conservatism

We don't pay much attention.  Whether we ever did, I really can't say, but there are many trends in the political arena today that works against the interests of the vast majority of Americans.  The alliance of economic conservatism and social conservatism strikes me as one such trend.  I can understand both, and there may even be some legitimacy to the arguments advanced on behalf of economic conservatism and social conservatism, but there seems to be a deep cynicism in the republican party, one whose true interests lie in economic conservatism, the fundamental principles of which benefit only the wealthiest of individuals, not in social conservatism, which has a broader appeal and serves as a cover for the former.  The intersections between the two are uneasy at best.  The cry against big government in the economic sphere is carried over into the social sphere, but only when it suits a particular argument -- the use of tax subsidies to fund elective abortions or contraception when all that is needed is an aspirin locked tightly between the knees.  Of course social conservatives want to ban abortion, and a certain segment want to ban contraception.  They want big government to regulate our sexual behavior, usually to the disadvantage of women, but not our economic behavior.  Of course, within a wholly free market, often thought of as a holy free market, big government must intrude on our boudoirs, else the market for child pornography, say, get out of hand.

We don't pay much attention, and we lack a sense of irony, probably because we are poorly educated in the humanities.  I wanted to write an essay entitled "A Modest Proposal," where the poverty across the globe, to include the poverty in our country could be solved through a free market solution -- just offer up the children of the poor to the sex trade.  The use of abortion and contraceptions would go down, the children would likely be quickly used up and their life expectancies short so they would not be a continuous burden, and the needs of those who could afford it would be satisfied.  I didn't write the essay because, frankly, too many would take me seriously and would miss the point.  Liberty and morality are fundamentally linked and just as fundamentally opposed.  We are moral creatures because we can choose between moral and immoral actions, but to choose morality, whether individually or socially, is to choose a restriction on our liberty.  Though it happens, the idea of selling children into the sex trade is so deeply repugnant to most that we feel, regardless of individual predilections, it should be banned.  Though I don't share their repugnance, I get the idea that homosexuality might be so repugnant to some that they feel, regardless of individual predilection, it should be banned.  Social conservatism has its place in the free market of ideas.  They can argue their position, and if their arguments are persuasive enough, one can imagine moral regulation that enforces their position, an infringement on liberty that insures we are not only moral individuals but a moral society as well.

I should point out that, to my way of thinking, there are differences between the market place of ideas and the free market per se.  The language of one crosses over into the language of the other, and we talk about things like "buy in" to an idea as if it were popular commodity, and then too rights to "intellectual property" can be protected and commodified facilitating their trade within the market place, but there remain a fundamental differences that are recognizable even if fraught with difficulties.  It is one thing for me to make a "Modest Proposal," quite another to realize the elements of that proposal within the market place, and we can allow for the much greater liberty in the market place of ideas than the market place per se, in part because great latitude in the former is a necessary (if not wholly sufficient) condition for the moral regulation of the latter.  I say this because "moral regulation" emerges within a social consensus and a social consensus emerges within the market place of ideas.  Even if one believes, fundamentally, that morality is tied to the revealed word of god, or his emissaries, it remains that there must be a genuine social consensus around the validity of the revelation.

I distract myself a bit, because I really wanted to talk about the nature of American conservatism, particularly the relation between economic conservatism and social conservatism, which in many respects hasn't changed much since Andrew Carnegie wrote "Wealth" for the North American Review.  In it, he wrote, "the problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth," and if we are not so much concerned that "the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship," we perhaps should be.  Carnegie, of course, was quite willing to accept great disparities in wealth, and he justified that disparity on free market principles.  As he put it, "much better this great irregularity than universal squalor," in part because the great advances, the "highest and best in literature and the arts," as well as "all the refinements of civilization,"as he saw it, were contingent upon this great irregularity.  At the core of the justification was an argument around liberty, and "the law of competition."  There must be, again as he saw it, "great scope for the exercise of special ability in the merchant and in the manufacturer who has to conduct affairs upon a great scale," in part because "this talent for organization and management is rare among men," and the possession of those rare talents "invariable secures for its possessor enormous rewards."  Great scope, or great liberty must be allowed for "the law of competition" to have it salutary effect in the provision of "our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train."

