I was going to snark about a week-old Jonah Goldberg column. “I confess, if Beck wasn’t a libertarian, I would find his populism terrifying.” But I see Will Wilkinson already said it: “If Mr Beck’s libertarian streak, such as it is, is all that keeps his demos-whispering puppetmastery from reducing Mr Goldberg to a quivering heap, it seems to me this weekend’s pageant of platitudes should not have been reassuring at all.” Cato’s loss.
The problem for Beck – and Goldberg – is obvious: it doesn’t make sense just to join Christian nationalism with libertarianism at the hip, and leave it at that. Conservatism as secular-theocratic/communitarian-individualistic/tribal-cosmopolitan philosophy. Conservatives will respond that it is the genius of conservatism to nurture a ‘fruitful tension’ hereabouts. My complaint against ‘fusionism’ is standard, and so is the stock ‘hobgoblin of little minds’ brush-off of my complaint. But let me try to say something brief about this that I haven’t seen said briefly in quite this way.
The rhetorical advantage of having a set of ‘principles’ that is, in effect, massively over-productive of permissions and prohibitions, is that you can take a ‘principled’ stand for pretty much anything, or against it, in roughly one step. You can call for vast individual sacrifices for the greater good. You can denounce any and all such calls for sacrifice. You can come out in favor of heavy-handed statism and paternalism. You can denounce everything except the minimal, night-watchman state. So it goes.
Your ‘principles’ are functioning as a volume knob on your preferences. If you like something, turn it up to 10. If you don’t like it, mute it out. You don’t have anything doing the job principles are generally thought to do: namely, acting as any sort of critical check.
Is this unfair to Beck – or Goldberg? After all, it’s probably true that political wisdom consists in judiciously balancing incommensurable values. Edmund Burke meets Isaiah Berlin-ish stuff. Yes, but the paradigm of respecting the crooked timber of humanity shouldn’t be treating your principles as servants that get you what you want, then melt discretely into the woodwork. You have to see, at a minimum, why Hayek wrote “Why I Am Not A Conservative”. If you don’t acknowledge that this makes serious trouble for Christian nationalist libertarianism, you simply aren’t a libertarian. Or a Christian nationalist. You’re just self-indulgent and/or a professional facilitator of self-indulgence in others.
(I am reminded of a post from a few years back in which Goldberg solved the riddle of how Hayek could fail to be a conservative by claiming he wasn’t talking about American conservatives. Which is, to put it mildly, a misreading.)
UPDATE: Yes, I know the rhetoric was rather blandly interfaith. But this is an example of what I am talking about, not a counter-example to it. If you think about it.
{ 38 comments }
Substance McGravitas 09.08.10 at 4:34 am
I’ll have thoughts on this later: gotta walk the dog. [Cries.]
John Holbo 09.08.10 at 5:01 am
I forgot to mention that Goldberg, in particular, has that third principle. It’s always ok to say ‘gotta walk the dog’ when confronted with a tough one.
James 09.08.10 at 5:36 am
I understand the worry, there are significant tensions between self-described members of the Beck/Tea Party group.
I am less interested in the cognitive dissonance of the tea parties’ opportunistic leaders than the sudden tolerance shown within its membership (tolerance of seemingly incompatible viewpoints). People with competing and often incompatible viewpoints are suspending disagreement and instead rallying around “one cause”. That is fascinating, and I don’t think enough thought has been given to this point specifically.
Determining exactly what that “one cause” is is central to understanding what the tea party is all about; how libertarians can stand shoulder to shoulder with communitarians. That one cause is, simply put, excercising collective political power, and retaking control of political debate. Tea Partiers, Beck supporters included, are skeptical of their governments representatives, and do not trust them to debate political issues in good faith. Libertarians have watched as both Republican and Democratic congresses increase the size of government, and feel scorned. By actively working together, as a block of politically engaged citizens, they seek to reduce the influence of individual politicians in the political process and increase their influence in the political realm. Take the recent Tea party nominees as an example. The nominees will not be beholden to the GOP, but to the tea party itself, for their nomination and election victories in November. The tea party is betting that they can influence these politicians after their election.
Some tea party members are certainly aware of the tensions within the movement, but are happier debating with fellow “members”, with whom they think they can have a reasonable discussion, than with the political “elite”, who they distrust.
