Last spring, I wrote an essay on the oddly apolitical treatment of the epidemic, urging people to talk politics, not fate. Yet nobody was willing to complain about China, except occasionally Trump, who has since been consigned to anonymity. As we have come to expect, our liberal friends were busy accusing anyone of racism or, worse, being Trump; but conservatives, Republicans, & whoever else is not woke—all respectable or famous persons in America seemed agreed that it was not worth talking about the origins of an increasingly consequential epidemic. I can add that in Europe, the press, politicians, & assorted celebrities were more or less the same.
This absence of dispute, in a country riven by partisanship, is by itself a fascinating thing to notice. People quarrel everyday about whether there’s a divine being & what about it. We’ve had quite a quarrel about who won the 2020 elections, you will remember, & were they contested fair & square. We had, on the other hand, an authoritative agreement, for a year & more, about the origins of the disease—a market selling exotic animals in the city of Wuhan, about which no one knew anything. Ignorance became sacred suddenly, & therefore in need of care. China did its part by kicking out foreign journalists. The press did its part as well, & reported quaintly on what a wet market is, for the benefit of curious audiences, who were not supposed to know that Wuhan is also host to research labs working on coronaviruses. Happily, we refrained from making a shrine of the supposed wet market, but in our hearts, at least, we did what we could, & our social media platforms took care of the rest, both by censoring many dissenting voices, especially when they became popular, & by indicating to everyone what the approved opinions are, at every step in reading, sharing, or discussing the matter…
Now, however, the “lab-leak hypothesis” has finally been accepted in the press as something other than a conspiracy theory—though it is still almost entirely dismissed, it would seem, on the basis that the press is ignorant of the matter, having piously refused to learn anything about it in the previous 15 months. Presumably, since liberals are now in charge of political affairs & vaccines seem to have ended the epidemic in America, it is no longer necessary to lie to the public systematically. Perhaps it never was, but we may applaud the public spiritedness of our liberal friends, who did not wish to leave to chance anything concerning speeches. We should also commend our conservative friends, who have helped them at every step, too patriotic to make a political mess by disagreeing with the acknowledged rulers of our minds. As you may guess, my own attempt to play provocateur failed in the face of this agreement, which I now acknowledge as worthy adversary, though at long last defeated.—No one was interested in publishing my thoughts.
Globalization
The obvious reason not to inquire into the origins of the epidemic is that a pandemic would be a mighty blame against our liberal order, which depends on globalization, & therefore makes us in one way prosperous, but in another way quite vulnerable. Millions have died around the world—they are treated as a source of outrage in our politics, but as of no importance beyond that. Accordingly, our liberal friends assure us Trump was the cause of much harm in America, although America dealt with the epidemic only a little worse than the EU, where there was no Trump to make mischief. But our liberal friends do not wish to bring up the matter of all the dead everywhere, however the epidemic was handled in one place or another. Some of the dead are of political importance, others are merely cosmic—this is in accordance with the philosophy of our liberal friends, who hold that wickedness is limited to opposition to liberalism. Globalization is liberal, & includes China, & therefore it cannot be bad, even if China unleashes this catastrophe, lies about it, &c. In a cosmic sense, man is merely mortal—this much, our liberal friends admit, but they hold that the proper answer to his predicament is liberalism. It follows, therefore, that even cosmic facts can be blamed on those who oppose our liberal friends, as I do. Were there no opposition to liberalism, cosmic problems would be solved, or at least anger about those problems would disappear. It’s not fundamentally important to solve these problems—it’s fundamentally important that liberalism should never take the blame.
The people most likely to brag that they are globalists, who travel around the world very much & claim their superiority, at least their superior freedom, over people who live where they were born, became as a class what are called “super-spreaders.” Since they are prestigious, elites, authorities in appointed or even elected office, it was very important to our liberal order not to identify them as the proximate cause of much death, suffering, deprivation, & arrest. I can only think of one man stupid enough to call himself a “super-spreader,” the historian Niall Ferguson, in his recent volume, Doom, which seems to have been designed to assure his readers that they are very silly fellows to listen to him. Perhaps his reputation can be understood in light of this eagerness to write what he calls “confessions of a super-spreader.” He might think this is funny—he may lack a sense of humor—but he bet correctly that no one would care about it, because his class is exempt from moral judgment. Remarks in bad odor are nothing compared to the miasma, not to say guilt, which we are pretending is not real.
Elite institutions, especially at the international level, are also involved in the catastrophe, not only in the sense that their claim to liberal authority rests on some supposed ability to deal with the world, but in the specific sense in which the World Health Organization would have to respond to a pandemic. Or the EU, in Europe, &c. Again, the WHO proved a servant to China not despite, but because of its allegiance to liberalism. Globalization can easily survive a pandemic—but it’s easier still if no one associates globalization with the fear, death, & economic catastrophe. Personally & corporately, elites were isolated from responsibility.
Therefore, liberalism proved in 2020 its hegemony over our minds. It may seem perverse to oppose good government, but it is surely understandable if people come to hate or blame bad government—the pandemic proved to everyone that liberalism is irreplaceable, because not even a catastrophe that induces hysteria in the liberal organs of opinion can encourage people to do anything to show disapproval of liberalism. Anyone can show his faith when it is profitable to him to do so—we showed our faith truly, by keeping unquestionable the institutions of globalization when they hurt us. Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac when God demanded it; we, our grandfathers.
