tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post114838454578322491..comments2024-03-25T19:48:24.624+11:00Comments on Oz Conservative: Anti-liberalism not enough?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-1151414580306653692006-06-27T23:23:00.000+10:002006-06-27T23:23:00.000+10:00Liberals, or whatever one calls them, aren't part ...Liberals, or whatever one calls them, aren't part of our culture, their interest is in overcoming it, yet they see fit to speak for it - and it goes on unchecked because they're allowed to assume the "us" whenever it serves their purpose.<BR/><BR/>VERY good point.<BR/><BR/>It is an interesting detail of the liberal worldview that they do seem to believe that all comment from a society must come from them since they are the only ones capable of expressing it.<BR/><BR/>They hold this to be true because anyone who disagrees with them must be of an inferior intelligence, and if they are not then they must be evil.<BR/><BR/>To a liberal the only possible correct worldview is a liberal one.<BR/><BR/>This makes concepts of free speech in modern liberalism nothing less than a joke.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-1148505950006089352006-05-25T07:25:00.000+10:002006-05-25T07:25:00.000+10:00Liberals, or whatever one calls them, aren't part ...<I>Liberals, or whatever one calls them, aren't part of our culture, their interest is in overcoming it, yet they see fit to speak for it - and it goes on unchecked because they're allowed to assume the "us" whenever it serves their purpose.</I><BR/><BR/>It's a good point, Shane.<BR/><BR/>Even so, at a practical level we won't maintain our own existence if we don't get some of the younger, intellectual, political class types onside.<BR/><BR/>Doing so means engaging in the public intellectual life, and building a presence within it.<BR/><BR/>It also means making the points of distinction clear between political modernism (liberalism) and ourselves.<BR/><BR/>One thing which has left us much weakened is that when individuals become disenchanted with mainstream left-liberalism, they often don't make a clean break with modernist politics, but drift into a right-liberalism instead.<BR/><BR/>So the orthodoxy, no matter how self-destructive it is, remains intact.<BR/><BR/>If we managed to attract a larger number of intelligent, politically active types to clearly support the kind of traditionalism we believe in, then we could start to achieve wider goals.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-1148475835649174762006-05-24T23:03:00.000+10:002006-05-24T23:03:00.000+10:00Shane, I know the feeling. Liberalism is so alien ...Shane, I know the feeling. Liberalism is so alien to the conservative mind that it seems at first to be impenetrable. The instinctive reaction is often to dismiss it as madness.<BR/><BR/>But the madness becomes public policy. So it has to be understood by us, as much as possible, if we are to persuasively critique it.<BR/><BR/>This isn't easy, not only because of the cultural impasse you describe, but also because liberalism, being false to reality, cannot always be consistent or principled.<BR/><BR/>Its underlying principles generate contradictions, and its devotees, to live in this world, must accept unprincipled exceptions.<BR/><BR/>So it's difficult to draw the different threads together tidily. I think that's why it sometimes seems elusive in its nature - difficult to grasp as a whole.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-1148422251766470892006-05-24T08:10:00.000+10:002006-05-24T08:10:00.000+10:00Mark, can I suggest a slight reworking of the idea...Mark, can I suggest a slight reworking of the idea of pursuing excellence?<BR/><BR/>Edmund Burke once accused the French revolutionaries of pursuing the low road of human nature in everything they did.<BR/><BR/>I think it's a good starting point to take the idea of pursuing the higher part of your own nature.<BR/><BR/>If pursued intelligently this is likely to lead to pretty solid conservative outcomes.<BR/><BR/>For instance, a man is likely to feel that he has reached a higher part of his nature when he has a strong sense of his own masculinity, and the kind of positive, creative drives emanating from this masculinity.<BR/><BR/>Similarly, our "peak experiences" are likely to include a responsiveness to nature, a positive sense of ancesty, a sense of place (of "rootedness"), an appreciation of what women embody as women, a romantic responsiveness to women, an appreciation of art, a heightened awareness of virtue and of what destroys virtue, and so on.<BR/><BR/>What is distinctive about the conservative pursuit of such higher parts of our nature is that we don't, as liberal like Rand do, reject worthier parts of the human experience because they are "unchosen": because they are traditional, or inherited, or biologically determined.<BR/><BR/>We aren't limited to what is available to the "Cartesian ego" described by Jim Kalb.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-1148420884664830882006-05-24T07:48:00.000+10:002006-05-24T07:48:00.000+10:00Mark, I'm glad you've abandoned the more sickly ma...Mark, I'm glad you've abandoned the more sickly manifestations of liberalism.