TGGP 09.08.10 at 6:03 am
Nobody claims to be a Christian nationalist these days, although I suppose that would be more popular than actual libertarianism. Even Glenn Beck’s recent religious rally was watery interfaith stuff. I guess it makes sense for him to take something like that route. “Mormons: at least we’re not Muslims, gays, or atheists!”
John Holbo 09.08.10 at 6:24 am
Well, I don’t think Beck calls himself a Christian nationalist. But he is a Christian and a nationalist, and he espouses his Christianity as the normative basis for his nationalism. That the U.S. is a Christian nation is the reason why you should be a nationalist on behalf of the U.S. A big part of the reason. So Christian nationalist does not seem like an unreasonable characterization. (Admittedly, this makes for trouble when it comes to explaining how Jews and Muslims can be good citizens. At that point you get some not-wholly-convincing interfaith gestures.) I guess you could call Beck an everyone-but-atheists-and-wiccans nationalist. But that doesn’t seem any more flattering as a designation. I think it is important, for him, that Christianity will provide the dominant keynote in American nationalist religiosity, even if other religions may harmonize with it.
alex 09.08.10 at 7:18 am
“melt discretely into the woodwork.” Somewhere, a little pedant is weeping.
Phil 09.08.10 at 7:26 am
Libertarians have watched as both Republican and Democratic congresses increase the size of government, and feel scorned.
Maybe, but they do seem to have watched one type of congress a bit more quietly than the other. Isn’t the “one cause” simply “Bring Down This Government”?
Charles Frith 09.08.10 at 7:30 am
Beck want’s the political to go religious. Not the religious to go political. It’s an important distinction for the next Mormon prophet.
Wait and see.
John Holbo 09.08.10 at 9:23 am
“Somewhere, a little pedant is weeping.”
That guy is always weeping. I think you are confusing correlation with causation.
Zamfir 09.08.10 at 9:47 am
If a pedant always weeps, there can be no observed correlation between him weeping and other variables.
There might at best be correlation with the strength of his weeping and other variables.
Metamorf 09.08.10 at 10:39 am
Hayek wasn’t a conservative, but he wasn’t a latter-day liberal either. What does that mean when it comes time to vote? Some further thoughts here.
Alex 09.08.10 at 10:42 am
There is a simpler explanation – it’s not a question of principles but of aesthetics. Being a ‘bagger is a style statement rather than a belief system.
Clay Shirky 09.08.10 at 11:46 am
I grew up with the kind of Christians Beck was talking to, and I can assure you that what he was saying was _not_ blandly interfaith, except as interpreted by liberals. Because he used few of the overt words ecumenical or atheist hearers listen for, the transcript of the day does indeed look fairly watered down — a lot of talk about God, and Jesus gets thrown under the bus.
But what Beck was doing was a kind of oral steganography, hiding the message in the high bit. His core audience is under no confusion about what America’s recent and tragic drift away from God means — it means gay marriage and mosques in our cornfields and Presidents who are different in some obvious but unsayable ways from the previous lot.
And that audience is likewise under no confusion what going back to God means — it means defending the Defense of Marriage Act, and banning mosques and burning Korans, and even if we can’t impeach the President for being not just black but really, truly African-American, we can at least make sure that nothing of the sort ever happens again.
Andrew Sullivan had it right — there is a sizable group of white people in this country who are truly starting to think like oppressed minorities, down to the strategy of speaking one way in the church and another in the town green. If Beck had taken his brand of rabble-rousing straight from from the screen to the green largely unchanged, he wouldn’t be much of a worry in the long term — more like a self-marginalizing McCarthy figure, who doubles down until he loses. The fact that he (and Palin) know enough to frame their speech in a way that seems flabby to liberals but energizing to much of the white Protestant population strikes me as nothing less than tactical genius.
John Holbo 09.08.10 at 12:39 pm
Yes, I do appreciate that there is a huge whopping negative space in the sermon: namely, who has stolen our honor? That said, there is quite a bit of interfaith rhetoric, and this is an example of the basic arbitrariness of the philosophy. There are some patches over which you apply a genuinely classical liberal philosophy of individualistic tolerance. But there are some other areas where that definitely doesn’t fly: the people who have stolen our honor. Whoever they may be.
mds 09.08.10 at 1:16 pm
[Weeps onto his pedantic little shoes]
I keep trying to convince myself that this was clever wordplay, as in “discrete principles are selected for convenient suppression.” Otherwise, civilization is doomed.
