How does a Conservative differ from a Radical? Part 2 (A Tale of Two Revolutions)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

Thus begins Charles Dicken’s classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities. The novel contrasts the cities of London and Paris during the upheaval threatening to turn the world upside down in the Age of Revolution. Most notably during the period, the American and French Revolutions would birth a new nation and forever change the character and structure of the other, respectively. The world was forever changing.

Some would resist the change, while others welcomed it with open arms. The resisters—London, as it were—warned of dire consequences for those who rushed recklessly into uncharted territories while the revolutionaries—represented by Paris—saw the rapid changes as an opportunity gift humanity with the liberty, equality, and fraternity they had lacked since the dawn of civilization.

The French Revolution began, in earnest, shortly after America had won its own revolution against the British Empire. There were many Americans who saw little distinction between the revolution in France and our own. Both sought to free the people from their monarch. Both fought in the name of liberty and insisted that the only legitimate government was the one that protected liberty. Both established new governments which boldly sought to put the ideas expressed in The Enlightenment into practice.

But there were others who insisted that the two revolutions were not at all alike and were actually fighting for entirely different ends and using entirely different means. At the risk of over simplifying—for there are many, many caveats to the story—we might say that the American Revolution represents the conservative worldview whereas the French Revolution better exemplifies the radical worldview. Since this series is exploring the difference between conservatism and radicalism, and since the Age of Revolution is where much of our understanding of these concepts begins to take shape, I believe the key to understanding their difference is to look closer at the revolutions themselves.

19th Century Bittersweet Frenemies: Burke and Paine

While there is an impressive array of 19th century public figures who stood on either side of the revolutionary debates, National Affairs editor Yuval Levin pits British statesman Edmund Burke against American political activist Thomas Paine to epitomize the political divide of the day in his brilliant book The Great Debate.

Thomas Paine was a revolutionary provocateur who got so caught up in the revolutionary spirit in America that he moved to France after the American Revolution to help ignite the process all over again. Paine’s deeply impactful pamphlet Common Sense arguably did more to persuade the American colonists to challenge the authority of their British monarch than the actions of any other public figure of the time.

At first, these two great rivals were political allies. “Burke and Paine were in effect on the same side of the American question, the side (eventually) of independence for the colonies,” writes Levin. “[Burke] was deeply involved in the British debate over America and was quite possibly the most prominent and vocal of the friends of America in Parliament.” But while Paine was driven by ideological passions that fought for the Rights of Man over the unjustified and arbitrary rule of monarchs, Burke had other motives.

As we’ve explored in Part 1, conservatives offer no universal blueprint—no political ideology–for how to structure a society. Instead, they look to the unique circumstances, culture, and history of the society in question and seek to understand how a precarious balance between order and liberty might be established in each particular situation. In my view, Burke himself was the most articulate and forceful advocate of this approach and it was his writings on the matter that shaped what eventually became modern conservatism.

So, what did Burke believe was unique and circumstantial about America that justified their independence? Levin continues, “Living apart from Britain for several generations, the Americans, he says, have developed a powerful attachment to personal liberty and, an insatiable entrepreneurialism, which their political institutions will inevitably reflect, while the British at home are more attached to firm and stable authority.” This view is hardly controversial. We Americans, as a people, have long had a certain tenacious entrepreneurial attitude and a dogged streak of independence. It’s not a question of whether these attributes are good or bad, but that they very much are; and further, any political arrangement must take these peculiarities into account if it is to survive and function.

But at the same time, Burke recognized Americans had not completely divorced themselves from British customs. In fact, much of what upset the colonists was the startling realization that their mother country no longer saw them as British subjects to be afforded British privileges. “In [Burke’s] view,” continues Levin, “it was the English, not the Americans, who had broken with prescription in the name of merely speculative theoretical claims about government by imposing an unprecedented regime of taxation and limits on commerce in America on the premise that Parliament had an unlimited authority to govern colonial affairs directly. The Americans, in his view, merely sought to continue and preserve the traditions of the English constitution and the privileges they had always enjoyed.” Russell Kirk echoed this view in saying that the, “American Revolution, substantially, had been a conservative reaction, in the English political tradition, against royal innovation…[It] was not an innovating upheaval, but a conservative restoration of colonial prerogatives.”

19th Century Cage Match: Burke v. Paine

Because Burke had been sympathetic to the American cause, many believed he would extend those sympathies to the French when they sought independence from their monarch. They were soon to be gravely disappointed. Shortly into the French Revolution, the French aristocrat Charles-Jean-François Depont asked Burke for his impressions on the matter. What followed was Burke’s most famous work—his Reflections on the Revolution in France—which represented not only a powerful critique of the revolution, but one of the greatest counter-revolutionary arguments of all time.

In fact, Burke’s critique was so powerful that none other than his former ally Thomas Paine busily worked on his own rebuttal—his Rights of Man—which was destined to be one of his most famous works and provided the foundation for revolutionary thinkers and advocates for generations to come. Strange though it may seem, much of the political history of the West over the past two centuries has been a tale of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary forces battling it out over ideas originating from Burke and Paine.

But what was so different about the revolution in France that caused Burke to react so strongly? To Burke, the French Revolution was an entirely different kind of flying altogether. “It is true that [Burke] never condemned the American Revolution, as he did the French,” wrote Irish historian Conor Cruise O’Brien, “but then the secession of a group of colonies is not an event similar to the overthrow of the settled order of a major state, even though the word ‘revolution’ is used for both.” Levin further clarifies that “in the American crisis, which he never called a revolution, Burke believed the colonies rebelled against British misrule. But the French were rebelling, he thought, out of zeal for a new theory of man and society and in the process were overturning far more than political structures.”

It's important to note, however, that the differences between the revolutions were not merely a matter of size or scale, but a difference of kind. And the differences extended far beyond mere political arrangements and even delved into rival understandings of humanity’s spiritual nature. That’s a subject far broader than we have time to fully explore in this series, but I trust just two excerpts from conservative thinkers on the subject will help establish the difference.

