Speaker 1: Want to welcome everyone back to the Pekanana Show. Return
Speaker 1: into the show. See Jangle, How you doing, CJ doing good?
Speaker 1: Thanks Pete, thank you for coming and agreeing to do
Speaker 1: a reading with me. Now, this is a longer chapter.
Speaker 1: I don't know that we're going to get through the
Speaker 1: whole chapter, but I think this is a really important
Speaker 1: chapter in Paul Gottfried's book After Liberalism. So we were
Speaker 1: just before we started recording talking about Paul Godfreed. You
Speaker 1: actually just finished doing a live stream with him. Talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about this book and why you were
Speaker 1: eager to read from it.
Speaker 2: Well, anything Paul's written I take very seriously. Paul's very
Speaker 2: academic writer. You know, like a lot of his commentary
Speaker 2: and stuff. It's very popular, but he's a very dense
Speaker 2: academic writer. And the thing about Paul is he has
Speaker 2: a very wide grasp on all the various contributions, and
Speaker 2: he has the ability to kind of sift through all
Speaker 2: the commentary over the centuries and recognize which sources have
Speaker 2: been the most transformative. You know, which ones you have
Speaker 2: to talk about. You can't talk about liberalism in the
Speaker 2: twentieth century without talking about you know, John Dewey or
Speaker 2: John Gray or people like that. So a lot of
Speaker 2: these more academic aspect of things he captures very well.
Speaker 2: Even even like a lot of us on the dissident right,
Speaker 2: you know, we'll read people, but we don't. Actually he's
Speaker 2: he's much more involved in the the the trajectory of
Speaker 2: the academy, you know, over the over the years, over
Speaker 2: the centuries. So I think Paul is really good if
Speaker 2: you need to get a sense of where the like
Speaker 2: the the the basics of officialdom came from. So in
Speaker 2: terms of this book, after Liberalism, you know, he actually
Speaker 2: discusses this in chapter one. It's impossible to define. We
Speaker 2: don't know what liberalism is. It's it's been used in
Speaker 2: so many different contexts and so many different frameworks that
Speaker 2: it's hard really to pin it down. And you can't
Speaker 2: pin it down. You have to define it every time
Speaker 2: you're going to address it. That's important to remember and
Speaker 2: keep in mind when talking about people like James Lindsay,
Speaker 2: you know, other pro classical liberals out there. We need
Speaker 2: to keep in mind that liberalism is incredibly difficult to
Speaker 2: define because of its historical path. But it's also sort
Speaker 2: of one of those hegemonic phrases that you just assume
Speaker 2: that you know because it's just part of our political discourse.
Speaker 2: But he points out that it's a lot more difficult
Speaker 2: than that, so we'll probably get into some specifics related
Speaker 2: to that, but.
Speaker 1: Go ahead.
Speaker 2: That's my take on the overall cool.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let me let me share the screen
Speaker 1: up here and yeah, there we go. Very cool. All right,
Speaker 1: So we're hopping over chapter one to chapter two, which
Speaker 1: is liberalism versus Democracy, and I think this is really
Speaker 1: where you start getting into the meat of it. And
Speaker 1: he also does a really good job of hitting some
Speaker 1: history here. So if you've heard me do readings before,
Speaker 1: stop me at any time to come in on anything,
Speaker 1: even if it's mid sentence. Yep, I think the only
Speaker 1: person who's there done that to me as AA, but
Speaker 1: I don't mind it at all.
Speaker 2: So yeah, okay, I'll see what I can do, all right.
Speaker 1: Liberalism versus democracy liberal and democratic mentalities a process of
Speaker 1: your attention at the turn of the century and even earlier,
Speaker 1: was the movement from a bourgeois liberal into a mass
Speaker 1: democratic society. Not all of those who observed this process
Speaker 1: made the same judgments about it. Some, including the European
Speaker 1: socialists and the founding generation of American social planners welcomed democratization. Others,
Speaker 1: such as Max Weber Max Weber sorry, considered it to
Speaker 1: be an inevitable outcome of capitalism, technology, and the spread
Speaker 1: of the electoral franchise. Still others, typified by Sir James
Speaker 1: Fitzjames Stephen eighteen ninety two to eighteen ninety four, prominent
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty nine to eighteen ninety four, pardon me, prominent
Speaker 1: jurist and a decidedly anti egalitarian liberal, protested that unseemingly haste,
Speaker 1: protested the un seemingly haste with which John Stuart Mill
Speaker 1: and his friends greeted the new democratic age, quoting the
Speaker 1: waters are out and no human force can turn them back.
Speaker 1: But I do not see why as we go with
Speaker 1: the stream, we need saying hallelujah to the river God.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's let's pause right there. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: the idea I mean, for a lot of people, probably
Speaker 2: not new to your audience, but the idea that there
Speaker 2: is this difference between democracy and liberalism, I think is
Speaker 2: new to a lot of people. I mean, we the
Speaker 2: phrase itself liberal democracy or democratic liberalism. The two go
Speaker 2: hand in hand to so many people. But like look
Speaker 2: at look at people like Victor or Bond, and how
Speaker 2: serious he is about the democratic interests of his own
Speaker 2: people require him to be illiberal. So these two don't
Speaker 2: go hand in hand, and we'll get I think a
Speaker 2: little bit more into the differences between liberalism, but I
Speaker 2: think that right there is really important. A lot of
Speaker 2: a lot of the original like classical liberals in England
Speaker 2: were very anti democratic. They didn't trust this spirit of
Speaker 2: the masth and especially the ability of the new elite,
Speaker 2: the merchant class, the capitalists to basically use democracy as
Speaker 2: a weapon for their own pursuit of material interests.
Speaker 1: It was obvious to them, where a lot of people
Speaker 1: now are just waking up to the fact that it
Speaker 1: can be used as a weapon, where back then many
Speaker 1: had already seen it or foresaw it. The tension between
Speaker 1: liberalism and a successor ideology in between the social classes
Speaker 1: embodying those ideas provides a recurrent theme in nineteenth century
Speaker 1: political debate. Francois Gusseau seventeen eighty seven eighteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: the Huguenot Prime minister under Frances Liberal July monarchy and
Speaker 1: a distinguished historian of England considered democracy to be as
Speaker 1: much of a curse as monarchical absolutism. As French Prime
Speaker 1: Minister in the eighteen forties, Guseeau fought doggedly against the
Speaker 1: extension of the limited franchise the sins from property tax
Speaker 1: payers to other French citizens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that, I mean that right there is
Speaker 2: important too, Like when we think of democracy, and I
Speaker 2: know it's kind of an overrated point. A lot of
Speaker 2: people make fun of, you know, people distinguishing in American
Speaker 2: you know government between like republican and democracy and stuff,
Speaker 2: and sometimes that that is like overstated, but there is
Speaker 2: a truth to the fact that mass democracy in the
Speaker 2: twentieth century sort of the American twentieth century model is
Speaker 2: not the original republican instinct. In fact, you know, the
Speaker 2: original Republican quote unquote democratic instinct was very much anti
Speaker 2: mass democracy. They did not trust the extension of the
Speaker 2: the What he means by the franchise is the ability
Speaker 2: for everybody to vote regardless of their class, regardless of
Speaker 2: their property status, their race, their sex, et cetera. So
Speaker 2: the original you know, trailblazers of liberalism were definitely not
Speaker 2: pro master Mindocricy.
Speaker 1: He distinguished sharply in his speeches and political tracts between
Speaker 1: those civil rights suitable for all citizens, such as freedom
Speaker 1: of worship and the vote. By means of the second,
Speaker 1: Gizo maintained the lower class could destabilize society radically, redistributed, redistributing,
Speaker 1: redistributing pop property, and bringing resourceful demagogues to power. He
Speaker 1: believed the bourgeoisie formed a class capasitid those who would
Speaker 1: be guided by reason and their stake in society in
Speaker 1: directing the actions of government. Indeed, yeah, that's guided by reason,
Speaker 1: because I've studied you know, when you study objectivism at all,
Speaker 1: whatever you see that like those three words together, you
Speaker 1: immediately think it jumps to one thing.
Speaker 2: Right. It's also I mean, this is this is sort
Speaker 2: of like it is a contribution of like enlightenment thinking,
Speaker 2: and it affects objectivism obviously, but it also permeates into libertarianism,
Speaker 2: even certain trends of like Marxism and certain certain aspects
Speaker 2: of socialism. Just the idea that we can use reason,
Speaker 2: utilize it and guide to society, you know, by our
Speaker 2: own expertise, is definitely an enlightenment You know holdover.
Speaker 1: Yes. Indeed, Griseeau recommended the idea of creating a state
Speaker 1: through representation which would fully reflect the values of bourgeois
Speaker 1: electoral law aristocracy. Although in eighteen thirty one he fought
Speaker 1: to give representation to government functionaries and other professionals who
Speaker 1: paid lower taxes than required for franchise eligibility, he nonetheless
Speaker 1: argued for the special suitability of the upper middle class
Speaker 1: for political participation. Only that class combined wealth with only
Speaker 1: that class combined wealth with formed intelligence.
Speaker 2: In other words, the original liberalism was not at all
Speaker 2: interested in, you know, handing a power over to every
Speaker 2: you know, ghetto pop culture, you know, subsumed consumer right.
Speaker 2: That was never the goal of liberalism. Much too probably
Speaker 2: the frustration of people like James Lindsay who think in
Speaker 2: these absolutist individualist terms. You know, these original liberals they
Speaker 2: never would have been interested in, you know, sharing political
Speaker 2: power with the proletariat or the you know, the cultural,
Speaker 2: culturally deranged.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they certainly wouldn't be championing the Civil Rights Act.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you're if you're confused about your own
Speaker 2: gender and you want to start chopping yourself to bits,
Speaker 2: maybe you shouldn't have the vote.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The English Juran jurist William Lackey, who admired GIZO,
Speaker 1: devoted his long polemical work Democracy and Liberty eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: six to the pop to the polarity between liberal order
Speaker 1: and democratic equality. Surveying England's parliamentary history in the second
Speaker 1: half of the nineteenth century, Lecky wrote Lericky worried that
Speaker 1: a universal franchise was irreversibly changing both English society and
Speaker 1: the English state. Not surprisingly, his book appeared at a
Speaker 1: time when English socialism was becoming a political power, and
Speaker 1: Leaky devotes more than one hundred and forty pages to
Speaker 1: analyzing the new radicalism. In eighteen ninety three, the Independent
Speaker 1: Labor Party officially came into existence in the Yorkshire town
Speaker 1: of Bradford. Since the elections of eighteen seventy four, however,
Speaker 1: avout socialists had sat in the British Parliament and socialist
Speaker 1: labor unions had been around since the eighteen fifties, to
Speaker 1: the consternation of German liberals. German socialists meeting in the
Speaker 1: Saxon town of Gotha, had drafted a program in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy six calling for public ownership of the means of production.
Speaker 1: The Gotha Socialists also demanded an entire battery of social
Speaker 1: programs to be introduced by a properly democratized German state.
Speaker 1: In France, the Revolutionary Socialists, this is all right, here
Speaker 1: goes one. Jules Gazzet sat at the sat in the
Speaker 1: Chamber of Deputies from eighteen ninety three on, and as
Speaker 1: like he as he reminded us these days in the Catechism,
Speaker 1: socialist presents the family as an odious form of property,
Speaker 1: one destined to give way to a multiplicity of sexual
Speaker 1: relations for men and women alike.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think one of the points here is something
Speaker 2: that we all recognize now. At the origin of these
Speaker 2: liberal or democratic movements, you know, there was a difference
Speaker 2: between them. They didn't stem from the same impulse, I
Speaker 2: guess is what I want to say here that you
Speaker 2: know that came America was sort of the first two
Speaker 2: nite these concepts in its own, you know, for his
Speaker 2: own purposes. But I think Paul's point here is throughout
Speaker 2: the Western European world, Germany, France, England, et cetera, these
Speaker 2: were very different instincts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, One way to look at such social
Speaker 1: quarrels is to observe how dated they are. These battles
Speaker 1: were supposedly, supposedly waged between reactionary and democratic liberals. Those
Speaker 1: liberals who were just in humanitarian, it has been argued,
Speaker 1: went with changing times, while others who were not, such
Speaker 1: as DiFranco, Italian economists and socialist Elvedo Pereto, fell into
Speaker 1: bad company and even sometimes into fascism. Implicit in such
Speaker 1: a view is the distinction that more and more modern
Speaker 1: liberals have drawn throughout the twentieth century between themselves and
Speaker 1: those they have replaced. It is purely it is a
Speaker 1: purely strategic stance that minimizes the reality of past conflicts.