Also, what Clay Shirky said. Anyone who’s been sufficiently gnawed by the Evangelical Elasmobranch could catch the signals.
bianca steele 09.08.10 at 2:37 pm
Now I’m supposed to listen to that speech? I’m slightly less enthusiastic about that than about trying to force Jonah G. into some kind of sense. (Though on the other hand, Beck is popular, influential and representative–I don’t think Goldberg is. Unless you think there are a lot of Jewish-Episcopalian journalists with far-right Catholic employers out there. But his prose is like jello.)
Steve LaBonne 09.08.10 at 2:55 pm
The latter could actually be enjoyable if instruments of torture were involved.
y81 09.08.10 at 3:00 pm
@6 et al.: I am one of those weeping pedants. But hey, we are a discreet and insular minority, who weep quietly and say nothing.
bianca steele 09.08.10 at 5:17 pm
John H. @ 5
I think there is an argument floating around out there that the LDS Church is a/the authentic “American Church.” An alternative “American Church” is American Evangelicalism. In favor of the former is the hierarchy and the cathedrals/temples and all, and also, I think, the fact that from an intellectual point of view it seems evangelicals have been almost merging with Roman Catholics in recent decades (though I would accept correction on this point). So, if we need an American church–given Protestant schism and the unacceptable nature of Roman and Episcopalian Catholicism, as well as Eastern Orthodoxy, for the task–what better? I do think there is a logic to it, however much a perversion of truth it ends up being.
No actual instruments of torture were used in the formation of this comment–only tortured logic.
g 09.08.10 at 5:47 pm
This weeping pedant would like to observe (in response to Holbo@5) that you can’t have a dominant keynote: the keynote is always the tonic, and the dominant is something else entirely.
roac 09.08.10 at 7:10 pm
Democritus argued millenia ago that discretely is the only way to melt, and modern science is unanimously on his side.
flibert 09.08.10 at 7:34 pm
I think Clay Shirkey’s comment is spot on.
Jeff 09.08.10 at 9:18 pm
Your ‘principles’ are functioning as a volume knob on your preferences. Isn’t it the reverse? Your ‘preferences’ are functioning as a volume knob on your principles.
Jeff 09.08.10 at 9:19 pm
But, yes the quotation marks go around “principles.”
mw 09.08.10 at 9:51 pm
I have a hard time watching enough of Glen Beck to make him out, but I’ve assumed that the reason that Mormons might find libertarianism attractive is their status as a minority religious group with a history of persecution (if the Amish were politically active, libertarianism would make sense for them as well) If Mormons had any prospect of becoming a majority, they might not find libertarianism appealing at all, but as it is, I think they perceive small-government libertarianism more likely to give them space. For a better example of a Mormon libertarian, I’d suggest looking at Jeff Flake rather than Beck.
TGGP 09.09.10 at 12:27 am
“I think it is important, for him, that Christianity will provide the dominant keynote in American nationalist religiosity, even if other religions may harmonize with it.”
Here I link to christwire, I can do no other.
John Holbo 09.09.10 at 12:43 am
Jeff’s point is well taken. It’s more a volume knob on your principles. But what I meant was that principles act as intensifiers, not critical checks. I was sort of crossing the idea that principles act to let us express what we prefer, but also as amplifiers of preference. Anyhoo.
As to the whole ‘dominant’ issue, g writes: “This weeping pedant would like to observe (in response to Holbo@5) that you can’t have a dominant keynote: the keynote is always the tonic, and the dominant is something else entirely.”
I think strictly this is a case of weeping half-pedantry, because a true pedant would realize that you can generally distinguish ‘dominant’ in the political sense from ‘dominant’ in the music sense, because the latter is a noun, the former an adjective. If I had said ‘the keynote which was also the dominant’, I would have been talking about music. As it stands, I just wrote a really really awkward sentence, perhaps due to not wanting to say that the keynote had a ‘tonic’ effect.