This is essentially the argument that economic conservatism advances today.  We should reduce, even eliminate, anything that would limit the "great scope" or the great liberty of those captains of industry.  Although there are great disparities in the wealth, and those disparities are likely to continue, nevertheless through the law of competition and the refinements it brings, the condition of all has improved, and today "the poor enjoy what the rich could not before afford."   There is, of course, a certain truth to this argument, and the grand 20th century experiments with controlled markets proved to be wholly disastrous for all concerned.  Carnegie may have been prescient in suggesting that no substitutes for the law of competition have been found, and in lieu of effective substitutes for the law of competition, that same law is "best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department."  It perhaps bears pointing out that his law of competition is social darwinism writ large, and self-justifying -- those who are at the top of the heap are inherently superior to those at the bottom of the heap, and their position at the top of the heap is sufficient proof of the same -- those who are in control of the resources are inherently those best capable of controlling the resources, and their being in a position to control the resources is sufficient proof of the same -- et cetera.  It perhaps bears pointing out as well that social darwinism is inherently anti-democratic.  One must be attentive to note that the law of competition prevails, not among the masses, but only among the fittest.  The masses have already been subjugated, and "we accept and welcome, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race."

As most would recognize, Carnegie's argument, and the argument of economic conservatism generally, is one of utilitarian resignation, not a moral argument.  I don't need to point out that great wealth can be accumulated by means not altogether moral or ethical, and being at the top of the economic heap, being among the "fittest," says nothing whatsoever about one's moral probity either for good or for ill, though there are religious arguments that might suggest otherwise, that those attributes rendering one "fittest" in the economic sphere might well render one least fit for the moral sphere, it being easier, after all, for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, and the like.  We do, however, defer to power, and with wealth comes power and the deference it demands, but we should not mistake the deference it demands with the reverence it desires.  We say things like, "the ends do not justify the means," in part to capture this distinction.  While the "future progress of the race" may well be a desirable end, even the material progress of the race, no one should have complete latitude in the means of effectuating that progress, and great scope is not complete scope, great liberty is not complete liberty to do as one damn well pleases.  Even though there may be a well developed demand, even though the satisfaction of that demand may be highly remunerative and may ease the squalor of the poor, we nevertheless do not not allow the consumption of children, whether at table or in the boudoir, and we do not allow it because it is morally repugnant.            

Economic conservatism, then, needs social conservatism to keep it in line, to define the moral limitations on its necessary and its social darwinist conception of liberty.  The difficulty of course is this:  social conservatism too is anti-democratic.  Consider, for example, the on-going malaise surrounding contraception and abortion.  On the one side is the argument to liberty -- that women should be free to engage in sexual activity, and should that activity result in a unwanted pregnancy, they should be free to terminate that pregnancy.  Even those who support abortion typically have moral limitations on that liberty -- at what point, for example, does a fetus become "viable" or "human," and its termination a matter of infanticide?  That is not so much a scientific as a moral question, and different societies have come to differing social consensus around that question, but the idea of a developing social consensus is anathema to the social conservative position, in part because they see the social consensus going in the wrong direction.  Indeed, it is the developing social consensus that must be arrested.  Contraception, at least contraception outside of wedlock, is fraught because it does allow women a greater liberty to engage in sexual activity for the sheer pleasure of it without consideration of the natural consequence of that activity.  Abortion is fraught at any number of levels, but at least in part because pregnancy and birth is the comeuppance for the sense of disobedience and lost innocence associated with sexual pleasure -- I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.  There are different arguments to advance here, and I needn't enumerate them all, but there does seem to be a social consensus around contraception (there being a strong market for contraception even among Catholic women) and the social consensus around abortion is "under construction" (there being a question whether a market for abortion itself should even be permitted).

