Coalitional Common-Sense v. Never-Trump Purism, Part I
Hammer and Melnick on the Conservative Situation
Let’s compare and contrast two notable essays recently published which, while quite different in structure and address, seek to prod reflection about the way forward for conservatives. One is the Newsweek editorial by Josh Hammer, “The Coalition of the Un-Woke,” and the other is the long Law & Liberty book-review essay by R. Shep Melnick, “Claremont’s Constitutional Crisis.”
Hammer calls himself as a traditionalist conservative, and the main argument of his piece may be immediately deduced from its title. It is, after all, written for a general audience. Melnick is a renowned scholar, whose work has focused on federal government programs from the Great Society on. Here is a recent taste of his work, concerning school desegregation. He’s also a scholar who contributed to a festschrift for Harvey Mansfield, so you know he’s familiar with the intra-Straussian disputes about the overall character of the American regime. Any consideration of his essay, given the way it analyzes the Claremont theory of America, and brings in things like James Ceaser’s work on foundational concepts, the chapter on “perfectionism” in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and a bit of Melnick’s own expertise, sees that it has more for conservative intellectuals to chew on than Hammer’s piece. My argument, however, is that despite all of its sophistication, it winds up delivering less nutritional value.
To continue with the meal-metaphor, the meat of Melnick’s piece is an analysis of Charles Kesler’s recently-published book The Crisis of the Two Constitutions, which Melnick develops into an analysis of the Claremont school of thought as a whole. This meat is served up between two fabulously provocative slices of sandwich bread, as the essays opens and closes by blaming—and in a most histrionic manner--the Claremont view generally, and the Claremont Institute’s association with Michael Anton particularly, for a wider conservative descent into Trumpist ugliness, and even for the crowing symbolic manifestation of this, January 6th.
While Melnick’s core essay makes some critical observations about Claremont conservatism which I largely endorse, most of them are not exactly new ones, and their value is overwhelmed by the provocation which surrounds them. The overall result is confusion, and a bitter taste in the mouth. Hammer’s humble opinion piece, by contrast, underlines key facts about the present situation that ought to alarm anyone, draws liberal readers into conservative thinking in a healthy way, and points conservatives towards necessary reflections about present-day strategy. That is, it proves far more thoughtful than most editorials, and we actually might have more of solid value to learn from it than from Melnick’s involved essay. It will take two parts to flesh-out my comparative judgment, and this first one concerns Hammer’s piece.
Hammer comes out swinging, and we should feel surprised and grateful that in 2021 such unvarnished truths can be published by a magazine, Newsweek, that has at least a legacy-claim to mainstream status:
The metastasis of the "woke" ideology is the most comprehensive threat facing the American republic. It is appallingly totalitarian, insofar as the woke wield the levers of cancel culture to suppress all dissident speech, root out all wrongthink and achieve by sheer force an intellectual homogeneity. It is outright racist, insofar as intersectionality and identity politics, to say nothing of vogue concepts such as "critical race theory" and "racial equity," overtly discriminate on the basis of race and thus undermine the preeminent American ethos of equal protection under the law.
Totalitarian and racist. Yep. Sure, when I’m trying to speak in a polite way to Democrats, I prefer to speak of the “racialism” pushed by the likes of Kendi, rather than to immediately pull out the R-word. If I do call it racist, I add the qualifier that it is in certain ways different from, with the suggestion that it is less virulent than, the classic American racism that supported segregation. That is, I try to ease Democrat friends into the realization that a number of this ideology’s tenets are at bottom racist. (The ultimate things that might come from this mainstreamed embrace of a newish kind of racism are terrible to contemplate, but one small example of its short-term impact is something we noticed this week: racial discrimination by not a few American governments in their distribution of the vaccines.)