First, from Russell Kirk:

“A principal difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution was this: the American revolutionaries in general held a biblical view of man and his bent toward sin, while the French revolutionaries in general attempted to substitute for the biblical understanding an optimistic doctrine of human goodness advanced by the philosophes of the rationalistic Enlightenment. The American view led to the Constitution of 1787; the French view, to the Terror and to a new autocracy.”

And second, from Irving Kristol:

“The French Enlightenment was shot through with romantic visions of a new political community in which all previous religions would be replaced by a new civic religion: the religion of rationalist humanism, in which the civic bonds themselves would constitute a kind of religious association.”

A Not So Revolutionary Revolution

One of the reasons American conservatives are so enamored with the American Revolution is because it’s one of the astoundingly few revolutions in history that actually accomplished its stated goals and ultimately left the nation and the people better off than they were before. And much of what made the revolution so successful was that it wasn’t—ironically—all that terribly revolutionary.

“We Americans created our Federal Constitution by deliberate action, within the space of a few months,” remarked Russell Kirk, “But in actuality that formal constitution, and our state constitutions, chiefly put down on paper what already existed and was accepted in public opinion: beliefs and institutions long established in the colonies, and drawn from centuries of English experience with parliaments, the common law, and the balancing of orders and interests in a realm.” Far from some brilliant innovation, the foundation of our revolution was anchored in the slow accretion of thousands of years of trial and error.

But how was it that we managed to take such a deliberative, slow approach in a revolution of all things? After all, revolutions aren’t exactly known for reticent reflection and patient reform. “All revolutions unleash tides of passion,” argued Irving Kristol, “and the American Revolution was no exception. But it was exceptional in the degree to which it was able to subordinate these passions to serious and nuanced thinking about fundamental problems of political philosophy.”

Deep within human nature is the latent passion of the revolutionary but also the cautious contemplation of the counter-revolutionary. The “trick”, it would seem, is to somehow balance these dueling natures so that change is possible but not destructive. But to get there we have to leave history and turn to examining human nature. And that is where we’re heading in Part 3.

from savingelephantsblog
via https://www.savingelephantsblog.com/saving-elephants-blog

Episode 49 – God and the Speechless at Yale with Avi Woolf

Ever since William F. Buckley wrote his landmark book “God and Man at Yale” in the 1950s, conservatives have had a deep love/hate relationship with higher education. That relationship has only soured in recent decades with some prominent conservative thinkers—such as the recently deceased sir Roger Scruton—suggesting it may even be time for conservatives to work to “get rid of universities altogether.”

But unlike Buckley’s generation, conservative groups today have emerged and even thrived on college campuses across the nation. Many of these groups have successfully instilled conservatives in prominent think tanks, political offices, the media, law, education, and other important areas of society. But as conservative speakers and ideas become increasingly marginalized in American Ivy League universities, so too have these groups grown increasingly aggressive in demanding their right to freedom of speech.

Many college conservatives and their organizations are in danger of losing sight of what it is they demand to have the right to say. So much so that, were Leftist administrators and students to suddenly tolerate anything and everything their conservative counterparts had to say, they may find themselves quite dumbstruck. We are in danger of fighting for freedom of speech for the speechless.

Joining Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis is international and returning guest Avi Woolf to weigh in on where conservatives can go from here. Avi is a translator and editor whose work has been published in Arc Digital, Commentary, National Review, The Bulwark, and The Dispatch. He is chief editor of the online Medium publication Conservative Pathways, and he hopes to help forge a path for a conservatism which is relevant for the 21st century while not abandoning the best of past wisdom. Avi hosts his own podcast entitled “Avi’s Conversational Corner”, a podcast on culture, history, and politics in a broad perspective, which can be found at https://avisconcorner.fireside.fm/

Avi can be found on Twitter @AviWoolf

LISTEN HERE

from savingelephantsblog
via https://www.savingelephantsblog.com/saving-elephants-blog

How does a Conservative differ from a Radical? Part 1 (Contextual Matters)

What is the polar opposite of conservatism?

When I was but a Jedi youngling in the ways of conservatism I had in mind that its opposite was liberalism. Among my youthful indiscretions I listened to untold hours of the Rush Limbaugh Show where I was informed over and over that liberals were the enemy. As talk radio radicalized over the years I eventually turned away from it entirely, though I certainly recall how other hosts also used “liberal” as a political pejorative from Sean Hannity—“We’re now going to hear from big liberal John out in San Diego”—to Mark Levin—“Get off the phone you liberal phony!”—to Michael Savage—“Liberalism is a mental disorder.”

(For what it’s worth, liberalism actually has a lot in common with conservatism as I explored here.)

In its simplest form, conservatism is the mindset of conserving what we have—the established order, the institutions and traditions and cultural norms we’ve developed and the laws we’ve enacted. There is a term for the mindset of upsetting the established order. Radicalism is the attitude of discontent—sometimes extreme hostility—towards those same institutions and traditions and cultural norms. The conservative wants to keep things as they are while the radical demands change.

Well then, is radicalism the exact opposite of conservatism? As you might expect, it’s not quite that simple.

Contextual Matters

For all their differences, there is at least one thing conservatives and radicals have in common: they’re both strongly defined by context. It isn’t enough to simply say a conservative wants to conserve and a radical wants change. We have to untangle what they’re trying to conserve or change.

This similarity also distinguishes both conservatism and radicalism from most other political viewpoints. Most political worldviews offer prescribed answers to questions of justice and liberty and equality. Conservative author Russell Kirk clarifies this idea by showing how conservatism differs from that common approach:

“Strictly speaking, conservatism is not a political system, and certainly not an ideology…Instead, conservatism is a way of looking at the civil social order. Although certain general principles held by most conservatives may be described, there exists wide variety in application of these ideas from age to age and country to country. Thus conservative views and parties have existed under monarchical, aristocratic, despotic, and democratic regimes, and in a considerable range of economic systems. The conservatives of Peru, for instance, differ much from those of Australia, say; they may share a preference for the established order of society, these conservatives of the Spanish and the English heritages; yet the institutions and customs which these conservative factions respectively wish to preserve are by no means identical.”