I am suggesting, of course, that social conservatism is always a reaction to a social consensus that is developing, or so it is perceived, in the wrong direction.  It is one thing to say, I am aghast, quite another to say, I am in power, and the social conservative in power will use those means necessary to repress the developing social consensus -- to repress, in short, the democratic impulse, particularly the free speech rights that fuel the developing consensus.  If we consider, for example, the Texas approach to text books, you have some sense of how those free speech rights might be abridged, particularly when you consider that paternalism knows no boundaries.  The connect between economic conservatism and social conservation is not in the mutual respect for liberty, but in the anti-democratic impulse.  At its most benign it is the far-reaching paternalism of the sort that Carnegie endorses on what might be called platonic grounds -- that the best, those merchants and manufacturers that have acquired great fortune, should rule because they have demonstrated a rare "talent for organization and management," on the one side, and on the other, the possession of wealth is the possession of the "highest and best in literature and the arts" and "all the refinements of civilization."  The acquisition and  disposal of wealth has displaced the philosophy of the philosopher king, but the implies is the same.  The best should govern, and there echoes of the Carnegie's attitude in Romney's assertions that his business success uniquely qualifies him for the presidency, even perhaps, if one is listening closely, entitles him to, the presidency.

There is, of course, another darker sense of paternalism, and the notion that the best should govern, the obligation to provide moral leadership to "those people."  I would call it the "white man's burden," though that colonial phrase has been rendered quaint, and too easily dismissed, and Charles Murray has taken great pains to demonstrate that race and ethnicity are secondary factors in the alignment of wealth and what might be taken as the core American virtues of "industriousness, honesty, marriage, and religiosity."  If one works backward through Murray's list of virtues, beginning with religiosity, which in many minds includes "defense of marriage," and certainly the protestant virtues of honesty and industriousness, one ends up with the attitudes and values of the white evangelical.  The point of Marray's latest tome, Coming Apart: the State of White America, 1960-2010, as he professes, is to provide what might be called empirical evidence for a moral position -- that the demonstrable attitudes and values of the wealthy, regardless of race or ethnicity, represent what is best about America -- that the attitudes and values of the wealthy represent "our kind of people" over against the demonstrable attitudes and values of "those people" -- and from there of course it is easy enough to determine who should govern.  It is easy enough to see as well the point of departure to which Murray is reacting, the social consensus of the 50s that began unraveling in the 60s, and have continued unraveling since.  Whether or not Murray is correct in his assertions, and there is much to argue, if we are becoming a minority majority country, whether in terms of the racial and ethnic composition of our society, or in terms of income distribution with an ever greater numbers of people falling away into Murray's own category of "those people," if we are to preserve (or turn back the clock to) what is "best" about America, then "our kind of people" should govern.

So my point really is simple.  Liberty, or freedom, is a necessary but not sufficient condition of morality.  One must be free to choose the moral course of action over the immoral, but liberty alone is insufficient to either individual or social morality.  On either the individual or the social scale, we know that our behavior is not always in line with our own sense of morality, and so liberty, in and of itself, is insufficient to morality.  Something more is needed, and the something more always comes in the form of a restriction on our liberty.  One would like to add "comes in the form of a principled restriction on our liberty," or perhaps "comes in the form of a revealed restriction on our liberty," but both the principled and the revealed turn out to be somewhat troublesome.  "Thou shalt not kill," for example, seems clear enough both in principle and as the revealed word of god, but we immediately create contextualized exceptions -- the soldier, self-defense, the police, and the like.  It is not merely that we seek exceptions to excuse bad behavior -- the soldier may well resort to violence to prevent violence to his village -- the police may well rest to violence to prevent the sale of addictive drugs to minors or minors to sex-trafficers -- but rather that it proves impossible, or nearly impossible, to articulate unambiguous and universally applicable restrictions on our behavior.