<BR/><BR/>However, I'd be careful with Ayn Rand. She would not have supported your last post at your own site:<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://westernsurvival.blogspot.com/2006/05/would-it-bother-you-if-white-race.html" REL="nofollow">Western Survivial</A><BR/><BR/>Rand rejected inherited or traditional forms of identity and attachment. She did so for the classic liberal reason:<BR/><BR/>"What matters is what you accept by choice, not what you are connected with through the accident of your ancestry."<BR/><BR/>What did Rand want in place of traditional identity? She took the basic right-liberal option.<BR/><BR/>If we are all atomised individuals pursuing our own individual choices, then liberals have to decide how you make a society of millions of competing individuals hold together.<BR/><BR/>The right-liberal answer is that the free market regulates selfish desires for profit to the overall benefit of the community, even if it means accepting a degree of unequal outcomes.<BR/><BR/>That's why Rand, the right-liberal, worshipped the free market so much.<BR/><BR/>She has the hero of her book Atlas Shrugged declare at the end:<BR/><BR/>"With the sign of the dollar as our symbol - the sign of free trade and free minds - we will move to reclaim this country, once more from the impotent savages who never discovered its nature, its meaning, its splendor."<BR/><BR/>So following Randian excellence really means devoting yourself to your career ("a life of productive achievement" as she put it), and pursuing a purely individualistic happiness in which communal attachments aren't allowed to count.<BR/><BR/>This isn't a promising philosophy for a conservative to follow (and since you want to conserve your own people, you are definitely a conservative of sorts).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6832901.post-1148402841883116142006-05-24T02:47:00.000+10:002006-05-24T02:47:00.000+10:00My own search for an alternative to the liberal wo...My own search for an alternative to the liberal worldview has led to two seemingly separate alternatives that I have not yet resolved.<BR/><BR/>One alternative that feels appealing to me is the ideal of a noble, Ayn-Randian seeker of excellence. A person who works to fulfill his full potential as a creative being, who asks no charity and insults no one by offering any, who values dignity, integrity, self-reliance, mutual respect based on accomplishment. A person who has a fundamentally positive view of the meaning of life and sees life not as some continuing string of tragedies requiring lamentations, pity and charity (enforced by the government), but as an opportunity to create great beauty. Someone who makes and accepts no excuses.<BR/><BR/>This feels right to me.<BR/><BR/>The other alternative seems in some ways to conflict with that. It is a sort of Darwinian, law of the jungle view. That we are essentially physical life forms subject to the same imperatives as every other form of life on earth: compete for resources, compete for the best mate, the most tribe status. Expand, grow, control ever more territory for yourself and your group. Competition is good, victory is good, weakness is shameful, strength is virtuous. The ancient Greek view, that it was good to be strong and slay many enemies. That men should be strong and smart and women should be beautiful and clever. This view appeals to me because it is honest and it seems to me to conform to the way the world actually is. There is no mercy in nature. Nature rewards strength, and weakness dies off. Nature, evolution, is a continuing evolution toward ever more capable, more potent life forms. So in this sense, morality is determined by what helps one to survive.<BR/><BR/>So the second view appeals to me in its honesty but does not appeal to me in the sense that it is something of an animal, jungle view. In that way of thinking, if you can overpower another man and take his woman and property, you are a higher form of life than he is and nature wants you to go ahead and use that property and breed that woman. That is in direct contradiction to my other vision, where the property rights of all are respected and each excels through creation of value rather than forcibly taking it from others. I think that respect for others' property rights is the essence of social morality.<BR/><BR/>Yet the reality is that every people's country was wrested from some other people at some time in the past. My America was taken by force from the indigenous people. We were stronger, so we took it. And we have used it fruitfully, and I think "Nature" smiles on that. We have put it to a higher purpose, a higher level of development and achievement of human potential, than the savages who lived there before us. So in that sense I think a Darwinian view is moral, and I would even say that it is crucial that we think like this if we are to survive.<BR/><BR/>I still haven't resolved these two visions of the Good, but I have certainly long ago discarded the liberal vision of mediocrity, celebration of weakness and victimhood, and contempt for and envy of achievement and strength.MnMarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01110007186831549266noreply@blogger.com