Speaker 1: Like the mainstream, Like the mainstream new deal liberal his
Speaker 1: storiography in post war America, the liberal historical view stresses
Speaker 1: the natural progression of the progression of things by which
Speaker 1: the new liberals took over from the old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this is important because like a lot
Speaker 2: of people who have this, I mean, this is this
Speaker 2: is classic like James Lindsay type stuff, Like everything is
Speaker 2: kind of reaching it's its own conclusion. It's been on
Speaker 2: too trajectory for you know, hundreds of years. And in fact,
Speaker 2: this was actually a sort of mentality that Murray Rothbard
Speaker 2: had early on and not later Murray Rothbart who recognized
Speaker 2: the function of the power elite, but earlyer Murray Rothbart
Speaker 2: he saw, like if you read his essay you know,
Speaker 2: left right in the Prospects of Liberty, it's all this, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's all this, like this single merit meta narrative. It's
Speaker 2: all like coming into fruition. Everything's improving over time. He
Speaker 2: definitely drops that at the end of his life when
Speaker 2: he when he talks about there's an essay on you know,
Speaker 2: Mesis's role or whatever, you know, within Austrian economics, but
Speaker 2: he definitely drops this. But the point is that a
Speaker 2: lot of people in the twentieth century America do have
Speaker 2: this mentality where, you know, some people took the wrong path,
Speaker 2: but this has been the liberal projects has been slowly improving,
Speaker 2: you know, over time. And Gottfried's saying that that actually,
Speaker 2: and this is one thing that Gottfried is really I
Speaker 2: wouldn't say it's unique to him, but it's something that
Speaker 2: he really is unique in terms of like overall traditionalist
Speaker 2: conservatives like who have this meta narrative story of things.
Speaker 2: He does emphasize discontinuity. Paul Goffried always recognizes that the
Speaker 2: New Deal replaced something before it, and the you know
Speaker 2: the point the post nineteen sixties left replaced the New
Speaker 2: Deal left, and like there's all these discontinuities. He doesn't
Speaker 2: see things in terms of this overall continuity. That's something
Speaker 2: that Paul always emphasizes that every historical epoch is unique
Speaker 2: to itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're gonna just did an episode on the same thing.
Speaker 1: Epochs how things change, how, but it seems like it
Speaker 1: goes in cycles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the current twentieth century, like people who see
Speaker 2: America as sort of like the fruition of all the
Speaker 2: best aspects of Western history and it's all culminated into America.
Speaker 2: They need the overall narrative thing because every age has
Speaker 2: to be like an improvement and it has to be
Speaker 2: this organic process, and America is sort of at the top,
Speaker 2: like the post war America is like the ultimate end
Speaker 2: of history. It's the end of man. Is the best
Speaker 2: and most complete political system in terms of justice and
Speaker 2: wealth and the equality and all these things. Whereas Gottfried says,
Speaker 2: you know, no, he denies, he denies the continuity there,
Speaker 2: He says, what we see in liberal democracy in our
Speaker 2: age is basically a repudiation of you know, historical epochs.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Anyone who looks at the what the United States
Speaker 1: has become and says, oh, this is this is dizen.
Speaker 1: Ith're you're in sane, You're insane. Yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just it's brainwashing. Right, let's move on. It is possible
Speaker 1: to perceive continuity in the movement from a bourgeois liberal
Speaker 1: society into a more democratic one, but that continuity is
Speaker 1: not the same as direct continuation, as was noted by
Speaker 1: Max Weber, Joseph Schumpeter, and other early twentieth century social commentators. Rather,
Speaker 1: we are dealing here with a series of points leading
Speaker 1: from a from a bourgeois into a post bourgeois bourgeois
Speaker 1: is bourgeois age, that is, with a process of displacement
Speaker 1: that went on for several generations. Thus, Weber focused on
Speaker 1: rational rationalization in analyzing the movement from a bourgeois capitalist
Speaker 1: towards a bureaucratized socialist society. A liberal bourgeois world created
Speaker 1: the secularist foundations and economic organization necessary for socialist rule.
Speaker 1: Another pessimistic social commentator with liberal leadings, Joseph Schumpeter believed
Speaker 1: that the middle class concept of readom encouraged the expression
Speaker 1: of critical opposition. This tolerance undermined the belief system of
Speaker 1: an older liberal society and prepared the way for social democracy. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I think this is important because here we see
Speaker 2: and Goffrey is going to get into this more, I think,
Speaker 2: and I think he also does later in the book.
Speaker 2: But we always have to keep in mind that there's
Speaker 2: a big difference between what you might call historicist liberalism
Speaker 2: and universalist liberalism. Historicist liberalism was the instinct that that
Speaker 2: labeled itself liberalism, but within the context of a certain
Speaker 2: political paradigm. And so the English, the English liberals, you know,
Speaker 2: saw themselves basically as pursuing new avenues of freedom within
Speaker 2: the context of their own history, within the context of
Speaker 2: their own political uh, you know, horizons. Whereas and that's
Speaker 2: not the mentality that a lot of like objectivists on
Speaker 2: you know, I Randians, but also like some libertarians and
Speaker 2: James Lindsay and other advocates of what they call classical liberalism,
Speaker 2: they have a more universalist liberalism where the ethnicity, the
Speaker 2: cultural context doesn't really matter. Every individual has these you know,
Speaker 2: universal human rights, and it doesn't really matter what the context,
Speaker 2: the political context is. These things are eternal and they're
Speaker 2: sort of transcended over all things. That's universalist liberalism. So
Speaker 2: what Godfrey's trying to say here is that, you know,
Speaker 2: the original liberalism, what's much more rooted within particular societies.
Speaker 2: That's why German liberalism was different than English, which was
Speaker 2: different than French and so on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but neither are those attempts by old style European
Speaker 1: liberals to find links between two distinctive social and political
Speaker 1: formations denies the differences between them. Both Weber and Schumpeter
Speaker 1: were looking at the conditions in which social changes took place,
Speaker 1: and they note the overlaps as well as distinctions between
Speaker 1: the epos and question, hasa panjatas condulus? I think that's correct.
Speaker 1: It's gonna that's as correct as I'm gonna get it there,
Speaker 1: good enough? Yeah. A German Germanophone Greek scholar whose work
Speaker 1: is not yet widely known, breaks new ground in this respect.
Speaker 1: Condolus examines the distinctions between liberal, bourgeois and mass democratic
Speaker 1: societies by looking at their literary and cultural artifacts. Modern
Speaker 1: democracies differ from pre modern ones, according to Congdolus, in
Speaker 1: that they disassociate citizenship from cultural and ethnic identities, and
Speaker 1: in the way in which mass production affects society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this is something I'm personally interested in,
Speaker 2: and I think a lot of younger people might emphasize
Speaker 2: this even more than Paul does. But we have to
Speaker 2: pay attention to how cultures like the market, you know,
Speaker 2: the so called free market, the the the the capitalist space,
Speaker 2: the the production of consumer goods, they don't they don't
Speaker 2: just respond to consumer interests, They often direct them. They
Speaker 2: often change the culture itself, and they're often placed into
Speaker 2: culture with the objective of transforming them. And so the
Speaker 2: emphasis on what has mass production done to society, I
Speaker 2: think is something that right wingers need to continue to emphasize,
Speaker 2: you know, much more than liberals. You kind of see
Speaker 2: as this neutral space wherever the free market is, it's
Speaker 2: there's like just you know, cultural neutrality there. But I
Speaker 2: think that Condoleus is entirely correct, that that that the
Speaker 2: entire you know, cultural landscape can change just by the
Speaker 2: introduction of mass production.
Speaker 1: Well, it also seems like a lot of the economics
Speaker 1: that you see pushed from like libertarians, is doesn't really
Speaker 1: take into account what we've seen as far as globalism,
Speaker 1: as far as to advanced in technology itself, also social engineering,
Speaker 1: things like that exactly. Just it exists in a vacuum.
Speaker 1: You can make it work in a vacuum. But what
Speaker 1: when you have to introduce it to I mean, can
Speaker 1: you imagine, like all of a sudden, the United States
Speaker 1: just dropped all its regulations on trade and manufacturing and
Speaker 1: just went okay, go yep. I mean that's something that
Speaker 1: Mesas would have. Mesas would have been okay with Rothbard
Speaker 1: probably would have wanted the state. Rothbard would have wanted
Speaker 1: the state out of the way. But you know it's
Speaker 1: still you look at that and you're like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: understand why you want to do this because you see
Speaker 1: what government and what what quote unquote cronyism that that
Speaker 1: word that they love so much does. Yet you're not
Speaker 1: taking into account what Condoless is talking about here talking
Speaker 1: about disassociating citizenship from cultural and ethnic identities. What that
Speaker 1: does to what that does when you have because if
Speaker 1: you have a free market, you also have no borders
Speaker 1: because you're gonna have free trade.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it also it also universalizes and it makes uniform
Speaker 2: world culture. I mean, the more you extend I mean,
Speaker 2: this is actually this is controversial, but this is actually
Speaker 2: a point that Lenin makes. You know, as you extend
Speaker 2: the capitalist order, you're going to do away with old cultures.
Speaker 2: It's inevitable that everything is going to become homogeneous culturally
Speaker 2: when you do this. Yep, if I can cite him.
Speaker 1: Perfectly, I mean I read through all of State and
Speaker 1: Revolution on this show. So yeah, there, Lenin is not
Speaker 1: a he's not a friend of the show. Definitely, He's
Speaker 1: definitely been a big part of the show.
Speaker 2: Well, he's got insights that are worth learning from. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be autistic about it.
Speaker 1: Well, some time times, if you even read Rothbart, it
Speaker 1: almost seems like the dialect like his dialectical style is Lenin's. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: like he stole, like he bred Lenin and he decided
Speaker 1: to use that dialectical style, which I don't think is
Speaker 1: a bad thing, because I think Lenin was was definitely
Speaker 1: the most intelligent of all of them.
Speaker 2: Right and what and by the way, what Lenin is
Speaker 2: critiquing is not some Messissian paradise, but he's critiquing basically
Speaker 2: the managerial capitalism.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, all right, the modern as opposed to pre modern,
Speaker 1: The modern as opposed to pre modern and democrat is
Speaker 1: not continually situated and has a fluid cultural identity being
Speaker 1: shaped by a consumer economy.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's a sentence right there, man, it is. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the consumer economy shapes man. Man doesn't shape the consumer economy.
Speaker 2: It's important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I said social engineering. It just doesn't. It's
Speaker 1: you're not taking that into account when you're talking about
Speaker 1: this free quote unquote free market. Yep. He also inhabits
Speaker 1: a culture that remains hostile to the older liberal universe.
Speaker 1: Postmodernism in literature and literary criticism, condolist argues, is the
Speaker 1: latest in a series of cultural strategies aimed at subverting
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century liberal order. The refusal to recognize a
Speaker 1: fixed or authoritative meaning for inherited texts, which is characteristic
Speaker 1: of postmodernism, represents an assault upon liberal education. Contrary to
Speaker 1: the world of moral and semantic order presided over by
Speaker 1: an ethical deity which bourgeois liberals preached, the postmodernists exalt indeterminacy.
Speaker 1: They decry the acceptance of tradition and discourse, as well
Speaker 1: as in political matters as a fasci as a fascist
Speaker 1: act of domination, or as the inadmissible allowance of the
Speaker 1: past to intrude upon the present. And I would say
Speaker 1: even the future.
Speaker 2: In the future. I agree. The other thing I want
Speaker 2: to say too, and this is kind of in passing,
Speaker 2: but the idea of describing the older this is what
Speaker 2: he's describing it, the older liberal order as fascistic, is
Speaker 2: something that when Gottfried wrote it, what did he write?
Speaker 2: This was this nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: Right, is it ninety eight? Ninety nine?
Speaker 2: Yeah, ninety nine. So yeah, so the idea that this
Speaker 2: would be determined fascist was probably seen by its readers
Speaker 2: as like dramatic. But look at everything that's called fascist.
Speaker 2: Everything that your grandma held just instinctually is now fascist.
Speaker 2: I mean, Gottfried, who's on the cutting edge of recognizing
Speaker 2: where all this was going.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why when people that's why I tell people
Speaker 1: when they're like gushing over James lindsay, I'm like, Paul
Speaker 1: Godfrey gave this to you twenty five years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: Nowhere does Condalis call for the eradication of postmodernism or
Speaker 1: make the facile assumption that by opposing it, the present
Speaker 1: generation can resurrect the bourgeoise world. He contends that liberal
Speaker 1: and mass democratic societies are not only distinct, but mutually antagonistic,
Speaker 1: and that antagonism has expressed itself culturally as well as socioeconomically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where this is where, this is where
Speaker 2: just the neo conservatives. And I say that in a
Speaker 2: time when everybody hates the neo conservatives, but I really
Speaker 2: just mean twentieth century American ideal, americanist ideology. They they
Speaker 2: really people need to recognize and we need to push
Speaker 2: this even harder that the mass democracy, democracy, the you know,
Speaker 2: the extended vote, and all the people that are pro
Speaker 2: civil rights regime, all this stuff, these are the mechanisms
Speaker 2: by which the old liberalism are being destroyed. So these,
Speaker 2: like a lot of people try to boot like the
Speaker 2: mainstream people, they try to balance like democracy and liberalism
Speaker 2: as like these unified you know, uh, you know, paths
Speaker 2: forward or whatever, but they are not. You know, one
Speaker 2: is eating the other. The old American bourgeois liberal order
Speaker 2: that existed in the nineteenth century is being eaten alive
Speaker 2: by mass democracy.