And by now, everyone should accept Hammer’s bald statement, made further on, that “this is Marxism.” Yep. For clearly, the identitarian ideologue—my preferred tag for the wokester—is someone who accepts the Marxist pattern of tying all morality and analysis to a victim-category, which in classic Marxism was the proletariat, but to which the identitarian now adds multiple categories. That is, our woke ideologue plugs the racial, gender, sexual-orientation, and sexual-identification victim categories into a basically Marxist framework. That results in certain “intersectional” complications, but regardless, the framework retains the most toxic premises of Marxism, such as: 1) the utter corruption of modern liberal-democratic society, 2) the importance of identifying and sharply defining oppressor groups, 3) the priority of ideocratic dogma and narrative over truth-seeking judgment, and 4) the need for nothing less than Revolution. It hardly matters that there is an older version of “identity politics” that functioned pretty much along the lines of American interest-group politics, because in arena after arena, older leaders have refused to firmly oppose the identitarian ideologues, and have let them take the lead. Add it all up, and the destination the Woke would bring us to is clear: totalitarianism in America.
Thus, Hammer argues that liberals and conservatives should form a temporary coalition to defeat the Woke. He introduces this argument by sketching liberalism’s decline:
Liberalism—real, actual, Enlightenment liberalism—is increasingly on the defensive in America. …On the Left, the traditional "live and let live" liberalism of John Stuart Mill has been far too reluctant to push back in earnest against the woke ideology.
There are certainly some high-profile left-liberal defectors… Former New York Times editor Bari Weiss, for instance… But in their present condition, left-liberals are too outnumbered and too ill- equipped to take on the wokesters themselves. …
The solution is for a political coalition of the un-woke. Admittedly, this coalition will be somewhat crass and, for many, uncomfortable. But much like the conservative "fusionism" that ascended to the status of the mainstream Republican Party platform during the era when the Right's disparate factions all had their various reasons to oppose Soviet Communism, so, too, can a coalition of the un-woke be based around a commonality of interests arrayed against a mutually shared, authoritarian foe.
This makes good sense, although I would add three qualifications.
First, the shocks of 2020 underlined not simply the fundamental danger to our democracy posed by the Woke, but also, that posed by another set of villains: the managerial oligarchs. Most of the key players here, the leaders of our universities, tech-companies, old-line media, and various connected establishments, such as the dominant clique in epidemiology, are not Marxist-in-spirit, neither in a traditional nor in a Woke-adjusted sense. Their thinking, although anti-democratic and hostile to most of the Constitution, is far from revolutionary. If they repeat the slogans of the Woke, they don’t really believe them, but intend to use Woke moral-panics for the purpose of further entrenching their own power. “Managerial Progressivism” is perhaps the best ideological tag we can give this group, and no analysis of contemporary left-liberalism can avoid considering how many of our professed liberals are in fact mental captives of the denial-soaked narrative the leaders of this group constantly spin. These deluded ones, dupes of CNN-speak, only touch reality at so many points, and certainly do not understand that the managerial oligarchs’ long-run intention, which even many of its own captains can barely admit to themselves, is to reduce “democracy” to merely a few acts of voting, to a Potemkin kind of show.
Second, the pattern at present seems to be that most of the old-school liberals who were serious about their liberalism are already in some kind of coalition with conservatives, not a few of them to a degree that they are regarded as a type of conservative, as some of them have taken to openly supporting Republicans. Jonathan Haidt, John McWhorter, Eric and Heather Weinstein, Dave Rubin, and Brandon Straka are the sorts of folks I have in mind here. When some of these types, such as the Weinsteins, wish to hold onto the liberal label, that feels a meaningful distinction to me, and one I honor. I feel quite differently about the many Democrats who insist on being referred to as liberals, even as they refuse to combat the patent pattern of Woke free-speech-squelching. For the last three to four years, I have refrained whenever possible from using the term “liberal” to describe them, instead reserving “old-school liberal” for the few who continue to defend basic First Amendment freedoms, and giving the tag “progressivist” to all remaining mainstream Democrats. Thus, I think most of the serious liberals are already with the conservative-led coalition against the Woke.
