The Tyranny of Liberalism
by James Kalb is a provocative and profound book on the paradoxical
nature of liberalism. As a political philosophy, it claims to be based
on such things as neutrality, tolerance, and individual freedom. The
upshot of a society adopting this philosophy, however, is a sort of
"soft tyranny."
Although a man might disagree with Mr. Kalb on, for example, the absolutely necessary continuity between all of classical liberal thought and modern day left-liberalism, his analysis is definitely worth study. More than that, I would call it essential reading if you want to understand the current regime. Mr. Kalb also defends the importance of society sticking with traditionalist values very well.
What I want to do here is to highlight some of the general themes of the book, and offer some reflections. Besides just reading the book, I encourage you all to visit the author's excellent website. It contains many useful resources.
Subjectivistic and Atomistic Liberalism
According to our articulate author, classical liberalism made freedom the highest principle of life. But this, he says, "makes no sense" as an "ultimate principle of social life." (p 102) A man who has the freedom to engage in actions is a man who aims at doing something with that freedom. His personal actions are therefore subordinated to something. A man does not live a life purely for freedom. This, argues Kalb, is what classical liberalism largely ignored. Being such a narrow philosophy, it avoided thinking about the nature of man and existence. Liberalism instead slowly exalted individual choice and preference as the supreme standard of man's existence. Choice and preference thus became purely subjective, detached from the authorities of traditional wisdom and knowledge. Objective judgments were claimed to be imaginary and irrational. Ideals, distinctions, and the transcendent were slowly lost.
It was these standards that influenced and were, partly, interwoven with the development of the (erroneous) doctrines of social contract theory. Consequently, under liberalism, a government "had to base itself on the will of the governed. In the name of God and natural order, the will of man became the source of all authority." (p 16)
As choice and preference became purely subjective, all choices and preferences then started to be viewed as equal, and hence interchangeable, vis-à-vis each other. Freedom started to be looked at as something opposed to civil society. The liberalism, one might say, of John Stuart Mill ideologically took over liberalism's thinking. Religion, especially, was seen as naturally "aggressive" to the individual---since it has a non-subjectivist outlook and classifies certain lifestyles and choices as superior and others as inferior---and thus needed to be extirpated away from public life as much as possible. Maximizing subjective individual choice, as the essence of liberalism, demanded all institutional and associational arrangements be made subordinated to this liberal goal. It became an end to itself. This is why, Kalb writes, "we are now called upon not only to tolerate but to celebrate diversity of lifestyle and culture." (p 38)
It is for the reason that the actions of individuals and groups of individuals in civil society bring about affects on other individuals that the liberal concept of "equal freedom" views such actions as potentially against "freedom" because they influence (viz., delimit, indirectly at least) the actions of these other individuals. This ideology is what sees "anything anyone does that affects others [as] presumptively an unwarranted imposition and so an act of aggression." (p 102) It is, accordingly, traditional values that are seen as the primary evil. (Note, too, that interactions in civil society are generally communal/institutional. In a manner of speaking, "pure" autonomy of the individual is absent in this regards.)
This particular, and unhappily popular, view of "individualism" is one of the sub-themes in Dr. Theodore Dalrymple's In Praise of Prejudice. With the Central State monopolistically regulating practically all of life, and hence with it acting as the monopoly of authority, men start to think that if "There is no law against it," it must be an OK activity to engage in (which, from my perspective, is a reason not to have "law socialism"). This is the result of a liberal environment where, Dalrymple writes, "there is no other source of collective authority." Such a non-monopolistic environment is contrary to liberalism, and this is why the Central State has developed into a Managerial-Technocratic one with the task of modifying social-cultural behavior. It is therefore that Dalrymple (correctly) reasons that "radical individualism is thus not only compatible with the radical centralization of authority, but is a product of it." Kalb concurs: "In the name of autonomy, [liberalism] makes the state control everything." (p 103) In consequence, freedom becomes to mean the freedom to engage in liberal practices. Everything else must be shunned from public. A quick glance at what is displayed on TV and what is allowed in political debate will verify this. (For another example: public property must rid all references to Christianity.) So, the instability of liberalism's view that man is the measure of all things, and its subjectivism, atomism, nihilism, and so-called neutralism, turns it around 180 degrees to tyranny. And this tyranny snowballs, as its open-ended demands are implemented to greater depths.
The Inescapability and Necessity of Tradition
In the same way that the redistributionist State financially survives parasitically on the productive (market) end of the economy, the current regime which promotes cultural leftism survives parasitically on the healthy (traditional) end of civil society. Indeed, "The [parasitical] consequences," of the liberal State, writes Kalb, "include suicidally low birthrates, children growing up without parental care, immigration and social policies that presume that culture does not matter," etc. (p 149) The end game of this affairs is destruction, and that destruction will take the liberal State with it.