Most political points of view can be adequately understood without having to muck about in tedious contextual details. Classical liberalism advocates unshackling the individual from arbitrary power and external restraints. Marxism invites the working class from around the world to unite and seize the means of production from their capitalist overlords. Populism insists that the people should push back against the establishment.

It’s not that contextual details are unimportant to these views—classical liberals often attempted to wed their ideology to Western societies they deemed capable of self-governance; Marx believed the communist states would evolve first out of advanced, industrial, Western nations; populists generally have some particular notion of who represents “the people” and “the establishment” based on historical grievances—the point is that these views are appealing to some abstract, universal principle to justify their political demands.

And while conservatism certainly has some elements of universal truths within it—as we’ll explore later in this series—much of the worldview is dependent on the context of the culture in which the conservative dwells. Where a liberal or a Marxist or a populist might work to export their ideological framework abroad as some kind of cure-all for whatever nation or civilization is willing to give it a go, conservatives are less inclined to believe the ideas and policies they’re advocating are entirely transmittable.

“Conservatism offers no universal pattern of politics for adoption everywhere,” continues Kirk, “On the contrary, conservatives reason that social institutions always must differ considerably from nation to nation, since any land’s politics must be the product of that country’s dominant religion, ancient customs, and historic experience.” While there are similarities between conservatives of different nations, conservatism will always be uniquely homegrown. Conservatives are trying to conserve what’s been handed down to them by their forefathers, not some universal, abstract ideas that transcend differences of time, place, and culture.

The kind of homegrown conservatism advocated by Saving Elephants is of a uniquely American variety. And the cultural heritage bequeathed to us by our American Founding Fathers contain some—wait for it—universal, abstract ideas that transcend differences of time, place, and culture. This peculiarity of American conservatism has led to no small amount of confusion and has made the American variety of conservatism truly exceptional—that is, unique and not necessarily superior—to all others. As Jonah Goldberg often points out, “America is the one place in the world where being a conservative has always meant being a liberal in the classical sense.”

Conserving Radicalism?

What does any of this have to do with radicalism? During the Enlightenment, being a “liberal in the classical sense” was understood to mean being a radical. It meant opposing the conservative monarchs of European politics and led to the now universally used political terms of Left and Right: Those on the Left wanted to change the monarchy while those on the Right favored conserving that institution.

Adding to the confusion, the American colonists who immigrated from the Old World to the New had developed an entirely unique culture and history from those of the European monarchs. As such, what it meant to conserve the histories and traditions of our European cousins meant something entirely different back in the thirteen original colonies. Here it meant preserving the ideas inherent in the British commonwealth more than the institutions of the Crown.

Fast-forward to our present day and we have a bit of a definitional mess on our hands: a conservative is one who conserves their culture and institutions, but the American culture was built upon a revolution, which is a tool most familiar to radicals. But if American conservatives are conserving radicalism, how is it that conservatism and radicalism can be said to be opposites? Is it simply a matter of allowing enough time to pass so that what may have been radical in one generation is now conservative in ours? If so, wouldn’t that make conservatism a rather arbitrary idea?

Conservatism may be highly contextual, but it is anything but arbitrary. But to understand this we have to look deeper at the context of American conservatism and—for the sake of clarity—compare it with some other contextual example. Fortunately, history has provided to us an excellent case study, for shortly after the American Revolution there arose the French Revolution. The former exemplified the conservative approach while the latter epitomized radicalism. Two revolutions, two very different approaches. And that is where we’ll turn in Part 2.

from savingelephantsblog
via https://www.savingelephantsblog.com/saving-elephants-blog

Impeaching Prudence

Over the past couple of weeks a debate has erupted within the conservative blogosphere the likes of which we have not witnessed since the French Ahmari Wars of 2019. Here is a woefully brief summary:

Last month, Mark Galli, editor-in-chief of the evangelical magazine Christianity Today, sent social media ablaze with his “Trump Should Be Removed from Office” piece which argued, as the title suggests, that Trump should be removed from office.

The following week yours truly replied with “Should Trump be Removed from Office?” which praised Galli’s call to moral consistency and his courage for speaking out within a group likely to be hostile to his message, but ultimately concluded that Trump’s removal may not be justifiable on prudential grounds in light of current circumstances.

A few days later my piece was republished in The Liberty Hawk.

Then, in a startling turn of events, fellow blogger Scott Howard wrote a rebuttal to my argument in a piece titled “Principles Should Trump Prudence”, arguing that the president’s actions were not only impeachable, but that a principled defense of the Constitution should trump a call for prudent restraint.

Finally, earlier this week Justin Stapley, the founder of The Liberty Hawk, weighed in to the debate with his piece “Principles or Prudence?” which attempted to strike a balance between the views expressed by Howard and myself. His piece concluded with these words: “My view is simple, and I believe agreeable, to both the demands of principle and prudence. In impeachment, be principled, aggressive, and unforgiving of all forms of abuse. In removal, be prudent, pragmatic, and thoughtful of political reality.”

Impeachment is God’s Way of Teaching Americans about Civics

Unless you’ve been binging on a never-ending stream of Disney+ videos for the past month, you surely know by now that Trump became the third president in history to have been impeached. The House voted to impeach the president on December 18, 2019. The following day Mark Galli wrote his article arguing for removal.

Judging by a brief perusal of my social media feeds on December 19, there is at least much anecdotal evidence that a disturbing number of Americans were unaware impeaching a president did not automatically remove them from office. It is unlikely we’ll ever truly know what percentage of Americans were coming to terms with this realization—for who’d want to admit not knowing if asked by a pollster?—but if the president ever were removed from office, I’d be willing to bet it would be the same percentage of Americans who believe removing Trump from office would turn the presidency over to Hillary Clinton.

For those who would appreciate a brief trip back to their high school civics class, the House of Representatives can vote to impeach a president with a simple majority vote. This does not mean that the president is removed from office. What it means is that the Senate may then proceed with a formal trial of the findings of the House and, with a sizable two-thirds majority, vote to remove the president from office and even convict him of any wrongdoing. As Stapley eloquently expressed in his piece, an impeachment in the House followed by no trial in the Senate essentially amounts to a censure: the expression of severe disapproval with no binding consequences.