Speaker 1: For over one hundred years, bourgeois liberalism has been under
Speaker 1: attack from authors and artists presenting views about human nature
Speaker 1: and the nature of existence antithetical to bourgeois convictions. Materialism, atheism,
Speaker 1: and pluralism have been three such worldviews which the bourgeoisie
Speaker 1: long viewed with justifiable suspicion. Deconstructionism is a more recent
Speaker 1: form of cultural criticism aimed at inherited assumptions about meaning.
Speaker 1: By now, Condulus maintains, the old liberals have been reduced
Speaker 1: to a rearguard struggle while watching I'm not going to
Speaker 1: pronounce the German word, while watching their opponents take over
Speaker 1: culture and education. But the reduced But the reason for
Speaker 1: this reduced liberal presence, Condolus explains, is not an insidious
Speaker 1: contamination by a cultural industry separated from the rest of society.
Speaker 1: Cultural radicals have done well in mass democracies because they
Speaker 1: continue to target the liberal order that the democrats deposed.
Speaker 1: The cultural yep, the cultural opposition continues to mobilize even
Speaker 1: after the political war has ended.
Speaker 2: Right this is this is also an insight of people
Speaker 2: like gramscy Right Like he recognizes that like they can
Speaker 2: capture power. But the cultural revolution. It has to continue going.
Speaker 2: The moment it stops, it falls apart. Like people think, oh,
Speaker 2: the you know, the trance stuff is like ridiculous and
Speaker 2: silly and goofy, it's actually not. You have to come
Speaker 2: up with something. You have to continue to advance it
Speaker 2: in some direction otherwise it stops. And you can't have
Speaker 2: a revolution that stops. If you have a revolution that stops,
Speaker 2: you could you know, that's that's when you get the
Speaker 2: momentum that goes to reactionaries. You know, the second they
Speaker 2: stop creating new things to terrorize us with. Culturally, that's
Speaker 2: when we'll gain a footing. So you know a lot
Speaker 2: of people think, oh, when is this going to stop it?
Speaker 2: You know, why didn't it stop with the gage, Why
Speaker 2: is it going to trade? Why is it going to pedophiles?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: It's because there has to be a new thing. The
Speaker 2: cultural revolution has to continue mobilizing even after the political
Speaker 2: war has ended.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're going to have progressivism, there has to
Speaker 1: be constant progress. That's why people concentrating too hard on
Speaker 1: the transgender thing and just concentrating on that. They don't
Speaker 1: understand that what you really should be looking at what
Speaker 1: comes next? And I think that by reading what we've
Speaker 1: already read before, we could see that Paul. That's the
Speaker 1: genius of Paul is he's not stuck where he is.
Speaker 1: He's looking twenty years, twenty five years down the road
Speaker 1: and he's like, Okay, where are we going to be?
Speaker 1: Right right, Victorian rigidity, social status, and elitist attitudes about
Speaker 1: education have all remained the butts of academic and literary criticism,
Speaker 1: and the opposition points back to the conditions of strife
Speaker 1: in which mass democracy arose. This cultural insurgency, condous observes,
Speaker 1: draws strength from a subversive source that once served liberalism
Speaker 1: in its war against the past.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. See, liberalism was something that came
Speaker 2: about on the scene of world history because it was
Speaker 2: attacking something that came before. You know, the political interests
Speaker 2: at the time of the rise of liberalism needed to
Speaker 2: confront it, you know, subversively. Basically, it needed to and
Speaker 2: we're talking back, we're talking back at like you know,
Speaker 2: Oliver Cromwell and stuff, and when the birth of some
Speaker 2: of these tendencies could be found. So today liberalism has basically,
Speaker 2: you know, come into the establishment. It is the establishment
Speaker 2: view of things. So but but now it's being opposed
Speaker 2: by something that also has to be culturally subversive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, here here we start getting into rough one feathers.
Speaker 1: The Enlightenment tradition of critical rationalism was crucial for the
Speaker 1: war of ideas waged by the bourgeoisie and its defenders
Speaker 1: against the remnants of an older world. Despite the attempt
Speaker 1: to integrate this outlook into a bourgeois vision of life,
Speaker 1: Enlightenment rationalism has played a new destructive role as the
Speaker 1: instrument of a war against a bourgeoisie on behalf of openness, skepticism,
Speaker 1: and material equality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is uh, you know, not to
Speaker 2: not to over oversight, you know, Edmund Burke, I mean,
Speaker 2: but this is this is exactly what he said you
Speaker 2: in the moment you start playing with society like this,
Speaker 2: it has to continue forever, you know. So Enlightenment rationalism
Speaker 2: is going to come up with this new you know,
Speaker 2: like this new you know series of reasons why you know,
Speaker 2: like homosexuality is reactionary, right, It's always going to come
Speaker 2: with something crazier, and it's going to be justified with
Speaker 2: you know, quote unquote reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is the reason why maybe you can
Speaker 1: look to Lindsay for certain someone like James Lindsay for
Speaker 1: certain things. But you can't look to him for answers
Speaker 1: because this is his answer is the enlightenment. His answer
Speaker 1: is continual change. He just sees his change, the change
Speaker 1: that he desired, has taken a detour mm hmm, exactly
Speaker 1: what he wants to go on, the you know, he
Speaker 1: sees the trans stuff and all, you know, the wokeness.
Speaker 1: He sees that as the enemy of progress, whereas there
Speaker 1: is a certain group that sees that as the progress.
Speaker 1: He's just they're on. They're on the same road. They're
Speaker 1: just they're on. They've just it's a fork in the road.
Speaker 1: But both of those roads lead to destruction.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right. These pointed observations about the culture of
Speaker 1: mass democracy do not deny the fact that cultural differences
Speaker 1: exist among Democrats, deconstructionists, and liberal democratic absolutists still fight
Speaker 1: over the values to be taught in history and literature courses.
Speaker 1: And so I don't even know if they do that anymore.
Speaker 1: That might be one that's uh.
Speaker 2: I mean, do they Yeah, I don't, Yeah, who knows.
Speaker 1: And some advocates well, yeah, go ahead, and some advert
Speaker 1: kits of post World War two abstract expressionism, such as
Speaker 1: Hilton Kramer have now come to oppose latter schools of
Speaker 1: art as relative cultural traditionalists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, like, yeah, this is this is why, like
Speaker 2: like JFK and stuff is now like a right wing traditionalist.
Speaker 1: You know. Nonetheless, radically anti bourgeois movements have remained powerful
Speaker 1: in our cultures as mass democracy continues to struggle against
Speaker 1: the remains of an older heritage. In the United States,
Speaker 1: traditional liberal and agrarian democratic forces state forces stayed alive
Speaker 1: into the twentieth century and resisted the inroads of the
Speaker 1: democratic administrative state.
Speaker 2: I wonder, I wonder how if you go to the
Speaker 2: nonetheless sentence there, I wonder if he would if he
Speaker 2: would update this to I wonder how much of a
Speaker 2: struggle there actually is between the older heritage and the
Speaker 2: mass democracy. I can't. It's it's it's hard to find
Speaker 2: an institution that's fighting for some older right, you know.
Speaker 2: I think it's like mass democracy versus the new Left
Speaker 2: basically now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's like who's struggling Chronicles.
Speaker 2: Is exactly, Yeah, there's no one fighting for the older heritage.
Speaker 1: Nobody mass democracy needed a cultural as well as political
Speaker 1: strategy to triumph, and the values and concepts juggled by
Speaker 1: our literary and now media elites are keys to the
Speaker 1: emergence of a post liberal society and politics. Condalus also
Speaker 1: makes clear that mass democracy could not have developed without
Speaker 1: the demographic and economic revolutions that transformed Western Europe in
Speaker 1: the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Industrialization, agricultural modernization and urban
Speaker 1: working class. The disappearance of a family based craft economy
Speaker 1: and the operation of assembly line production where the factors
Speaker 1: Condolus observes contributing to mass democracy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, master democracy could not have happened if
Speaker 2: it wasn't for the administration the industrial revolution basically is
Speaker 2: what he's saying.
Speaker 1: Here, right, And this one part here, the disappearance of
Speaker 1: the family based craft economy, I didn't. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: I read Rhder Sombart that I that it blew my mind.
Speaker 1: It was like, yeah, that's when once you you could
Speaker 1: see how Walmart exists, once you see how the family
Speaker 1: based craft economy, the tailor, the specialty shop, how that
Speaker 1: just is moved out and now you get cheap, cheap
Speaker 1: crap from pretty much anywhere, Right, exactly you can.
Speaker 2: It's it's funny, like, I know, everyone talks about her
Speaker 2: everything's made in China, but my so my family, my
Speaker 2: wife's family's German. Her her mom basically came from from
Speaker 2: Germany in the nineties when she got married because my
Speaker 2: father in law was stationed over there. So she goes
Speaker 2: back to her village where they, you know, they've been
Speaker 2: making crafts for you know, hundreds of maybe thousands of years,
Speaker 2: you know, these the same village, the same rural village,
Speaker 2: and she was just absolutely dismayed to go back to
Speaker 2: the same village. And you see, all the products that
Speaker 2: they've been selling for a long time are basically imitations
Speaker 2: of the older products, and they all have stamps made
Speaker 2: in China. And I know everyone recognizes that and talks
Speaker 2: about it, but it's just it permeates every aspect of
Speaker 2: the old European world. And people pretend like people pretend
Speaker 2: like consumerist capitalism is culturally neutral. It's a complete lie,
Speaker 2: Like the entire rural village has been transformed just by
Speaker 2: the mass production of these goods.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I mean, hey, as long as it's cheaper,
Speaker 1: that's all that matters, right, As long as the line
Speaker 1: is going up. Everything's fine, Yes, exactly exactly. Although Imperial
Speaker 1: Realm experienced the concentration of uprooted proletai and it's swelling
Speaker 1: strife ridden cities, it could not have produced a modern
Speaker 1: political movement because it lacked both mass production and mass consumption.
Speaker 1: Earlier societies had to deal with perpetual scarcity and with
Speaker 1: the need to share limited resources in a communal setting.
Speaker 1: The modern West, by contrast, provides more and more material
Speaker 1: gratification to socially isolated individuals.
Speaker 2: Just the way libertarians want it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, just as long as I have Instacart
Speaker 1: and you know, porn on demand, Okay, we're good to
Speaker 1: get happy. Yeah. It's politics are therefore predicated on hedonism
Speaker 1: and individual self actualization, values that give an ethical dimension
Speaker 1: to a consumer economy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the ethics. The ethics sort of justifies what's happening economically.
Speaker 1: Yes, as democratic politics also advocates material equality, as opposed
Speaker 1: to the exclusively formal or legal equality preached by nineteenth
Speaker 1: century liberals. M h.
Speaker 2: Actually, sorry keep interrupting, but it's it's it's funny, like
Speaker 2: there's one of the essays by Mesus and and I
Speaker 2: have these you know, examples in my head, because you
Speaker 2: and I both came from that world. But I have
Speaker 2: this this story of thesis. I think I'm trying to
Speaker 2: remember what book it's in, and it might be in
Speaker 2: his interventionist book. But he basically says that, you know,
Speaker 2: we capitalists don't disagree with the interventionists in terms of
Speaker 2: our shared desire for a material equality. It's just that
Speaker 2: we have different paths to get there. So he says,
Speaker 2: you know, his view, the liberal view, is that by
Speaker 2: the capitalist, free market economy, we can provide the same
Speaker 2: type of material equality that the interventionists are also trying
Speaker 2: to do by their own memes. But you know, now
Speaker 2: becoming a right winger, I actually don't care all that
Speaker 2: much for a material equality at all. It doesn't doesn't
Speaker 2: phase me, it doesn't enter into my you know, priority scale.
Speaker 1: By stressing the ties between modern democra material pleasure, Condalus
Speaker 1: also explains why modern democracy cannot appeal effectively in the
Speaker 1: long run to an ethic of austerity. At the end
Speaker 1: of the eighteenth century, both both American and French revolutionaries
Speaker 1: invoked classical ideals of republican simplicity, a practice found pre
Speaker 1: eminently in the political writings of Rousseau, self indulgence and
Speaker 1: luxury were viewed as aristocratic flaws and among nineteenth century
Speaker 1: French Republicans as upper middle class vices. Democrat, Democratic and
Speaker 1: later socialist revolutionaries even tried to exemplify the moral conduct
Speaker 1: which they hoped to enforce in a society of equals.
