Cultural libertarianism the real threat to America?

[Matthew Gaylor]

[Note from Matthew Gaylor: I could have titled this essay Jonah 
Goldberg doesn't get it.  Mr. Goldberg is the online editor for 
National Review and has written a series of attack pieces on 
libertarianism.  Below is the newest example.  I did read one line 
that jumped from the page that is the crystallization of his view of 
conservatism when he wrote: "You foster good character by limiting 
freedom".  Then curiously Goldberg writes: "I've done lots of things 
in my life that are "un-conservative." Even now, my personal tastes 
are not entirely consistent with what most people associate with 
conservatism."  I can only regard his appeasement a personal 
rejection of the conservative values he is talking about, which I 
suppose he made in hopes of still being able to get laid-  But on to 
the "meat" of his argument-  I'm not entirely sure what ideology 
Goldberg wants imposed on us?  It surely can't be an American one as 
outlined in our first amendment" "Congress shall make no law 
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free 
exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the 
press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to 
petition the government for a redress of grievances."  I don't see a 
constitutional mandate to impose any religion on anybody? Nor can I 
see where limiting freedom by continuing the war on drugs to be 
anything beneficial?  I really have nothing but contempt and disdain 
for writers such as Goldberg who want to impose some sort of ill 
defined governmental "conservatism" while personally considering 
himself a member of the elite which doesn't have to follows rules 
made for the rest of the sheep.]

<http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg121201.shtml>

Jonah Goldberg can be reached at (JonahEmail at aol.com).

Freedom Kills
John Walker, Andrew Sullivan, and the libertarian threat.

By Jonah Goldberg, NRO editor

December 12, 2001 6:25 p.m.

First, George Bush refers to "the evildoers" at every turn, but 
insists on pronouncing it "the evil Dewars." And now the major news 
networks are constantly referring to John Walker, the American 
Taliban, as "Johnny Walker": "Is Johnny Walker un-American?" "Does 
Johnny Walker represent a viper in our midst?" etc.

Well, you can count me out of the "war on terrorism" if it becomes a 
proxy war on our most cherished brown liquors.

What John Walker Says About the Right

So let's talk about John Walker, the man, and leave poor Johnny out 
of this. Indeed, it's turning out that John is one of the most 
interesting cultural Rorschach tests we've had in a while.

If you haven't been following the argument, you should read the 
article in yesterday's New York Times comparing the life of Mike 
Spann - the "God and country" CIA agent who was killed in Afghanistan 
- to that of John Walker, the son of hippy-dippy divorced parents 
from Marin County, California. The article put some flesh on what a 
lot of conservatives have been saying over the last week. Spann is a 
red-state guy, Walker a blue-stater. Spann is from Alabama: He's 
religious, from a strong, stable family, and he always wanted to 
fight for his country. Walker comes from a wishy-washy, 
whatever-floats-your-boat family living in the shadow of - where 
else? - San Francisco.

The always eye-opening Shelby Steele made the definitive "blue state" 
argument in Monday's Wall Street Journal. In brief, Steele argues 
that Walker is a product of overly permissive, fashionably 
anti-American Left-coast liberalism.

Andrew Sullivan, of the coincidentally named AndrewSullivan.com, also 
saw Walker's obvious cultural significance, labeling him a poster boy 
of blue-state culture. But Sullivan then backed off from the "blue 
state" argument, after his readers persuaded him that he had it 
wrong. The Walker case is "much more complex and more interesting 
than my original impression," Sullivan writes. One of the arguments 
that persuaded him to drop his "blue state" analysis is the fact that 
Walker became a "right-wing" fanatic. He excerpts a letter from a 
reader making this case:

Maybe I missed something, but I am not sure how a religious 
fundamentalist and zealot like John Walker is an embodiment of the 
American Hating Left. He is a right wing religious nut just like the 
guy arrested here in Cincinnati last week for sending fake anthrax to 
abortion clinics. While you may be correct that his permissive 
parents and his multicultural context may have produced him (sounds 
like something some right wing nut case would say about 
homosexuality, right Andrew?), what it produced was a right wing 
Islamic religious nut who hates the West and America for its 
decadence (which he enjoyed and benefited from) and sin, just like 
his brothers on the right wing Christian extreme (like maybe Tim 
McVeigh, who was a Catholic to boot?). Let's at least be honest that 
Walker represents some of the worst of American permissiveness and 
multiculturalism, while being the embodiment of right wing religious 
fanaticism. I think we all get caught on this one.

The lefties, meanwhile, have been slow out of the gate, but basically 
think that tagging the Left with Walker is just so much McCarthyism. 
But that's not what I want to talk about.

The Problem of Andrew Sullivanism
What I do want to talk about is the problem with the conservative 
critique of Walker and with Sullivan's approach in general.

It's not surprising that Sullivan changed his mind after reading that 
letter. After all, he had already made it a project, if not a 
mission, to establish that so-called "theocons" (i.e. religious 
conservatives, particularly Christian ones) practiced a form of 
Talibanism - long before most people in the United States had ever 
heard of the Taliban.

