Wake up, fellow conservatives: the leftist enemy we oppose is ourselves

Over at American Thinker, William Staneski has an article called “The Drumbeat” which is about the ubiquitous leftist ideology that surrounds us. There is much truth in the piece, but also the huge fallacy that these leftist ideas only come from the left, and that “we conservatives” are standing against them. The reality, as a commenter with a distinctly traditionalist point of view makes clear, is that so-called conservatives share or support most of the same liberal attitudes—“tolerant, diverse, non-judgmental, non-discriminatory, egalitarian, politically correct, multicultural, globalist, and collectivist”—that the article attributes solely to the left.

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William Staneski doesn’t seem to have any other articles online, but he had a long exchange with blogger Thomas Brewton at The View from 1776 in 2005. Staneski is clearly some kind of trad con, concerned about the loss of constitutional federalism, encroaching godlessness, and demographic invasion.

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Boris S. writes:

I wanted to read the article sympathetically, and I agree with the author’s overall outlook and much of what is said. But I was very much annoyed with two aspects of the article:

1) It seems that conservatives, and especially those on the hard right, use the term “Marxist” in much the same way that liberals use “Fascist,” i.e., as anything deemed not desirable. For example, Staneski’s article equates “cultural Marxism” with extreme relativism, the belief that there is no truth. I don’t know a whole lot about actual Marxism but I doubt that those who historically have referred to themselves as Marxists actually believed anything like this. Certainly, I’d be very surprised if extreme relativism is required by Marxism. Elsewhere (possibly including VFR), I have seen the term Marxism associated with (among other things) racial egalitarianism, PC, the belief that IQ tests are irredeemably flawed and irrelevant, extreme moral libertinism, and the dumbing down of education. Note that I’m not claiming that these phenomena are unrelated; rather, I’m questioning whether it is right to call them Marxist. For example, in the Soviet Union the education (at least in technical subjects) was at a very high level—something that would be difficult to achieve with a relativistic and hyper-egalitarian regime. Also, sexual mores in USSR were positively puritanical compared to the post-1960s America. These are just a couple of the examples of the quintessential Marxist state contradicting the tenets of modern leftism that are commonly called “Marxist” by conservatives.

2) Staneski mentions “modern physics” as part, or a symptom of, a leftist nihilistic philosophical movement along with modern art, atonal music, and scientific materialism. As a PhD student in physics, I’d be very interested to know what the author’s problem is with what he calls modern physics. He might even have a legitimate point (I can think of a few possibilities of what he could have in mind), but he doesn’t bother to explain, as if his audience will know exactly what he is talking about. More likely, he’s throwing a cheap shot based on some mistaken notion that he’s picked up from someone who is ignorant or dishonest. Physics (and science in general) certainly says nothing about morality and the existence of right and wrong. Casually denigrating science doesn’t (and oughtn’t) do conservatives’ credibility any good.

LA replies:

I agree with you that “cultural Marxism” is not a useful term. I understand why people use it: just as Marxism seeks to create economic equality, cultural Marxism seek to create cultural equalty. But for me the term has never conveyed any precise meaning. I prefer my all purpose term liberalism, or rather modern liberalism.

I missed Staneski’s comment about modern physics. That is indeed surprising. Here is the whole passage:

[The drumbeat] denies God, human exceptionalism, and the soul. We are reduced to Darwinian animals floundering in an amoral sea of meaninglessness. It is a product of the nihilistic, existentialist philosophical movement, which went hand in hand with modern art, atonal music, scientific materialism and modern physics, and the generally discordant nature of the twentieth century.

There is truth in this statement. The trouble with it, apart from its inclusion of modern physics in the litany of cultural nihilism and the fact that it’s swining a bit wild, is the typical problem of most conservative criticism of the left: if the nihilistic left is false, what is its true opposite? If non-discrimination and tolerance are false, what are their true opposites? Mainstream conservatives never answer this question, because, as I’ve argued over and over, while the conservatives are reacting to the extremes of liberalism, they themselves do not have a clearly non-liberal ground of truth to stand on in opposition to liberalism and the left. My view is that the true opposite of liberalism is traditionalism.

