Gerald J. Russello Reviews The Limits of Liberalism: Tradition, Individualism, and the Crisis of Freedom

AmConMag: Liberalism: The Great Anti-Tradition By Gerald J. Russello
It may have rejected traditional authorities of church and state, but it has put other authorities in their place.

The Limits of Liberalism

CWR: Narrating the Tradition of Liberalism’s Anti-Tradition by Brian Jones
Mark T. Mitchell’s The Limits of Liberalism argues that the human person can only understand himself in this world by being in relation, with nature, neighbor, enemy, and ultimately the ontological source of all that is, namely, God.

FPR: The Modest Republic: Just Published - Palgrave MacMillan

Dr. Fleming on Social Sciences

Back to the Stone Age II E: Beyond the Market


From Mark T. Mitchell: The Founders on Taxation, Redistribution, and Property
Richard Aleman, Plutonomy

What to Do Now?

May not get to the post-election discussion post, we'll see. Mark T. Michell has a new book out - here's an excerpt: The Politics of Gratitude: Scale, Place and Community in a Global Age. He offers his perspective on a plan of action: Opportunity in the Ruins. His program, unsurprisingly, is a localist one. I have been preparing something on the limits of collaborating with those who disagree on traditional mores - such an effort can be effective with respect to less controversial issues (regaining economic freedom, opposing corporations, pursuing agrarianism, environmental safety and health care issues, and so on), but how much can such mutual tolerance last? And can such a "peace" last long if we do not have natural ties to those who are opposed to tradition? This may be the best option for many, but we do not live together only for mutual advantage, but to enjoy friendship (based on virtue) with one another, but how can such friendship with those who seek to do away with tradition be possible?

And here is Bruce Frohnen: Should there be a Traditional Conservative Program of Action?

So long as people think of the state as the guarantor of our well-being, with the right and duty to protect us from life’s ills, the families, churches, neighbors, and social organizations in which decent lives are lived and tragedy mitigated in a humane manner, will continue to atrophy unto death.

Even here the political program is clear: government and the federal government in particular, must cede power, must decentralize and give up its commanding role at the same time it frees more local associations to form and carry out the tasks that naturally belong to them. Features of our tax code, corporate law, public policy, and misinterpreted constitutional law all actively prevent the flourishing of families, churches, and local associations. But so long as people think of the state as our guardian, they will not enact policies that empower the associations in which we can lead decent lives.

This should tell us that the real work ahead of us is cultural in nature. Such a statement should come as no surprise to traditional conservatives, but it bears repeating when one is considering the question, “what now?” A program for traditional conservatives is needed, but must be aimed at cultural and spiritual rejuvenation, which may, in time, bring about a return to political sanity. The good thing about a situation such as ours, in which we have been routed for decades in every sphere, is that there is no end of choices of where to begin working for improvement. I hope in future posts to address some major areas of concern in at least some detail. For now I would merely point out that a program for traditional conservatives will, if it is to be useful, focus on what we can do in the places where we live, work, and worship, to create an atmosphere for cultural renewal.

Joe versus the FPR Volcano

Joe Carter, Monarchists to the Left of Me, Socialists to the Right, Here I Am, Stuck in the Middle with You Liberals

Jerry Salyer, Who Gets To Be The Czar of Human Evolution?
Mark T. Mitchell, Agrarian Hypocrisy and the Evils of Distributism

Discussion at Rod Dreher's blog. (Dreher on Scruton: Conservatism as conservation)

Items of Interest, 3 October 2011

Metropolitan Hilarion meets with Pope Benedict XVI

Transition: BBC2′s ‘Town’ programme about Totnes now online!


Shifting the Suburban Paradigm by Allison Arieff

Three strikes and you are out? - commentary [on Daniel Yergin's latest]
by Jeffrey J. Brown (EB)

Mark Mitchell, On Power (the subject of the post - On Power: The Natural History of its Growth by Bertrand de Jouvenel)

MARSHALL AUERBACK, Are Trade Deficits Really That Bad?

Has he looked at the problem of unmployment in connection to the supply of cheap energy and its displacement of human energy?

The new recession by Barath Raghavan (EB)

The real recession never ended
Anthony Mirhaydari, MSN Money

We're well into a recovery, so why does it still feel so bleak? Here's why: The crunch we’re in is rooted in stagnant paychecks and payrolls, and it’s more than a decade old.

Why an understanding of money creation is essential to financial reform by Josh Ryan-Collins

Redesigning business by Justin Ritchie (EB)

VIJAY PRASHAD, De-Colonize Wall Street

99% Wrong by Jim Goad

Jeffrey Polet, Plutonomics (he links to this article in Atlantic: "Can the Middle Class Be Saved?"

Reflections of a Questioner: The Palmetto Freedom Forum Revisited by Robert P. George

The importance of the Fourteenth Amendment for Robert George.

Fr. Z: Video interview with the Secretary of the Pont. Comm. “Ecclesia Dei”. Link to the video.