Genuine tradition, Kalb explains in the book, is a "step-by-step process" which "starts with basic functional patterns that establish themselves because they work." (p 197) Men imitate other men's successful patterns. We as individuals learn via example. And we depend on tradition as acting and living beings because our ability to grasp the full complexity of the world is impossible. It additionally serves as a "mutually supporting system" (p 198) by not only giving all of us a guide to how to live, but by creating a framework or social fabric that allows interactions. Furthermore, this brings about civilizational development (which is social by nature) by its effect of fortifying and strengthening interactions. (Just as a market economy wonderfully promotes diversity it promotes forms of traditional uniformity as well.) In sum: "We need tradition because we are social." (p 257) It is self-contradictory to say we don't.
No individual man, to repeat, could really function without some tradition backing the public ethos. To quote de Tocqueville: "If everyone undertook to form all his own opinions and to seek for truth by isolated path struck out by himself alone, it would follow that no considerable number of men would ever unite in any common belief." As has been said, "the species" is wiser than the dumb and isolated individual. In addition, man depends on tradition and societal prejudices because rationalism has limits (as, in my judgment, does tradition, by the way). A man's daily life cannot be individually worked out in a Euclidean-like way, and certainly no scientist could possibly engineer society in a rational way.
The complexity of tradition cannot be replaced or replicated by the managerial State. Prejudices, habits, and good commonsense must develop naturally, and be "tested," through the decentralized inner workings of civil society. "Tradition" that is state-made is therefore entirely artificial: "In fact, advanced liberal society is reproducing the errors of socialism---the attempt to administer and radically alter things that are too complex to be known, grasped, and controlled---but on a far grander scale." (p 12)
(In N. Stephan Kinsella's interesting article "Legislation and The Discovery of Law in a Free Society," Mr. Kinsella argues somewhat similarly that legislation, i.e., state-made law, cannot be centrally planned in a rational way because of the Hayekian "information problem." In this sense, could we not say that good-tradition is anti-legislation in character [versus anti-law]?)
Civilization's existence and stability depends upon its traditional framework. The scientist works on the shoulders of giants and he tries to increase our knowledge of the natural world to greater heights on those shoulders. (On this point, we can further say that progressive development relies on elites, who rise above the common man. And so, a healthy ethos---which authoritatively promotes traditional values---is necessarily hierarchical because men are unequal in relationship to each other.) The to-be poet learns about poetry by studying its tradition. The artist, too, does the same. A "pure" creativity is hence a myth. All genuine innovation, therefore, works through tradition. In contrast, much of the uninspiring (and often perverse) art of modernity, says Kalb, is ever more based on "a cult of creativity resulting from loss of confidence in goods that transcend." (p 303)
"Human rationality," Kalb writes, "involves making sense of our thoughts and actions by relating them to an overall understanding of reality." (p 193) It is here that man looks for "ultimate principles." These principles, which are independent of man's will, are transcendent. This transcendence fills man with reason to live and gives him a sense of identity. It gives man something higher to reach for. Without it, man is lost. But this also depends on faith, Kalb argues.
As a matter of fact, an interesting point that Kalb touches on that many others miss is how this relates to the sciences. Western Civilization, after all, didn't develop in a cultural or religious void. The scientific method, strictly speaking, cannot be tested using the scientific method. In a way, it takes its methods as true a priori (as it does with, e.g., mathematics and temporal causality). (All genuine science, in my opinion, has some sort of rationalistic basis to it. Even theology does.) One of the things that sets this civilization apart from others was Christianity (especially Catholicism), which had faith in a world of intelligibility, order, and universal principles (laws). Thus the modern idea that science and religion do not mix really is an odd statement. No doubt, it would have been odd to someone like Sir Isaac Newton.
But, then, a man might ask: Is that which is based on tradition always "right"? Does Mr. Kalb really provide a guide to a moral society?
Interestingly enough, in reviewing Russell Kirk's Conservative Mind, Richard Weaver saw exactly this as a problem with Kirk's work. The title of his review reads: "Which Ancestors?" And, in it, he asks: Which Traditions? For Weaver, the answer was to rationally examine the various traditions, which can conflict, and "to isolate intellectually their elements of value and of truth." "Yet this is a process disrespectful of tradition," he wrote, "in the sense that it transcends tradition and looks for some higher goals." Hence, for Weaver (and for me too in this case) we have to look for principles that transcend.
Now our thoughtful author does not think that tradition is to be "worshiped" as infallible. From his perspective, though, a bad tradition is generally discovered as going against other traditions.
The Managerial State and Its Tyranny
What defines [this liberal-neoconservative] regime is the effort to manage and rationalize social life in order to bring it in line with comprehensive standards aimed at implementing equal freedom. The result is a pattern of governance intended to promote equality and individual gratification and marked by entitlement programs, sexual and expressive freedoms, blurred distinctions between the public and the private, and the disappearance of self-government. (pp 5-6)
Burke's "little platoons" of civil society, from the liberal perspective, are often viewed as inhibitions to the liberation of the "free" individual and therefore seen as something needed to be dismantled. Given that it's against equality, tradition must be done away with. Men possessing any genuine cultural attachments, too, must be destroyed, since they result in various forms of discrimination and exclusiveness.
