George F. Will, far left, in happier political days.
I try to keep my election posts, for the most part, all in one thread as sort of a running contemporary history thread. But the most recent item, on George F. Will's recent column urging Republicans to abandon their party, and his former, party, which I featured here;
probably deserves a closer look in various ways.
But what Will urges, and whether it sound for a lot of conservatives, raises a lot of interesting questions.
Will, I'd note, is a columnist I've long admired. I should note there that I read columnists from both sides of the political fence. He's a conservative columnist I've always liked and still like. This column, and indeed Will himself, however, more than anything point to the oddity and deficiency of a two party system.
Let's start with the obvious, which we've discussed before. A two party system, which has become institutionalized in the United States, makes no sense at all and in fact is anti-democratic. Will's departing the GOP in 2016 illustrates that in a way that is dramatic and recent, but not unique.
Will is an intellectual conservative. Trump is not. Trump is a sort of quasi libertarian, sort of, populist. There's some common ground there, but frankly there's a lot of common ground between quasi libertarians and the radical Democratic left. Indeed, the candidate most like Trump on the Presidential scene is, in some significant ways, Bernie Sanders. The politician that most resembles Trump today who is simply on the political map may be AOC.
Huey Long, the legendary Louisiana populist.
That may seem like an odd thing to say but all of those politicians are populist without a deep attachment to a philosophical core in a lot of what they say. They'd hotly dispute that, but its their pitch to populism that most characterizes them. Their meme, if you will, is Huey Long.
Now Trump has shrewdly overcoming this by allying himself with Mitch McConnell, who has done the same, for their mutual political self-interests. But the significant thing here in this post is that Trump and Will aren't really in the same political party, if we assume that Will is a Republican. Will and McConnell, however, are in the same party, which may explain part of Will's overall anger that at his fellow conservatives who haven't followed his path.
The question then becomes for people who are in the same party as McConnell and Will on where to go.
That's where what Will urges will not work for large numbers of the people who admire him and want to follow his lead.
Will is an anomaly among Buckleyite conservatives. He's one of them, but in significant ways he's not like them at all.
William F. Buckley with Ronald Reagan.
Buckley defined and informed the modern conservative movement. He was an intellectual who gave a philosophical base to a conservative movement in the United States which had never had one before. There had been conservatives, but they were instinctual conservatives, with their conservatism often founded on nothing in particular other than a gut feeling. Liberals in the country, however, tended to be the opposite. They always had a strong philosophical base. Ironically, they lack one now to the degree they once had, having abandoned much of the intellectual core that once defined them. This is, indeed, making them much more like the populist we noted above, who also lack a philosophical core.
Buckley's vision was so strong that over time it displaced the old conservatism that had been around for the entire 20th Century through the 1950s. It first started to assert itself in the late 1960s but it really started to come into its own in the late 1970s and saw its first victory with the election of Ronald Reagan, a President who was hated by liberals to nearly the same degree which Trump presently is, but for completely different reasons. Founded on a real intellectual core, the Reagan reforms of government were deep and very long lasting, still exhibiting a major influence on the government today. Anyone born after the Reagan Administration is unlikely to be able to grasp how different the government was prior to that, and how both the right and the left tended to look back on the model of Franklin Roosevelt's Administration and emulate it. By way of an example, Richard Nixon would be regarded as a Democratic centrist today if he were running for office.
Buckleyite conservatives, held, at their core, that there were certain things that were dictated by nature, of which human nature was part. That defined their approach towards everything and their view was, to a large degree, Thomist in nature. Interestingly, this was also true of one of the two branches of American liberalism that emerged in the mid-19th Century and which was still influential throughout Buckley's life, which would explain why Buckleyite conservatives and some liberals were easily able to come together on some issues, civil rights being primary among them.
Holders of that view held that nature was real and physical, and that human beings were subject as part of that to human nature. They also held that the world was broken and always would be. Humans were incapable of producing a Heaven on Earth, but they would do as well as possible by observing, accepting and acting in accordance with nature, to include human nature. As noted, one significant branch of American liberalism held the same thing and differed only on the degree to which human interaction could and would improve things. Conservatives tended to take the view that except in certain areas conserving action was the best approach, whereas liberals tended to take the opposite view.