Speaker 1: The Jacobin socialist Louis Auguste Blanci lived and dressed like
Speaker 1: a priest, and the self proclaimed Republican Senecal in Gustave
Speaker 1: Flaubert's novel Le Educashan Sentimentale is made to appeal eccentric
Speaker 1: in his extreme pursuit of virtue. Senekal is shown embracing
Speaker 1: dietary and sexual restraints and scorning sumptuous living in a
Speaker 1: similar vein Black Marxist President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabi has
Speaker 1: denounced the homosexuals in his homeland. Mcgaby is outraged that
Speaker 1: sodomists and sexual perverts continue to be found there and
Speaker 1: scoffs at the idea of rights for those given to
Speaker 1: beast reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is so funny to me, because I mean,
Speaker 2: I think what Paul Godfrey's trying to communicate here is
Speaker 2: a lot of these very anti liberal people are actually
Speaker 2: more like just instinctually culturally conservative than today's left and
Speaker 2: today's quote unquote right. You know, all the people that are,
Speaker 2: you know, seeking freedom and liberty against you know, the
Speaker 2: democratic lip totalitarianism or whatever. They don't realize that they're
Speaker 2: all using the same far left phraseology that we're opposed
Speaker 2: by all these antiliberals. It's fascinating to me. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think it's hilarious when these like Marxist revolutionaries in
Speaker 2: the Third World are against like sodomy, that's just hilarious.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, oh and an American American and quote unquote socialists,
Speaker 1: they don't get it, and they have to make excuses
Speaker 1: for it. And what do they do. They make cultural excuses. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's like it's like it's like the Republicans like when
Speaker 2: they when they point out that, like, you know, Stalin
Speaker 2: was anti LGBT, and you're like, oh, so Stalin was
Speaker 2: kind of based.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. Interesting, It's like there's something I agree with
Speaker 1: them on. All of these revolutionary democratic or socialist appeals
Speaker 1: to public virtue hark back to Republican models that CONDOLEUS
Speaker 1: views as incompatible with mass democracy. What distinguishes the latter
Speaker 1: from the former, in his opinion, is the prevalence of
Speaker 1: hedonism associated with mass production and mass consumption. This ethos
Speaker 1: express itself expresses itself as a ceaseless desire for consumption
Speaker 1: combined with resentment against those who have more access to pleasure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, see, this is like, this is how I would
Speaker 2: write here, This is how I would describe the uniqueness
Speaker 2: of the American situation. You know, people always want to
Speaker 2: say that we're becoming this is this is a classic
Speaker 2: James lindsay, Right, we're becoming like communist Russia or whatever.
Speaker 2: We're coming like communist China. Actually, those communist experiments were
Speaker 2: very much focused on austerity. They were very much focused
Speaker 2: on denying material gratification, denying pleasures to the point where
Speaker 2: you basically had a miserable life. We're on the opposite
Speaker 2: end of the scale. Like the entire point of the
Speaker 2: American regime is to make us just absolutely sick and
Speaker 2: disgusted with a with titillation with pleasure, like we're living
Speaker 2: on Pinocchio's pleasure island and sort of like mandated prosperity.
Speaker 1: All right, It was the failure of liberals. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: it was the failure of liberalism from the standpoint of
Speaker 1: mass democracy, to move decisively enough toward material equality and
Speaker 1: individual self expressive that led to its undoing. The defenders
Speaker 1: of bourgeois liberalism temporized when faced by the sociological evidence
Speaker 1: of inequality in their own society. They claimed to be
Speaker 1: more interested in freedom than in the further pursuit of equality,
Speaker 1: but were more were also more committed to family cohesion
Speaker 1: and gender distinctions than to individual freedom. The reason for
Speaker 1: this is clear. According to condolists, bourgeois liberals were both
Speaker 1: economic innovators and perpetuators of an urban civilization going back
Speaker 1: to the Middle Ages. In their heyday, they spoke about
Speaker 1: sweeping change, but they never but they were never as
Speaker 1: dedicated to the social and cultural implications of a consumer
Speaker 1: economy as were those who replaced them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so you know, that's so fascinating to me,
Speaker 2: just drawing this distinction between old school liberalism and how
Speaker 2: much it would be opposed to James Lindsay's consumer based liberalism.
Speaker 2: You know, this is sort of like modern democratic. Twentieth
Speaker 2: century American liberalism has almost nothing in common with the
Speaker 2: old liberalism. And that's I think what Coffee's trying to
Speaker 2: communicate here is we live in a world that's post
Speaker 2: industrial revolution. The entire economic world order has changed, and
Speaker 2: therefore the type of liberalism that you're going to see
Speaker 2: is going to change with it.
Speaker 1: Basic to the thesis is the recognition that liberalism is
Speaker 1: a bourgeois ideology, a set of ideas and principles indissolubly
Speaker 1: tied to the Western middle class. This does not mean
Speaker 1: that liberal principles are reducible to material interest, nor that
Speaker 1: they should be dismissed as a pretext for economic exploitation.
Speaker 1: In the early nineteen fifties, John Plominets tried to separate
Speaker 1: ideology from the pejorative association associations many Marxists have loaded
Speaker 1: onto that term. According to Plominots, the word ideology is
Speaker 1: not used to refer only to explicitly and theories. Those
Speaker 1: who speak of bourgeois ideology often mean by its beliefs
Speaker 1: and attitudes implicit in the bourgeois way of speaking and behaving,
Speaker 1: And sometimes they speak of bourgeois theories and doctrines as
Speaker 1: if they did little more than explicit then explicit These
Speaker 1: beliefs and attitudes understood in the cultural sense and not
Speaker 1: simply as a theoretical instrument of self justification. Liberalism exemplifies
Speaker 1: bourgeois ideology. It designates not just liberal ideas, but also
Speaker 1: their social setting. That is, the context without which liberalism
Speaker 1: becomes merely disembodied concepts or slogans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is what I was talking about before. You know,
Speaker 2: original bourgeois liberalism came from like what he just said there,
Speaker 2: like a social setting. It came from a certain context.
Speaker 2: But when you just when you try to rip those
Speaker 2: principles out of their context and apply them to the
Speaker 2: world today as this universalist and transcendent political principle, you
Speaker 2: transform the function of liberalism from a you know, a
Speaker 2: culturally contextual function into basically a world revolutionary project.
Speaker 1: When Benjamin Constant and Francois Guiso argued for a political
Speaker 1: just melu in the eighteen twenties in the form of
Speaker 1: constitutional monarchy, they were not simply advocating moderation or an
Speaker 1: Aristotilian Golden mean. They were looking at the educated bourgeoisie
Speaker 1: as a natural leadership class that could maneuver between the
Speaker 1: equally disastrous shoals of absolute monarchy and democracy. Guiseau identified
Speaker 1: that class with the modern nation state. He believed that
Speaker 1: this political order and the bourgeois and the and the
Speaker 1: bourgeoisie would benefit from their historically and this necessary association.
Speaker 1: This cultural context does not mean that the French doctrinaires,
Speaker 1: as the constitutional liberals in post Napoleonic France called themselves,
Speaker 1: had nothing to teach our own generation. It is rather
Speaker 1: to insist on the need to avoid tendacious to tendentious parallels,
Speaker 1: which arrange past figures and past movements and accordance with
Speaker 1: current appetites for a usable past.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is I mean, yeah, we have to avoid it.
Speaker 2: But if there's anything that describes the modern age, it's
Speaker 2: exactly this. They're arranging all these they're you know, they're
Speaker 2: they're lining up past figures that they consider good and
Speaker 2: past figures that they consider bad. And basically like this
Speaker 2: is this is what the whole thing about, Like everybody is,
Speaker 2: you know, Hitler or whatever. That is exactly what's going
Speaker 2: on here. They're arranging them in accordance with current appetites.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So that's yeah, that's exactly what he people Paul will
Speaker 2: say that we need to avoid this, but this actually
Speaker 2: deeply characterized characterizes our ideological formulation today.
Speaker 1: What I am emphasizing here is need for sexualization, the
Speaker 1: avoidance of which typifies contemporary zealotry. Appeals to human rights
Speaker 1: as historically unbounded absolutes now resound in political debates in
Speaker 1: which opposing sides accuse each other of relativizing values. Wards
Speaker 1: and social policies are justified by invoking self evident truths,
Speaker 1: even though what is true in these truths in these
Speaker 1: truths may be different now from what seems self evident
Speaker 1: about them two hundred years ago. Pointing this out is
Speaker 1: not the same as relativizing all truth. It is only
Speaker 1: to question the opportunistic and decontextualized use to which the
Speaker 1: past has been has been bent.
Speaker 2: He's basically critiquing He's yeah, he's critiquing historicism, or he's sorry,
Speaker 2: he's critiquing universalism from a historicist mentality. You have to
Speaker 2: look at things in their original context. English liberalism is
Speaker 2: not the same as American liberalism, and to treat them
Speaker 2: as the same as basically doing gauge in propaganda.
Speaker 1: Yea. The decontextualization of liberalism can happen in two ways,
Speaker 1: either when we place liberalism into an eternal present, going
Speaker 1: back and forth in time, or else when we make
Speaker 1: it real history into a stepping stone to the present.
Speaker 1: A particularly striking case of this comes up in FG.
Speaker 1: Bratton's The Legacy of the Liberal Spirit nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: a once widely esteemed defense of the liberal heritage. In
Speaker 1: his preface, Bratton explains that liberalism is not to be
Speaker 1: viewed as a nineteenth century phenomena ending with the Second
Speaker 1: World War, as an attitude towards toward life. It has
Speaker 1: a history of twenty five hundred years. It goes back
Speaker 1: to the Age of Reason and the Reformation, and to
Speaker 1: earlier distant attempts to establish intellectual freedom and the life
Speaker 1: of reasons. In the journey that follows from Plato through
Speaker 1: Jesus to John Dewey, Braton celebrates thinkers who he believes
Speaker 1: have pointed it in his own direction. Thus, he favorably
Speaker 1: favorably contrasts one North African Christian Platonist origin with another Augustine,
Speaker 1: presenting the first as a protoliberal and the second as
Speaker 1: an obscurantist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically Paul saying that it's cheating to say that,
Speaker 2: like all the good things throughout history were liberal and
Speaker 2: anticipated our age right, and all the bad things were
Speaker 2: forks in the road that people went in the wrong direction.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's basically part of creating an ideological hegemony
Speaker 2: in our time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you see this, this is this is not
Speaker 1: only with liberals, classical everyone knows this, right, everyone does
Speaker 1: this in liberalism. John Gray also assigns liberal ratings to
Speaker 1: thinkers who lived long before the liberal era. Grape praises
Speaker 1: pericles funeral oration or its reconstruction by the historian Thucididies
Speaker 1: for its statement of a liberal, egalitarian and individualist principles.
Speaker 2: This is basically what the neo conservatives do, Like if
Speaker 2: you read like Leo Strauss. Paul is really critical of
Speaker 2: Leo Strauss precisely here where he basically says that you
Speaker 2: can find aspects of American liberal democracy in the Greeks,
Speaker 2: and then he goes to the Romans and you can
Speaker 2: just go throughout history and find all the good ones
Speaker 2: and say this, you know, America perfected all of these tendencies.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's cheating.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He thereby ignores the pervasive stress and that speech
Speaker 1: on living for the public good, which was paradigmatic for
Speaker 1: ancient Greek democracy. Yeah, modern modern liberal individualism existed only incipiently,
Speaker 1: if at all, in Greek antiquity, a point documented in
Speaker 1: works by end Fustal des Colange's Fostell. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: remember how to pronounce that.
Speaker 3: I actually it's de Coulanganga. Yeah, it was Fustyle de Colange,
Speaker 3: the Ancient City. To Paul Rose, Republican, the republic's ancient
Speaker 3: and modern. Among the readings of liberalism which try to
Speaker 3: shove its past into a triumphalist present are the academic
Speaker 3: apologist apologetics discussed in the first chapter. In all fairness,
Speaker 3: it should be said that even probing critics of contemporary
Speaker 3: liberalism ascribe it to an exceed excessively long genealogy. Christopher Lash,
Speaker 3: John P. Diggins, and the ethical philosopher Alistair McIntyre have
Speaker 3: all written critically on the liberal heritage, which they believe
Speaker 3: has descended more or less intact from earlier centuries.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think one of the things that Paul would say
Speaker 2: here is it's what you can't do in history is
Speaker 2: reach back into specific contexts and take a phrase, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm someone who spend a lot of time in Christian circles.