Third, I would like to see a coalition with certain younger socialists who resist the pull of the identitarian cult. We can welcome them into a coalition if we convince them to become more serious and rigorous about the adjective “democratic” in the compound term democratic-socialist. Listen, for example, to this recent interview of Touré Reed, or read this Spiked piece on the anti-woke left. These socialists detest the Woke ascendancy, and it particularly irks them when it serves to cloak the moves and power of “liberal” elites. Sure, the interview I link to is on the toxically-named Jacobin platform, and sure, even the key political group, the Democratic Socialists of America, is not willing to insist upon a clear parting of ways with BLM-types, nor with Antifa-types. Not yet, at least. But this turn of many millennials and Z-sters to socialism may yet develop in unexpected ways.
All in all, what I am suggesting, slightly contrary to Hammer but in full agreement with his main recommendation of coalitional tactics, is that the days of conservatives gaining allies such as Dave Rubin may have run their course, and any new outreach must be at least as much targeted to reach the truly-democratic socialists. On their side, that will require willingness to more explicitly indicate their rejection of major chunks of Marx, especially the democracy-hostile and Revolution-welcoming elements; on our side, it will require conservatives who have become less dogmatic about free-market ideology.
Wise conservatives should be ready to pivot either way, depending on how things develop: maybe a Hammer-type liberal-wooing approach, maybe my kind of socialist-wooing approach, or maybe both simultaneously. I would only insist that Hammer understand that there is another fundamental enemy to our republic, the managerial oligarchs, and thus, that an anti-Woke coalition that makes compromise with certain aspects of liberalism, or which squelches conservative truth-speaking about the oligarchy-fostering institutions that many “liberals” remain entangled in, might cost us other coalitional partners of greater long-term value. Also, they might cost us too much in terms of the loyalty of the populist-conservative base.
But whereas with Hammer, I sense a fellow conservative alive to the dangers of the time, and feel I can dialogue with him to good purpose, with Melnick, I am not so sure. Something about his kind of purism seems blind to present threats, and to block any plausible way forward. I admit we could learn far more about how our government has actually functioned for the last six decades from him than from Hammer or Kesler, but that might not matter as much as other kinds of political knowledge…at least not today. More on that in part two.
Good points, Carl. The connection to managerial progressivism is an important one to make, and it can get lost as we focus on the chaos inspired by progressive activists. But it's right there in the theory though; Woodrow Wilson, and first discussed in our Claremont circles by John Marini. Conservative thinkers need to continue to make Marini's connections, and not just leave those to our lawyers and Originalist Justices working on it. Dr Fauci and our liberty-squeazing COVID managers are the ones who come to mind most these days, but we professors shouldn't forget about the managerial progressives in our own field- the accreditation/assessment industrial complex.
There's of course also a place for the managerial class in the deeper Marxist theory you reference, "intersectionality." I have heard several communists complain that the bureaucracy "ruined" their pure communism, but central planning and the managers are an unavoidable corollary of their own utopian theory. Once private property is abolished, and the proletariat seizes the means of production, and it isn't instantly paradise on earth- you have to bring in those managers.
P.S.- Here's a recent debate that Josh Hawley participated in with Fed Soc. I agree that his conservativism is a way forward, as opposed to a dead end that I see in Melnick
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD-8QfrfO00
Well said, Carl! Looking forward to part 2 before we make the comparison, but like you, I wonder whether we're stuck in a situation where those who know how gov't works & those who understand it's not working for the common good are becoming enemies, or at any rate, have nothing in common...
Like Chris cays--we need to keep our eyes on the necessarily oligarchic implications of rational gov't, as well as the tyrannical character of that claim to rule by scientific expertise. I worry that some of our anger at the woke lead us to forget, the woke are not the oligarchy! (to wit, it's just now in the papers that 100 of the nations CEOs, executives, &c., got together on Zoom to conspire against the laws of states like Georgia, Texas, &c.)