I am not sure why yesterday’s post about Andrew Sullivan
elicited comments about whether or not he is a conservative. Obviously, it
depends on what you mean by conservative. Right now, there is only one true
conservative in the presidential race, and, after tonight, there will probably not be any. Among the things that Republican voters are not looking for is … conservatism.
It looks as though they are going to get their wish.
For my part I find redeeming social value in Sullivan’s
thoughts on Plato’s warning about democracy. Not so much because I agree, but
because the description is apt. Besides, it is always good to consider the thoughts
of great minds… and Plato certainly counts among them.
Plato deemed democracy to be the breeding ground for
tyranny, and, as you know, America’s Founding Fathers were so fearful of it
that they established a constitutional republic, one that was not only less
likely to fall into the hands of a tyrant, but, was also less likely to fall
into multicultural anarchy.
As Sullivan points out correctly, the checks and
balances of the constitution have been beaten down. Worse yet, all aspects of everyday life have been politicized. The reason is not so much because we have become
more democratic, but because we are being tyrannized by the intellectual and
media elite. The cure for this tyranny is a return to the constitution, not an incipient tyrant.
Strangely enough, today's America corresponds to the type of government
that Plato would have favored. He did not quite understand that a nation
governed by a guardian class of philosopher-kings would resemble what we have
now. This elite has reconfigured and reconstructed society to fulfill Platonic
ideals of equality and justice.
However much truth lies in the notion that people turn to
tyrants to impose order on social chaos, it is also true that people turn to incipient
tyrants because they feel that they have been tyrannized by an unelected and often invisible elite.
As for the traditional ways of imposing order on social chaos, we
should mention that warfare, especially when it involves mass mobilization, can
and has served that purpose in the past.
In Plato’s thinking, Sullivan explains, democracy tends
toward the greatest freedom and equality. It is not so much the freedom of free
will and fair play as the freedom of the free-for-all. And it does not value
the equality of equal opportunity as much as it promotes the
equality that erases all differences. Equal means no one is better or worse. Thus, no one need feel ashamed of failure and no one has any incentive to improve.
The inhabitants of Plato’s version of
democracy have been dehumanized, deprived of the social ties, their cultural
traditions and even their labor. They are living to fulfill an ideal, not living to promote social harmony. We recall that the greatest
twentieth centuries tyrannies, Communist governments always claimed to be
democracies.
Sullivan writes:
Democracy,
for him, I discovered, was a political system of maximal freedom and equality,
where every lifestyle is allowed and public offices are filled by a lottery.
And the longer a democracy lasted, Plato argued, the more democratic it would
become. Its freedoms would multiply; its equality spread. Deference to any sort
of authority would wither; tolerance of any kind of inequality would come under
intense threat; and multiculturalism and sexual freedom would create a city or
a country like “a many-colored cloak decorated in all hues.”
In Plato’s ideal democracy, there is no deference to
authority and no respect for achievement. Intellectual elites resent the fact
that they do not control the means of production, so they vilify and diminish those that do.
After a time everyone is being threatened with reprisals for
thinking the wrong thought… so they meekly acquiesce to their ideological
overlords.
David French quotes a scene reported by Rod Dreher (via
Maggie’s Farm):
One of
his New York City readers wrote in to say that her 14-year-old daughter had
just finished dressing in a city locker room when a grown man stepped from the
showers wearing only a towel. Girls as young as seven were present, and they
were staring at the man with “concerned expressions.” The reader ends her
e-mail with, “It sucks to be a parent these days.”
He adds:
This is
how culture wars are lost: through the slow accumulation of individually
defensible but collectively unjustifiable decisions not to resist. It’s the
decision that objecting during diversity training simply isn’t worth the
hassle. It’s the decision not to say anything when you see a colleague or
fellow student facing persecution because of their beliefs. It’s a life habit
of always taking the path of least resistance, keeping your head down, and
doing your best to preserve your own family and career. The small fights don’t
matter anyway, right?
I
recently spoke to a mid-level executive at a major corporation who had been
forced to sit through mandatory “inclusivity” training. The topic was
transgender rights, and the trainer proceeded to spout far-left ideology as
fact, going so far as to label all who disagreed with the notion that a man can
become a woman “transphobic.” I asked if anyone objected to any part of the
training, and the response was immediate. “Are you crazy? No one wants to deal
with HR.”
Of course, no culture progresses naturally into the form we
are now seeing. Human beings do not willingly give up their freedom. They might
be tricked out of it; they might be talked out of it; they might be forced to
give it up. Cultures do not just become overly infatuated with ideals.They are transformed when a group of people hijacks the culture and imposes its will on
everyone else.
More importantly, Plato’s and Sullivan’s failure to see that
this cultural revolution is really a coup d’etat absolves those in charge of
all responsibility.
I quote Sullivan’s rendering of Plato:
This
rainbow-flag polity, Plato argues, is, for many people, the fairest of regimes.