Speaker 2: Protestant Christians do this all the time. They'll reach back
Speaker 2: in history and take a phrase, and Catholics do it too,
Speaker 2: but like they'll take we'll take a phrase and they'll
Speaker 2: basically just apply current meanings to it in order to
Speaker 2: justify their association with that past figure. That's that's what
Speaker 2: he's describing here, is you can't say, because Greeks use
Speaker 2: democracy and we use democracy, were basically like, you know,
Speaker 2: the Greeks were on our side and we can cite
Speaker 2: someone from history. That's that's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, faith and material progress as a means of solving
Speaker 1: moral problems, a buoyant skepticism about religious questions, and especially
Speaker 1: in Diggins analysis, individual autonomy at the end of social
Speaker 1: policy are all, in their opinion, permanent aspects of the
Speaker 1: liberal worldview. So yeah, people who want to hold on
Speaker 1: to liberalism and and our Christians Catholics, I mean, inherent
Speaker 1: in it all, especially since the Enlightenment has been a
Speaker 1: boyant skepticism about religious questions. I mean that anyone could
Speaker 1: deny that, dismiss it, or try and pooh pooh it
Speaker 1: away is insane to me. It's just what it is. Yep.
Speaker 1: This worldview is thought to define liberalism, which it preached,
Speaker 1: which whether it preaches a free market economy or the
Speaker 1: need for social democracy. Diggins and other perceptive commentators contend
Speaker 1: that people would not go on for generations speaking about
Speaker 1: a liberal heritage unless one truly existed. Those who admire
Speaker 1: John Dewey and John Rawls could, for the same reason
Speaker 1: find something in Adam Smith and John Locke to admire,
Speaker 1: Otherwise they would not fix the same label upon upon
Speaker 1: all of those matter, and a pen said, I don't
Speaker 1: know what that means. I didn't look it up. The
Speaker 1: view of a liberal heritage is furthermore, based on a
Speaker 1: reliable axiom and historical research that a long term and
Speaker 1: widely held belief in the persistence and integrity of a
Speaker 1: movement cannot be entirely illusory. Note that while classical liberal
Speaker 1: John Gray sees his own liberalism transformed by modern social democrats,
Speaker 1: he nonetheless searches for shared ground between himself and them.
Speaker 1: But this approach raises its own methodological difficulties. It overlooks
Speaker 1: several generations of agitated debates between liberals and democrats. These
Speaker 1: debates include Guzeau's warnings about the sovereignty of numbers and
Speaker 1: Stevens assaults on John Stuart Mill's faith that all people
Speaker 1: should live in a society as equals. Indeed, much of
Speaker 1: the political debate in Western Europe from the second half
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century into the early decades of the
Speaker 1: twentieth testifies to the deep divisions between old fashioned liberals
Speaker 1: and democratic reformers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean liberal democracy as this natural, historically prevalent
Speaker 2: uniting force is what but Paul's deconstructing here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The French anthropologist Louis demon in Homo Akilus treats
Speaker 1: as the unifying theme of modern of the modern West,
Speaker 1: the rise of individualism within the world. Would you argue that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Uh no, I think are you asking if I think, uh.
Speaker 1: You think he's right there?
Speaker 2: Oh no, No, I don't. I don't think. I don't
Speaker 2: think that's the unifying theme of the modern West. I
Speaker 2: think I think that's an aspect of certain tendencies within
Speaker 2: the modern West.
Speaker 1: I think it's a weapon. I think it's I.
Speaker 2: Think it's well, I think what it is, it's something,
Speaker 2: it's part of the American you know, the American ideologies
Speaker 2: version of things, I would.
Speaker 1: Say, okay, sounds good. Unlike the ascetic ideals of medieval
Speaker 1: Christianity and Eastern contemplative religions, Western modernity has been characterized
Speaker 1: by the belf that individual fulfillment should take place within society.
Speaker 1: This individual consciousness, Dumont explains, does not require that people
Speaker 1: withdraw from a hierarchical world based on status relations. To
Speaker 1: the contrary, it has encouraged individuals seeking success and self
Speaker 1: expression to find it in a changing and increasingly atomized society. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I really do think though that, you know, the idea
Speaker 2: of modernity being defined in this way, I think it's
Speaker 2: I think this is actually the unique expression of the
Speaker 2: American version of the modern age. I don't think you
Speaker 2: can see a lot of this. I mean, because, like
Speaker 2: you would, you would have to consider a lot of
Speaker 2: the reactionary movements in France and Germany and England, anyone
Speaker 2: from like anyone from like Mosley to Miscellini, anyone like that.
Speaker 2: You know, all these people were basically modernists, and none
Speaker 2: of them had an individual individualist view of the world.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, Yeah, I'm talking about America, Okay. Months analysis
Speaker 1: treats the intellectual history of the Western world as a
Speaker 1: steady movement towards expressive individualism from the Protestant Reformation to
Speaker 1: the rise of a contractual view of civil society in
Speaker 1: John Locke and in other early liberal theorists. I agree.
Speaker 2: I do agree with that. I do agree that there
Speaker 2: was a major strain of this individualism, perhaps working itself
Speaker 2: out for sure.
Speaker 1: Implicit in this interpretive perspective is distressed by the German
Speaker 1: sociologist Fernandotonis on the movement from traditional communities to functionally
Speaker 1: oriented and highly mobile societies. Dumal focuses on the cultural
Speaker 1: and intellectual basis underlying Tony's transition from Geimnschaft to guy Sellschaft,
Speaker 1: and he places that transition into a continuum of thought
Speaker 1: going back to the early modern period. Dumont's thematic stress
Speaker 1: on individualism within the world underscores a problem found in exportations.
Speaker 1: Appealing to root causes, they account for both too much
Speaker 1: and too little. By citing a single force that is
Speaker 1: made to account for modern culture, duma ignores the distinctiveness
Speaker 1: that marks specific phases of Western history from the Reformation onward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I was saying. It's because I was
Speaker 2: saying it accounts for too much, so I agree here.
Speaker 2: I agree with.
Speaker 1: Paul, though clearly he knows that the Protestant idea of
Speaker 1: the individual experience of divine grace has little to do
Speaker 1: with contemporary views of individual self gratification. Dumal's interest and
Speaker 1: cultural continuity leads him to play down such a difference.
Speaker 1: His study of individuality in the West causes him to
Speaker 1: overlook short term cultural changes, even those with powerful cumulative effects.
Speaker 1: To the extent that our own study deals with two
Speaker 1: successive epochs, which Dumal disregards, is for us significant. Moreover,
Speaker 1: liberal democracy has a accelerated some aspects of that long
Speaker 1: range process outlined by Dumont, while making others less important.
Speaker 1: Material redistribution as a means of individual fulfillment has become
Speaker 1: basic to our own liberal democratic age, while the cohesion
Speaker 1: of the nuclear family has grown weaker as liberalism has
Speaker 1: lust out to liberal democracy. Differences and values can be
Speaker 1: perceived in short term political transformations, even if the general
Speaker 1: trend of modernity is what Dumont describes. Critics of the
Speaker 1: old bourgeois liberalism are finally too hasty and linking liberal
Speaker 1: concern about the social question to economic interest. As Gertrude
Speaker 1: Himmelfarb has demonstrated with regards to Victorian attitudes about work
Speaker 1: and philanthropy, questions of character formation and family responsibility were
Speaker 1: tied together in the Victorian middle class mind. Himil Farb
Speaker 1: argues that such an association was not a threadbare defense
Speaker 1: of low facts three wages or of the lack of
Speaker 1: public works programs. Did you know him? A?
Speaker 2: Farb was at Bill Crystal's mom. What, Yeah, that's I
Speaker 2: think it's Bill Crystal's mom. Yeah, she's yeah, she married
Speaker 2: Irving Crystal.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm I've looked that up after this.
Speaker 2: I hope I'm right.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I'm right, Okay. Rather, it came from
Speaker 1: widely shared assumptions about the social good. The broad middle class,
Speaker 1: extending from bankers and mill owners to shopkeepers and church canons,
Speaker 1: rejected a welfare state conception of government because of what
Speaker 1: they assume were it's socially destructive effects.
Speaker 2: It's interesting here that the old liberals he's describing as
Speaker 2: being opposed to welfare and all that. Like if you
Speaker 2: asked a current day liberal, like like someone from the
Speaker 2: Libertarian Party or like James Lindsay or something. You know,
Speaker 2: why we should be opposed to welfare. Well, first of all,
Speaker 2: Jim James Lindsay wouldn't be that oupposed to welfare. But
Speaker 2: generally I would say because it, you know, treads on
Speaker 2: individual rights and their freedom and all this. But you know,
Speaker 2: these these within the social context, the socially situated situation
Speaker 2: where old liberalism found itself. They were mostly concerned to
Speaker 2: about the socially destructive effects, you know, the effects on
Speaker 2: their ability as a family to function cohesively and continuously
Speaker 2: throughout the generations. I mean, this is very much the
Speaker 2: old liberalism was very much a historicist instead of a universalist.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to me, Yeah, where did I? Where'd I? Okay?
Speaker 1: Even if modern liberals disagree with these judgments, their disagreement
Speaker 1: does not justify substituting their own adaptation for the liberal tradition.
Speaker 1: Whether welfare state democrats and public administrators have refined or
Speaker 1: degraded the original articles beside the point. What they have
Speaker 1: done is changed that article in ways that would make
Speaker 1: it unrecognizable to earlier generations, nor will it Due to
Speaker 1: speak of the failure of earlier liberals to see the
Speaker 1: world see the world like modern liberals. If they had
Speaker 1: seen the world differently, they would not have been liberals,
Speaker 1: but social democratic advocates of public administration. American historian John
Speaker 1: Kloppenberg accounts for Weber's liberal skepticism about such concepts as
Speaker 1: the will of the people by pointing to the longer
Speaker 1: context of German history. Weber, as interpreted by Kloppenberg, could
Speaker 1: not imagine the meaningful practice of egalitarian politics because quote,
Speaker 1: Germany had no tradition of popular sovereignty and liberals repeatedly
Speaker 1: put their faith in elites rather than democracies to accomplish
Speaker 1: their goals. True, nineteenth century German bourgeois thought did not
Speaker 1: produce as much radical ferment as its English and French counterparts,
Speaker 1: but Weber's liberal doubts about the people's capacity to rule
Speaker 1: were not restricted at the turn of the century to
Speaker 1: germanophone observers. Kloppenberg, as a social democrat who thinks of
Speaker 1: himself as liberal, looks for larger contexts i e. The particular,
Speaker 1: the particularity, the particularities of German history for his own
Speaker 1: ideological use to detach the liberal tradition from traditional liberal
Speaker 1: views that he finds distasteful. Yeah that's that's just a
Speaker 1: common it's a common trick, right, Yeah, It's just a
Speaker 1: dismissal of It's a dismissal of the opinion or belief
Speaker 1: of somebody because of a social opinion or because they
Speaker 1: come from a different culture, they have a different cultural background.
Speaker 1: Simple stuff like that. Yes, yeah, unlike today's liberals traditional one. Well,
Speaker 1: and when you look at it's also wrong. I mean Prussia,
Speaker 1: Prussia had a welfare state Prussia. Yeah, so it's but
Speaker 1: and it seems to operate very well. Why because it
Speaker 1: was homogenous as society people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they thought of themselves as part of a
Speaker 2: greater community rather than a bunch of you know, individuals
Speaker 2: from from all over the world.
Speaker 1: Exactly. I've been talking about that. I've been reading from
Speaker 1: Imperium Yaki and he talks about that. He talks about
Speaker 1: how as soon as as soon as you have two
Speaker 1: cultures clash within within one one land, you're going to
Speaker 1: even by trying to repair that rift, it actually makes
Speaker 1: it worse.
Speaker 2: Right Yeah, yeah, it can't be done. Yeah, which is like,
Speaker 2: this is why things are so bad now, not only
Speaker 2: because we have the all these you know, cultures coming
Speaker 2: into one place to try to, but we also have
Speaker 2: like hysterical experts who think that they can. They they
Speaker 2: are the ones by doing more, they have more tools
Speaker 2: at their disposal. They are the ones that can finally
Speaker 2: unite all these cultures. And that's why it's especially beat here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Unlike today's liberals, traditional ones entertain deep reservations about
Speaker 1: popular rule. A belief that democracy leads inevitably to socialism
Speaker 1: was common to French liberals at the eighteen thirties and
Speaker 1: eighteen forties, and it is equally apparent to Lakey, Pereto, Weber,
Speaker 1: and other liberal observers at the end of the century.
Speaker 1: Preto and Lakey feared that democracy would bring forth a
Speaker 1: trade union approach to economic policy. Unless put under some
Speaker 1: kind of control. Democratically elected trade unionists would add to
Speaker 1: unemployment by driving up wages, which would then harm the
Speaker 1: most expendable workers. Democratic spokesmen would also agitate to impose
Speaker 1: tariffs on foreign goods, and this would hurt domestic consumers,
Speaker 1: while unleashing reprisals from those countries whose goods were being excluded.
