A reader offers a cogent challenge to my book:
Leaving aside all quarrels about the meanings of words, the central fact is that any intellectual position is subject to the danger of authoritarianism. Clearly that happened to Enlightenment liberalism with communism. The right is at least equally susceptible, however. For me, the right is more susceptible precisely because of this business of privileging tradition and longing for the past (even allowing for your desire to disavow
the explicit aristocratic leanings of the Aristotle crowd). Thus, your book comes off to me as an exercise in trying to avoid facing what the consequences of historical conservatism have always actually been, no matter how lovely and poetic its expression. Those consequences are for me typified by the Bush Administration. The powerful will always find ways to believe that it is in everybody’s interest for their traditional grip on power to be maintained and expanded (just as rich people will hire economists to prove that giving more money to rich people will make society better – I hope you tumble to that scam someday). In the service of that end they will be secretive and cruel, all the while feeling that they are nobly doing what must be done. Our only real hope is constant agitation against tradition, however much loss we risk by it. Don’t worry that it will be overwhelmed – plenty of powerful people will defend it, and love will defend it, too. In almost every age of the world it’s the other side that needs help, I believe.
This is too long already, and I am still full of the things your book made me think about. Maybe just two more thoughts, staccato. First, I liked what you said about Leo Strauss, who is an icon here at St. John’s, where I teach. He read books, that’s what he did; he would be horrified to have his name connected to the launching of wars. I think your diagnosis was right that he was afraid, too afraid, and – in theory, mind you, which was all that was ever asked of him – consequently too willing to surrender the open society into the hands of the powerful elites offering an illusory freedom from fear.
Second, I believe this was your problem, too. You exaggerated the danger of terrorism and consequently surrendered your critical judgment into the hands of the Bush Administration. The Bush Administration shared your exaggerated fear and foolishly decided to elevate the status of these people to that of warriors, rather than the relatively small group of criminals that they are. I admit that it is another reason I dislike conservatism, that it seems to me always to be exaggerating fear as the first concern of human life. I disagree with Hobbes on that point, at least as you present him. In the terms of your book, prior to being afraid that our families and homes will be taken away, surely we built them? Building and loving are our first concern – fear is second, and should always be servant to the first. Isn’t it true that the most frequent command from God in Scripture is "Be not afraid?" I think that is practical advice, and that the world has suffered far more from an excess of fear than from an excess of hope.
The Dish 