Statism and Individualism shifting the balance

Ross Douthat is wrestling. From Is the Religious Right Privileged? by Ross Douthat.

I mentioned in an earlier post that he seems troubled by something going on in the Mandarin Class salons of the great Swamp City. It is still not entirely clear, but reading this piece makes some things marginally more understandable.

There is plenty of nonsense he is responding to. He is, in good faith, trying to answer some bad faith arguments.

This might be the rub.

In fact, the religious right consists of an alliance of several groups that, without experiencing anything like the oppression visited on black Americans, have consistently occupied lower rungs in the American social hierarchy. Today’s evangelicalism is a complicated mix, but it is heavily descended from Bible Belt, prairie and Sun Belt folkways that were often poor and marginalized and rarely close to the corridors of power. Its allies in pro-life, pro-family politics include Orthodox Jews, whose history is not exactly one of power; Mormons, who were harried westward by a brutal persecution and then forced to rewrite their doctrines by state power; and conservative Roman Catholics, about whose difficult relationship to liberalism I will say more in a moment. And all of these groups are embedded in global religious communities in which persecution is as common as privilege — which if anything probably leads them to worry too much about what a hostile government might do to them, not to fail to imagine such oppression.

All of these groups have their own sins to answer for (my own Catholic Church’s scandal being particularly salient these days), and some of the stances religious conservatives take in their struggle with secular liberalism are clearly influenced for the worse by the racism that has pervaded every white religious tradition in America.

But while that secular liberalism, in its meritocratic-elite form, may present itself as a vehicle for long-suffering minorities to finally grasp power, in many ways it is also a peculiar post-Protestant extension of the old WASP ascendancy — shorn of that ascendancy’s piety and sense of duty, but still at war with fundamentalists on one flank and Catholics on the other, still determined (to borrow an image from National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty) to impose the current doctrines of Episcopalians on the Baptists and the Papists.

I especially like that last line because it rings so true. Being Episcopalian, I am conversant with the more doctrinaire and intolerant strands of the Episcopal Mandarin Class. I had always thought of them principally in terms of philosophy but I see Douthat's insight. The Mandarin Class Episcopalians rub a lot of traditional Episcopalians the wrong way. I can only imagine how they come across to Baptists and Papists. That special magical blend of intolerant doctrinaire arrogance mixed with enthusiastic malicious ignorance is not everyone's cup of tea.

It strikes me that Douthat is trying to navigate between religious belief and the pieties of the Mandarin Class which derive from postmodernism, critical theory, deconstructionism, etc. If you accept that frame, then Douthat's concerns and arguments make more sense to me.

I have a different frame. The Age of Enlightenment birthed two incompatible philosophies, one grounded in the sovereignty of the state and the other grounded in the sovereignty of the individual. Both are steeped in rule of law, empiricism, scientific methodology, logic, reason. But they are inconsistent with one another.

Sovereignty of the state encompasses Marxism, Statism, Totalitarianism, Fascism, etc. The center gets to make all the important decisions, usually by the credentialed technocrats. Those decisions tend to be oriented towards optimizing short term efficiency. How do we get the most for the least in the near term. It speaks the language of science but is rarely actually conversant with science. The real language is always the language of control and power.

In contrast, sovereignty of the individual speaks the language of freedom and encompasses a hodgepodge of philosophies within an arena of Classical Liberalism. Burkeans, Chesterfieldians, religious, bourgeoise, Hayeckian, Lockean, Smithian, etc. They are concerned about the efficacy of the State but they are as concerned or more about the freedom of individual people. They have a more complex view of the world. They are more aware of a broader set of trade-offs. They set greater store on tolerance AND compliance. They recognize the importance of emergent order versus deterministic order. They value strategic effectiveness over tactical efficiency. They will tolerate short term waste for long term effectiveness.

Both the Statists and Individualists share philosophical DNA. They both understand one another and simultaneously misconstrue one another. Any particular individual will be inclined on particular issues to tilt towards the opposite pole. Consistency is illusive.

My frame is that during World War II Statism surged to the fore. Only a massive concentration of focus by countries out of the Individualist tradition allowed them to defeat the Statists (Germany, Russia, Japan, Italy). But to do so, the Individualist cultures all adopted many of the trappings of Statism. Monetary controls, price controls, circumscribed freedom of speech, control of industry, etc.

After six years of WWII and then the next decade or two of Cold War, the return to Individualism was slow and by fits and starts. If you are on the inside of a Statist system, even if you believe in Classical Liberalism, it is tempting to ignore individual freedoms.

In the past couple of decades, the deep regulatory system of the State has begun to be challenged for a variety of reasons. The taste for freedom of individuals is returning. We are having conversations about the balance between individual freedom and State control which we have not had for a long time.

And the very act of having those conversations is making the Statists uncomfortable. The fact that people object to being governed badly is being misconstrued as people objecting to being governed at all.

I suspect that underlying fear and tension, that people want to be as free as responsibly possible, is what is driving the Statists crazy. Here, Europe, South America, the Antipodes. Everywhere.

I think we are locked in antiquated discussions about extremism and populism and communism, etc. when the real conversation is about the legitimacy of power in a system intended to maximize freedom.

Or I could be wrong.