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I will note one difference in the way Titus talks about today's political challenges, however, and the way I do: I shy away from blanket statements about liberalism, and especially about capital-L liberalism.
In terms of Democrat ideology, I believe the term "progressive," (and my preferred neologism is "progressivist") now better describes 90% of Democrats, including the leadership of the ACLU, who refuse now to stand up for the kind of 60s-through-early-aughts liberalism that was tied to an absolutist defense of free speech and individual autonomy. (Thus, I believe that it can be useful to criticize today's proggies in the name of Douglas-style or Brennan-style or RFK-style liberalism. Doing so in the name of real political wisdom, i.e., in the name of conservatism, is of course the next step, but that exercise can serve as a good start.)
In terms of Liberalism as political theory, blanket-use of the term falsely suggests that Liberalism is monolithic, i.e., either a) that the differences between, say, a Rawls and a Nozick (and maybe a Publius also) just fade into insignificance when grasping the larger package, or b) that somebody like Rawls (or a new-and-improved Rawls) should be regarded as the one who best captures and speaks for the larger package. So a Locke and a Madison just lead you to Rawlsian Liberalism. In turn, that suggests that one can meaningfully stand "against" Liberalism, or work to move "beyond" it, when to the contrary, all kinds of things that the Liberalism of an earlier era put into the American constitutional order are basically good things and ought to be largely retained. The reality of America's good regime, and others like it, is a mix, a "built better than they knew" kind of mix, and with the Liberal part itself (Locke) being a set of ideas some of which you have to reject, and others of which you have to retain. I believe I repeat Lawler's thinking here. I will go further: I agree with virtually all the arguments about Liberal political philosophy's errors made by Deneen in his Why Liberalism Failed book, and (often by implication) by Legutko in his Demon in Democracy book, but I say the former's real message (which of course recommended the retention of many aspects of liberalism) was marred by its title, and the latter's message was marred by Legutko identifying the main enemy as "liberal democracy." The EU-style elites feared by Legutko are by many only slightly old-school rubrics, really bad liberals and the enemies of constitutional liberalism. So we need to identify them as progressivists, as managerial, as globalists, as Potemkin-democrats, and perhaps even as oligarchic, but I don't see any tactical gain (see my Hammer piece on Coalitional Common Sense) nor any lucidity-of-theory gain to be won by labelling them liberals. Why should I speak of Fauci as a paragon of Liberalism, or see him that way? Or what is "liberal" anymore about a mainstream institution like CNN, or Williams College, or NYC Schools, or Amazon? Or select your EU institution of choice. You don't have to be a Lockean to bristle at the idea of smearing Liberalism by associating it with corrupt and actively anti-free-speech institutions like those. As for conservatives and Trumpists, we're all liberals in certain senses. So long as I recommend staunch originalist-type support for the US Constitution, I will be regarded, correctly, as a Liberal in part.
That is, I think all Pomocons should aim to "keep Locke in the Locke-box," but that does mean we're keepin' him in part! So if "Liberalism" ever "Fails Completely," that necessarily means that America and our conservativism with it, fails also.
I'm not denying that there might be something in the way our Lawler-like thinker and tireless leader Titus is referring to liberalism that more quickly gets to the truth of one of its key components (or schools of thought), or which, when his usage is understood correctly, is really entirely about one of those. I'm just wanting, for future's sake, to point out the differences in the way he and I refer to things. It's largely a stylistic difference of presentation and labelling, I hope, although if were ever to be translated into political rhetoric, the differences here could prove important. I certainly wouldn't see much hope for a political coalition whose leaders regularly made highly critical remarks about capital-L "Liberalism."
Hey, Carl.
I concur in part, dissent in part; in fact, I largely concur--perhaps the only real dissent is to with the part concerning theory. My guess is Nozick, Rawls, &c. don't matter to anyone anymore in politics; whether they as writers had a good grasp of the phenomena is an independent question, but I don't think anyone owes it to their ghosts to spend a lot of time on them...
Thinking about Locke & Madison, on the other hand, is always important. But it's not the starting point for the urgent events we're dealing with. I talk of liberalism because people in authoritative institutions call themselves liberals & are called liberal. In 2020, the most important organs of opinions or politicians or anyone else related to them largely accepted that they're liberals. These are political terms, not scholarly terms.
I agree that we have to defend as much as possible of the good things we've inherited; but that doesn't often include the names people use; it's not in our power to persuade millions of people to change the words--perhaps not even thousands...
My guess is oligarchy is the name that is likely to be popular & that also fits the political phenomenon. We certainly need to find a rhetoric that offers people an alternative to the elite institutions in education, opinion, gov't--often, that will require attacking these institutions. I am doubtful that we can tell people, how dare such & such an institution sully he name liberal! I am sure, however, that we can tarnish the name until they are embarrassed of it, which is at least partly accomplished with respect to the word woke. Further, if Americans should defend liberty & the daring modern enterprise in political representation under the name Americanism or something like that, I wouldn't mind. Of course, if we could get liberals to stop calling themselves liberal, it would be wonderful. I don't think it's impossible, either. I'm just not holding my breath.
One idea I have picked up from our particolored political rhetoric is to link liberalism as now talked of with globalization, as in this part of the essay. This should help people see the difference between various liberal persuasions, since below elite level, many liberals aren't entirely for the institutions or the people who function at trans-national levels...
-t