I am suggesting, in other words, that while useful, the law is an insufficient guide to moral behavior, and that would include the law of god.  We can be in-compliance with the law and behaving reprehensibly, and equally we can be out-of-compliance and behaving morally.  There are too many examples of both to list them all, but one need only think of the CEO of Lehman Brothers, who apparently acted within the law to help send hundreds of thousands into financial crises, or Rosa Parks, who apparently acted outside the law to help enfranchise hundreds of thousands of Americans, and one has some sense that we cannot do without the voice of conscience.  I will set aside individual conscience for the moment.  It can be what it will be, but I  simply suggest that our social conscience resides in the on-going development of our social consensus, one that transcends any particular religion or any particular version of a particular religion -- one that transcends any particular ideology, or any particular version of a particular ideology.  With one possible exception (guns) the framers were correct in protecting the individual liberties that they protected, the freedom to worship and the freedom to speak. They set the on-going development of our social consensus, our social conscience outside (not the influence, but the control) of any particular demagogue.  The conservative impulse, even in its most benignly paternalistic forms, is the impulse to curtail the on-going in the on-going development of the social conscience.      

the individual mandate

The New Yorker had an interesting article in the current edition.  Ezra Klein is the author, and the sub titular question, "why do politicians reverse their positions?" pinpoints the content.  The answer is psychological -- that is to say, in-group loyalty leads us to use what has been called "motivated reasoning."  I suspect all reasoning is motivated, but nevertheless, it does help explain why the Republicans can attack with such vehemence what was originally and essentially a Republican idea -- the individual mandate.

I won't touch on the actual constitutionality of the individual mandate under the commerce clause -- that is for legal scholars and the Supreme Court to debate -- but the premise of the argument against it is simple.  It is an infringement on our liberties, not of the negative sort where government tells us what we cannot do, but of the positive sort where government tells us what we must do.  We are slightly more tolerant of infringements of the negative sort, and for most morality consists of obedience to infringements of the negative sorts -- that shalt not commit adultery or homosexual acts or the like.  We are slightly less tolerant of infringement of the positive sort, and it might in some psychological sense have something to do with being bullied as a child.  Its someone making us do something, by force, that we do not particularly want to do -- like pay taxes -- even though, at some fundamental level, the more meaningful moral imperatives -- thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself -- is cast as a positive infringement on our liberties.

I make this distinction for a couple of reasons, but mostly just to point out that morality is demonstrated not only by what we might refrain from doing, but what we actually do, and then not only individually, but collectively.  First, as a premise, I should point out that I think health care is not a commodity, but a moral right.  If I cannot afford an iPad, and Apple refuses to provide me with one, I don't necessarily want to accuse Apple of immoral behavior.  On the other hand, if I cannot afford health care, and say Intermountain Health refuses to provide me with care, I do want to accuse them of immoral behavior.  It is one thing to deprive me of a toy, another thing to deprive me of care.  The market treats both equally as a commodity, which is why the invisible hand of the market might be a fine thing for commodities, but not for moralities.  If I am a hospital, or care giver, your inability to pay does not relieve me of my moral responsibility to do what I can and must to save your life, even though that positive obligation is an infringement on my liberty and comes at a cost to me.            

Second, as a premise I do not particularly believe in redistributive justice, if by that we simply mean "taking from the rich to give to the poor."  I do, however, believe that each of us individually and that governments collectively have moral responsibilities, and that others have the right to expect moral behavior of each of us individually and governments collectively.  A fundamental moral right is the right to life, and we have the moral obligation not only to refrain from murder, but the obligation to preserve life the life of others if we can.  Individually, we may not be able to do much.  I am not a caregiver, nor do I work at a hospital.  As a member of a collective, however, I have an obligation to do what I can, and for the most part that means paying taxes that go to pay for the care of those who cannot afford care.

We have, in short, a moral obligation to do what we can to preserve the right to life, and in the case of most Americans that means the moral obligation to pay taxes to support a health care plan.  We can, and should, of course, debate the efficacy of a plan, but the inefficacy of any particular plan does not relieve us of the moral obligation to have a plan.  It seems clear enough that the so-called private option of employer-based insurance isn't working well.  We have heard the numbers of Americans that fall outside the employer-based system, and it's reasonably clear why they would.  Not all Americans are employed, and not all employers, even very large employers, offer health benefits.  Consequently, we have medicare and medicaid to cover those who fall outside the employer-based system.  As it stands, we are meeting our moral obligation, but the general consensus has us doing it rather poorly.  If we dismantle medicare and medicaid, we would fail to meet our positive moral obligation to do something unless there is something better -- that is to say, something more efficient -- to replace it.  The question is not "whether we should" -- we should -- but rather "how to do it better."    

