” of Paul Gottfried.  Mr. Gottfried himself (in Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt) emphasizes that the ideology promulgated by the elite is conditioned on the prior religious-like beliefs subscribed to by virtually all Americans.  Mr. Gottfried also emphasizes that the masses are generally quite ready to accept this hegemonic ideology.

For reasons of space, I couldn’t develop a full-blown “elite theory” of my own, which would take into account the complexity of the relation between elites and masses, as Leon and Ploni correctly point out.  Elites can sincerely believe in their ideology too, although there is probably more cynicism at this level of power.  I agree that each group can affect and manipulate the other (as H. Arendt showed in her analysis of totalitarianism).  My main point was that Lukacs’ analysis of US politics, despite its insights, lacks elite theory altogether.

A reason Lukacs is less than enthusiastic about Hannah Arendt is that he indeed eschews the efficacy of ideas like the concept of “elite theory” altogether.  This is not to say that he is in any way unconcerned with how elites have thought.  Again I would recommend his book “A Thread of Years” for his explication on the very issues we are discussing here.

Mr Havers and a few other writers on this site are concerned with control, not the truth. They are Burnhamites and Franciscans.  Elites don’t bother them, so long as they are the elites.  At least Lukacs and Irving want to get at the truth, and don’t want to create new elites to hoodwink the masses.  We need more truth-loving defenders of the one true church (Rome) on this site.

Great article.

I suppose, what counts as “Conservative” varies from country to country.  As Puritan-Whig Rebels, it follows that the Tory-Leaning Whig, Edmund Burke, has become the archetypal American Conservative.  Indeed, given the history of our formation, we could hardly look to a Bolingbroke, who was a Monarchist and a Churchman (favoring the established Church of England)—essential requirements of an historically authentic 17-18th Century English Tory. 

In short, one man’s Tory is another’s Whig.  Because of his monarchist sympathies, Lukacs may be just further to the right of the historical Anglo-American spectrum than Buchanan, who is a populist republican, even Lukacs cannot score full points due to his Catholicism and his Russophobia.

Mr Taft makes a good point.  As a European, Lukacs knows WW 2 best, although he should’ve seen the similarities between Hitler & Stalin better.  And his critique of right-wing populism has more to do with his critique of Hitler, and has little relevance to the US.

“he should’ve seen the similarities between Hitler & Stalin better.”

Lukacs is known for pointing out the similarities of Stalin’s later rule to that of Hitler.

“even Lukacs cannot score full points due to his Catholicism”

Although members of the CofE (after all they wanted to keep their heads) the original English Tories were Royalist supporters of the Catholic King James II.  As was the case with many Cavaliers, I daresay Lukacs Catholicism puts him slightly to the right of Tory.

Mr. Haver,

“although Lukacs (and I) would doubt that this version of Christianity ever existed in America.”

Existing as a determinate number that influenced but never permeated American culture, yes and no. That would require another thread to fully discuss.
Enough to suggest here that without it, every emotion is a kindness to mankind and every coffee-house, casino, and brothel, a different Church; or in our day, a religion. I do thank you for your comments.

nfb makes a good point.  The Jacobite cause was the course of arch-Tory Bolingbroke and the nonJurors, though they remained C of E (until Bolingbroke became infected with Enlightenment Lunacy on the Continent.

Given Mr. Lukacs’s Hungarian descent, and the FACT of the Toleration Acts, I suppose we can give him full contemporary Tory points n.o.v. his Roman Catholicism.  Definitely, he is more Tory than any American “statesmen” as only
United Empire Loyalists can claim full Toryism here in the New World

This is an excellent piece because it goes in an unexpected direction. I thought it
would be an encomium to the Tory spirit when I began to read it but it quickly turned
in a different, more provocative direction by raising the responsibility of elites
for the godawful way in which the populace behaves.

If the American people think the religious right has power(and they do),
it does in fact have power. Look how all the politicians suck up to it.
McCain was the last to fight the RR and he disgustingly knuckled under to
Hagee and the born again Baptists in order to win the Republican nomination.

Rob,

To equivelence John Hagee with Jerimiah Wright and Michael Phleger is fatuous.
Hagee is a warmongering Zionist and part of the political Religious Right.
He chooses to ignore new testiment scriptures about peace and nonviolence too
numerous to name here and creates endtime interpretations through his warped
imagination to kill palestinian christians. Say what you will about Wright
and Phleger, they line themselves on the other side of those issues.