Speaker 1: Also unfamiliar to you, yea. The effects from such economic
Speaker 1: measures would then be blamed on the owners and captains
Speaker 1: of industry, and social democratic governments would cite this accusation
Speaker 1: to justify their confiscation of the means of production. The
Speaker 1: Finnasia sequel prediction about trade union democracy revealed the persistent
Speaker 1: liberal fear about a seizure of property that would take
Speaker 1: place at the urging of socialists. Despite the French Revolution
Speaker 1: of eighteen forty eight, in which bourgeois and social democrats
Speaker 1: went from being allies to violent enemies, a liberal view
Speaker 1: did persist that democratized governments would become radical ones, socialism
Speaker 1: or rampant social order would accompany the advent of a
Speaker 1: universal franchise. Thus, Fitzjames Stephen declared with finality in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, quoting, the substance of what I have to
Speaker 1: say to the disadvantage of the theory and practice of
Speaker 1: universal suffrage is that it tends to invert what I
Speaker 1: should have regarded as the true and natural relation between
Speaker 1: wisdom and folly. I think that wise and good men
Speaker 1: ought to rule those who are foolish and bad. To
Speaker 1: say that the sole function of the wise and good
Speaker 1: is to preach to their neighbors, and that everyone indiscriminately
Speaker 1: should be left to do what he likes, should be
Speaker 1: provided with a rat with a rateable share of the power,
Speaker 1: sovereign power in the shape of the vote, and that
Speaker 1: the results of this will be the direction of power
Speaker 1: by wisdom. Seems to me the wildest romance that ever
Speaker 1: got possession of any considerable number of minds and gold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a critique of the entire twentieth century
Speaker 2: American spirit. I mean, the idea that we're going to
Speaker 2: disseminate political power to every I mean, look at the people,
Speaker 2: like you want to give every person the vote, Look
Speaker 2: at the people that you're giving the power to, I mean,
Speaker 2: and then the idea that this is going to result
Speaker 2: in a wiser governmental direction is absolutely insane. He calls
Speaker 2: it a wild romance, and I think that's kind of
Speaker 2: understating it. But this is basically the mentality that captures
Speaker 2: the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and all major you know,
Speaker 2: voices and advocates within within that entire regime ideological sphere.
Speaker 2: This is the Americanist impulse in the world is to
Speaker 2: share political power with every person. This is why the
Speaker 2: civil rights regime is so crucial to the way the
Speaker 2: American power sees the world. But it has been proven
Speaker 2: so fundamentally wrong. I can't think of anything more disastrous
Speaker 2: than handing out the ability to vote to all of
Speaker 2: these all these groups that have been very easy to radicalize.
Speaker 2: I mean, Paul, even Paul S. Gottfried who's writing this.
Speaker 2: You know, he talks about the fact that he would
Speaker 2: have opposed the central mandate, you know, the national mandate,
Speaker 2: that that all blacks have the vote because he recognized
Speaker 2: that these people would could very easily be radicalized and
Speaker 2: they could be fueled in order to pursue you know,
Speaker 2: various you know, far left objectives. And so this is
Speaker 2: exactly what's happened. We've lost wisdom in at the same
Speaker 2: time as we've gained the right to vote for more.
Speaker 1: And more people. Yeah, these ten lines on paper just
Speaker 1: perfectly described the religion of civic nationalism in America.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And this and this is this is a
Speaker 2: not only is this against like, you know, the Democrat Party,
Speaker 2: but this is specifically against the impulses of the neo conservatives,
Speaker 2: the conservative incorporated, not just neo conservatives, but conservative establishment
Speaker 2: conservative you know, uh, you know, political commentators. This is
Speaker 2: this is against them specifically they're the ones that are
Speaker 2: pushing for the Martin Luther King view.
Speaker 1: Of the world. Yeah, yeah, Martin luthervig Yeah. And Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, Abraham Lincoln wouldn't have been you
Speaker 2: know this bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, he yeah, he would have given the differences.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he wouldn't have given them the right to vote,
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 1: The well, I guess the mythological Lincoln that we hear.
Speaker 2: About, Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: Like Steven Lakey feared that democracy, by overwhelming and sweeping
Speaker 1: away any national leadership, would leave to capricious and unstable government.
Speaker 1: He predicted almost twenty years before it happened, that the
Speaker 1: House of Lords would be disempowered, and in the eighteen
Speaker 1: nineties he also warned that quote the disassociation of the
Speaker 1: upper classes from public duty is likely to prove a
Speaker 1: danger to the community. Yeah, no, Boyd said, nobless abuge.
Speaker 1: Just that goes right out the window, and it's what
Speaker 1: kept society going for centuriesennia from millennia. Right, liberal critics
Speaker 1: of mass democracy offered differing but equally grim predictions about
Speaker 1: the disposition of power in a democratic age. In the
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies, Stephen could find no cohesive group of political
Speaker 1: leaders that might create stable rule in the world as
Speaker 1: imagined by John Stuart Mill. His opponents were mere dreamers
Speaker 1: who liked the radicals, the term by which he did degated.
Speaker 1: Mill in his circle look forward to an age in
Speaker 1: which an all embracing love of humanity will regenerate the
Speaker 1: human race. Not only is it you get this kind
Speaker 1: of egalitarian language, but you also get a you get
Speaker 1: a theological language thrown in there as well. Of course,
Speaker 1: though the radicals complain of the political of the petty
Speaker 1: social arrangements in Victorian England, they lack the hardness of
Speaker 1: mind Steven observes to change things for the better. In time,
Speaker 1: they would be swept aside by better organized fanatics. Another
Speaker 1: liberal critique of democracy, widespread among the doctrinaires of the
Speaker 1: eighteen twenties was its primitive character, which made it unsuited
Speaker 1: for the nineteenth century. Charles Remusot and Guiseeau both stressed
Speaker 1: the idea that democratic republics were a product of classical antiquity.
Speaker 1: Given their need for cultural homogeneity, severe public morals, and
Speaker 1: highly restricted citizenship, popular polities did not seem destined to
Speaker 1: flourish in the nineteenth century. We need to read that again.
Speaker 1: Given their need for cultural homogeneity, severe public morals, and
Speaker 1: highly restricted citizenship, popular polities did not seem destined to
Speaker 1: flourish in the nineteenth century. Why would they flourish now? Right? Exactly? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Unlike Guiseau's democratic Unlike Useau's democratic critic and traveler of
Speaker 1: the New World, a Lexus to Tokville, the doctrinaires did
Speaker 1: not believe that the European future belonged to democracy. They
Speaker 1: viewed the American experience as as suy genries. According to Gizo,
Speaker 1: Americans had established popular sovereignty because they had been able
Speaker 1: to build a regime without an inherited class system. Phil's
Speaker 1: depiction of localism as the essence of American democracy seemed
Speaker 1: to confirm Guizau's judgment. It offered a political picture that
Speaker 1: Guizeau and other doctrinaires thought had no bearing for France
Speaker 1: or for Europe in general. A Europe of highly centralized
Speaker 1: nation states required a stable social pillar drawn from the
Speaker 1: educated bourgeoisie in order to maintain political stability. Democratic primitivism,
Speaker 1: as revealed in the chaos of the French Revolution, was
Speaker 1: the political alternative Guiseau complained into which his democratic critics
Speaker 1: would plunge France and the rest of Europe.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if people caught this or read
Speaker 2: this out of it, but you know, getting to know
Speaker 2: gotfried over the years. The way I read this is
Speaker 2: it is basically that it's insane for America to export
Speaker 2: its own model, which by the way, is a complete
Speaker 2: aberration from its original model. But it's insane for America
Speaker 2: to export its own model back to Europe. These things
Speaker 2: don't work. I think localism in America is has a history,
Speaker 2: has an organic history that is just completely non transferable
Speaker 2: to the Old World. So you can't. You can't transport that.
Speaker 2: That's why nationalism in the Old World in Western Europe
Speaker 2: makes much more sense than localism does in terms of
Speaker 2: dealing with the political emergency. Whereas nationalism in America, you know,
Speaker 2: for whatever you know political, whatever political advantages we can
Speaker 2: gain from it right now, it's over the course of
Speaker 2: the last two hundred years, it's tended to be more
Speaker 2: progressive than anything. But you can't. So you can't. But
Speaker 2: you can't export the original Tokuoville's model of local democracy
Speaker 2: back to Europe. It doesn't work like that, and the
Speaker 2: attempt to do so is basically let in all of
Speaker 2: the radicals, and it's led in all of the far
Speaker 2: left movements and allowed them to capture power.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The doctrinaires pointed portentiously to the Jocoman rule in
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety three as a precedent for democratizing experiments, As
Speaker 1: Gizo explained in the essay de la Democracy that duns
Speaker 1: on society modern air. Democracy is a cry. Democracy is
Speaker 1: a cry of war. It is a flag of the
Speaker 1: party of numbers placed below, raised against those above. A
Speaker 1: flag sometimes raised in the name of the rights of men,
Speaker 1: but sometimes in the name of crude passions, sometimes raised
Speaker 1: against the most iniquitous usurptions, but also sometimes against legitimate superiority.
Speaker 2: Yeah Yeah, democracy knows no higher principle.
Speaker 1: Basically, While Tokville and Guizeau underlined the link between American
Speaker 1: democracy and America's decentralized republic, a new and faithful view
Speaker 1: of the American regime surfaced in the theorizing of George
Speaker 1: Bancroft eighteen hundred and eighteen ninety one. Jacksonian Democrat, Jacksonian Democrat,
Speaker 1: career diplomat and author of the ten volume History of
Speaker 1: the United States. Bancroft admired German idealist philosophy, which he
Speaker 1: popularized in the United States. As a young man, he
Speaker 1: had studied in Goettengen, Berlin, and Heidelberg, and while in
Speaker 1: Germany he had become intimately familiar with the historical speculation
Speaker 1: of Hegel. His own work incorporated several unmistakable Hegelian themes
Speaker 1: that history showed the progressive unfolding of the divine personality,
Speaker 1: that this process was reflected in the advance of human liberty,
Speaker 1: and that liberty had developed most fully in the Protestant
Speaker 1: Germanic world. For Bancroft, unlike Hegel, however, this progress toward
Speaker 1: liberty reached its culmination on American soil. Bancroft presents the
Speaker 1: American people as the ultimate bearers of divine, divinely ordered liberty,
Speaker 1: and makes this point explicit at the end of his
Speaker 1: History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United
Speaker 1: States eighteen eighty two, quote, A new people has arisen,
Speaker 1: without kings or princes or nobles. They were more sincerely religious,
Speaker 1: better educated, and of nobler minds, and of purer morals
Speaker 1: than than the men of any former Republic. By calm,
Speaker 1: meditation and friendly counsels, they had prepared a constitution which,
Speaker 1: in the Union of Freedom with strength and order, excelled
Speaker 1: everyone known before. It's interesting, It's a fantasy. It's a fantasy,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's it's funny to me that people
Speaker 1: can take the American situation in the nineteenth century, eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: or the eighteenth century or even earlier, and in disregard
Speaker 1: the ethnic and cultural roots of that society and basically
Speaker 1: universalize it, bring in tons of people and expect to
Speaker 1: remain the same, you know. So the idea that that
Speaker 1: you can take this you know, you know, fantastical situation
Speaker 1: and just universalized it has been the foundation for all
Speaker 1: sorts of you know, egalitarian terror in the Western world.
Speaker 1: A discussion I've been having privately with a friend of
Speaker 1: mine recently is whether the United States as a colony
Speaker 1: could even transport the culture, the high culture of the
Speaker 1: home country to the colony.
Speaker 2: Right. It proved, it proved, you proved that you couldn't
Speaker 2: do that. Yeah, well it couldn't. It couldn't outlast the
Speaker 2: first generation that had you know, absorbed it firsthand. You
Speaker 2: know that the longer those things are separated, and the
Speaker 2: more you know, foreign elements you interject into something, you
Speaker 2: can't you can't keep that up.
Speaker 1: Well, you also have to take into consideration that while
Speaker 1: this uh, while this new colony is growing, it's the
Speaker 1: enlighten the enlightenment injected into it. You're getting all of
Speaker 1: these ideas injected into it which are going to clash
Speaker 1: with its original high culture. I don't know the conversation,
Speaker 1: the conversation goes on. The spirit of the people, thus described,
Speaker 1: was held to be democratic, and Bancroft described to Americans
Speaker 1: a collective wisdom which found expression in their political architecture.
Speaker 1: The American Federal Union, as he saw it, was no
Speaker 1: mere convenient state, but the only hope for renovating the
Speaker 1: life of the civilized world. The political institutions fashioned and
Speaker 1: inspirited by America's democratic people, assumed in Bancroft's writing a
Speaker 1: mystical quality, and his insistence that the voice of the
Speaker 1: people is the voice of God led Tokeville to remark
Speaker 1: that pantheism is the religion most characteristic of democracies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the American capacity for self government that Bancroft exalted was
Speaker 1: not in the end, the American propensity for local self rule.
Speaker 1: Bancroft glorified a national democratic will, and his history of
Speaker 1: the United States ends appropriately with a topic consolidating the union.
