Monday, January 27, 2020

Caldwell's America

A Conservative Pundit Who Can Actually Write

Here is my big objection to Christopher Caldwell ("The Age of Enlightenment:  America since the 60's").  He does a masterful job of describing how awful the world is, but seems to take a couple things for granted that in my opinion are just conservative bullshit.  First, since his readership is primarily conservative, he can just assume as a given that all the crap inflicting our world right now is a result of the liberal direction our politics has taken since the civil rights legislation of the 60's.  Second, he takes it as a given that all of this bad stuff could have been avoided, that it was not inevitable.

His major thesis seems to be (N.B. please remember that I am new to this guy's stuff and so I'm basing everything I say on my reading of one review and one long op ed about France in City-Journal.) that our country is polarized because, thanks to the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, we have two constitutions.  There is the original one written by the framers and then there is the de facto one created in 1964 which "curtailed freedom of association and property rights."  He goes on to lament the fact that civil rights activism in the 60's created "a newly emerging idea of fairness against all traditions."  In other words, the fairness we were trying to achieve back then ran counter to the intent of the framers.  I guess, according to Caldwell, the framers were not much interested in fairness.

So, Caldwell is an Originalist, just like Antonin Scalia, who believes that "the only way back to the free country of [Republican] ideals is through the repeal of civil rights laws."

This dual constitution situation has created all sorts of conflict within the body politic.  There is a clash of "civilizations" at work here.  On one side (this is Caldwell speaking and he sneers a lot) we find the high-minded elites (you could probably insert the word coastal here); on the other side we have a loose band of dissidents, patriots, cranks, and gadflies.  It is pretty clear which side Caldwell and most Republicans prefer.  They don't like all those coastal elites telling the rest of us what to do and, worse yet, making us feel guilty if we don't do it.

After all, Caldwell's, and by extension, all conservatives' principal concern is with cultural preservation and continuity.  Introducing new fangled laws championing the rights of people of color and the rights of women damages that continuity.  After all, the framers certainly were not interested in granting rights to people of color or women and what was good for the framers must be good for us.

And so we become a country of victims and oppressors and the victims' views are the ones that become the adopted views of our country.  All the changes of the past 50 years have been a war on the country and the civilization conservatives used to know and love.

In Caldwell's article about the situation in France, he presents a pretty convincing case against globalization.  The unintended consequences have torn France and America in two with those who benefit from globalization firmly entrenched in big cities and the rest of us relegated to the dead end poverty of the rest of the country.  The urban real estate market, he asserts, is a pitiless sorting machine.

He says, for example that at the turn of the century, London was 58% white.  Today it is 45% white.  The reader is supposed to GASP at that.  He lists lots of scary statistics like that and just assumes we, like him, look on the situation with horror.  He clearly implies that liberals' misguided belief in the good of diversity is making this whole situation untenable.  He also implies that none of the problems with immigration plaguing Europe and America would have happened if we had just employed some conservative common sense.

Liberals misunderstand the relationship between diversity and inequality, he asserts.  The fact is, as diversity grows, so does inequality.  Therefore, all the arguments we have are either sensible or superstitious, good or evil, depending on if you base your argument on the grounds of economics or identity.  Separating parents from children at the border makes sense to conservatives like Caldwell.  It is an economic necessity.  Those liberals freaking out about the policy simply misunderstand the economics of the situation; they are all hung up on personal identity, superstition, and political correctness.

Do you remember a couple of days ago when Treasury Secretary Munchin sneered that he would listen to Greta on the environment when she gets her degree in economics.  That explains the two sides of the argument in a nutshell.

I'm going to read more by this guy.  Marxist historian Perry Anderson said that his "columns in the FINANCIAL TIMES make much liberal opinion look the dreary mainstream pabulum it too often is."  That's what William Buckley's writing was like when I was an undergraduate.  I hated what he said, but I loved the way he said it.

See, I can be fair and balanced too.

2 comments:

Ed said...

The science fiction author Eric Flint, who was a labor organizer before he became a writer, said that socialists see the primary conflict in the world as economic between the classes, whereas fascists see the primary conflict as ethnic between the races (or cultures). The basis of conservatism in America since Nixon has been to try to get lower class whites to have a fascist point of view instead of a socialist one. It's why illegal immigrants get punished but not the white business owners who employ them (a sentiment Trump is loudly supporting). It's why cuts to government subsidies that actually help lower class whites get backed--because they also help blacks and if you're a fascist, it's more important to stop that other group from getting ahead than to actually help yourself.

Caldwell is dressing up such fascist thinking in some very nice writing and arguments, but at the end of the day what he's saying is that the ethnic groups that were rich and powerful in 1776 should still be rich and powerful now. But that's not only not how the political world works, that's not even how true capitalism works. Power goes to those who can take it, and if the Civil Rights protesters managed to seize a little, tough tooties. And in true capitalism, the person with the better mousetrap wins regardless of their race or sex or other personal qualities. That's something any minority business owner will gladly point out has never existed.

If you want to be a true Constitutional originalist, then you need to advocate for some version of slavery, since that was the foundation of half of our Government and economy at the time. Once you grant that slavery is bad, you cannot be an originalist. You have to admit that the view of the Constitution changed in 1863. And if it changed in 1863, why not 1964? How can the first change, with a shooting war, be acceptable and the second change, with only one side getting shot, not be?

It is disingenuous to pick a single point in history and claim that's when it all went bad. Caldwell's logic is simply a dressed up way of justifying his own fascistic view of the world.

jstarkey said...

Thank you for your terrific addition to my post. You've given me lots to think about.