PATRICK COCKBURN, The Deadly Costs of Muslim Sectarianism

Yang Lan: The generation that's remaking China

Mark T. Mitchell reports on the FPR conference

FPR Conference: A Fine Day in Emmitsburg. Some great news for those of us who couldn't attend: "Recordings of the conference will be available shortly."

What are Western men to do?

Mark T. Mitchell, Attributes of the Gentleman or Mr. Darcy’s Rules of Engagement

Comparative essays are only as good as a thorough understanding of each of the two systems being compared, but something could be said about the Confucian junzi (君子 [wiki]) and the [Christian] gentleman.

Disgruntled men do need to direct their energies towards some positive ideal, even if liberalism and feminism seek to put them down. It may be easy for men who are a bit lost to embrace nihilism or hedonism instead. To destroy or to create; which inclination will prevail?

First Principles Journal: A discussion of liberty by Mark T. Mitchell and Joseph Stromberg.

Socialization without community?

Mark T. Mitchell, Homeschooling and Socialization (see also Ashley Trim's Waiting for Superman, and a Real Conversation)

Some thoughts, not especially related to Mr. Mitchell's post -- do schools do anything to promote stable relationships, as opposed to superficial relationships based on emotion? Can they do anything, when whether families stay located in an area or not is out of their control? At best schools can help students acquire the social virtues, and learn how to be friends to others. The burden of socialization falls upon everyone in a community, not on the schools, and our problem is that we do not have real communities.

Children need to learn how to get along with others, tolerate their weaknesses, bear with their failings, accept their quirks, and so on. It seems to me that these lessons can be better taught through a close-knit homeschooling network than through [public] schools, where relationships are more "voluntary" or "intentional" in nature. It might be objected that friendship is always voluntary, and you cannot force someone to be friends with another person. While this is the case with intimate friendships, it is not the case with all forms of friendship. It is we moderns who have an impoverished notion of friendship (and of love) -- some friendships are not chosen, and we must do the best we can in living up to our part. Civic friendship is an example -- only those who are cut off from the community for grave reason (or socially isolated as a form of punishment) should be denied civic friendship.

This would seem to indicate that homeschooling networks are more than just groups for rote learning -- they help in the "integral formation" of the individual. Schools, on the other hand,
are praised if they can merely do their purported job well -- helping students master certain intellectual skills. Hence I find claims by defenders of mass education (and the public education system) about socialization rather exaggerated.

How easy it is for us to stop being friends with someone merely because they displease us in some way. Our understanding of friendship is often tied to narcissism or disordered self-love. All social relationships are reduced to a voluntary association between individuals (except for family, but even familial relationships are tenuous these days if not through deliberate malice than through neglect in the pursuit of the Uhmerican Dream).

Mark T. Mitchell, The Neighborly Arts

He gives a definition of happiness:

Happiness, as described by classical and Christian thinkers, is a life of excellence in accordance with goods and standards (both natural and supernatural) that are suited to human beings. This sort of happiness is not achievable in isolation, for humans are creatures fit for community.

This isn't the definition of Aquinas or Aristotle; it is similar to that of Boethius. I can't recall if St. Augustine give a definition of happiness, or one that does not include God within it. This definition of happiness also seems to be more in consonant with the New Natural Law Theory than with Aristotelian-Thomism. (Goods are implied by the A-T definition of happiness, in so far as virtues are ordered to goods but so is right reason, and right reason is more than adherence to the Natural Law.)

Mark T. Michell, Three Political Principles

Mark T. Mitchell, Same-Sex Marriage, Abortion, and the Limits of Localism

He gives a response to a common paleo objection to involvement by the government in deciding the legal question of marriage:

Perhaps the government should simply get out of the marriage business altogether. But that doesn’t look likely, and so we are left with the question of culture. Can a society survive if the vast majority of the populace do not share a common culture and together affirm a collection of common ideas? Is an affirmation of “liberty for all”—where liberty means the freedom from any constraint or authority—an adequate foundation for a society? Or does, in fact, this sort of absolute liberalism consume itself in the very logic of its existence? Can a society exist when all that unifies it is the continual emancipation of desire? The obvious answer, it seems to me, is no. But where can one find a common culture? The affirmation of certain basic rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness devoid of any metaphysical conception of what it means to be a human being falls short. Rights claims without acknowledgment of obligations and ends suited to human beings are little more than emotivist utterances that can be asserted and expanded with ever-increasing shrillness and incoherence. This is precisely where we are today. The same-sex marriage “debate” is the logical outcome of a society steeped in the language of rights where the understanding of rights has been separated from any notion of the human person as more than a bundle of expanding appetites. Such a “debate” cannot be won by either side, for winning a debate implies rational discussion, but in an emotivist context, the only victory is gained by force.