In contrast to both of these veins of thought were those liberals who held that nature was solely subject to human definition, including human definition, and anything could be changed to make a self-created Utopia. This has actually come to underpin liberal philosophy in recent years and it constitutes its underlying weakness in basically being based on nothing. In its most extreme form, it underlined the philosophy advanced by Marx and it came to influence the global left through his massive early 20th Century influence even though its contrary to nature and its application tend to be extraordinary problematic.
Buckley’s influence on the conservative movement was so strong that he can basically be regarded as modern American conservatisms, and perhaps even western conservatism’s, founder. As he advanced in intellectual spheres he gathered to himself those who he influenced and in distinct ways formed their thought. So its important to note that Buckley’s thoughts weren’t just Thomist in their basic nature but they shared an underlying belief. Buckley was a devout Catholic.
More than a few, but not all, of Buckley’s early acolytes were likewise deeply Catholic men, although not surprisingly as time went on many of them fell in comparison. Buckley was one of those interesting examples of somebody who remained personally and professionally loyal to his deep convictions and cannot be accused of hypocrisy no matter what a person may think of his ideas and ideals. Many of those he likewise influenced are also highly admirable in that way, but not all have proven to be. At any rate, the significant thing here is that not only did Buckleyites take a view that conservatism was founded on nature and that human nature was part of nature, but underlying it they accepted the proof of God’s existence, something that has to be denied in denying nature itself, as the ultimate underpinning of the natural order.
Which makes Will the exception and which may explain why his views aren’t really ones that other conservatives can readily accept.
George F. Will, age 79 now, was the son of a philosophy professor and was provided with an excellent early education. His BA was in religion from Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut, but unlike Buckley and many of his close fellows, Will is not a religious man and has claimed to hold atheistic views which in fact don’t come across that way. A protestant by heritage, his first wife was a diehard Presbyterian and his children were raised in that faith. That may explain his view as much as anything as his primary exposure would have been to Calvinism rather than to the Apostolic faiths which are the foundation of modern western thought. Will himself really basically places himself in the category of being unsure about God but disinterested this oddly places him in the position of being a supporter of religion while not being a member of any. He’s frank about his views on natural law and nature underpinning conservatism.
Will came up through Buckley and was the editor of Buckley’s magazine National Review at an early age. But in his later years his problem has been that its become increasingly obvious that his work, while always interesting, actually built simply on the shifting sand of being a conservative without having a deep foundation. Indeed, he has an avowed dislike of intellectuals even though he is one, which in some ways may be his way of avoiding the obvious, nature exists and there’s a reason for it, you simply can’t say it is.
But that view is why Will can take the positions he’s taking and not face the same issues that others do. Will really isn’t loyal to anything in particular as nothing makes him be loyal. So there are no moral issues for him, at the end of the day. And that makes his philosophy inherently weak.
Other conservatives can’t take that view in an election For those whose conservatism is founded on the metaphysical, rather than the physical, the natural order cannot easily be departed from. Voters who regard all human life as sacred don’t have the option that Will does of voting for an order that not only supports abortion but which would increase it, for example, and that’s only one such example.
Indeed, seemingly only having the common urban American’s view of the world, Will’s world outlook is remarkable small, and that also makes his election choices remarkably broad. He’s shown disinterest in some large issues of the day that require scientific inquiry. And for those things that many Americans engage in and have a fanatic loyalty to, he only seems to be a fan of baseball outside of his office. I’m a baseball fan too, but to just have this intellectual life, and baseball, is amazingly narrow.
Of course, I don’t know him, and all of these things may prove to be untrue. But they seem to be, and explain why Will can argue to just throw his former party to the wolves, accept the inevitable outcome that would mean, and then rebuild towards a new conservatism. He doesn’t have to worry about the now in that analysis.