The freedom in that democracy has to be experienced to be believed — with shame
and privilege in particular emerging over time as anathema. But it is
inherently unstable. As the authority of elites fades, as Establishment values
cede to popular ones, views and identities can become so magnificently diverse
as to be mutually uncomprehending. And when all the barriers to equality,
formal and informal, have been removed; when everyone is equal; when elites are
despised and full license is established to do “whatever one wants,” you arrive
at what might be called late-stage democracy. There is no kowtowing to
authority here, let alone to political experience or expertise.
As I said, the new cultural values are not popular values.
They are imposed by a different group of elites. And, as French pointed out,
one is obliged to kowtow to their authority. If you don’t it’s bad for your
career and bad for business.
In Plato’s democracy, patriarchy becomes a relic, children
no longer respect their parents or teachers, no one has a sense of shame, animals
are regarded as equal to people and foreigners are made equal to citizens. Does
this not sound like what passes for today’s progressive agenda. The only
difference is that "progressive" is a misnomer. It is regressive and atavistic. It has nothing to
do with progress.
In Sullivan’s words:
The very
rich come under attack, as inequality becomes increasingly intolerable.
Patriarchy is also dismantled: “We almost forgot to mention the extent of the
law of equality and of freedom in the relations of women with men and men with
women.” Family hierarchies are inverted: “A father habituates himself to be
like his child and fear his sons, and a son habituates himself to be like his
father and to have no shame before or fear of his parents.” In classrooms, “as
the teacher ... is frightened of the pupils and fawns on them, so the students
make light of their teachers.” Animals are regarded as equal to humans; the
rich mingle freely with the poor in the streets and try to blend in. The
foreigner is equal to the citizen.
5 comments:
This is the best summation of the state of the nation (and of the world) that I have seen in the blogs to date. Maybe the reading of Plato in the past served as something of an inoculation against the disease of direct democracy: the jettisoning by the Left of the classic wisdom of the "old white guys" is not an accident.
I got off the Andrew Sullivan train when he insisted Sarah Palin's special needs kid was actually her unwed daughters child. He probably still holds to that today.
And just think, I saved ten minutes wasted from my life by not reading his crap today.
"Strangely enough, today's America corresponds to the type of government that Plato would have favored. He did not quite understand that a nation governed by a guardian class of philosopher-kings would resemble what we have now. This elite has reconfigured and reconstructed society to fulfill Platonic ideals of equality and justice."
Plato's civil model is quite similar to the Marxist model:
Destroy the family and mold society and 'The New Man' to your liking.
Children taken from families,and "raised" by the State.
'It takes a village!'
Stuart, your posting hit the center of the target,IMO,when you mentioned:
"As I said, the new cultural values are not popular values. They are imposed by a different group of elites. "
-shoe
Stuart: As Sullivan points out correctly, the checks and balances of the constitution have been beaten down. Worse yet, all aspects of everyday life have been politicized. The reason is not so much because we have become more democratic, but because we are being tyrannized by the intellectual and media elite. The cure for this tyranny is a return to the constitution, not an incipient tyrant.
Sullivan does offer a peculiar predicament. We moved from "backroom deals" by "old white men" to manage power to expanding freedoms for all. And according to Stuart, now its the intellectuals who have taken over power somehow. But if we can't trust the "old white men", and we can't trust "the intellectuals", then who do we trust?
I think "a return to the constitution" is just magical thinking, a way of avoiding the problem of power in times of decline when the rich are sucking up all the wealth. The problem for me comes down to "everyone wants power and freedom and no one wants responsibility for the consequences."
So in that regard a dictator at least breaks that pattern. You pick a dictator who has all the power, and all the responsibility and you have a military coup when he fails and pick a new scapegoat dictator.
I saw David Brooks new article that seem related, if we assume the platonic ideal is maximum freedom for all, like the Liberals and Libertarians claim they want, even if the Liberals become "conservative" against freedoms of the rich, while the Libertarians would reduce practical freedom as economic freedom of the rich to do what they will. But Brooks sees the problems of choices, and not enough wisdom to do that well.
In any case, while we still have freedom, the advice is good:
www.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/opinion/the-choice-explosion.html
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It’s becoming incredibly important to learn to decide well, to develop the techniques of self-distancing to counteract the flaws in our own mental machinery. The Heath book is a very good compilation of those techniques.
For example, they mention the maxim, assume positive intent. When in the midst of some conflict, start with the belief that others are well intentioned. It makes it easier to absorb information from people you’d rather not listen to.
They highlight Suzy Welch’s 10-10-10 rule. When you’re about to make a decision, ask yourself how you will feel about it 10 minutes from now, 10 months from now and 10 years from now. People are overly biased by the immediate pain of some choice, but they can put the short-term pain in long-term perspective by asking these questions.
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I like the "assume positive intent" maxim, something that is exactly the opposite of Trump's "me first", assume others are trying to screw with you.
The 10-10-10 rule is certainly harder, and shows the problems of leadership as well. In times of massive change, whether advances or threats of decline, no one knows what the future holds, and there's no value in overly investing in any given future.
Ares, I'm sure you're the most open-minded person you know. You prove it here every day.
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