The distinction between impeachment and removal is important. Both Stapley and Howard make the point that the Founders never intended for impeachment to be the rarely used tool of congressional oversight it has become. The mere fact that only a simple majority is needed to impeach a president would suggest that the Founders had envisioned presidential impeachment occurring on a far more regular basis.

In retrospect, I may have caused some unnecessary confusion by not doing a better job at the outset differentiating between my views on impeachment and removal in my original piece. Galli was providing his argument for why the president should be removed from office and I was attempting to grapple with the possible consequences of removal. While prudence and restraint are warranted for both, I agree with Stapley’s view that we can be high-minded in our principles when discussing impeachment whereas removal warrants a bit more caution.

Removal is a big deal. It has never been done before and the closest we’ve ever come (with Richard Nixon) the president chose to resign from office instead of becoming the first president to be removed. And, while impeachment should not be taken lightly, I share both Stapley and Howard’s concerns that the House has historically shown far too little willingness to use this tool to keep wayward presidents in check. This has contributed to an ever-expanding executive branch undeterred by the threat of congressional surveillance.

At the Risk of Sounding Unoriginal: Both Sides are Doing It

It’s always an interesting thought experiment to imagine whether the Founders would have done anything different if they were alive today to see what became of the government they bequeathed us. The checks and balances embedded in the Constitution represent an ingenuously balanced system that distributes power across various branches, being mindful to give each branch the ability to keep the other in their proper lane. Theoretically.

Throughout Stapley’s piece I find myself nodding along in agreement. Until I get to here:

“A president who avoids removal but whose trial fails to acquit his character is still a president who has faced the stain of impeachment. He is still one who has had his actions laid bare to the public. And, he must face a forthcoming election with determined enemies (those who supported removal) and a public not wholly satisfied that he is trustworthy.”

“As well, a president who avoids removal and whose trial clearly acquits his character has recovered his legitimacy. The process has freed him from the cloud of uncertainty the allegations had cast upon him. And, he is now free to exercise the office as an effective and trusted chief executive.”

In my view, this sounds rather utopian given the dumpster fire that is contemporary politics. Is there any evidence Republicans in the Senate would use a potential trial to reprimand Trump’s behavior? How many Republicans in the House actually said that what the president did was wrong and dishonorable, but that it didn’t justify impeachment? Are we to believe Senate Republicans would suddenly find the courage to take the opportunity to school the American people on the importance of congress maintaining a check on the executive branch, regardless of party affiliation?

Even if the Senate did vote to retain the president but express grave disapproval of his actions, would that change anyone’s mind? Would Democrats suddenly become more passionate that Trump had to go now that a handful of GOP senators had some not-so-nice things to say about him? Would Republicans be less likely to vote for Trump. Would any American reserve judgment on what they thought of the character of any president (let alone this president) until after they’d heard the pontificating of Senators on C-SPAN?

The more likely scenario, of course, is that the Republican-led Senate avoids removal and exonerates Trump of any wrongdoing; that is, if the Senate even holds the trial at all. But Americans have seen this dog and pony show before. In the 90s a Republican-led House impeached a Democratic president only to have the Democratic-led Senate retain and acquit. Now we have a Democratic-led House impeaching a Republican president where it is all but certain the Republican-led Senate will retain and acquit. Barring some astronomically usual plot twists, we all know how this shows ends. The only open question is whether Trump will successfully defeat his eventual Democratic nominee.

We have the great misfortune of living in an era where congress only seems interested in holding the executive branch in check when it’s occupied by the other party. Ours is an age bereft of honor and statesmanship. We listen to our elected officials bring railing accusations against the other side, knowing full well that the “other side” would be doing the exact same thing if the tables were turned. This isn’t congressional oversight, it’s political convenience. This isn’t statesmanship, it’s dereliction of duty. This isn’t prudence or principles, it’s hyper-partisanship and hypocrisy.

It is true that the president has done some terrible things for which, in some alternative universe where congress took their oath to uphold the Constitution seriously, he would (and should) be impeached and removed. But it is also true that Democrats have not operated in good faith, seeking to find a way to impeach the president since the day he was elected, and have abused the surveillance powers of the state in the process. Meanwhile, Republicans in the House have made a mockery of the proceedings to the point you’d think there was nothing untoward about a president using a foreign government to get dirt on his political rival and those in the Senate are behaving as partisan jurors before the trial has even begun.

Impeaching Prudence

What are we to make of this nonsense? As I argued in my original piece, we do not have the luxury of debating political questions in the realm of pure principles. Arguments over the ideal are valuable, of course. But they are valuable only in that they help us develop better political theories and provide a roadmap for where we ought to be headed. But better politics requires that we take into account not only the ideal, but the actual as well.

The pertinent question before us isn’t whether Trump should be removed from office in some idealistic utopia because that would be like asking whether North Korea should embrace liberal democracy. The real question is whether Trump should be replaced at the ballot box. His actions are impeachable, dangerous, and insufferable. But it remains to be seen whether his eventual opponent could pose a greater threat to the republic. At the risk of making a totally disproportionate comparison that’s in no way indicative of our leaders, the question isn’t whether Kim Jong Un should be removed from power but are we ready and willing to deal with what’s likely to happen if he is.

We are in danger of impeaching prudence itself. And I do not mean the kind of prudence that asks only what is in the best long-term interests of a particular political party. I mean the kind of civic virtue necessary to maintain a society of ordered liberty. Prudence isn’t among the principles we should uphold in the realm of politics, it is THE central principle by which all other political principles are possible, as I argue over an entire blog series.

