Illiberal Conservatism in France: An Interview with "L'Incorrect"

I am some times asked why I identify Darwinian conservatism as a liberal conservatism, or as a fusion of classical liberalism and traditionalist conservatism.  My explanation is that I want to distinguish liberal conservatism from the illiberal conservatism of authoritarian conservatives like Joseph de Maistre.

I was reminded of this a few days ago when I was interviewed by a journalist with the new French magazine L'Incorrect, which began publishing last fall.  L'Incorrect is a conservative magazine designed to "develop the virtues of the multiple houses of the right" in France, according to its editor Jacques de Guillebon, in his opening editorial statement. 

Many of the people working with this magazine have some connection with Marion Marechal-Le Pen, who is the granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founding leader of the French National Front, a far right party, and the niece of Marine Le Pen, the recent presidential contender of the National Front.  In 2007, at age 22, Marechal-Le Pen became the youngest person ever to be elected to the French Parliament. 

Although last spring she announced her retirement from politics, she continues to be influential as a leader of a new conservative movement in France that seems close to the Trump movement in the United States.  Steve Bannon identified her as a "rising star" in French politics.

Marechal-Le Pen has been arguing for a coalition joining the National Front and some or all of the Republicans.  The Republicans are a center-right or liberal conservative party that was formed in 2015 by renaming the Union for a Popular Movement party, which had been founded in 2002 under the leadership of Jacques Chirac, the former President of France.

This suggests to me that if L'Incorrect is associated with Marechal-Le Pen's position, then the magazine should be identified with a liberal conservatism.  But my interviewer--Benjamin Demeslay--identified the French conservative tradition with the "anti-liberal tropism" of Joseph de Maistre and Charles Maurras.  I responded to this by criticizing the illiberal conservatism of Maistre and suggesting that French conservatives like Marechal-Le Pen are actually far more liberal than they realize, and certainly they don't embrace the absolutist authoritarianism of Maistre that provided the intellectual seeds for fascism.

L'Incorrect has published a short version of my comments.  Here I provide the full text--seven questions (in italics) and my answers:

1. You defend a "Darwinian conservatism" against "metaphysical conservatism". These expressions are enough to surprise the French reader. The French conservative tradition remains strongly impregnated by Catholicism, a certain counter-revolutionary and anti-liberal tropism (from Joseph de Maistre to Charles Maurras), even a mistrust of "the Technique" (the essays of the Christian Jacques Ellul or the last Heidegger). English conservatism, heir to Edmund Burke, is now attracting renewed interest, with the translation of the philosopher Roger Scruton. There is nothing comparable to your conservatism in France. How would you define it?

Metaphysical conservatism views human social order as grounded in a transcendent realm of cosmic design.  Evolutionary conservatism is empiricist in viewing human social order as grounded in common human experience as shaped by human nature, human custom, and human judgment.  Both forms of conservative thought can be found in Edmund Burke.  

In the United States, Russell Kirk spoke for metaphysical conservatism when he appealed to the conservative belief in “the state as a divinely ordained moral essence.”  Friedrich Hayek spoke for evolutionary conservatism when he appealed to the classical liberal idea that social order could emerge through the evolution of spontaneous orders in a free society.  My claim is that a Darwinian evolutionary science of human nature and human culture supports Hayek’s side.

          In taking Hayek’s side in this debate, I am defending a liberal conservatism that is a fusion of what Americans identify as classical liberalism and traditionalist conservatism.  Actually, even Kirk is a liberal conservative insofar as he rejects the illiberal conservatism of Joseph de Maistre.  (A brief statement of my reasoning here is my article on “Darwinian Conservatism Versus Metaphysical Conservatism” in the Fall 2010 issue of The Intercollegiate Review.)

          Although you identify the French conservative tradition with the Catholic “illiberal tropism” of Maistre, I doubt that French conservatives really agree with Maistre’s illiberal conservatism.  Do French conservatives agree with Maistre’s claim that all stable government requires belief in its absolute divine authority as enforced by the execution of heretics who deny religious orthodoxy?  Do French conservatives agree with Maistre’s defense of the violent persecution of heretics in the Spanish Inquisition as necessary to protect Spain from the disorder of Protestantism?  Do French conservatives agree with Maistre’s argument that all social order depends on the terror of punishment by “the executioner”?  I doubt it.