For example, in the cover story for the current New Republic, on the 
future of conservatism, Sullivan uses the war on Islamic extremists 
to argue that America, and conservatives in particular, need to drop 
our own support for such "extremists" at home. "It is hard to fight a 
war against politico-religious extremism," Sullivan writes, "if you 
are winking at milder versions in your own political coalition." This 
is reminiscent of his argument during the Clinton impeachment 
battles. "For the new conservatives," Sullivan wrote in 1998 in The 
New York Times Magazine, "the counterattack on homosexual legitimacy 
is of a piece with the battle against presidential adultery."

Sullivan's essay in The New Republic is certainly worth reading, but 
in the end his conclusion is that all branches of conservatism are 
wrong, and that they should basically adopt Sullivan's own quirky, 
iconoclastic, personal brand of conservatism, complete with his 
imperative of incorporating gays into the mainstream conservative 
movement.

In a nutshell, this is my problem with Andrew Sullivan's 
conservatism. He's a brilliant and charming guy. But he seems to 
reject or critique all forms of conservatism that don't dovetail with 
his own personal priorities. I'm not referring solely, or even 
primarily, to his homosexuality or advocacy of gay rights. From what 
I can tell, Sullivan's conservatism is informed not just by his 
sexuality but by his Catholicism, his blue-collar British roots, his 
serious hang-ups about British authoritarian culture, and - not least 
- by the fact that he's a follower of the British philosopher Michael 
Oakeshott (if I were smarter and more patient, I think I'd be an 
Oakeshottian too) and a protigi of the classical conservative Harvey 
Mansfield. Moreover, Sullivan's conservatism isn't just informed by 
these things, it's informed by the perhaps insurmountable 
contradictions between these things.

For example: Oakeshott had a brilliantly nuanced and highly tolerant 
understanding of conservatism and of liberal society (he believed, I 
think, that the best metaphor for a good society was a good 
conversation). Meanwhile, Catholicism is wonderful, but it's hardly a 
democratic institution. And as for Mansfield, he's a leading opponent 
of gay rights. Further, anti-traditionalism in Britain may have its 
uses, but in America anti-traditionalism runs against many of the 
things conservatives rightly want to preserve. As Hayek pointed out, 
in America you can be a conservative traditionalist and still be a 
champion of liberty - because our institutions preserve liberty 
rather than combat it.

Anyway, my point is: That's all great. These sometimes competing, 
sometimes complimentary impulses make Sullivan a joy to read (and 
talk to). But the extrapolation of one's personal beliefs - or, more 
accurately, one's personality - to a broad universal philosophy is at 
minimum a form of arrogance, and at maximum a recipe for disaster.

Take me, for example. I've done lots of things in my life that are 
"un-conservative." Even now, my personal tastes are not entirely 
consistent with what most people associate with conservatism. But, I 
do not argue that conservatism would be better off if everybody 
adopted my own personal choices and tastes. Rather, I try to make the 
case for old-style conservatism in a way lots of people like me can 
relate to. The fact that I can't or won't live up to the ideal may 
make me hypocritical to a certain extent, but that doesn't mean the 
message is wrong. As the moral philosopher Max Scheler reportedly 
said: The sign that points to Boston doesn't have to go there.

Sullivan is right to criticize certain conservatives for being too 
ideological. But what he doesn't give credit for, to these same 
conservatives, is that a little ideology is always necessary in order 
to remember what your ideas are.

Chinese-Menu Culture

If Sullivan is guilty of translating his personal priorities into a 
public agenda, he at least does so by speaking in the vocabulary of 
morality. His arguments for everything from gay marriage to the war 
on terrorism are deeply moral and proudly conservative.

The real villains - the ones who take this sort of political 
solipsism a great deal further than Sullivan - are to be found 
elsewhere, and John Walker is a logical consequence of their 
political agenda. You see, the real enemy isn't the cultural 
liberalism Shelby Steele describes. It's the cultural libertarianism 
that is rapidly replacing liberalism as the real threat to America, 
and the true opposition to conservatism.

Cultural libertarianism basically says that whatever ideology, 
religion, cult, belief, creed, fad, hobby, or personal fantasy you 
like is just fine so long as you don't impose it on anybody else, 
especially with the government. You want to be a Klingon? Great! 
Attend the Church of Satan? Hey man, if that does it for ya, go for 
it. You want to be a "Buddhist for Jesus"? Sure, mix and match, man; 
we don't care. Hell, you can even be an observant Jew, a devout 
Catholic or a faithful Baptist, or a lifelong heroin addict - they're 
all the same, in the eyes of a cultural libertarian. Just remember: 
Keep it to yourself if you can. Don't claim that being a Lutheran is 
any better than being a member of the Hale-Bopp cult, and never use 
the government to advance your view. If you can do that, then - 
whatever floats your boat.