Two people can dutifully exercise prudence and walk away with different understandings of what course to take or what action is right or most advantageous. The fallibility of our nature guarantees that we will never live in a world without fierce political disagreements. But we are in danger of succumbing to a world in which all that truly matters is that we win and “they” lose, and to hell with whatever it was we were fighting about in the first place.

from savingelephantsblog
via https://www.savingelephantsblog.com/saving-elephants-blog

Episode 48 - The Problem with Populism

Much has been said of the rise of populism on the Right today. But what is populism? Is it a coherent ideology with discernable objectives and ideas or a reactionary movement against an entrenched government and The Establishment?

Saving Elephants host Josh Lewis parses through the meaning of populism, how it’s applied to politics, what it gets right, what it gets wrong, and how populism can disguise itself as other more rigorous worldviews, not the least of which is conservatism itself. While a certain dosage of populism is important in a free society, there are many ways in which too much populism can go very, very wrong. In this episode, Josh expands on the five reasons why populism is ultimately a dangerous ideological game.

Populism is like the cover of a book. It may look enticing enough from the outside to earn you approving nods by holding it in front of your face at Starbucks, but unless it’s filled with actual content of a more comprehensive worldview, it hasn’t much to say. Show me a man who is only a populist and I will show you a book with blank pages. We can only truly understand a populist by examining the flavor of the worldview that’s infused with their populism. That’s why two populists can end up supporting radically different causes from communism to fascism to protectionism to socialism to capitalism.

We might assume then that a conservative wouldn’t find much fault with populism so long as it’s infused with conservatism. That would be a faulty assumption, though some conservatives today put much effort in defending president Trump’s rather void political philosophy on these grounds. Trumpism, lacking a set of coherent, consistent policies of its own, has—for the moment—adopted conservative policies. Why fuse over a book cover entitled The Political Rantings of an Uninformed Narcissist if the pages inside plagiarize excerpts from The Conscience of a Conservative? Why judge a book by its cover?

Laying aside the argument that the words we use actually do matter, this view wrongly assumes conservatism can be reduced to a systematic list of policies. Conservatism is rooted in circumstance, not abstract principles. Conservative policies are important, but not nearly as important as the attitudes and convictions and persuasions that led us to those policies. From a distance a conservative and a populist advocating conservative policies may look very much alike. But look past the flashy cover, past the index, the preface, the introduction by that celebrity on the Right who spoke at last year’s CPAC, and delve into the actual meat of the book and the differences begin to emerge in a powerful way.

Josh explains that conservatism can never truly align with populism because conservatism stands against radical ideologies; in fact, it considers them dangerous. And, ultimately, populism is among the most dangerous, as Josh explains in this episode.

LISTEN HERE

from savingelephantsblog
via https://www.savingelephantsblog.com/saving-elephants-blog

Succeeding at Failure

Let us begin with some unsettling facts:

You will to die someday.

It is quite possible your death will be painful and frightening.For some, death comes tragically early and unexpectedly.For some, death comes much later and is fully expected, after years of the body and mind steadily deteriorating to the point vital organs no longer function.If you live long enough, everyone you care about now will die.

I’m not trying to be macabre here; I’m simply trying to frame things in a certain context before we proceed.

Succeeding at Life

The thoughts above were echoing in my mind recently as I was reading a Medium article by Ayodeji Awosika entitled Embrace the Suck: How to Develop the Skills You Need to Succeed (Even If You’re Not Very Good). At the risk of oversimplifying, the article argues each of us “suck” at attaining our life-goals, but that we can have what we’re after if we learn to accept that success is born of repeated failures and setbacks.

On the whole, the article is well written and replete with good advice on reaching our goals. As such, I don’t want to come off as if I’m being critical of the piece but—the truth is—as I was reading it my thoughts kept drifting to the mindless futility of reaching our goals. Perhaps it’s because I’m a dreary conservative. Perhaps it’s because overly emphatic generalizations don’t resonate with my personality type. Or perhaps it’s because I had also finished reading an insufferably positive motivational speakers’ book the same week. Whatever the reason, my mind began to wander past the question of whether I could achieve my dreams and over to what happens when we’re no longer capable of dreaming.

Our society is obsessed with success, winning, reaching our goals, being our all, “arriving”, self-help, and self-actualization. Trump promised his supporters we’d be winning so much they’d get tired of winning. We love winning. Shelves are dedicated to self-help books in bookstores and there’s no end to podcasts offering advice on how to get rich, be successful, and reach whatever goal you have in mind.

What Does Success Mean to Me?

Now, the point of this post isn’t to argue that we shouldn’t set goals or that self-help is never worth the effort; the point is that we are marinated in a culture that believes, more and more, that success represents the purpose of our existence. What’s more, because these goals are self-determined, it isn’t much of a leap to believe that each of us, as individuals, have within ourselves the power to create our custom-built purpose-driven-life.

When we don’t reach our goals—when we’re unsuccessful—life is dreadful and void of meaning. We envy those who seem to be ahead of the game, who are a success at anything they endeavor to do. If only we could attain success we will have “arrived” somehow. Then—then!—life will be worth the living. Then we will know what it means to be our true selves because are true selves are surely a success at whatever it is we believe we need to be successful in.

For some, success is the new salvation. It may be an elusive dream to some, but if we can hone our skills just so, if we can adjust our attitude here or there, if we can work at it bit by bit, IT will be ours. But what is “it”? Are we only reaching for our goals, or are we reaching for something more? Such as the notion that somehow happiness or purpose or some spiritual actuality is lurking behind the door to success? Is success an endpoint in some finite endeavor or is it the god we worship?

This mindset may come upon us quite unawares. And a people who are fed a steady diet of surface-level spiritualism—spiritualism of the sort that promises to help us achieve our desires but certainly isn’t something people would willingly die for—are ripe for a new god to worship. And what closer god could there ever be than the worship of the self and the promise of self-actualization?

Failure is temporary. If it manages to truly set us back or keep us from our goals that’s only because something or someone—God? The lifeforce? The Universe?—has set in motion something even better for us than we had imagined. Death, if it enters our minds at all, is some distant threat that won’t come knocking until after a long life of success and a solid legacy that will ensure our life’s impact is felt for generations to come.