          In fact, Maistre’s theocratic authoritarianism would support radical Islam in its enforcement of Sharia.  But don’t French conservatives—like Marion Marechal-Le Pen-- reject this as contrary to French culture? If so, then they are showing their liberal conservatism in opposition to the illiberal conservatism of radical Islam and Maistre.

          You identify the French conservative tradition with Catholic Christianity, and I know that conservatives like Marechal-Le Pen have stressed the “Christian roots” of French culture.  But isn’t it true, according to some surveys, that most of the French people identify themselves as non-religious or even atheistic?  

By contrast, most Americans identify themselves as deeply religious.  Surely, this arises from the American liberal tradition of religious liberty and religious life in voluntary associations free from governmental coercion; so that a liberal idea has a conservative effect in promoting a religious cultural tradition in civil society without state enforcement.

You mention Roger Scruton as a Burkean conservative now being read in France, Scruton is an example of a metaphysical conservative who thinks a religious attitude is essential for a healthy moral order, and therefore that traditional religious experience needs to be defended against a Darwinian science that claims to explain the place of human beings in the natural world without any reference to a transcendent realm beyond nature.  And yet--like many other metaphysical conservatives--Scruton does not believe in the literal truth of Christianity or any other religion.  He wants to have a sense of the sacred that comes from religious emotions, but without the need to believe any religious doctrines.  

We know that God is dead, Scruton suggests, but we also know that human beings need to satisfy their religious longings for transcendence and redemption through religious art and ritual.  That's the truth that Scruton sees in Richard Wagner's Ring cycle.  To me, this atheistic religiosity is incoherent self-deception.

2. French conservatives are currently facing a "progressive" offensive: same-sex marriage, medically assisted procreation "for all", surrogacy, etc. Conservative resistance largely comes from Catholic circles. You are an advocate of "natural rights". How do you reconcile them with Darwin's legacy? Your project of a "biological ethics of human nature" is audacious.

My project of a “biological ethics of human nature” argues that there are at least twenty natural desires inherent in our evolved human nature, and that, if the good is the desirable, we can judge social orders by how well they allow human beings to satisfy those natural desires.  

So, for example, I think we have evolved natural desires for sexual mating, conjugal bonding, and parental care.  For most human beings, therefore, marriage and parenting are crucial to their human flourishing.  For Thomas Aquinas’s natural law teaching, marriage is natural insofar as it satisfies the natural desires for conjugal bonding and parental care.  

Is it possible that same-sex marriage could satisfy these two natural desires?  If so, then Darwinian conservatives would allow same-sex marriage as part of a free society.  There is an empirical question here.  Whether same-sex marriage satisfies or frustrates these natural desires—whether children are harmed by same-sex parenting—will have to be decided by our experience with same-sex marriage.

In any case, I assume that most conservatives today would not favor capital punishment for homosexuals, which was common not so long ago in Europe and North America.  Why the change?  Is it because we have discovered that homosexuality need not be harmful to the social order, and so it need not be punished as a capital crime?  Can we say then that illiberal Islamic conservatives are wrong in persecuting homosexuals?

3. Scientific data are generally absent from the debates in France. While ethnic statistics are "of course" banned in our country, even official immigration statistics are under dispute. The observation is often the same for economic problems. How would you describe the relationship of American intellectuals, and your own relationship, to science?

          To a large degree, the utopian Left is hostile to the science of human nature, because that science seems to put restraints on the malleability of human beings by social engineering.  So, for example, the Left rejects any scientific evidence that there are natural differences on average between men and women, because the Left dreams of achieving an androgynous society.

          Darwinian conservatives respect science as confirming our common experience that there really is a human nature, that that human nature constrains but does not determine human culture, and that human nature and human culture jointly constrain but do not determine our individual identities.

          Darwinian conservatives see this science as supporting the conservative view that the best social order is one of ordered liberty rooted in natural desires, customary traditions, and prudential judgments.

