Liberal theory posits we are by nature “free and independent” but no human being anywhere has ever come into the world, nor been raised to maturity as “free and independent” creatures. We are rather are rather creatures of duty, obligation, and – one hopes – gratitude who are born, and most often live and die, dependent upon others. The great task of civilizations has been to sustain and support familial, social and cultural structures and practices that perpetuate and deepen personal and intergenerational forms of obligation and gratitude, of duty and indebtedness. However, liberal philosophy is based on the theoretical construct that humans are by nature autonomous, free and independent, and that it is the role and function of the State to realize personal, national, and even globalized individualism.
What American political elites feverishly seek to export to Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and Russia would therefore be best characterized as anti-civilization. Within American academic circles, meanwhile, no serious critique of liberal ideology can take place because liberalism itself sets the parameters for discussion. All classical liberals like Friedrich Hayek and progressive liberals like John Dewey have to argue about is whether it is free enterprise or state bureaucracy which will most effectively liberate the individual from nationality, ethnicity, sex, and religion; to question whether absolute liberation from such sources of identity and meaning is desirable is to instantly place one’s self outside the realm of “respectable” (i.e. liberal) discourse.
“[A]s liberalism becomes more perfectly ‘itself,’ it will become more and more difficult to explain some of its endemic features as merely accidental or unintended,” Deneen declares, adding that “it is now the task for those with imagination and courage, and a deep commitment not only to humanity, but to human beings, to begin to envision an alternative future to the one to which we now seem destined, which will focus especially on beginning to put together what liberalism has torn asunder.''
Deneen is rightfully hesitant about turning this rebuilding project into yet another systematic and comprehensive ideological program. Instead, he contents himself with identifying a few rules of thumb. One, “subsidiarity should be strongly encouraged,” two, “conservatism needs to defend, where they still exist, aristocratic inheritances of the past, and to seek the creation of new forms where possible,” three, “conservatism ought to resist the modernist urge toward homogenization and monoculture,” and four, conservatism “needs to stress an education steeped in knowledge of, and appreciation for, the past.”
In other words, a true conservatism for America would affirm America’s place in Western civilization rather than define America in revolutionary opposition to its European heritage. As most readers are well aware, this affirmation of the West has long been the stance of Paul Gottfried and other members of the increasingly marginalized group sometimes identified as “paleoconservatives.” And when we think through the implications, Professor Deneen’s principles are necessarily a little more controversial than he might want to admit publicly. He devotes scant attention to that particular region which gave the world so much of what is distinctively “American” – from George Washington and country music to Flannery O’Connor and mint juleps. For my part, however, I find myself drawn back to John Crowe Ransom, an agrarian-localist figure whom some might even deem the equal of Wendell Berry. According to Ransom, “the South in its history to date has exhibited what nowhere else on a large scale has been exhibited on this continent north of Mexico, a culture based on European principles which has lasted as long as a century […] European principles must look to the South if they are to be perpetuated in this country.”
Of course even before the debacle at Charlottesville and its exploitation by the Left, any mention of the South was wont to cause many otherwise intelligent conservatives to speak evasively or suffer sudden attacks of amnesia. Meanwhile establishmentarian mouthpieces like David Brooks consistently push upon impressionable young Southern conservatives a “skeptical, untrusting, even accusatory perspective” vis-a-vis the Southland. So dissidents must make the point firmly, loudly, and repeatedly: Without Dixie, there is no America to conserve. For in the American context the term subsidiarity inescapably evokes states’ rights; aristocratic inheritance necessarily includes the ideals of the Southern gentleman and belle; resistance to monoculture means opposing attempts to “Americanize” the South; appreciation for the past implies reflective and respectful treatment of the Confederate dead, instead of ordering their descendants to dance on their graves. In short, to envision an alternative future we must first summon the nerve to radically and candidly rethink America’s historical pieties. To be sure, Unionists are still free to insist that the War Between the States was a necessary evil, but at the very least they will sooner or later have to give more attention to the “evil” part, especially given the extent to which Mr. Lincoln’s revolutionary crusade for the Union resembled the Italian and German wars of unification.
In the meantime, Deneen is to be commended for exploring in detail the impact upon the American mind of indiscriminate consolidation, centralization, and cultural leveling. Perhaps no discipline has been perverted so badly as education, Professor Deneen’s own vocation:
We are engaged in the human equivalent of strip-mining, identifying “rational and industrious” young people in every city and town and hamlet through standardized testing, extracting them for processing at one of our refining centers (universities), and then excreting them now as productive units of economic productive to be conveyed to a hub of economic activity while leaving behind a landscape stripped bare of talented and industrious people that God thought wise to distribute widely.
While the step away from internationalism and toward nationalism heralded by populist conservatism is a welcome step in the right direction, it is still only the first step of many. Even before it became fragmented by multiculturalist policies and the open borders lobby, the American “nation” would have been more accurately described as a hegemonic regime rather than as a
patria. So Deneen is surely right about one thing. A revival of human-scale patriotism is called for. The gifted and ambitious youth should not be taught how to escape from Flyover Country, but about his neighbors, kin, and countrymen, and his obligations toward them.