The Road to Revolution

according to Alexis de Tocqueville...

Stanley Payne, the great historian of twentieth century Spain, describes how modern democracy succumbs to revolution and civil war. https://t.co/kKJWDsqfH7

— Matthew Schmitz (@matthewschmitz) December 11, 2020

I must confess that I'm deep in Tocqueville and Kirk Fatigue

(mainly because of milquetoast conservatives' over-reliance on them) though this essay does acknowledge Tocqueville's recognition of ethnic (and therefore cultural) solidarity as a necessary foundation for republican (not "democratic") government.

Tocqueville on America’s Colonial Experience & the Seeds of Democracy (essay by Bradley J. Birzer) https://t.co/ZdFwEVruvq

— ImaginativeConservat (@imaginativecons) November 5, 2020

Imaginative Conservative

Alas, Tocqueville and not

readings that would have transmitted a proper tradition of understanding the Constitution and American republicanism.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Tocqueville was part of every educated man's mental arsenal. That his ideas reflected that shouldn't surprise.

It's a shame we've gotten away from core readings.

— @KevinGutzman (@KevinGutzman) September 5, 2020

Hillsdale Radio

The new @HillsdaleRadio is now available! I'm joined by Matthew Spalding @HillsdaleInDC, Ken Masugi @JaffaneseAm, & @hillsdale's Paul Rahe talking Alexis de Tocqueville https://t.co/WCU5WotJAi

— Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) July 31, 2020

Bradley Birzer:

"While I agree that conservatism is not, nor ever should be, a political label, I am far less certain that it should be loathed or dismissed." https://t.co/ZhQ9mq8zwO

— The American Conservative (@amconmag) July 31, 2020

Archbishop Chaput at It Again

Pushing his erroneous immigrant myth about the United States -- Things To Come: Faith, State, and Society in a New World

The full text of the inaugural Religion and Public Life Lecture delivered today at the Matthew J. Ryan Center at Villanova University.

Too Much Tocqueville?

Is that the foundation of his understanding of the American political tradition? Or is the source someone or something else?

An interview with Patrick Deneen: Why individualist liberalism wins, and the Catholic side loses

See also: The Tragedy of Liberalism by Patrick J. Deneen

(h/t to Oz Conservative)

Illiberal Catholicism

John Zmirak, Illberal Catholicism

Thought about it, but I won't be wading into this discussion...

Rejecting Zmirak’s Rejection of ‘Illiberal Catholicism’ by Andrew Haines
Illiberal Catholicism, the Moral Self, and the Political Community by Aaron Taylor
Discussion of Zmirak's piece at WWWTW.

Related:
Liberalism is a Sin
CDK, On Tolerance, the Benignity of the Christian
Why are U.S. conservatives so obsessed with monarchies?
Tocqueville on Keeping Our Countercultural Churches

"Civil Society"

Someone posted a link to this over at the ResPublica America FB group: Civil Society Reconsidered by Gertrude Himmelfarb

Civil society has been described as an “immune system against cultural disease.” But much of it has been infected by the same virus that produces the disease—a loss of moral integrity and purpose. What is required, then, is not only the revitalization of civil society but its reform and remoralization—the reform of those institutions that parody government agencies, and the remoralization of those that have lost their moral focus.

This is a formidable challenge, inspiring us to recall those to whom we are indebted for the idea of civil society and whom we now cite in support of it. It is to Locke, of course, that we owe the distinctively modern concept of a civil society that mediates between the individual and the state. But it is not quite the individual and the state that figure in Locke’s trinity. It is the “state of nature” and “political society” that are on either side of “civil society.” This is not a trivial semantic point. The “state of nature,” as Locke describes it, is more fearsome than the “individual,” and “political society” less formidable than the “state.” Moreover, in Locke’s account, civil society has a close relationship to political society, almost overlapping with it, as opposed to the state of nature, which is always in sharp contrast to civil society: “Those who are united into one body and have a common established law and judicature to appeal to, with authority to decide controversies between them and punish offenders, are in civil society one with another; but those who have no such common appeal, I mean on earth, are still in the state of nature.”

The distinction between civil society and the "state" seems to be a recent one, coupled to the development of the modern nation-state. Is it at all a useful tool in the analysis of polities? Or does the science of politics need to start at, well, with the principles, rather than with the assumption of the nation-state as an ideal form? The classical distinction would be between the community and the ruler(s), no? How are they united into one body? Why should we accept Lockaen liberal political theory as the basis for our analysis of what ails us? Reading Locke should be on my list of things to do, but I can't muster the enthusiasm for it.

Similarly, Tocqueville’s “voluntary associations,” which we sometimes equate with civil society, are not as exclusively within the domain of civil society as we might suppose. Tocqueville has the highest regard for these associations which are unique to America—but not unique to civil society. On the contrary, the genius of American democracy is the proliferation of “political associations” as well as “civil associations,” and, more important, the intimate relationship between them, the civil being dependent upon the vitality of the political. “In all countries where political associations are forbidden, civil associations are rare. .  .  . Thus civil associations pave the way for political ones, but on the other hand, the art of political association singularly develops and improves this technique for civil purposes.”