King Solomon Was a Terrible Motivational Speaker

Even if this were true—and, sadly, for most of us it will not be true—would that actually imbue our life with richness and meaning? If only there were someone who experienced the pinnacle of a successful life who could speak to us…

“Vanity of vanities,” begins the Book of Ecclesiastes, “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”

While it is debated whether Ecclesiastes was actually written by Solomon, King of Israel, the lesson remains: we are invited to look through the eyes of a man who had riches and power and wisdom beyond anyone else of his day. Whatever his heart desired, it was his. Whatever ambition or goal he set his mind to would come to fruition. The wonders he built and the wisdom he possessed gained him international fame. And what did this man who “had it all” have to say about his life?

“The wise man's eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness: and I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them all. Then said I in my heart, ‘As it happeneth to the fool, so it happeneth even to me; and why was I then more wise?’ Then I said in my heart, ‘that this also is vanity. For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool.’”

“Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me. And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? Yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have shewed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity. Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the labour which I took under the sun.”

Wow, that’s…uh…dreary. This is hardly the sort of message one would expect to glean from a self-help book or hear from a motivational speaker. What would cause someone with such immense wisdom that rulers of foreign nations would travel great distances to seek his advice to settle on such a dark and pessimistic view of life?

The text of Ecclesiastical tells the story of one who has reached the highest mountaintop of success anyone could achieve. He had self-actualized in ever possible sense and found that no matter how much success he could amass, it never filled the longing of his soul. His successes, he understood, were temporal. He longed for something eternal.

Admittedly, I have a hard time relating to Solomon. I haven’t any idea what it must be like to achieve the things he achieved; I’ll just have to take his word for it. What I do know is that, even if there is no ultimate joy to be found in our successes, failures are still painful. A life of untapped potential—one where we are constantly reminded of the painful reality that we have not achieved all that we could have achieved—is of no comfort either.

Leaf by Niggle

Years ago, I was in a conversation with a friend, bemoaning the fact that there was simply never enough time to do everything one ought to do. If I were to get adequate sleep, not neglect to exercise, pursue a relationship, pour myself into playing the piano and banjo, advance in my profession, worship my God, and do a litany of other worthwhile things it would be impossible to squeeze them all into the twenty-four hours allotted to me each day. In order to reach for some things, I had to let other things go.

And, worse of all, it seemed that often I was made to let go of things not because I wanted to, but because of some outside interference. I wanted to take care of myself with plenty of sleep and exercise? As a young professional in public accounting seeking my CPA license there were simply too many demands made each day for me to make it work. I wanted to pursue a relationship? So much time and energy could be invested in one person, only to find that it was a dead end all along. I took some time off work to devote myself to some personal goals? I spent all of that time recovering from the flu or, worse still, giving into laziness and apathy.

My friend suggested my concerns sounded a lot like those of a fictitious character named Niggle in one of J. R. R. Tolkien’s short stories. After reading the story for myself, I think he was on to something. In the story Leaf by Niggle we are introduced to the character named Niggle, a mediocre and unappreciated painter, who was resolved to paint his masterpiece before he was made to take a long journey (symbolizing death). He had in mind to paint a tree, and he had some sense of what it ought to look like.

But as the story progresses, Niggle is beset with problem after problem that interrupt him from his work. Much of his interruptions come from his neighbor Parish, who is in constant need of help. After a series of unfortunate events Niggle is heartbroken that he must leave on his journey, knowing that the tree will never be completed. His masterpiece, his purpose, his goal, his idea of success is left uncompleted and ready to be torn apart by people who will never understand how much of Niggle went into that painting.

Niggle is taken to some distant, gloomy country. His past has become a distant memory and each day rolls forward as if in an infinite prison of meaninglessness. Then one day, Niggle is permitted to leave his desolate surroundings and, while riding a bike through the countryside, spots something astonishing in the distance:

“Before him stood the Tree, his Tree, finished. If you could say that of a Tree that was alive, its leaves opening, its branches growing and bending in the wind that Niggle had so often felt or guessed, and had so often failed to catch. He gazed at the Tree, and slowly he lifted his arms and opened them wide.

‘It’s a gift!’ He said. He was referring to his art, and also to the result; but he was using the word quite literally.

He went on looking at the Tree. All the leaves he had ever labored at were there, as he had imagined them rather than as he had made them; and there were others that had only budded in his mind, and many that might have budded, if only he had had time. Nothing was written on them, they were just exquisite leaves, yet they were dated as clear as a calendar. Some of the most beautiful—and the most characteristic, the most perfect examples of the Niggle style—were seen to have been produced in collaboration with Mr. Parish: there was no other way of putting it.

The birds were building in the Tree. Astonishing birds: how they sang! They were mating, hatching, growing wings, and flying away singing into the Forest, even while he looked at them. For now he saw that the Forest was there too, opening out on either side, and marching away into the distance. The Mountains were glimmering far away.”

The story continues with Niggle later being joined by his old neighbor Parish. They begin to work together, making the countryside around them even more beautiful and enchanting than before. Then one day, they are approached by someone who looks to be from this foreign land:

“‘Are you a guide?’ he asked. ‘Could you tell me the name of this country?’

‘Don’t you know?’ said the man. ‘It is Niggle’s Country. It is Niggle’s Picture, or most of it: a little of it is Parish’s Garden.’

‘Niggle’s Picture!’ said Parish in astonishment. ‘Did you think of all this, Niggle? I never knew you were so clever. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘He tried to tell you long ago,’ said the man; ‘but you would not look. He had only got canvas and paint in those days, and you wanted to mend your roof with them. This is what you and your wife used to call Niggle’s Nonsense, or That Daubing.’

‘But it did not look like this then, not real,’ said Parish.

‘No, it was only a glimpse then,’ said the man; ‘but you might have caught the glimpse, if you had ever thought it worth while to try.’”

Turning Failure into Something Real

The story of Niggle is, of course, an allegory. He we see a man who has failed to complete his masterpiece, though we know full well that, even if he had, it would not be appreciated by his thoughtless neighbors who believed it all to be nonsense. Yet somehow Niggle’s failure is transformed into something—how did Parish put it?—something real. At best, one could have caught a glimpse of Niggle’s handiwork but now the completed essence of the thing was so strong that the painting had become reality.