Cheez Whiz 09.09.10 at 3:55 am
On a semi-related topic, it struck me today that there are a huge number of parallels between the Tea Party and the Hippies. Both are/were amorphous groups that have no real leadership or structure: any one can “be” a teapartier/hippie and anyone can “speak for” the TeaParty/Hippies. The trick in “leading” a group like this is simply to grab the megaphone. Abbie Hoffman did it, so did Glen Beck. And like the Hippies, the Tea Party (nee TeaBaggers) began as a small/distrubuted/grass-roots/under-the-radar group, then the hustlers moved in and took over and productized it. The analogy completely falls apart when you realize that other than record labels and clothing manufacturers, (and maybe Jann Wenner) no one saw Hippies as a potential power base, so there’s plenty of motive to freshen up the makeup on the corpse of the Tea Party every so often.
Gene O'Grady 09.09.10 at 2:00 pm
bianca steele —
There are segments of the Catholic church I avoided even when I was still a quite active member, but I do remember a sermon (mid-90’s) by a well-connected and fairly influential priest on the local ecumenical association in which he said it had recently been strengthened by the new participation of the Mormons and Mennonites, as well as by the continued non-participation of the Moral Majority evangelical types. That was in California, so perhaps not typical.
bianca steele 09.09.10 at 2:36 pm
Gene, I had in mind collaborations at the theological and academic level, for example at universities associated with evangelical denominations and in books like one I remember by Michael Novak in which he seems to count Catholics and evangelicals as the two significant divisions within American Christianity, both of which he is concerned to analyze (also at least one probably facetious comment I’ve heard about “the merge”).
bianca steele 09.09.10 at 2:47 pm
Also, I’m not all that clear on what “ecumenicism” is? It could be a kind of quasi-federalism or gradual inter-criticism of divergent belief systems. But it could also be a resolution to correct each divergence as it’s noticed, and it seems to me this is what some people mean when they complain that ecumenicism is making their right-leaning church more liberal.
politicalfootball 09.09.10 at 3:52 pm
I grew up with the kind of Christians Beck was talking to, and I can assure you that what he was saying was not blandly interfaith, except as interpreted by liberals.
Another vote here for Clay Shirky’s view. If you are only able to hear the words, you run the risk of becoming a bonehead in the style of Will Saletan.
Well yeah, but if your basic framework is authoritarian, you can pretty much say whatever the hell you want. Whatever works.
JM 09.09.10 at 4:34 pm
I may have missed the joke, but it seems to me you’re going about this the wrong way. Since the American right can no longer sell the notion that yet another round of voodoo economics will raise all boats, they’re having to double down on tribalism. They have yet to establish a narrative that will simultaneously appeal to their economic prey while placating the few who actually stand to profit, but given time I’m sure they’ll iron something out, since they have so much corporate marketing experience in-house.
Advertising, not philosophizing, is the better metaphor for the present volatility. They’re trying to sell the same shitty product to a shrinking demographic that has lost faith in their own elites. Very entertaining.
JM 09.09.10 at 4:38 pm
Well, I don’t think Beck calls himself a Christian nationalist. But he is a Christian and a nationalist, and he espouses his Christianity as the normative basis for his nationalism.
Glenn Beck is a Christian? I was under the impression that he was a Mormon.
chris 09.09.10 at 5:04 pm
Well, a lot of people seem to think that there’s something about the name “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints” that suggests that it might possibly be a sect of Christianity. Probably something to do with those third and fourth words.
alex 09.10.10 at 11:13 am
@28 – if they’re hippies, can we punch them?
@35 – only if Arians, Socinians, Valentinian Gnostics, et al. get in as well.
JM 09.10.10 at 7:06 pm
@35:
… except I would expect there to be more to it than that. Mormonism’s individual deification/multiverse and oddly sci-fi God don’t seem to fit any kind of Christianity previously known.
If, however, that’s all that’s required, I will proclaim myself to be the Me of Jesus Christ and tell the IRS to go sniff.
Sam Hutcheson 09.14.10 at 2:20 pm
So Christian nationalist does not seem like an unreasonable characterization. (Admittedly, this makes for trouble when it comes to explaining how Jews and Muslims can be good citizens. At that point you get some not-wholly-convincing interfaith gestures.)
While he would likely never use the phrase himself, I think Beck and his fellow Christian nationalists are open to a “people of the book” interpretation of that nationalism, so long as the recent additions to “the book” agree to vote Republican. As a Mormon, perhaps Beck has more affinity to “the book plus additional revealed holy texts” than your standard Christian, though.
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