CRAZY LIKE A FOX?: A couple responses to the “LOL Americans” post below. Keep in mind that that post really was a… is it a blunderbuss I’m thinking of? The thing that fires a huge amount of shot all over the place, in hopes that some of it might hit the target. So:

T.H. writes:

Long time, no talk. I had one short point about your post, and a question.

First, the question: did Kirk really identify with the agrarians? I’ve read some Kirk, but not enough to know if this is true or not. It sounds fishy, though.

The point: I’m not so sure about your identifying Americans with utopians. I mean, there’s certainly a strain of that in the American tradition. Tom Paine’s a good example. There’s some stuff in Jefferson that lends itself to utopianism, too, I suppose. And certainly there’s a strong streak of utopianism in contamporary
American society. But, usually that utopianism is among the elites of culture and academia.

I think your claim that Americans are utopians is in some tension with your claim that Americans try to do crazy stuff like blend Enlightenment rationalism and evangelical Christianity. If Americans really were utopians, one would think they would choose one or the other, like the French (who really do seem to be utopians, or at least have seemed to be quite utopian since the French Revolutoin until
recently). Blending enlightenment rationalism and evangelical Christianity looks a lot more like pragmatism to me than utopianism. “Look, we’ve got these two elements in our cultural patrimony. Let’s put them in a bag, shake them up, and live with the result.” In other words, there’s a level of abstraction that seems to be missing that would normally indicate utopianism. This is, in some degree, why we only have two viable political parties, instead of the multitudes of small, ideologically pure parties in Europe.

I hope I have succeeded in rattling off even less organized thoughts than you did in your original post. Hope you’re doing well!

Eve says: OK, the two-parties thing is a good point. But I do think that the bats craziness of trying a mix of Enlightenment and evangelicalism in the first place is so out there that it proves my point, rather than being some kind of pragmatic Chinese-menu approach.

R.D. writes:

“…the political-philosophy work we need to do now, which is re-founding liberalism on a Christian basis.”

Eve–
I’m all for that. But when you say that, I’m wondering just what you mean by “a Christian basis.” That could be a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Would that Christian basis be focused on issues like abortion and stem-cell research? Or would it be focused feeding the hungry and caring for the ill in America and abroad? Would it be prone to work in non-military ways for world peace, even if that peace involved material sacrifice? Or would it be prone to launching “Just Wars” in order to promote the cause of freedom and justice at the barrel of a gun?

Christianity cannot incorporate politics, liberal or otherwise. The reverse, of course, is not true; nor should it be.

Unfortunately, however, when Christians become political, their religion is, usually, in fact, corrupted by their politics. This ultimately renders their politics ineffective, from a purely Christian perspective.

I would be very interested in seeing a bit of elaboration, therefore, on what “Christian basis” means to you in the context of a reformed liberalism.

Eve says: Superbriefly–
1. Yeah, that’s probably the sloppiest line in a post that wasn’t too hospital-corners to begin with. I definitely see the danger of instrumentalizing Christianity in the service of a political philosophy, and I hope you all realize that is very much not what I was promoting.

2. It may help to think “liberal” as in “liberal democracy,” not as in “liberal Democrat.” I’ve written before on the blog about how “liberal” (as vs. Left) and “conservative” can in some ways be shadows of the same edifice; sometimes that’s bad (see post linked below, about how Burke gives me a Paine) and sometimes it’s good, but basically, just keep in mind that in the way I was using “liberalism” in that sentence, Ronald Reagan was a liberal.

3. What I want is a different framework for political understanding. Sometimes it can be helpful to talk about that framework in terms of contemporary political disputes: I think one possible angle of approach is to say, “Defend freedom of conscience without laying the groundwork for the ‘mystery doctrine’ of Casey v. Planned Parenthood.” But keep in mind that if the underlying political culture changes, some questions that are controversial now will be mostly-resolved, and new things will become controversial. I’m not actually trying to lay out, e.g., a solution to the US health-insurance mess. It would be closer to the truth to say I am trying to figure out how the contemporary political options (= not monarchy, and not agrarianism, both of which may have their virtues but are nostalgia at best for us now) can be based on the individual without falling into rationalism or utilitarianism.

…Yeah, I bet that didn’t help. Um. If I can think of something else useful to say, I’ll say it, but right now my mind is much more in cultural-critique mode than in useful-things-about-politics mode.