That novel you never finished writing; that broken relationship that never mended; that loved one who died far too young; that thing you never got a chance to do or place you never had the opportunity to visit; the ways in which you never truly expressed yourself, what if they were still out there? What if somehow, somewhere there existed the fulfillment of those longings that success could never give? What if even your failures were made into something beautiful and true?

British philosopher Roger Scruton observed in his book, How to be a Conservative:

“The loss of religion makes real loss more difficult to bear; hence people begin to flee from loss, to make light of it, or to expel from themselves the feelings that make it inevitable…The Western response to loss is not to turn your back on the world. It is to bear each loss as a loss. The Christian religion enables us to do this, not because it promises to offset our losses with some compensating gain, but because it sees them as sacrifices. That which is lost is thereby consecrated to something higher than itself.”

The faith of our ancestors is superior to the rising faith of self-actualization, because it refocused them on something beyond themselves. What’s more, it even refocused them on something beyond others. It is much healthier to focus on loved ones or some grand pursuit, but, ultimately, all of that will come to naught. If we put our hopes in things that are finite our joy and sense of purpose will be finite. Only something or someone Infinite can sustain our hope forever.

“There has been a decline in the belief in an afterlife in whatever form—the belief that, somehow or other, the ‘unfairness’ of this life in this world is somewhere remedied and that accounts are made even,” wrote Irving Kristol in his book Neoconservatism, “As more and more people cease to believe any such thing, they demand that the injustice and unfairness of life be coped with here and now.” What if the faith of our ancestors that taught life everlasting is awaiting us after death wasn’t an antiquated superstition that we’ve evolved out of, but the very glue that held people together when everything else around them looked meaningless in an eternal sense?

The gloomy Book of Ecclesiastes ends with this admonition:

“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.”

I once thought that King Solomon’s conclusion was rather lackluster and seemingly comes out of nowhere. Having persuaded me that all of life is vanity, how is it any comfort to admonish me to just do my duty to God? And what does that have to do with the vanity of life anyhow? It’s like he was saying life sucks, but don’t forget to vote on election day.

But I now see that looking to God not only provides hope beyond the very problem of the vanities of life, it is the only answer that ever could.

from savingelephantsblog
via https://www.savingelephantsblog.com/saving-elephants-blog

Should Trump be Removed from Office?

Last week the leading evangelical magazine Christianity Today sent social media ablaze with their short article “Trump Should Be Removed from Office” which argued, as the title suggests, that Trump should be removed from office.

Mark Galli, the magazine’s editor-in-chief and author of the piece, calls on believers to join in support of removing the president because he is not morally fit to serve. To quote Galli, “The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.”

What follows is a rebuke of Donald Trump’s immorality and of evangelicals who would minimize or ignore it. “To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve.” Galli goes on to recite how Christianity Today had made similar calls for Bill Clinton’s removal based on his immorality and argues it would be hypocritical to hold Trump to a different standard.

While the article did set social media ablaze and has encouraged some evangelicals to also express concerns about the president, we should be under no delusion that this somehow represents a tipping point with Trump’s evangelical supporters. Nearly 200 evangelical leaders slammed Christianity Today’s piece and tales of Trump’s iniquities are hardly news to anyone. Most evangelicals had already made peace with Trump by embracing some variant of the idea that so long as he is faithful on the big issues, such as appointing pro-life justices, it matters not what else he does. And some evangelicals have become immune to any attempts to persuade them that Trump is anything other than a shining beacon of virtue.

Speaking as a Trump-skeptical evangelical myself, I must say Galli’s article came as a breath of fresh air in a torrent of evangelical Trump sycophants. Professing evangelicals have remained Trump’s biggest base of supporters and far too many of our leaders have blurred the lines between politics and their faith in a pitiful show of solidarity. If for no other reason, it’s at least nice hearing a leader in the evangelical faith offer misgivings similar to my own rather than suggesting, as Franklin Graham and Eric Metaxas did, that my views may stem from demon possession.

Nevertheless, I have two concerns with Galli’s article.

Concern #1: Is a President’s Moral Character the Best Criteria for Deciding Whether to Remove Him from Office?

Trump is only the third president to be impeached, but the prior impeachment took place a little under twenty years ago. Why was Bill Clinton impeached? Because he had an affair with a White House intern, right? Well, no. Not exactly.

The Republican-led House of Representatives impeached Bill Clinton in December of 1998 on grounds of perjury to a grand jury and obstruction of justice. In other words, he lied under oath about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky and he attempted to cover up his misdeeds. Was this immoral? Of course. But that’s not what got him impeached. What got him impeached was that his actions were a violation of his Constitutional duty as president.

I get that Galli is writing to a largely Christian audience who turn to Christianity Today for religious and moral insight and not necessarily political op-eds. And, for the most part, Galli does a decent job rightly delineating between his political judgments and his religious convictions. But he does leave open the possibility that a president’s moral character is the primary political means by which we may determine they should be removed from office.

Galli states that Trump’s use of “political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents” is a violation of the Constitution. But he goes on to stress that “more importantly, it is profoundly immoral”. He argues that “none of the president’s positives can balance the moral and political danger we face under a leader of such grossly immoral character” and concludes that removal is “not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.”

The term “political means” is important here. Having built a moral case, Galli calls on evangelicals to support a political judgment. Galli’s faith informs his moral convictions, but does it offer us any insight into the mechanism or prudence of removal? The criteria whereby a president may be removed from office are somewhat complex, and we would do well to not conflate the matter by elevating morality to the criteria.

Immorality isn’t adequate justification for removing a president. Neither is incompetence. Neither is bad policy. Neither is breaking the law. Neither is imprudent or unjustified military action. All of these things can contribute to reasons for removing a president. But impeachment and removal aren’t ultimately moral or ideological or legal questions. They’re political questions.