This brings me back to the individual mandate.  It is a tax.  It is a particular type of tax, but it is a tax none-the-less.  I pay a similar tax for the right to drive my automobile -- the mandate that I carry liability insurance in order to operate a motor vehicle on the roads of my state.  There are of course differences in the justification for the mandate and the universality of the mandate -- I can forego the privilege of driving on public roads and thereby forego the obligation to purchase automobile insurance -- but the premise is roughly the same.  If I carry insurance and you do not, I also carry a disproportionate share of the risk and the cost of my insurance goes up.  It is, in effect, unfair unless we all carry insurance and share more or less equally in the the risk.

A crucial difference, however, lies in the up-front moral obligation.  I do not feel the same moral obligation toward your "right to drive" as I feel toward your "right to live."  There is a not-so-subtle difference between "I cannot afford car insurance and so cannot drive" and "I cannot afford health insurance and so cannot live."  The former might elicit sympathy.  It might even elicit some tax-supported subsidy for public transportation.  But it is unlikely to elicit the purchase of a Mercedes on your behalf.  I cannot forego the need to access health care in quite the same way that I can forego the privilege of driving on public roads.  I will access the health care system, and there is a public benefit in my doing so, if for no other reason than helping curtail the spread of infectious disease.  Moreover, when accessed, if it takes a Mercedes-level effort to cure you, a Mercedes-level effort will be made on your behalf.  Anything less would be unconscionable.

I have the expectation that every effort will be made on your behalf in part because I have the expectation that every effort will be made on my behalf.  I can be sanguine about your inability to afford care, but cannot be equally sanguine about my inability to afford care.  I can stand in the crowd and shout "let them die!" but the one who did that, in the throes of the moment, might not be quite so quick to shout "let me die!" if he were having a heart attack and his insurance couldn't be verified, or if he were to find himself unemployed and uninsured, and in reality the vast majority of us are a pink slip away from being without coverage.  If I bear that expectation, however, then I should bear my proportionate share of the risk.  I have an obligation to you because you have that obligation to me -- an individual mandate to do my share, an individual mandate that infringes on my liberty to ignore your needs, just as your individual mandate infringes on your liberty to ignore my needs -- and it is ultimately this reciprocity of individual mandates through mutual obligation that makes of us a moral society.    



           

Rational Secular State -- Introduction Continued

I have used the term willful obversity to avoid, on the one hand, the hob-goblin of evil that Bloom's satanic impulse conjures up, though his analysis of the romantic stems from Milton's own extended (and obversely sympathetic) analysis of the Edenic myth, or the elevation of academic snarkiness that 'ironist' seems to justify, though there too one could argue that American moral and political discourse is irony deficient.  Nevertheless, the romantic impulse is clear enough -- the rebellion against conventional mores, against settled senses of the good, particularly when that settled good is not good for me.  The use of 'conventional,' however, can pass by too easily.  It is a term used in modern discourse almost as a pejorative.  The conventional is set not only against the trivially unconventional -- the one who thinks, to use the current cliche, outside the box, improvising improved means to unimproved ends.  If one finds the conventional truly and deeply limiting, and one must find the conventional limiting if one is to assert and be recognized as an individual qua individual, then too the conventional is set not only against the trivially unconventional, but against that which is more authentic at least for me, against my own private perfection. 

A deeper irony emerges, and it stems from the close examination of language as an epistemological impediment brought it to the fore.  We use language to point at reality, but language itself is conventional through and through.  If one begins using unfamiliar words in unfamiliar ways, one becomes not only unconventional, but incomprehensible to others.  Moreover, Chinese is not an oddly translated form of English, but a way of speaking about the world whole unto itself, with its own lexicon and its own grammar, a lexicon and grammar to varying degrees incommensurate with English -- part and parcel of a Chinese, as opposed to English, form of life.  The same holds true, or so it seems, for most socially constructed human activities, for most forms of life.  They are, to use the linguist's term, coherent, but arbitrary.  There is no direct correspondence between the words we use to describe reality and reality, divine or otherwise, and insofar as our ways of talking about reality are conventional through and through, fraught with conventions that have developed over time in response to emergent historical contingencies, they could well have been otherwise and could well become otherwise.  