Of course, liberalism subscribes to something very similar, but 
today's liberalism is more of a condescending pose. It finds exotic 
ideologues - Marxists, black separatists, transgender theorists, 
whatever - fashionable and interesting as entertainment. The liberals 
who run the New York Times are simply thrilled to have these sorts of 
cultural rejectionists at their cocktail parties. But very few of 
them want their kids to become any such thing. They want their kids 
to go to private schools, attend an Ivy League or comparable 
liberal-arts college in New England, and become nice tolerant 
stockbrokers who are extra-careful to donate generously to the United 
Way, 'cause that might help people of color.

But, at the same time, modern liberals hate traditional orthodoxies. 
If you're a pious Zoroastrian, they will show you off to their 
friends as if you were an exotic fertility mask they bought on a 
vacation safari. But if you are a pious Baptist, don't wait by the 
phone, because you won't be invited over at all. And, of course, 
liberals see no problem with using the government to impose their 
cultural beliefs on others; they just won't admit that's what they're 
doing.

In this sense, cultural libertarians are less bigoted than their 
liberal cousins. The libertarians think all ideologies - so long as 
there's no governmental component - are equal.

But of course, the flip side of this is that cultural libertarianism 
is essentially a form of arrogant nihilism. There are no universal 
truths or even group truths (i.e., the authority of tradition, 
patriotism, etc.) - only personal ones. According to cultural 
libertarianism, we should all start believing in absolutely nothing, 
until we find whichever creed or ideology fits us best. We can pick 
from across the vast menu of human diversity - from all religions and 
cultures, real and imagined - until we find one that fits our own 
personal preferences. Virginia Postrel can write triumphantly that 
the market allows Americans to spend $8 billion on porn and $3 
billion at Christian bookstores, because she isn't willing to say 
that one is any better, or any worse, than the other.

Unreasonable Reason

The leading champions of this ideology are the folks over at Reason 
magazine. Nick Gillespie, who recently replaced Postrel as the 
editor, is a voluptuary of the idea that we can all have 
individualized, designer cultures. While he's got a healthy disdain 
for identity politics, Gillespie keeps going beyond that, and argues 
that people should be able to be whatever they want. Perhaps because 
cultural libertarianism is so popular on the Left these days, 
Gillespie recently told the Washington Post that he will try to woo 
anti-drug-war liberals, and others on the Left, to the magazine.

For a long time, but now more than ever, Reason has essentially 
argued that being a drug addict is a lifestyle choice like any other. 
Because, hey, who are we to judge? Indeed, Gillespie is very fond of 
the usual argument of pro-drug libertarians: I've done lots of drugs, 
and I turned out okay - so why should I tell other people they can't? 
In the latest issue, featuring a big neon sign spelling "DRUGS" on 
the cover, Gillespie confesses that when he was younger, he did "pot 
and alcohol, mostly, but also acid, mescaline, Ecstasy, mushrooms, 
coke and meth... Mostly I did drugs because they were fun and I liked 
the way I felt when I was high." In other words, if it's good for me, 
it's good for everybody.

So what does all of this have to do with John Walker? Well, John 
Walker's father has told various interviewers that he was just 
delighted that his son believed in something. He liked the fact that 
his son had "passion" for something. The fact that it was a 
thumb-in-the-eye to traditional Western values made him more exotic, 
to be sure. But that was just gravy.

You don't turn children into responsible adults by giving them 
absolute freedom. You foster good character by limiting freedom, and 
by channeling energies into the most productive avenues. That's what 
all good schools, good families, and good societies do. The Boy 
Scouts don't throw a pocketknife to a kid and say, "Knock yourself 
out, kid. I'll be back in a couple hours." The cultural libertarians 
want to do precisely that.

Someone threw John Walker a copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X 
and said, "Knock yourself out, kid." From there, left to his own 
devices, he slid down a long slope to the Taliban - because nobody 
had the moral courage or maturity to put him on the right path. He 
could just as easily have become another Columbine spree-killer, or a 
drug addict - or, perhaps, a fireman. But any of these, it seems, 
would be a surprise to his father.

It's hip and cool to say, "Be whatever you want." But - as in the 
case of the Boy Scout with the pocketknife - it's all fun and games 
until somebody loses an eye. If you tell kids they can believe in 
anything (and that anybody who disagrees is a bigot), you will 
eventually breed a bunch of kids who despise the very openness you 
champion.

Western civilization in general and American culture in particular 
are remarkably, almost uniquely, open to and tolerant of competing 
views and faiths. That's wonderful. But pluralism is not, to borrow a 
phrase, a suicide pact. Chesterton pointed out that when a man stops 
believing in God, he won't believe in nothing, he'll believe in 
anything. God isn't necessarily the issue here. But the principle is 
the same. Humans, especially children, very much want to believe in 
things. If we don't bother to teach - or impose - certain Western 
values on our own people, they will embrace values that are neither 
open nor tolerant. Belief in "something" just isn't good enough.

__________________________________________________________________________
Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
---



**************************************************************************
Subscribe to Freematt's Alerts: Pro-Individual Rights Issues
Send a blank message to: freematt at coil.com with the words subscribe FA
on the subject line. List is private and moderated (7-30 messages per week)
Matthew Gaylor, (614) 313-5722  ICQ: 106212065   Archived at 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fa/
**************************************************************************