Speaker 1: According to Bancroft, an American people and an American national
Speaker 1: government were both incotly present even before the colonies formed
Speaker 1: a nation state. Quote for all the one of government,
Speaker 1: they're solemn pledged to one another. And mutual citizenship and
Speaker 1: perpetual union made them one people. And that people was
Speaker 1: superior to its institutions, possessing the vital form which goes
Speaker 1: before organization and gives its strength.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is sort of the foundation of like propositional nationhood, right,
Speaker 2: Like it's these things were formed independent of our own past,
Speaker 2: you know, and anyone can anyone can jump in and
Speaker 2: be part of it, be part of the people.
Speaker 1: That I'm gonna go one because start talking about Okay,
Speaker 1: one does not have to strain to find here a
Speaker 1: Jacobin imagination hidden behind Hegelian language. A consolidated American national
Speaker 1: govern a powerful executive representing the popular will, and a
Speaker 1: global civilizing mission are the visionary exceptions that one can
Speaker 1: read into Bancroft's patriotic scholarship. Although his history of the
Speaker 1: United States deals predominantly with the colonial period. It points
Speaker 1: more toward the American future than back to the eighteenth century.
Speaker 1: Bancroft is celebrating the progress of the democratic spirit as
Speaker 1: embodied in the American nation. In the process, he replaces
Speaker 1: an older American liberal constitutional identity with one that Guizeau
Speaker 1: and Toakville might have associated with their own eighteenth century
Speaker 1: French Revolution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the original vision of the American situation was basically
Speaker 2: replaced by neo Jacobinism.
Speaker 1: For sure. While Bancroft celebrated the triumphant course of democracy
Speaker 1: in America, others, among them European liberals, grew increasingly agitated
Speaker 1: about the inevitability of popular rule. I actually this we're
Speaker 1: starting a new and we only have a few pages left,
Speaker 1: so we're just gonna you don't mind going to the Okay,
Speaker 1: all right? This news section is entitled liberal Pessimists. While
Speaker 1: Bancroft celebrated the triumphant course of democracy in America, others,
Speaker 1: among them European liberals, grew increasingly agitated about the inevitability
Speaker 1: of popular rule. This anxiety, in some cases, became more
Speaker 1: pronounced as the twentieth century began to unfold, and social
Speaker 1: problems in Europe appeared to be worsening. The most detailed
Speaker 1: critical treatment of democratic rule produced by European liberal was
Speaker 1: Transformation of the Democracy. By this, I'm just translating that
Speaker 1: from me by the sociologists economists, Pereto. Preto's example, as
Speaker 1: John Gray remarks, makes dramatically clear how the pre nineteen
Speaker 1: fourteen liberal mind was placed irreversibly at a crossroads. In
Speaker 1: the face of a democratic franchise, riotous trade union strikes,
Speaker 1: and the intrusive presence of public administration, some liberals embraced
Speaker 1: authoritarian solutions of the host. Pereto was perhaps the best
Speaker 1: known and the most deliberate, as can be judged from
Speaker 1: his social writings.
Speaker 2: It's funny. It's funny that today's liberals, you self describe liberals.
Speaker 2: They'll never talk about that, the importance of an authoritarian
Speaker 2: solution in the midst of a crisis or emergency. You know,
Speaker 2: it's really interesting how they never bring that up.
Speaker 1: Where was it? In Transformation, he outlines the characteristics of
Speaker 1: the democratic epoch and its relationship to the period that
Speaker 1: had preceded it. In the nineteenth century of parliamentary regime
Speaker 1: had come to Italy as the result of a faithful
Speaker 1: alliance between a demagogic plutocracy and the popular classes, both
Speaker 1: that opposed a rule of landed wealth and the ecclesiastical establishment,
Speaker 1: but drew apart after a liberal, cost institutional and unified
Speaker 1: Italy had come into existence. Thereafter, the labouring class had
Speaker 1: worked to seize the wealth of the liberal middle class,
Speaker 1: and by the twentieth century hit it also turned against
Speaker 1: the parliamentary institutions on which the plutocracy had built its
Speaker 1: political legitimacy. In the aftermath of the First World War,
Speaker 1: from which Italy had emerged on the side of the
Speaker 1: victors but financially crushed, unions took over the railroads, iron
Speaker 1: works and factories in Milan and throughout the industrialized North.
Speaker 1: Red Guard units were formed to police the worker occupied areas,
Speaker 1: and though these units carried out the summary executions of
Speaker 1: the enemies of the working class, the national government, then
Speaker 1: under revolving premierships, avoided military force. There was political calculation
Speaker 1: behind this hesitancy. The largest block in the postwar Italian
Speaker 1: parliament was a socialist who in nineteen nineteen had voted
Speaker 1: to nationalize key industries. They and the Catholic Social Democrat
Speaker 1: Popolari held enough votes to bring down any government, and
Speaker 1: both were afraid of estranging their constituents by releasing armed
Speaker 1: forces against the Sindicilasti syndicalists. Meanwhile, land peasants landed, landless
Speaker 1: peasants brong.
Speaker 2: Do you know what that word means, Broccianti, I think
Speaker 2: it's just the landless the peasants.
Speaker 1: Like, Okay, we're grabbing land from large estates. As a
Speaker 1: paralyzed national government conferred on these expropriations ex post facto approval,
Speaker 1: Paredo vented particular contempt on Giovanni Gioliti, the aged prime
Speaker 1: minister who formed his fifth and most disastrous government. Among
Speaker 1: amid these trials, Paredo mac Giolitti's cowardice when he responded
Speaker 1: to Redguard violence with the statement that intervention would be
Speaker 1: tantamount to capital punishment, which would be inappropriate at the
Speaker 1: as in time. Parreto contested Gilti to those fascist squadrons who,
Speaker 1: in the fall of nineteen nineteen moved against the Red
Speaker 1: Baronies in Bologna and Pole Valley. For Peretto, the plutocracy
Speaker 1: had become timorous and moronic, and the only groups which
Speaker 1: now seemed capable of exercising power were nationalists and union leaders. Quote.
Speaker 1: Among the propertied class, the sentiments of self defense and
Speaker 1: property are largely spent and have begun to transform themselves
Speaker 1: into a nebulous, uncertain social responsibility, which others call social duty,
Speaker 1: used interchangeably with work, now defined as a right. In
Speaker 1: some parts of Italy, workers invade the land and perform
Speaker 1: useless tasks, thereafter claiming the right to receive wages which
Speaker 1: the owner has a duty to pay them. I guess
Speaker 1: that's labor theory of value. Huh. The response of many
Speaker 1: bourgeois is approval. Elsewhere, Parreto notes that the hatred and
Speaker 1: combativeness manifested by the union ast towards the propertied class
Speaker 1: no longer elicited resistance. Quote. On one side of the
Speaker 1: class divide, one sounds the trumpet and moves on to
Speaker 1: the assault on the other one. On the other one
Speaker 1: bows one's head, capitulates, or better yet, joins the enemy
Speaker 1: and sells one property for thirty pieces of silver. In
Speaker 1: two political commentaries published in nineteen twenty three, following the
Speaker 1: fascist advent of power. In October nineteen twenty two, Peretto
Speaker 1: expressed the hope that Mussolini's regime would restore economic and
Speaker 1: political order. In January nineteen twenty three, he perceived as
Speaker 1: the major difference between past and present governments that one
Speaker 1: ignored economic issues, paying attention to demagogic sentiments and particular interests,
Speaker 1: while the new government is seeking to re establish an
Speaker 1: equilibrium between social forces. At the same time, Perreto warned
Speaker 1: against the danger of taxing heavily those who were salary
Speaker 1: read or small landowners, and he recommended that modern moderate
Speaker 1: unionists be consulted in setting economic policy. In September nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty three, he also suggested how the fascist regime might
Speaker 1: be might best reform the structure of government. Pereto urged
Speaker 1: Mussolini to maintain a free press, let the crow's call,
Speaker 1: but be indefatigable in repressing rebellious deeds. Experience demonstrates that
Speaker 1: leaders who embark upon this path of censorship find headaches
Speaker 1: rather than benefits. It may help to imitate ancient rome,
Speaker 1: not occupy oneself with theology, but attend only to actions.
Speaker 1: Parreto also advocated the putting into place of a new parliament,
Speaker 1: which would express popular sentiments without crippling the executive. Though
Speaker 1: he readily admitted the failure of Italy's earlier parliamentary experience,
Speaker 1: he nonetheless thought that the new regime should not operate
Speaker 1: without elected institutions. He believes such institutions necessary to stabilize
Speaker 1: and legitimate the fascist order.
Speaker 2: So, and Paul, here's going on a long winded example
Speaker 2: of you know, the tendencies of the democratic tendencies of
Speaker 2: you know, the fascist experiment. Basically, I think he's trying
Speaker 2: to demonstrate that democracy and liberalism are not always mutually.
Speaker 2: They're not always like you can have aspects of liberalism
Speaker 2: and democracy within non liberal democratic political orders.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly what I'm reading here. In assessing these
Speaker 1: comments written shortly before Pereto's death, that is important to
Speaker 1: keep in mind to critical factors. First, there was no
Speaker 1: reason for Peretto and others to believe in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: two that the Italian fascist rezime regime would later go
Speaker 1: berserk and ally itself ideologically and politically with Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1: In the early twenties, the Italian fascist express either racist
Speaker 1: or anti Semitic ideas, and they were willing to offer
Speaker 1: leadership in a country that had broken down economically and
Speaker 1: was on the vergi of political collapse.
Speaker 2: I actually personally disagree with this part. I think that
Speaker 2: Italian fascists, I think, like so many regular Europeans over
Speaker 2: a thousand years, had you know, racial prejudices. Yeah, well,
Speaker 2: you know, and I mean maybe they didn't consider it
Speaker 2: as like official part of like you know, a political
Speaker 2: agenda or anything, but like they were aware within their
Speaker 2: own context of you know, the dangers of multiculturalism, multi racialism,
Speaker 2: and also you know, the Jewish threat.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: To say that the Jewish threat is a post nineteen
Speaker 2: thirties or nineteen forties European phenomenon, I think is overstating it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to say that Italians were not aware of the
Speaker 1: of the Jewish question right exactly is Yeah. Second, Parreto
Speaker 1: saw his own class to bourgeoisie as spent and demoralized,
Speaker 1: and though he hoped to preserve some of its creations,
Speaker 1: particularly a free market, a free press, and religious liberty,
Speaker 1: he did not believe that his own social class would
Speaker 1: be able to do so. He therefore thought it was
Speaker 1: necessary to turn to what he, like Machiavelli, designated as
Speaker 1: the lions bold warrior forces to save what had been
Speaker 1: devised by those who had become foxes, parliamentary schemers and
Speaker 1: finessing plutocrats. What Pereto saw happening in Italy seemed to
Speaker 1: belong to a broader civilizational context. Throughout his writing, he
Speaker 1: used the concept of uniformities, which he applied to both
Speaker 1: economic and social affairs, and which he claimed to have
Speaker 1: derived from an experimental research method. The long term invariability
Speaker 1: of the income curve and the equivalent advantages of to
Speaker 1: producers of a perfectly organized monopoly and of an unimpended,
Speaker 1: unimpeded free market are two such laws that are worked
Speaker 1: out in Prereto's major economic works. In Trezado the Social General,
Speaker 1: he developed a theory of psychological predispositions to explain social behavior.
Speaker 1: In this analysis we find six such predispositions, which Prereto
Speaker 1: called residues and associated with changing movements and ideologies, also
Speaker 1: known as derivations. The six residues underlying group behavior are
Speaker 1: the instinct for combination, the persistence of aggregates, the desire
Speaker 1: to manifest one's beliefs, sociality, and the integrity of the individual.
Speaker 1: The integrity of the individual and the sexual drive. It
Speaker 1: is the instinct for combination and related residues three and
Speaker 1: four that actuate groups on the rise, while the persistence
Speaker 1: of aggregates and the concern about individual interests are most
Speaker 1: characteristic of established elites. Paredo discussed those residues operating within
Speaker 1: Italian society in the context of his social observations. He
Speaker 1: believed that the waning of liberalism, conspicuous in his own country,
Speaker 1: was taking place throughout the industrialized West. The liberal bourgeoisie
Speaker 1: had lost its assertiveness in the face of its insurgent
Speaker 1: working class and of other democratic forces expressing instincts for
Speaker 1: combination and group solidarity. In the First World War, according
Speaker 1: to Pereto, the parliamentary plutocrats had triumphed over the German
Speaker 1: military aristocracy, but had succumbed to the democratic classes, without
Speaker 1: which they could not have hoped to win the war.
Speaker 1: The only force now able to resist a revolutionary socialists,
Speaker 1: Preto maintained, were the nationalists, who drew upon the same
Speaker 1: residues prevalent among the socialists. Socialism and nationalism seemed to
Speaker 1: be related derivations, both resulting from residues leading to collective action.