An even deeper irony emerges, and it stems from the predicating assumptions.  If there is nothing but what we have constructed for ourselves, if our private perfection is to have any public meaning, it must not only free itself from an over-arching convention that has gone somehow awry, but must communicate itself.  Therein lies the rub.  The governing intentionality of the romantic project is to create a "private perfection," but to do so the individual must differentiate itself from other individuals qua individuals, and the more thoroughly one differentiates one's self, the more thoroughly one speaks and acts outside the conventional, the more incomprehensible and alienated one becomes.  Much madness might be divinest sense, but it is still much madness.  If one is to assert and be recognized as an individual qua individual, and to do so comprehensibly, one cannot escape the question of "human solidarity" and one's contingent place within a form of life that must be reformed -- not tweaked, but reformed whole cloth.  The romantic project is essentially revolutionary.  The existing form of life must be destroyed, and a new form of life placed in its stead, and one must become not only an individual qua individual, but to use Emerson's term, a representative man, and what the representative man represents is the zeit-geist of a new human potential, becomes the catalyst for a new human solidarity.

Rational Secular State -- Introduction Continued

In some respects, I hear myself arguing that the Marxist state represents a reducto ad absurdem culmination of the 18th century enlightenment project with its valorization of science and the importation of its basic assumptions and methods into the social sphere -- a wholly secular state and, insofar as the conclusions of science seemed to trump and transcend the truths of religion in their immediate material utility, a wholly rational state.  The difficulties with the Marxist project have been well detailed, and conservative thinkers like Hayek are, I think, essentially correct when they tell us that "the uncritical transfer to the problems of society of habits of thought engendered by the preoccupation with technological problems, the habits of thought of the natural scientist and the engineer" tended to "impose ideals of organization on a sphere to which they are not appropriate," and those ideals of organization all required the willing sublimation of the individual subjectivity within the state, a willingness that would come of its own accord with with well planned and executed changes in the material contingencies of existence.  That it did not come of its own accord, that physical forms of persuasion were needed to help along the willingness of the populace, that it itself became an ersatz religion willing to use immoral means against individuals to achieve the moral transformation of the state, gives some credence to Hayek and others insistence on "respect for the individual man qua man," and the romantic notion that puts the private above the public, that for the individual man "the recognition of his own views and tastes [are] supreme in his own sphere, however narrowly that may be circumscribed."  Romanticism emerged as a response to the same 18th century project, and if Marxism represented a reducto ad absurdem culmination of its progressive assumptions, Nietzsche perhaps represents the culmination of the romantic thought.  In broad strokes, romanticism might be described as a reactionary response to science and its sublimation of the human spirit to the material, the individual to the social.  Romanticism in its various iterations has sought to recover divinity in man, not in the traditional sense (though often the romantics, as they aged beyond adolescent rebelliousness, lapsed into one form or another of traditionalism) but rather as a response to the same conditions of existence, the same historical contingencies that had animated Marx.  It was, in part, a reaction to industrial capitalism that to all appearances had suborned the majority of mankind to the condition of a machine, a condition that alienated them not only from themselves, but in its clacking and coal smoke surround, more natural forms of existence, more organic ways of being in the world.  The romantic project, no less than the Marxist project, wished to recreate man, but unlike the Marxist project, the reformation of man would not come from without, but from within -- from what Harold Bloom might call the satanic impulse -- or in the diminished key of a latter day Nietzsche what Rorty might call irony -- the "means to private perfection rather than human solidarity" -- or in Hayek's terms "the belief that it is desirable that men should develop their own individual gifts and bents."

To be continued. 