This increase of "experts" managing more of society is followed by men becoming less able to manage themselves. It reduces the need for civil society ties. The abnormal lifestyle and habit is promoted at the expense of the normal, as the natural ties of civil society erode.
Take the family as a paradigm (an anarchistic institution, says G.K. Chesterton). Traditional ideals are what have maintained its existence. Planning and acting are involved in supporting the family. That's why it depends on a common public ethos of ideas for support. Its ideal further brings with it, Kalb explains in the book, "certain functions and obligations." (p 210) Order, continuity, and the continuation of human society are the result. As fathers (patriarchs), we know our natural roles. As mothers, ditto. As children, ditto. This is why identity (and stereotyping)* is important. The healthy development of the individual depends on the healthy family.
*(To take this to the extreme, imagine the ridding of stereotyping about the sexes. Wouldn't this demand that no one care about how we dress and present ourselves as a member of a distinct sex? Forgive me for being so bold, but logically consistent liberalism would turn the world into a hellhole.)
Thus the whole idea---based on the concept that everything is equal and interchangeable and that things operate in an atomistic-subjectivistic vacuum---of "gay marriage" makes no sense whatsoever. It, moreover, destroys the identity of family in the common public ethos. The result can only be the degenerating state of families, where functions and obligations slowly lose all value. "Family" becomes a disposable, no big deal thing. Today it is well-known what the current state of families is. And, paralleling this, traditional sexual restraint has been abandoned for animalistic "free love." Instant gratification, with (socialized) zero costs, is the raison d'être of modernity.
The welfare state, in particular, is used as a means of social engineering. As it "frees" us from a traditional setting, a vacuum is created and the government fills the void. Men become less dependent on each other, and therefore, Kalb (so rightfully) reasons, less civil and less social. "The welfare state,
makes us useless to each other. It separates conduct from consequences and undermines personal responsibility. It weakens connections between the sexes and generations by insisting that dependence on particular persons is wrong. It deprives personal loyalty and integrity of their place and function by making us rely on the system as a whole rather than on ourselves and each other. (p 120)
And the "liberation of women and of sex has deprived women of masculine support, feminized poverty, and turned girls into sexual commodities." (p 123) Other examples of this engineering are to be found in government's involvement in sex education to its subsidization of childcare. With these changes, government---and its managerial business allies---has ever more become a thought police as well.
"Reeducation programs, sensitivity training, speech codes, and other forms of thought control become a permanent necessity," (p 67) with forced liberal diversity. (But, a man might ask, if liberalism's goal is "diversity," why does it break down and homogenize? It seems, on the contrary, that liberalism is actually against true diversity.) My review here, seeing that language itself has undergone political correction, would be judged (by nonjudgmental judgmentalism?) as filled with incorrect and sexist words.
Given all of this, it is not untrue to say that the liberal State leads to speech controls. In Europe this has already been done. Kalb's analysis shows that it can logically lead to it. For instance, free speech can say things that go against liberal principles of inclusiveness. Since this is viewed as "oppressive," it must be regulated away. "Even liberals who support free speech agree with their more advanced brethren that politically incorrect speech is morally illegitimate." (p 118)
Some Concluding Thoughts
Contained in his wonderful book Egalitarianism as a Revolt against Nature, Murray Rothbard wrote an essay on why someone should be a libertarian. For him, the answer was a "passion for justice." Along these lines, and with a recognition of human nature, transcendence, etc., I have to disagree with Mr. Kalb in a major way. I think we can construct a libertarianism that escapes his dialectics. One can be a "fusionist." And, while I'm sure he would disagree with me, I don't see a breaking away from all government power as categorically against a respect or recognition for traditional values.* Why can't a private (polycentric) form of law develop among various family households and other intermediate institutions? To me at least, the State is against good ethics and morality. It crushes virtue, and has every reason and incentive to do so as a monopolist of law-making. A private order, on the other hand, can more easily be kept in-check to the demands of culturally conservative values.
Be this as it may, Mr. Kalb has written a book I recommend to all. He defends a traditional conservatism one can respect.
He believes a path to a moral society can be developed. It takes all of us as members of families and communities to do our best to lay the groundwork. "The next generation," our author writes,
must be brought up to respect tradition and the transcendent more than the commercial, hedonistic, and egalitarian standards now dominant. This will not be possible unless home, school, local community, and alternative media provide a refuge of sanity from which a declining public order can be judged and found wanting. A change in orientation that begins individually and is initially perhaps backed mostly by words and gestures must grow into something far more social and comprehensive. (pp 268-9)
*[Robert
Nisbet, although not an anarchist, was an admirer of Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon and Peter Kropotkin. Though, I suppose this would be very
confusing to some so-termed "left-libertarians."]