“Democratic”
and “Reactionary” aren’t words that you often hear used to describe the same political
thinker, or the same belief system.
There is a
reason for this: In the 19th century European politics from which so
much of our political vocabulary is drawn, liberal democracy was a rising force,
and reactionaries, by definition, wanted to revive discarded elements of their
respective countries’ national traditions. In those days, being a reactionary
meant wanting to go back to absolute monarchy.
But there
isn’t some eternal principle which prevents a reactionary from being a liberal
democrat. In fact, if you live in a country which was more democratic in its
past than at present, then defending democratic principles just might require
you to be a reactionary.
Now,
before I go on, I should probably spend a few paragraphs explaining just
what kind of reactionary I am. To begin with, I am a thoughtful reactionary.
That means that I have a more nuanced view of the past than a lot of people on
the conservative side of things, who just pine for a return to whichever era of
our country’s history they happen to see through the most intensely
rose-colored glasses.
The only
thing that can be said in favor of that viewpoint is that it rejects the myth of progress; that is to say, it doesn’t follow the delusional mainstream of
American society in believing that the rapid and uncritical adoption of the
latest innovations, both social and technological, will liberate us from human
nature and set us on track to a glorious future that’s much better than any
era in the past.
But the
simple-minded reactionaries still fail to see the cyclico-chaotic nature of
real history, as opposed to the linear idea of perpetual betterment, on the one
hand, or the equally linear idea of mankind falling away from an idealized past, on the
other.
Having
thus liberated myself from the boneheaded idea that it’s a reactionary’s job to
defend every aspect of a particular time in American history which supposedly marked
our country’s peak, I am instead free to pick and choose which elements of our
collective past are most worthy of admiration.
Thus, I
can say that I am enamored of the religious climate in colonial Philadelphia,
which I think was demonstrated very well in the philosophy and religious outlook of
Benjamin Franklin. It was a time when the belief in a benevolent Creator, and the
adherence by men and women of all sects to the same code of Christian ethics, was
balanced with religious pluralism and a distrust of any sect which claimed to
have too firm of a grasp on God’s infallible truth.
I admire
the political organization of the antebellum United States, where the power of
the federal government to manage military affairs and regulate trade was
balanced by a healthy degree of apprehension that the states – both north and
south – might rebel if their rights were violated.
I would
love to see a return to the sort of locally autonomous, old-fashioned school
systems that we had circa 1910, which were good enough that, even with an eighth
grade education – which was all that many Americans got back then – a man of
that time was still far more articulate, and knew far more about the world
around him, than his present-day counterpart. Frankly, even in the 1950s, which
were a ways downhill from 1910s, the schools were still lightyears better than
they are today.
I look
back fondly at the scientific and technological leadership which America
enjoyed during the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, when we built scads of nuclear of power
plants, put men on the moon, and achieved other feats of engineering that haven’t
been repeated in more recent times.
And I
sort of like the kind of race relations we had in 2008. I mean, they weren’t
perfect by a long shot, but the Democratic party had just elected the nation’s
first black president, the conservatives had a black man in the rightward-most
seat on the Supreme Court, and solid majorities in both parties were committed to
the idea that blacks and whites could live together as equals if they really wanted to.
White privilege, and the insistence that if you were born white then you were
born a racist, had not yet entered the mainstream.
So that,
to me, is what being a thoughtful reactionary means. You can’t just replace
blind faith in the bestness of the present/future with blind faith in the bestness
of your favourite era in the past.
Now to
answer the original question: Why is my being a reactionary inseparable from my
faith in liberal democracy?
To which I
respond: Because liberal democracy was much stronger in America’s past than in
its present.
Congress,
which is supposed to be the most powerful branch of government, has very
little role in making the laws these days. Nearly all meaningful policy is set
by the courts and the civil service. Most Americans follow professions in which
everything they do is rigidly shaped by compliance with innumerable regulations
made by the SEC, FCC, FAA, OSHA, USDA, and countless other unelected bureaucracies
– agencies which get reorganized by Congress every few decades, but otherwise are
running on autopilot.
Now, some
people will say that this argument to the effect that America is not a
democracy is flawed because the civil service (and even the courts) are
theoretically subject to a variety of congressional checks. However, in
practice the checks are never used. In much the same way, Britain is still officially a
monarchy, and the Queen is still theoretically in charge; she has nonetheless
chosen, in accordance with longstanding tradition, to always defer to her
ministers.