Rational Secular State -- Introcution Continued

In at least one sense, this gap between liberty and agency was the problem Marx confronted.  Unless the gap were narrowed, even closed, the problem of liberty was not solved, even with the state-sanctioned guarantee of rights -- perhaps especially with a guarantee of rights, particularly property rights.  State-sanctioned liberty, insofar as it guaranteed the rights to property and agency in the use of that property, allowed the continued oppression of those without.  In some respects, or so it appeared in the early days of the Marxist experiment that came to dominate the latter half of the twentieth century, the Marxist state seemed to hold the potential for the first fully rational state, a fully justified state.  It promised, at one level, to recreate all men as equal, not in some metaphysical sense, but in the only sense that mattered -- in the material conditions of their existence -- and insofar as the material conditions of one's existence determined one's potential as a human qua human, the project to recreate all men as equal was, in effect, a moral project aimed ultimately at the redemption of mankind.  Marx, in effect, addressed the gap between liberty and agency by reducing the wholly public condition of the former to the latter, and he did so by subsuming what had hitherto been the private condition of agency, a matter of individual will, into the public concerns of the state, a matter of collective will represented by the fully communist state.  The initial strength of the Marxist argument was its apparent scientific rationalism -- an argument based on the minute and perceptive examination of the inherent contradictions of the capitalist state -- an argument that specifically repudiated as well the theocentrism that historically had at once provided public justification for economic disparities and a palliative for private despair in the presumptive moral superiority of and the next-life rewards for those who suffer the indignities of this life.  The communist state promised a fully just state, and that moral promise fully justified the actions of the existing state.  That the actions of the Soviet state were no less brutal than the actions of the inquisition should have been no surprise.  While the brutality of the emergent police state bespeaks the Machiavellian desire of those in power to remain in power, it also bespeaks the power of any state sanctioned purpose, any governing intentionality that would subject the individual subjectivity to a collective and ultimately utopian imperative, to justify the most horrific acts.  As Aron put it, "ministers, commissars, theorists and interrogators," all those engaged in effectuating the purpose of the state, "will try to make men what they would spontaneously be if the official philosophy were true."     

Rational Secular State -- Introduction Continued

The difficulty, of course, was the emergent difference between liberty and agency.  To grant liberty, and to protect it as a universal right through legal restrictions placed on the state itself, did nothing to guarantee agency.  The freedom to act did nothing to guarantee the capacity to act.  I say 'emergent difference,' in part because the American continent provided a unique set of circumstances that, for a while at least, made the necessary condition of liberty seem wholly sufficient.  Within the largely agricultural and mercantile economies of the colonies, coupled with the open land to the West free from hereditary holdings, the guarantee of liberty gave men a "new sense of power over their own fate, the belief in the unbounded possibilities of improving their own lot," to borrow a phrase of Hayek, a belief buttressed by the "the success already achieved among men."  The narrow gap between liberty and agency was brought about by a unique set of historical contingencies, by colonization and the fresh green breast of the new world, a land not only commensurate with man's capacity to wonder, but also a land open to those willing and able to exploit it.  If the individual was no longer subject to the subjectivity of the state, if they were no longer limited by the subjectivity of the public sphere, they were limited only by those attributes of character always relegated to the private sphere -- what Franklin and others, were they alive today, might describe as their 'work ethic.'  Their fate was not contingency-imposed, but the self-imposition of one's conscientiousness, one's industriousness, one's courage, one's imagination and intelligence.  The gap between liberty and agency had always been wider elsewhere, and with the emergence of the industrial capitalist economy, wider on the American continent as well.  It was not immediately apparent, in part because the industrialization of the US fueled and made possible the westward expansion, a contingency that continued to blur the class distinctions that were more visible in the motherland of Britain, but the capacity to act depends upon the means available, and in the capitalist economy, those with means were clearly more liberty to act on behalf of their interest than those without.  If 'the rich were different,' and it seemed clear enough to most as the industrial capitalist economies matured that the rich were in fact different, a good deal of that difference lay in the accumulation of 'means.'  Those with means were clearly more at liberty to act than those without, and as the gap between the have's and the have-not's widens, so too does the gap between those who are and those who are not at liberty pursue their private interests.  Again, however, it was not immediately apparent, in part because the anecdotal exception, the rise from rags to riches, seemed at least possible (though perhaps always a bit implausible) as a matter of romantic self-assertion -- if one exercised diligence, if one worked-hard, if one took risks, especially if one were clever, then one could rise above the contingency-imposed limitations and acquire the means to pursue one's private happiness.  One suspects, however, that contingency more often than not disappointed the hopes of the aspirant.

