This is a comforting lie. It is Rousseau conservatism: the idea that man is born innocent, but corrupted by society, or government. Remove the chains of government, and man will return to his natural, good state, which is one of limitless possibility. This denies two bedrock truths of philosophical conservatism, which are that 1 human nature is fallen, and 2 man must learn to live within limits. A conservatism that is not founded on a conscious recognition of those two truths is a false conservatism, and has a shaky foundation from which to criticize liberal utopianism.
via CPAC: White kids on dope – Crunchy Con.
First of all, there was nothing in Rush that claimed man was corrupted by society–and that was precisely Rousseau’s point. Man is corrupted by being born to a mother and a father. Man is corrupted by gender roles and other “external” role expectations. Here’s the quote to which Dreher is responding”
Let me tell you who we conservatives are: We love people. [Applause] When we look out over the United States of America, when we are anywhere, when we see a group of people, such as this or anywhere, we see Americans. We see human beings. We don’t see groups. We don’t see victims. We don’t see people we want to exploit. What we see — what we see is potential. We do not look out across the country and see the average American, the person that makes this country work. We do not see that person with contempt. We don’t think that person doesn’t have what it takes. We believe that person can be the best he or she wants to be if certain things are just removed from their path like onerous taxes, regulations and too much government.
There is nothing like Rousseau in this. Rousseu would want (indeed his view would require) the state to liberate man from the stuctures and strictures (as he would see them) that corrupt the pure individual. In fact, it is precisely because Rush does not foresee some sort of state-induced utopia that he resists the entire leftist radical agenda of the Obama presidency–which is plainly what he thinks of the present Administration, whether one agrees with him or not. It is Obama, in Rush’s view, who sees the individual as pure and innocent before corrupted by evil capitalist bourgeois society. Rush has only been pointing this out as his critique of Obama about 342, 318 times every show since January (or earlier) so I am amazed that Dreher could miss this.
And, by the way, how does the depravity of man (“that human nature is fallen”) entail any consequences for the need for the state? If there is any logic in Dreher’s paragraph, it would be that one needs the state to ameliorate the effects of the Fall. But that makes no sense. The state is nothing more than an organization of fallen humans–except that it is an organization that can get away with more than just about any other group.
As for the second tenet, that “man must learn to live within limits,” I think Dreher’s criticism is slightly more justified. I did wince a bit at Rush’s description of the workings of the free market which I think, while true more often than not, are not always perfectly “fair.” There are people who are never placed where there talents or abilities merit. Luck and the limits of knowledge allow for this. Rush himself had struggles earlier in life. He persevered until he found the right opportunity, but even in the most free society there will be people who miss such chances. It is a matter or statistics.
The possibility of becoming amazing is not enough. People need to not steal or covet or envy. They need to remain faithful to spouses and children even when circumstances are miserable. I don’t think Rush’s vision about the potential of the individual in a free society is going to be enough.
But that being said, Rush obviously believes that people have limits. He regularly praises people for the everyday courage of showing up for work (and working!) regularly. Listeners will remember Rush dumbfounded by news stories about how parents are using the recession to introduce to their children for the first time that they cannot have everything they want. Claiming that some central “tenet” has been violated because Rush didn’t say everything he could have said is just stupid. Which pretty much sums up Dreher’s entire blog enter.
And in the paragraph Dreher quoted, he obviously is pointing out that people should be in a society that encourages them to do their best, rather than one that encourages them to live off the help of others. There is no conservative tenet which states that man must be limited by “onerous taxes, regulations and too much government.” Since those are the only limits that Rush mentions opposing, why is Dreher pretending this counts as evidence that Rush is violating a conservative tenet?
And on this flimsy pretext Dreher accuses Rush of false conservatism.
The rest of his post is even worse, if that could be believed. And consists of pushing a drug metaphor without any basis at all. Anyone can say “uncut progressivism.” But idiotic untruths won’t stick. The only thing I think worth further comment is this revealing hypothetical:
Because, what, it was handed down from Sinai? One hardly knows what to say to this. Do they really believe politics is dogmatic religion? They must. And if so, they’re hopeless. Can you imagine going to such a liberal gathering in 1985, after Fritz Mondale had his head handed to him by Ronald Reagan, and listening to the de facto leader of US liberalism talking this way, saying that, “Liberalism is what it is and it is forever. It’s not something you can bend and shape and flake and form”? If you were a conservative, you would have chortled and taken comfort in the evidence that the opposition was going to be spending a lot more time in the woods before the light of reality dawned upon their furrowed faces.
Pretty amazing. Conservatives are now supposed to accept that their beliefs are just as much false and contrived utopian systems as liberalism is? To even engage in that thought experiment is to accept a moral equivalence that is impossible to anyone who is actually conservative. “A dogmatic religion?” Well, duh, which one has cared about preserving the Ten Commandments?
Full disclosure here: I found Rush insufferable during the entire Bush presidency. The main reason I loved his CPAC speech so much was that he entirely omitted foreign policy. So I’m no ditto head. But he does stand up to Obama, and Dreher only makes him look better.