In other words, the people responsible for the replacement of American democracy with technocratic oligarchy are masters of the art of revolution within the form.
If you
want to hear the best arguments to the effect that democracy in today’s America
is a ceremonial affair in much the same way as monarchy in today’s United
Kingdom, then read Mencius Moldbug. Be warned, though: if you start reading his blog
from the beginning, it could take days before you get to where he hits his
stride. If you don’t have much time, here is a good place to begin.
Now, the
big difference between myself and Moldbug is that, to Moldbug, democracy is an
unworkable sham through and through, and Anglo-British politics have been going
downhill since the days of Charles Stuart. Me? I think that Moldbug’s beliefs
about the value of democracy (as opposed to its absence from
contemporary America) are dead wrong. Basically, I agree with Winston Churchill’s
observation that “democracy is the worst form of government, except all
those other forms that have been tried.”
To me it
seems undeniable that America’s national greatness, in our first century-and-a-half or so of independence, was inseparable from our democratic form of government.
Likewise, the British enjoyed unprecedented domestic peace, along with military,
economic, and scientific dominance in the centuries following 1689, largely
because of Britain’s democratic form of government.
And by “democratic
form of government”, I don’t just mean that people voted. What I mean is that
the political system was dominated by one or two elected Houses – in Britain,
the Commons, and in America, the Senate and House of Representatives – which alone
had the power to enact major changes in the laws, while other officials played
smaller roles and were accountable to the Houses if they abused their power.
Modern
America has lost its democratic character, not because the Senate and House no
longer exist or because the people no longer get to vote for their Senators and
Representatives, but because those Senators and Representatives wield very little
power.
And this didn’t
happen because the supporters of democracy were on the losing end of any sort
of armed struggle. There was no epic battle between those who wanted the Supreme Court to decide whether praying in the public schools should be prohibited and abortion should be legalized, and those who wanted that power to stay with voters or their elected representatives.
In the old days, that's what it would have taken. For example, when Oliver Cromwell decided that the House of Commons - which he led - should govern England alone and leave no power in the hands of the King or the House of Lords, he had to establish parliamentary supremacy by the sword. Establishing judicial supremacy in the United States didn't take that kind of effort; in other words, the 1960s didn't end with Earl Warren giving the order to behead the last Speaker of the House.
No, what
happened was that the Warren Court made a number of power grabs which made a
lot of conservatives mad, but not mad enough to put sufficient pressure on the
elected arm of the government to do anything about it. There were people like George Wallace who,
perhaps without intending it, devoted their careers to convincing the American
public that the main purpose of states’ rights was to defend segregation. And
on the other side there were technocratic liberals who were fine with the destruction
of representative government as long as it meant they could have their civil
rights reforms a few years earlier than Congress and the state houses would
have gotten around to passing them.
Perhaps
if the desire to defend “home rule” or whatever you call it had inspired more
civil disobedience on the part of the right, things would have turned out
differently. Perhaps if the decision to outlaw school prayer in Engel v. Vitale
had proven unenforceable except by sending US Marshals to beat noncompliant ten
and twelve-year-olds, we would have gotten our country back.
Perhaps
if 23 January 1973 had been America’s “Day of the Barricades” in which Congress
and the President had no choice but to either impose limits on judicial power, or else order
the army to go all Tiananmen Square on millions of civilians blocking the streets of every
major city, then radically altering the constitution would still require the
consent of Congress and the requisite three-fourths of the state legislatures.
But that isn’t what happened. During the 1960s – and to a lesser extent in the decades before and since – people on the left were far more willing than people on the right to put their own careers, safety, and freedom on the line in order to agitate for the causes they believed in. And because the left played the game harder, the left won all the prizes.
I don’t
even begrudge them many of these prizes. I said earlier than I think American race
relations reached their best point in 2008; well, that wouldn’t have happened
without the efforts of people like the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., whom I
once eulogized as America’s Last Great Statesmen on account of the fact that
nobody since King has led a mass-movement that was willing to make similar
sacrifices to achieve its purported goals.
But I do
regret the downfall of American democracy. And I think that our country – or its
successor states, in the event that America breaks into multiple pieces – will
be better off in the future if democracy somehow gets revived. And that is why
I call myself a democratic reactionary.
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