Rational Secular State -- Introduction Continued

Any theory that sets aside any possibility of the utopian, the end to end all ends once and for all, sets aside as well any possibility of 'progression.'   Progress must be progress toward something, and the 'more perfect union' must be progress toward an idea of the 'perfect union.'  The notion of social progress found its natural ally in scientific progress, which was at once a notion of historical progress, but in its epistemology a self-consuming historicity.   We know more today than yesterday, in part because one labors to extend and to correct the knowledge of our predecessors, but its epistemology was predicated first and foremost on a reality that is, so to speak, 'out there' -- a Kantian 'ding an sich' that can be apprehended, but can be apprehended only imperfectly by a single subjectivity.  If science fails to fully comprehend the truth, the failure lies not in science, per se, but in the singularity of the single subjectivity, its imperfect comprehension of reality, an imperfection that is corrected (if never quite entirely) by the social nature of science.  It is not simply the observed truth, which leaves room for the singular revelation, but a truth verified by in its observation by others.  A single individual might be mistaken, might see a ghost in the shadows, but the confirming question, 'did you see that?' sets aside (if never quite entirely) the possibility of the ephemeral.  Scientific progress, of course, is not entirely without its tenants of faith, one being that the reality 'out there' is orderly, that it obeys certain 'laws,' and those 'laws' in turn can be accurately and objectively represented in a way free from any subjective bias, an accuracy and objectivity achieved, as it were, through peer review.  Although there is ground to question these tenants of faith, they nevertheless allowed science to model progressive thought, and those same tenants of faith -- that there is as well a human reality, that it is orderly and obeys certain laws, and those laws can be refined and improved through a collective process of verification -- informed the opening words of the American constitution -- "in order to form a more perfect union, we the people ... "

As one might have gathered, although the tenants of faith have been broadly challenged on a number of fronts, I nevertheless feel compelled to offer some defense of 18th century scientific rationalism, and its progressive optimism for a couple of reasons.  First, of course, it provides at least a point of departure for what concerns me most.  The challenges to scientific rationalism are fundamental, and if not fundamental, then at the very least significant challenges as well to an American way of being in the world.  My concern stems perhaps from the sheer pressure of contingency.  I am American, and the American way of being in the world is my way of being in the world.  Though I have spent time on both ends of the globe, in Europe and in Asia, I cannot say what it means to be either European or Asian, but I can say what it means for me to be an American.  I can only speak from my contingency, and that contingency provides both my insight and, without doubt, my blindness.  Nevertheless, second, I believe the 18th century thinkers got it mostly right -- mostly.   Although something of an over-simplification, the bone in the craw of the modernist and post-modernist thinkers comes down to the matter of 'truth' and what constitutes 'truth.'  It seems each human attempt to apprehend 'truth' and articulate it within a comprehensive doctrine has failed.  The most pointed failure has been religion.  While the western tradition that gave rise to the likes of Locke and Jefferson could perhaps get some consensus around the notion of Christianity as the one true religion, there was clearly insufficient consensus among the Christians to form the basis of a state, and if a state were to be had, it must seek its legitimacy elsewhere.  The turn from the theo-centric state had many salutary effects, but it was a rather significant break from a long preceding history where the sovereign received legitimacy either as a god or from god.  It vested legitimacy in the people, and reified what had hitherto been a philosophical abstraction, the social contract, within the American constitution, creating a wholly secular state.   It left unanswered, however, the question 'to what end?'  If John Winthrop could cite Matthew 5:14, and characterize the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a 'city on a hill,' with every expectation that the purpose of the colony transcended the merely commercial as instrument in the fulfillment of God's will and God's plan for them, the Constitution left open the question of purpose as a matter of public governance and relegated it to the private sphere.  The state itself existed for no grander purpose than to insure that people were free to pursue their private purposes, to include their religious purposes, with only those restrictions imposed by general civility and safety.