Speaker 1: Among his last published remarks were those on Italian constitutional reform,
Speaker 1: addressed to the new fascist government on September twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty three. Under democratic ideology runs the current of fascism,
Speaker 1: which overflows at the surface, but beneath that runs a countercurrent.
Speaker 1: Beware lest that countercurrent overflow. Beware lest you bestow upon
Speaker 1: it power to power by trying to close it off completely.
Speaker 1: Bredo believed that the fascists and their socialist enemies were
Speaker 1: harnessing the same democratic enthusiasm that in now declining liberal
Speaker 1: society had given up trying to oppose. He felt that
Speaker 1: the fascists would have to coexist with social democracy, but
Speaker 1: hope they would do so on their own terms. Bredo's
Speaker 1: appeal to some aspects of liberal heritage occurred in the
Speaker 1: face of what he took to be an irre irrevocable,
Speaker 1: irrevocable political change. The march towards democracy would continue no
Speaker 1: matter what, and the decadence of the Roman plutocracy was
Speaker 1: only a portete of the destiny tower above our own plutocrats.
Speaker 1: An activist and redistributionist democratic government was about to arrive,
Speaker 1: and unlike Lackya generation earlier, Parretto had no doubt that
Speaker 1: a corresponding elite was arising to take charge of modern democracy.
Speaker 1: Political upheavals did not transpire randomly, but were the work
Speaker 1: of purposeful elites who took advantage of their consequences.
Speaker 2: Of course, yeah, I mean, it's just classically theory. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Faced by the Italian nationalists and the priesthood of the
Speaker 1: social proletariat, Parreto opted for what he considered to be
Speaker 1: the more moderate democratic leadership. In fact, he chose what
Speaker 1: turned out to be less far sighted of the two
Speaker 1: aspiring democratic elites. In the twentieth century, it was the
Speaker 1: exponents of working class democracy, not of democratic nationalism, who
Speaker 1: made the more compelling claim to represent liberal democracy. Significantly,
Speaker 1: social democratic planners took over a form of discourse more
Speaker 1: closely akin to Perettos than to that of Italian fascism
Speaker 1: fascists in Scandinavia, England and the United States. They appeared
Speaker 1: to experimental scientific methods in education and public policy, and
Speaker 1: they presented their takeover of civil society as an act
Speaker 1: of liberating individuals and upholding their rights. But they also
Speaker 1: appealed effectively for several generations to democratic legitimacy. Unlike the
Speaker 1: Italian fascists, who were forced to manufacture popular endorsements for
Speaker 1: their plans. It is not surprising that by the end
Speaker 1: of the century, social democratic planning had given rise to
Speaker 1: what Charles Croudhammer calls reactionary liberalism, holding fast to the
Speaker 1: structures and constituencies of the welfare state come What may
Speaker 1: more interesting is the fact that this liberal democracy held
Speaker 1: up for more than half a century in the most
Speaker 1: prosperous and literate areas of the world, with popular approval.
Speaker 1: This result indicates that some European liberals read the political
Speaker 1: future with clearer eyes than others. Despite his demonstrated polemical skills,
Speaker 1: Fitz James Stephens Stephen underestimated J. S. Mill's capacity to
Speaker 1: plan a popular regime. Mill did not intend to leave
Speaker 1: the uninstructed masses to do it as to do as
Speaker 1: they please. Maurice Colling notes that Mills staked his democratic
Speaker 1: hope on a religion of humanity quote, a better religion
Speaker 1: than any of those which are ordinarily called by that
Speaker 1: title unquote, and on a new claricy which would work
Speaker 1: to instill a universal faith in rationality. Unlike the Anglican
Speaker 1: clergy and most of the English professariat, Mills claricy would
Speaker 1: propagate scientific method and political sociology, seen as the true
Speaker 1: science of society. This elite would arise in response to
Speaker 1: social need and to the spread of secular rationalism. It
Speaker 1: would train citizens to emulate its own rationality and bring
Speaker 1: them into fellowship with the advocates of social progress everywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like he's described, he's describing the rise of like
Speaker 2: the managerial state. You know, the ability for the reasoned
Speaker 2: experts using rationality in their own training to basically create
Speaker 2: something ongoing and something that was more stable.
Speaker 1: Calling further argues that Mill's devotion to intellectual freedom was
Speaker 1: conditioned by his concern about great minds being crushed by mediocrity.
Speaker 1: Mill was less of a libertarian than someone looking out
Speaker 1: for the highest nature's noblest minds and the advancement of
Speaker 1: scientific truth. Note that Mill favored extensive state intervention in
Speaker 1: the economy and the ongoing redistribution of incomes. He also
Speaker 1: hoped that his own elite would take charge of the
Speaker 1: general culture. It would thereby become possible to teach a
Speaker 1: his own utilitarian ethic, which Mill assumed would bring forth
Speaker 1: a new social morality. All enlightened citizens would eventually accept
Speaker 1: the utilitarian notion that the good is that which maximizes
Speaker 1: general happiness. But as Calling perceives, the highest end that
Speaker 1: men here were imagined to pursue in quest of pleasure
Speaker 1: was whatever Mill and his confreres desired for themselves. They
Speaker 1: never doubted that their own social preferences would come to
Speaker 1: prevail in a democratic age. Clearly, fitz James Stephen and
Speaker 1: his younger brother Leslie Stephen, though both sagacious critics of Mill,
Speaker 1: did not see fully his authoritarian side. They did not
Speaker 1: grasp the inquisitorial the inquisitorial certainty which Calling exposes at
Speaker 1: the core of his method of inquiry. Nor did they
Speaker 1: appreciate the dogmatic way in which Mill generalized about subjects
Speaker 1: he never studied. Mill knew little in detail about the
Speaker 1: history of British society in the two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: years before he was born. His denigration of its polity
Speaker 1: and religion was based neither on close observation nor on
Speaker 1: exact historical knowledge.
Speaker 2: Well, if that doesn't describe the current liberal spirit like
Speaker 2: they just they have no bearing in history of no
Speaker 2: idea what happened, They just have the solutions will of course,
Speaker 2: include much worse solutions than Mill ever put forth.
Speaker 1: Well, and to know what happened, they'd have to understand why.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And that's one question no one wants to ask anymore.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, this happened, Well, why did it happen? Well,
Speaker 1: because people are.
Speaker 2: Mean, yeah, exactly. Okay, you can't look at specific political dynamics.
Speaker 2: You just have to rely on generalities like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Finally, Mill's liberal critics underestimated the power of his
Speaker 1: vision of a new claricy crafting and directing in democratic order.
Speaker 1: However we may have been his grasp of the past,
Speaker 1: Mill evoked a society of democratic planners which would arise
Speaker 1: after his death. His twisting of historical data and fudging
Speaker 1: of laws of human progress were of less significance than
Speaker 1: Mill's ability to foresee mass democracy at work. No other
Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century figure, including Tokville, exhibited such understanding of
Speaker 1: the dawning democratic age, even if that understanding, in Mill's case,
Speaker 1: was ideologically colored, and only one European liberal, Max Weber,
Speaker 1: revealed comparable insight in plotting the likely course of modern democracy.
Speaker 1: Unlike those liberals who trembled over the fate of property
Speaker 1: and parliamentary civility. Faber associated democratic life with the aid
Speaker 1: with the iron case of iron cage of bureaucracy. Like Pereto,
Speaker 1: he was willing to entrust democratic government to plebisatory leaders
Speaker 1: not because of the fear of anarchy, but because of
Speaker 1: his dread of bureaucratic despotism yeah very In an off
Speaker 1: quoted letter from Weber to the sociologist of elites, Robert Michel's,
Speaker 1: at the end of the First World War, Weber questions
Speaker 1: the intelligence or honesty of those who exalt the will
Speaker 1: of the people. He goes on to admit that genuine
Speaker 1: wills of the people have ceased to exist. For me,
Speaker 1: they are fictitious. All ideas aiming at abolishing the dominance
Speaker 1: of man over man are utopian. In nineteen eighteen, Weber
Speaker 1: observed even more incisively, in large states everywhere, modern democracy
Speaker 1: is becoming a bureaucratized democracy. And it must be so,
Speaker 1: for it is replacing the aristocratic or other titular for
Speaker 1: officials by a paid civil service. It is the same everywhere.
Speaker 1: It is the same within parties two. It is inevitable.
Speaker 1: Despite the attempt by Weber's critics to attribute such are
Speaker 1: marks to the anemia of German liberalism. What they indicate
Speaker 1: is Weber's deep perception of a secular trend, the intertwining
Speaker 1: of mass democracy and public administration as the shape of
Speaker 1: things to come.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is such a powerful narrative. I mean, the
Speaker 2: entire ethos of conservative Incorporated and the liberal establishment is
Speaker 2: that America represents like the triumph of individual freedom. And
Speaker 2: I think Weber is much more perceptive to the fact
Speaker 2: than actually what it represents is the triumph of the
Speaker 2: managerial state, the triumph of the administration, the triumph of
Speaker 2: bureaucratized or what you know, bureaucrats basically just running people's
Speaker 2: life and trying to arrange the world in the way
Speaker 2: that they see fit. And that's exactly this spawn This
Speaker 2: administrative state that Weber had his sits on, basically spawned
Speaker 2: the multiculturalism in which we exist. We don't exist in
Speaker 2: a world of increased individ dual freedom. We exist in
Speaker 2: the world of mandated cultural degradation. You know, that's what
Speaker 2: we existed, and it's and it's handed down, it's politically derived.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think the people that say, like Aaron
Speaker 2: McIntyre and Others who say that culture is downstream from
Speaker 2: politics recognize the fact that the administrative state, the thing
Speaker 2: that Max Weber learned about, is characteristic of the American
Speaker 2: function in world affairs. You know, everything, our culture, everything
Speaker 2: is handed down from politics. Everything is handed down from above,
Speaker 2: and it comes from not individual freedom but from breureaucracy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And in order it has to be that way
Speaker 1: if you understand that the managerial state, it's one purpose
Speaker 1: is to perpetuate itself. It has to control everything, it
Speaker 1: has to control the culture, it has to guide everything. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's why the you know, was Jonathan Bowden famously saying,
Speaker 1: the only way you change this is to clear it
Speaker 1: all out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I think I think the overall lesson here for
Speaker 2: Paul is that liberalism and democracy are not the same,
Speaker 2: but their unity is the particular characteristic of American totalitarianism.
Speaker 2: The attempt at at unifying these two themes has created
Speaker 2: an ideological hegemony that people don't know how to oppose,
Speaker 2: that the dissident right is only now figuring out how
Speaker 2: to oppose. But this is this is one of the
Speaker 2: sacred caws of the American ideology. Is the union of
Speaker 2: democracy and liberalism.
Speaker 1: And the real genius of it is the fact that
Speaker 1: you you have this left right paradigm, this democrat republican paradigm,
Speaker 1: let's call it, where they do not realize that they're
Speaker 1: both operating within the same system, and that all conservatives
Speaker 1: are working to do is to conserve this system.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Yep. If they're if they're working to concern to keep
Speaker 1: any of it, they're perpetuating the system. So there's a
Speaker 1: certain genius to its design and that you have if
Speaker 1: you only have two factions that are that are allowed
Speaker 1: to genuinely fight within it, they're both working to they're
Speaker 1: both working to keep the system going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is why like people, i mean people as
Speaker 2: they're becoming more radicalized on the right, you know, the
Speaker 2: recognizing that there's something more substantial needs to be done.
Speaker 2: But I've never found I've never found the solution really
Speaker 2: in republican politics, you know, Republican party politics. I mean
Speaker 2: sometimes it's fun, but really that's not where change has
Speaker 2: to happen. Because both of these parties are reinforcement mechanisms
Speaker 2: for this regime, and it have to be it's built
Speaker 2: into the cake like that.
Speaker 1: You have to clear it out yep. So all right, man,
Speaker 1: promote whatever you want. Thank you well, first of all,
Speaker 1: thank you for this. This is great and I didn't
Speaker 1: know it was going to go this long, but thank
Speaker 1: you for Yeah.
Speaker 2: Paul is such a dense a dense writer, so's it's
Speaker 2: really hard to get through sometimes. But at contramordor is
Speaker 2: my Twitter and then my name CJ dot Substack. You
Speaker 2: can you can find me there, and that's basically. I
Speaker 2: also do the Chronicles magazine, which is small now and
Speaker 2: we're making some changes for next year, so that'll be fun.
Speaker 2: We always have a fose magazine podcasts, right yeah, Chronicles
Speaker 2: magazine podcasts, and so we're doing some more stuff next
Speaker 2: year for that, but in anticipation of that, you can
Speaker 2: always check it out on YouTube, et cetera.
Speaker 1: All right, I'll link to it. Thanks a lot, I
Speaker 1: appreciate you