Jonah Goldberg offers an excellent example. He says (and here I’m ad-libbing his actual quote) that if Trump ordered the bombing of a foreign city that wouldn’t be impeachable. But if he were to order the bombing of all of the hotels in that city that were competitors to the hotels he owned, that would be impeachable. The political mechanisms of impeachment and removal are intended to protect us from a President who is abusing his power and is violating the Constitution. It is not there to protect us from the consequences of our own decisions to elect someone who is immoral, incompetent, executing bad policy, breaking the law, or entangling us in military misadventures.

Since some may argue that all presidents abuse their power and violate the Constitution to some degree or another, how are we to know when the abuse and violations rise to the level of impeachment and removal? That is a matter of political prudence. Precisely how much of the president’s moral character should weigh into this decision is also a matter of prudence, and may prove to be a surprisingly complex question for some as was discussed in a recent podcast.

Concern #2: Has Galli Made a Strong Enough Case Trump Should be Removed from Office?

As I said above, I’m a Trump-skeptical evangelical. I didn’t vote for Trump (or Hillary) in 2016 and I have been disgusted by his continual misconduct in office, while simultaneously grateful for the modest policy victories won thus far. As such, I’m the in the demographic that would probably be the most receptive to Galli’s message. And indeed, I do agree with much of what he’s written. But when it comes to his central call to action, I remain skeptical:

“Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election—that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.”

Let me stipulate that, in a certain sense, I agree Trump should be removed. In fact, Trump should have never been the Republican nominee, let alone actually win the election in 2016. It’s of some consolation that Trump’s election spared us from a Hillary presidency, but the great tragedy of 2016 is that two of the most unfit and unlikeable candidates we’ve seen in my lifetime somehow managed to simultaneously become nominees of the two major parties in a country of legions of better candidates to choose from.

That being said, we do not have the luxury of resolving political questions in some mythical “ideal” world, but in the actual world in which we live. And we must deal with the limitations and complications this world throws our way.

If Trump is to be removed, Galli has correctly narrowed our choices down to the two Constitutional methods afforded to us: 1) removal by the Senate or 2) losing the election in 2020. Galli asserts that Trump ought to be removed by one of these two methods. Let’s briefly examine both.

Removal by the Senate

Removal is a big deal and should not be taken lightly. What’s more, removal is a question of prudential politics and not moral good. Many people who enter into a political conversation through an evangelical lens can grow uncomfortable with such talk because it sounds impure, messy, or sinful. But we must take care to distinguish between what ought to be and what is. It may sound pious to say that we should “do what’s right” regardless of the consequences, but, in politics, considering the consequences IS part of doing what’s right.

The point is that there may be circumstances in which retaining a president is a great evil, but removing the president produces an even greater evil. In our history as a nation, removal has never happened. But during those nearly 250 years eras of violent divisions and bickering and, in one extreme case, civil war has resulted from our inability to reconcile our differences over presidential disputes. Ideally, if a president is unfit for office it will become apparent to the majority of Americans and cut across ideological and partisan lines. Whether or not Republicans should feel that Trump is unfit is an entirely different question from whether or not they do.

Should Republicans reject Donald Trump? Absolutely! He is unfit for the high office of president both due to his lack of character and his abuse of his authority. But the fact is, the vast majority of Republicans don’t currently see it that way and it is highly unlikely that will change in an environment where the opposition party seems hellbent on competing with one another to drive further and further to the Left. Barring some unusual events, the attitudes on the president from both his supporters and opponents are very unlikely to change.

The purpose of removal is not to punish some wayward president or to satisfy Americans that the president got their comeuppance. The purpose is to protect the republic from a threat to the Constitutional order. The question must be asked then, under our current political divisiveness, which is the greater threat to the Constitutional order: the president or the further division that would likely result from his removal?

Losing the Election in 2020

Elections don’t occur in a vacuum. And, while I reject the idea that we are only presented with a binary choice on election day because we have the option of voting for a longshot candidate or simply not voting, we should not be ignorant of the likely consequences of our votes.

Many of my 2016 NeverTrump friends have sworn off voting for Trump in 2020 as well. I’m reluctant to make such a vow for fear that, once I do, the radical Left will manage to infiltrate enough of the Democratic party and nominate such a noxious candidate that they would appear to be a disproportionately greater threat to conservatism, the GOP, and the nation as a whole than anything Donald Trump has done or likely will do. In 2016 I did not believe either candidate represented a disproportionately greater threat than the other. I may not have that luxury the next time.

Here too some good old-fashion prudence is in order. If we have reason to believe (which we do) that the Democrats are unlikely to take the Senate in 2020, should that give us adequate cover to vote against Trump and hope the GOP wins big in 2024? Does it matter which candidate the Democrats nominate, or are they all better or worse than Trump? Would Trump winning in 2020 further push the Democrats to the Left or moderate the party? Would Trump winning in 2020 usher in the populist nationalism take-over of the GOP for a generation? Would it cost the GOP the youth vote, thereby handing the Democratic party larger victories for decades to come? If we had a major catastrophe, terrorist attack, or, God forbid, military conflict with a nation such as Russia or China over the next four years, would it be worth electing a Leftist president just to see to it we aren’t relying on Trump’s juvenile temperament to weather the storm?

Fellow Trump-skeptic evangelicals and Americans of all stripes will look at these same facts and disagree on what is to be done. I’m currently on the fence as to whether Trump should be removed from office given our current options.

Who Speaks for Evangelicals?

Maybe we should stop looking to “evangelical leaders” for spiritual advice on political matters. The good Lord has placed many incredible men and women in positions of authority and insight within our political institutions, and we would do well to heed their advice in matters of politics over the unlearned musings of those who have made a name for themselves in the evangelical faith but have no special knowledge or experience in politics.

Hardly a day goes by where some evangelical “leader” isn’t saying something cringeworthy in relation to the president. In spite of my reservations though, I do think Galli’s piece is laudable and, quite frankly, rather courageous given his audience. It’s a good start, but the real work must take place with you and I as we mull these thoughts over in our heads and hearts and learn to discuss them among ourselves with civility and sobriety.

from savingelephantsblog
via https://www.savingelephantsblog.com/saving-elephants-blog