For a further explanation of what I mean, see this article.

September 22

Jim F. writes:

First of all, I agree with Staneski that liberals have thrust these attitudes onto the public: toleration, diversity, non-judgmentalism, egalitarianism, political correctness, multiculturalism, globalism, and collectivism.

Second, what I fear, and what Lawrence Auster has pointed out often, is that many so-called conservatives have bought into these same attitudes, to the peril of us all.

True or traditionalist conservatives, however, forcefully reject these attitudes:

Toleration, when not reciprocal, becomes mere weakness.

Diversity, when referring to people or cultures, is only worthwhile when there is a solid and deep common ground, and shared values, to spring from. Diversity for its own sake is leveling.

Non-judgementalism is a copout to excuse the exercise of the above toleration and diversity. Good judgment is an attribute to be cultivated, not suppressed. One must exercise judgment for it to become a sharp tool.

Egalitarianism is meaningless: people are incommensurate in many dimensions, including mind, body, soul, culture, wealth, health, liberty, freedom, religious belief, energy, drive, i.e. every attribute I can think of, and they will remain so as they have for millennia. Equal opportunity is our heritage, but not equal outcomes.

Political Correctness: this is a curse born of over-toleration, extreme non-judgementalism, pervasive non-discrimination, and unreal egalitarianism. PC constraints inhibit clear thinking and clear debate.

Multiculturalism: we are in fact living in a multicultural nation, but its working vector should be towards assimilation, not maintenance of minority cultures for their own sake. Let the private minorities maintain their own cultures by themselves if they wish, but not to the detriment of our society, as Islam threatens daily, for example.

Globalimt: after we have taken full care of our own nation, it is appropriate to lend a helping hand elsewhere. Charity begins at home, as does defense. The UN is not worth supporting further. There are global threats that must be met and vanquished in the name of self-defense—Islam, pandemics, and nuclear proliferation, to name a few. However, man-made climate change is not one of the threats: it is a man-made tempest designed to further seizure of power and promotion of global government.

Collectivism: In no political or economic sense does a true conservative ascribe to collectivism, but collective defense is an obvious truism.

September 23

Ken Hechtman writes:

I’m pretty sure I know what he’s talking about. The world of quantum physics is much more subjective and (pardon the puns) uncertain and relative than the world of Newton’s Watchmaker. Look up a pop-science explanation of Schroedinger’s Cat, or Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle or Bell’s Nonlocality Theorem and you’ll see what I mean. There’s a reason the left gives Einstein just as much credit as Marx and Freud for demolishing the old 19th century traditional certainties.

I remember a research contract I did a while ago where I had to find 24 quotes, 12 from Eastern mystic philosophers and 12 from Western quantum physicists but all of them so ambiguous it wouldn’t be obvious which was which. I got most of them from Fritjof Capra’s “The Tao of Physics.”

LA replies:

Yes, But as you say it’s the pop-physics aspect of it, and Staneski weakened his point by even mentioning it, because, notwithstanding the popularity of pop physics, the unpredictability or uncertainty of events at the quantum level has no more to do with human moral and social reality, than the “relativity” of Einstein has to do with the idea that “all [moral] things are relative.” These are examples of what Ouspensky called formatory thinking: thinking by the form of words, not by their meaning, so that people take the notion of relativity in one context, physics, and translate it into the human and moral realm. This is the idiot level of the human brain, and unfortunately it controls much of what people believe and even the fate of civilizations, e.g., “Muslims believe in one God, and we Christians believe in one God, and therefore Muslims are basically just like us.”

Many years ago I picked up one of the popular books on this subject, it may have been “The Tao of Physics,” and I saw within a few pages how completely specious his argument was, and immediately returned it to the book store.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 21, 2008 03:15 PM | Send