First, our (too-occasional!) contributor Pavlos Papadopoulos has published a beautifully crafted “op-ed in the style of a Thomas Aquinas article” here. If you’re unfamiliar with that format, what you do is, a.) read the title question, then b.) skip down to the middle for the “on the contrary” and the “I answer that” sections, and c.) only then read the objections and replies to them.
Pavlos’s title question, which he answers in the affirmative, is “Whether It Is Prudent to Speak of Caesarism?” I agree with his arguments. (I also find his deployment of a famous Washington Post slogan as an “authority” hilarious, though the point he makes with it is serious enough.)
Pavlos’s piece seems inspired by another at the same site, which is our second reading, “Founding Fathers and Red Caesarism,” by Casey Wheatland. It was itself a reply to other pieces, one by Jason Wilson, and another by the increasingly ridiculous Damon Linker, which criticized conservatives for even daring to discuss Caesarism in public.
Now if you’re puzzled because you’ve never really read about “Caesarism,” I provided a quick definition of it my one-and-only how to think about what conservativism is piece this summer:
Caesarism is a type of despotism, or at best a type of monarchy, that it is said to be justifiable to turn to in the event of a radical moral corruption of the citizenry, by which the citizenry has become no longer capable of practicing republican government...
The model is Caesar Augustus of Rome. My piece, which we’ll count as our third reading here, is “Conservatism in Relation to Perennial Political Wisdom,” and it’s one of my best. “Caesarism” was not its main topic, but it did contain a number of insights about it towards the end, including this speculative paragraph:
In our time, Strauss-influenced conservatives like Michael Anton and myself try to warn our fellow citizens that if they do not follow conservative advice now, a time may come when Caesarist rule becomes the least-horrible of the very bad options before them. That does not make us Caesarists now, even though we do not promise that we will never become one. Admirable defenders of civilization such as Virgil and Plutarch, as well as the few church fathers who spoke of political matters, were after all Caesarists... Now maybe Anton and I would do the die-hard conservative/republican thing of crying “Give me democracy, or give me death!” if things ever arrived at such a pass. Or, maybe we would take up a duty to guide those who must live on after democracy’s fall, who would need to find their way into the best kind of life possible when the government is no longer a free one; acceptance of that duty would require, among other things, an acceptance of the Caesar. (That’s assuming Anton and I hadn’t already been executed, as there’s no telling whether a rightist Caesar would want our kind of intellectual around, and certainty that a leftist Caesar wouldn’t.) But regardless, if that ever became the situation, then it would no longer be the case that the good person would properly understand his highest political commitment, the one to perennial political wisdom, through the limits set by his secondary-level one of conservatism. That is, conservatism would have become irrelevant, except as a memory of a human possibility. For if modern democracy were to collapse in a way which made it look exceedingly difficult to revive, then we would be back to something like the situation of the seventeen centuries that ran from Caesar Augustus down to the American Founders.
My discussion of Caesarism was designed to show that conservatism always involves a commitment to liberal (aka modern, constitutional, etc.) democracy, but that it cannot be thought of as our final political commitment, which rather should be to what I call “Perennial Political Wisdom,” a wisdom open to the possibility that any given people could become incapable of republican government.
Pavlos thinks pretty similarly on the issue of whether one’s commitment to the American form of constitutional democracy ought to be one’s final one; see this in his Reply to Objection 3:
If merely speaking of Caesarism would tempt the people to adopt a Caesar, then the people would seem already to deserve a Caesar. Moreover, belief in “the absolute sanctity of the established constitutional order” is undesirable in citizens. No earthly regime is “absolutely sacred.” A regime is a means to securing the good of a political community. Therefore, to seek the good of one’s political community is the highest political duty, with reference to which loyalty to any particular form of government ought to be judged. A regime is owed allegiance only insofar as it serves its proper end, the good of the political community…
Now all three of the readings stem from Leo Strauss’s discussion of Caesarism in On Tyranny, pp. 177-184. That is the ur-text for our discussion, even though there are a couple Renaissance texts Strauss drew from, and one can find quick endorsements of the idea in the writings of certain classical historical writers.
Reading Strauss carefully, you will find a few sentences that would seem to challenge Pavlos’s reply to objection 3:
The true doctrine of the legitimacy of Caesarism is a dangerous doctrine. The true distinction between Caesarism and tyranny is too subtle for political use.
Pavlos has good answers that he deploys against those who would try to use this Strauss quotation against public discussion of Caesarism (and he knows the quote, as he quotes all the sentences around it in his formulation of the objection), but my sense is the debate here is not entirely settled; obviously, I side with Papadopoulos, Wheatland, and Anton in favor of some public discussion of the doctrine, and it is fair to observe that Strauss himself was in favor of it enough to authorize the publication of his own discussion.
Let that be the fourth reading, though it is the most important.
And for a fifth reading, the best discussion of Caesarism’s possible contemporary relevance is that from Michael Anton’s The Stakes, pp. 341-51; that book is an indispensable guide to the right populist-conservative doctrines and tactics anyhow, so you might as well get a hold of it.
Of course, I remain convinced as ever that there is also something else, oh fellow conservative intellectuals, that we are likewise obliged to be talking about these days…
Thanks for the links to the American Mind article and On Tyranny. Fascinating reading.
I thought "caesarism" was the phenomenon, recently documented on Tik Tok, when women began asking their boyfriends if the ever thought about the Roman Empire and were amazed to find that that they all do.