Russell Kirk on Ideologues

From W. Wesley McDonald’s Russell Kirk and the Age of Ideology p. 81-83:

Because the imagination of the ideologue is impoverished, the reason it begets will lead him deep into false views of reality, for example, utopian expectations or political fanaticism. The root cause of these moral and political errors lies not in the faulty reason behind them, Kirk argued, but in the still more basic defective imagion that fails to give a complete account of man’s universal experience. Kirk cited three ideologies, or constellations of ideological notions, as primarily responsible for working the most mischief in our times: liberalism and its numerous collectivist variants, libertarianism, and the behavioralist persuasion as manifested in the social sciences.

The presumptuous rationality characteristic of liberals from John Locke onward struck Kirk as liberalism’s major flaw. The Lockean liberal proclaims that tradition, authority and wisdom “must now now expect to exist on sufferance.” Hence, he desires that “everything in heaven and earth would come under the critical scrutiny of dispassionate private rationality.” Breaking even more sharply with classical and biblical views, the Benthamite utilitarian liberal expresses a pride and an unlimited confidence in the power of individual reason. His mentality is always on the level of the purely useful, of means and ends, because he is unable to comprehend the higher imagination or to understand the complexity of the motives of man. Utility, rather than love, is his main motive. He lacks warmth and a “sense of consecration” toward community, authority, inherited values, and institutions.

Doubting all things in heaven and on earth, accepting only what can be validated by empirico-quantitative reason, utilitarianism is a “philosophy of death; its morbidity is the consequence of Benthamite emphasis upon Doubt …and this is consummate folly. For Doubt is a surly envious, egotistic emotion, a bitter denial of everything but the sullen self; and one learns nothing by doubting. Doubt can never be wholly assuaged in many things, but we must manage to live despite our doubts (which are a condition of our imperfect temporal nature).” We must recognize, admonished Kirk, that we are ignorant of much and must accept much on faith. To doubt everything results in a paralysis of the will and the impoverishment of one’s spiritual existence. Such is the fate of the doctrinaire liberal who would follow Bentham in repudiating authority, tradition, and the prescriptive wisdom of his ancestors. He has succumbed to the Benthamite folly of believing that “private rationality henceforth would emancipate mankind from obedience to tradition, authority, and the past experience of humanity.” Without faith and standards to check his arbitrary will, the Benthamite liberal comes to believe, in his own pride, that he has the right to judge everything according to his private taste. The modern mind, having made utility the essence of politics and having thereby lost sight of the higher ends of existence, Kirk charged, “has thought of men as the flies of a summer, and so deprived himself of the wisdom of our ancestors, and laid waste that portion of posterity.” The result is a weakening of the social bonds that hold a community intact. A community lacking the restraining power of tradition or prescriptive institutions is rendered defenceless against the demands of special interests and selfish passions.

Lacking historical perspective and imagination, modern liberalism proceeds from Benthamite assumptions to the delusion that scientific reasons can solve all of mankind’s complex problems and thereby guarantee a golden age of prosperity and plenty. This abstract, utopian mentality, Kirk predicted, will be the ultimate undoing of liberalism.

In light of his vigorous attack upon abstract reasoning of liberals, Kirk’s equally strong criticism of similar deficiencies in libertarian thought is not surprising. Although many observers have regarded libertarians and traditional conservatives as natural allies because of their common opposition to the growth of modern collectivist state. Kirk vehemently and consistently opposed all attempts to form an alliance. Genuine conservatism would suffer as a consequence of such a merger of what he considered to be antithetical positions. The atomistic individualism and ahistorical rationality of the libertarians, reflecting their utilitarian mentality, would corrupt conservative thinking. Their exultation of reason uninformed by the moral imagination precludes any understanding of values beyond utility and self-interest. A conservatism incorporating old Benthamite or social Darwinist tenets would be worse than no conservatism at all. Like liberalism, its lack of imagination would be its undoing.

The Enemy of the Family

Dear Reader–

In a recent article, Scott of Adelaide Conservative has attempted to defend the Welfare State from a pragmatic Conservative viewpoint.

As much as I hate to quote Libertarians – Han-Hermann Hoppe in Democracy : the God that Failed makes some good points against this point of view – showing the innately pernicious nature of Welfare State to Traditional Conservative values, in particular that of the Family:

By subsidizing with tax funds (with funds taken from others) people who are poor (bad), more poverty will be created. By subsidizing people because they are unemployed (bad), more unemployment will be created. By subsidizing unwed mothers (bad), there will be more unwed mothers and more illegitimate births, etc.

Obviously, this basic insight applies to the entire system of so-called social security … of compulsory goverment “insurance” against old age, illness, occupational injury, unemployment, indigence, etc. In conjunction with the even older system of public education, these institutions and practices amount to a massive attack on the institution of the family and personal responsibility. By relieving individuals of the obligation to provide for their own income, health, safety, old age and childrens education, the range and temporal horizon of private provision is reduced, and the value of marriage, family, children and kinship relations is lowered. Irresponsibility, shortsightedness, negligence, illness and even destructionism (bads) are promoted, and responsibility, farsightedness, diligence, health and conservatism (goods) are punished. The compulsory old age insurance system in particular, by which retirees (the old) are subsidized from taxes imposed on the current income earners (the young), has systematically weakened the natural intergenerational bond between parents, grandparents, and children. The old need no longer rely on the assistance of their children if they have made no provision for their old age; and the young (with typically less accumulated wealth) must support the old (with typically more accumulated wealth) rather than the other way around, as is typical within families. Consequently not only do people want to have fewer children-and indeed, birthrates have fallen in half since the onset of modern social security (welfare) policies – but also the respect which the young traditionally accorded to their elders has diminished, and all indicators of family disintegration and malfunctioning, such as rates of divorce, illegitimacy, child abuse, parent abuse, spouse abuse, single parenting, singledom, alternative lifestyles, and abortion have increased.

….

In any case what should be clear now is that most if not all of the moral degeneration and cultural rot – the signs of decivilization – all around us are the inescapable and unavoidable results of the welfare state and its core institutions. Classical, old-style conservatives knew this, and they vigorously oppossed public education and social security. They knew that states everywhere were intent upon breaking down and ultimately destroying families and the institutions and layers and hierarchies of authority that are the natural outgrowth of family based communities in order to increase and strengthen their own power. They knew that in order to do so the states would have to take advantage of the natural rebellion of the adolescent (juvenile) against parental authority. And they knew that socialized education and socialized responsibility were the means of bringing about this goal. Social education and social security provide an opening for the rebellious youth to escape parental authority (to get away with continuous misbehavior). Old conservatives knew that these policies would emancipate the individual from the discipline imposed by family and community life only to subject it instead to the direct and immediate control of the state. Furthermore, they knew, or at least had a hunch, that this would lead to a systematic infantilization of society – a regression, emotionally and mentally, from adulthood to adolescence or childhood. (p. 195-198)

Let me just say that I find Traditional Conservatism more convincing than Social Democratic Conservatism that all the countries of the Western World have been subject to. The answer to the question of Public Opinion in regard to the Welfare State is not to modify Conservatism to suit Public Opinion but to try to change Public Opinion to a more Conservative awareness of the Harm it causes.

Yours sincerely,
Mild Colonial Boy, Esq.