James Madison argued that the political system produced by the constitution of 1787 provided for certain institutional impediments to the demands of the majority but that ultimately the will of the people could not be stopped. As such, he argued that the virtue of the citizens was the primary bulwark against the usurpation of freedom. But a common consensus about virtue (and about freedom) implies a common underlying culture that consists of more than demands for individual rights. If the sole purpose of human existence is to liberate every desire, same-sex marriage is clearly a good thing so long as it is desired. If, on the other hand, there are ends and means proper to human persons and we are obligated to conform our actions to these norms, then same-sex marriage may not be within the realm of that which is morally good for human persons. It’s a question of culture that, as these questions do, goes to the heart of what it means to be a human. It is a question that cannot adequately be answered by recurring simply to competing rights claims.

Madison could imagine a national community united by a robust conception of virtue. As we have grown larger and more diverse in our thinking, that is no longer the case (if it ever was). We may generally agree on abstractions such as equality and individual rights but that is not enough to form a coherent community. So we are left with an incoherent national community (did such a thing ever exist?) and the possibility of more or less coherent communities of a smaller scale and even these will be difficult to maintain, for we all drink deeply from the fount of a popular culture where the liberation of desire is the first fundamental of the faith.

If he is saying that the National Government should be responsible for promoting a culture of virtue, then how is this National Government to be brought into existence? While one may find supporters for the virtue in certain parts of the country, representatives from other parts of the country would oppose these virtues, or at least supporting them through law, in the name of public agnosticism regarding what is good.


Ted V. McAllister, The Romance of Conservatism

Mark T. Mitchell, A Lost Job and a New Life

Caleb Stegall brings us an excerpt from Mark Mitchell's forthcoming book, The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry.

(Mr. Wendell Berry of Kentucky must have been updated fairly recently -- it now has a blog.)

Mark T. Mitchell has more on Phillip Blond: "Here is an interview from The Guardian. Blond has the ear of David Cameron, calls himself a Red Tory, and is launching a new think tank in the fall. Do his ideas translate to the US?"

Mark T. Mitchell, Family Matters

So a family based on the biological unit of a mother and father is the norm for the creation of children. It appears, then, that the nuclear family emerges as the standard, rooted in nature, representing the norm for the family. Here we need to pause. While it is undeniable that a man and a woman are the necessary elements for the begetting of children, men and women do not exist in solitude prior to their union. They, themselves belong to families. The parents, themselves, were inculcated into a particular set of social traditions mediated by the family into which they were born. When a man and woman join to form the basis of a new nuclear family, they bring with them the stories, memories, habits, customs, practices (as well as the social and genetic anomalies) of their respective families. When the two raise their children, they are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (and busybodies) both alive and dead, that envelopes the family they have initiated.

The nuclear family may be the norm for the simple production of children, but it has not been the norm for their upbringing. In a pre-industrial world where people tended to stay put, extended families created an atmosphere of nurture, care, discipline, advice, meaningful work, as well as stories that provided the narrative context for the lives of each individual. In the west, the intact extended family has largely given way to the transient family that encounters family members outside the nuclear family only at reunions and holidays at the beach. In a mobile age, where leaving home is as easy as calling U-Haul, the nuclear family has come to be seen, by many conservatives, as the ideal. Forgotten is the richly textured world of multi-generational interaction made possible when nuclear families were embedded into the larger structure of the extended family.

The family has not escaped the individualism that pervades our society. The isolated nuclear family, existing as a lonely island on the sea of society, is not the ideal, and it can be seen as a step in the direction of a fully fledged individualism where any unchosen attachment is deemed undesirable. Of course, in particular cases, this sometimes cannot be avoided, but exceptions are different than expectations, and when exceptions become the norm, propriety has been lost.

Mark T. Mitchell, Corporate Capitalism and the Loss of Virtue

Here we come to a surprising possibility. Could it be that many of our economic problems are not the result of insufficient regulations, as many argue, but instead the result of a regulatory structure that creates an unlevel playing field and thereby makes it easier for the large corporation and more difficult for the small concern? Could the internal dynamics of the corporation, itself, lead to this outcome? The implications are, I admit, far-reaching, but at the very least, we should be honest enough to admit that, along with an unprecedented explosion of consumer goods and services, corporate capitalism has nourished powerful forces that may not contribute to the long term health of our society.

Mart T. Mitchell, Home-Making for Home-Coming

This seems to be the prevailing attitude of many modern American parents. And it is not just the parents. Children tend to think of themselves as connected to their parents only until they reach the ripe old age of eighteen. Then they leave. Or, as is often the case, some form of dependency, usually economic, remains until the child graduates from college. But once that occurs, there is little expectation that the lives of parents and their children will remain intimately connected on a day-to-day basis. Indeed, often there is an expectation that the child will cut whatever ties he might have with his family or with the place of his youth and seek eagerly to go wherever his education, his job, his girlfriend, or his fancy dictates. The impulse to distance himself from his parents facilitates their newfound (and long anticipated) freedom. Besides, if it is clear to the child that the parents are looking forward to freedom from their children, it should not be surprising that the child will feel little desire to remain in their proximity. No one wants to be a burden.

This is so common in America, that my mother often says that it is what "white parents do." How does one teach one's children that they have obligations to the family? (And therefore they should not live too far from home, unless some higher good is involved, e.g. God and one's personal vocation?) Primarily by their own example, but this is probably not enough.