Tocqueville may be admired by some American "conservatives," but was he not also a liberal? (Just as they are, I suppose.) Can his observations of American society be said to be from the viewpoint of a liberal? In his native Europe was he already born into the loss of true, rooted communities formed through shared history and life? That is to say, does he recognize that a polity must be exist in accordance with the proper scale?

Today, in our anxiety about the excesses of individualism and statism, we may find ourselves looking upon civil society not merely as a corrective to those excesses but as a be-all and end-all, a sanctuary in itself, a sufficient habitat for the human spirit. What our forefathers impress upon us is a more elevated as well as a more dynamic view of civil society, one that exists in a continuum with “political society”—that is, government—just as “civil associations” do with “political associations,” “private affections” with “public affections,” and, most memorably, the “little platoon” with “a love to our country and to mankind.” This is civil society properly understood (as Tocqueville would say), a civil society rooted in all that is most natural and admirable—family, community, religion—and that is also intimately related to those other natural and admirable aspects of life, country and humanity.

Civil society refers to families, communities, churches, workplaces, formal and informal associations, in distinction from the state. But is there one sort of community which is superior to the rest? Himmelfarb wants to say that some problems cannot be solved by civil society but must be addressed by the state, and that "civil society itself has turned out to be a more complicated and ambiguous entity than might be supposed. Indeed, it is sometimes complicit in the problems it purports to solve." Are these problems not due to "civil society" but because of the loss of community and any power that it might have within the modern nation-state?


AmConMag: Tyranny of Merit

ecp gives a summary of the constitutional issues behind the WBTS. Meanwhile PR for Steven Spielberg's Abraham Lincoln movie continues to unfold --
Twitch: SPIELBERG'S LINCOLN LOOKS VERY ... HISTORICAL
Film School Rejects




From last year: Spielberg Talks ‘Lincoln’ Timeline & Planned Release Date

We should be getting a trailer soon?

A Discussion of Courtesy Titles and Names at FPR

A Tip of the Hat to Courtesy by Mary Vander Goot

There is this one school in SJ where teachers are called by their first names. I think at least one of the teachers was understanding enough to have the students call me Mr. ---. I don't know who decided that this was to be the custom at the school, the principal, the faculty, or both. But I wasn't really going to follow suit, since it is a question of justice.

It reminds me of one of my professors, whose children called him and their mother by their first names. I didn't really understand the reason for this, and I mentioned it to one of my fellow grad students, and she was puzzled by it as well.

It seems that family titles/names can be honorifics as well, since they remind us why respect is owed to our parents, grandparents, and so on--it is because they are our parents, grandparents... the rationale for other courtesy titles may be more obscure, and those who educate us should be explaining to us why it is polite to call someone by a certain form of address, so that the rationale is not lost to us.

In the comments section, Mr. Polet cites Toqueville, who makes an interesting argument:

This, of course, is a problem endemic to egalitarian societies. As Tocqueville wrote:
“In democratic countries, manners have ordinarily little grandeur because life there is very petty. They are often vulgar because thought has but few occasions to raise itself above preoccupation with domestic interests. Genuine dignity of manners consists in always showing oneself in one’s place, neither higher nor lower; that is within the reach of the peasant as of the prince. In democracies, all places appear doubtful; hence it happens that manners, which are often haughty, are rarely dignified. In addition, they are neither well regulated nor well informed. Men who live in democracies are too mobile for a certain number of them to succeed in establishing a code of social graces and to be able to keep it in hand so that it is followed. Each therefore acts nearly as he pleases, and a certain incoherence in manners always reigns because they conform to the sentiments and individuals ideas of each rather than to an ideal model given in advance for imitation by all.”

What was a greater contributor to the loss of honorifics here in the United States? Both social and physical mobility have had an impact in the last century. And I have no doubt patriotic Southrons would claim that things got worse in the North first...
Today I went to a school where I haven't worked for a year or so -- the secretary was unknown to me, and the other secretary, who replaced the secretary I knew, was absent due to illness. The secretary called me sir, but I didn't introduce myself; the secretary introduced one of the other teachers who was using a sub, but no one asked me to identify myself...

wiki: Courtesy Titles in the UK ·
The British system of aristocratic honorifics
honorifics

Patrick Deneen lecture

Land of Pilgrim's Pride: Tocqueville and the American Founding Vision

Patrick Deneen
Markos and Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Associate Professor of Government, Georgetown University

The Adolphus Hotel, Dallas, TX
3/20/2010

2010 Dallas Conference - Whose America? National Identity and the Fragility of American Constitutionalism

• Listen to Audio

More ISI lectures. (Click on the link in order to watch the video of Prof. Deneen's lecture.)