          Darwinian conservatives argue that human freedom is good, because when human beings are free from coercion, they will voluntarily cooperate in the evolution of social orders that are more successful in satisfying the twenty natural human desires than any planned order using coercive power to achieve its goals.  Consequently, social orders with more human freedom will be more adaptive in securing human well-being and happiness than are those social orders with less human freedom.

          These are empirical claims that require empirical confirmation by the scientific measurement of freedom and its consequences.  And, indeed, this can now be done using the annual Human Freedom Index published by the Fraser Institute, the Cato Institute, and the Friedrich-Naumann Foundation for Freedom.  This is a comprehensive index of human freedom that combines economic freedom and personal freedom using 79 distinct indicators for 159 countries for 2015.  

          Here are the top ten countries: Switzerland (1), Hong Kong (2), New Zealand (3), Ireland (4), Australia (5), Finland (6), Norway (7), Denmark (8), Netherlands (9), and United Kingdom (tied at 9^th).  The United States is at 17^th, and France is at 33^rd.  The bottom four are Iran (154), Egypt (155), Venezuela (158), and Syria (159).  This allows for an empirical science in measuring the correlation of human freedom with human happiness and of the lack of human freedom with human misery.

4. In France, the conservatives have for several years defended an idea inherited from the communist Antonio Gramsci: the "metapolitical" or cultural action would precede the political victory. What do you think of this strategy? Do intellectual debates really affect the cultural and political life of your country? Their themes are little known to us.

          In the United States, there are many avenues for promoting the intellectual investigation of the principles of traditionalist conservatism and classical liberalism.  The three most important avenues are private educational foundations, think tanks, and higher education.  Educational foundations—for example, Liberty Fund and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute—sponsor hundreds of conferences every year and publishing programs that influence cultural and political life.  Think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute promote the discussion of conservative and libertarian ideas.  And despite the pressures of “political correctness,” higher education does allow for some open discussion of these ideas.

          A good illustration of how intellectual and cultural activity in America has promoted Darwinian conservatism is the remarkable success of evolutionary psychology over the past 40 years.  In 1975, the publication of Edward O. Wilson’s Sociobiology provoked an intense outcry from the Left—insisting that any biological explanation of human behavior was strictly prohibited.  But now evolutionary psychology—as taught by people like Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Steve Pinker, Jonathan Haidt, Matt Ridley, and others—has had immense influence in psychology, anthropology, history, and the social sciences generally.  Now, even some leftists like Peter Singer defend a “Darwinian Left” that accepts limits on leftist social engineering from evolved human nature!

          This has implications for social policy.  For example, it has now become generally accepted that the evolutionary psychologists are right in arguing that evolved natural differences between males and females make young men (on average) more inclined to violence and social disorder than are women.  This confirms the conservative insight that every society has the problem of civilizing young men through good parenting and marriage.  (This and other Darwinian ideas are evident in James Q. Wilson and Richard Herrnstein’s Crime and Human Nature.)

5. There are many transdisciplinary studies in the United States (psychology, biology, sociology and political philosophy). I think of Charles Murray's book Coming Apart, which analyzes the ghettoisation of American society on the basis of cognitive abilities and educational level, and the new "class racism" of some progressives. In France, these themes emerge timidly, but separately. For example, with the works of the geographer Christophe Guilluy on French Fractures; or the recent work of Dr. Laurent Alexandre on The war of intelligences. What do you think of these analyzes, and do you judge them influential?

          One illustration of how interdisciplinary studies might support Darwinian conservatism is the special meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in the Galapagos Islands in June of 2013, for which the theme was “Evolution, the Human Sciences, and Liberty.”  Participants included economists, psychologists, biologists, anthropologists, philosophers, physicists, political scientists, and theologians.  I presented a paper on Darwinian conservatism.  The general theme was how evolutionary science might support classical liberal and traditionalist conservative views of liberty and social cooperation.  This shows the interdisciplinary influence of Darwinian evolutionary ideas among classical liberals and conservatives.

          Charles Murray was at this conference, and he indicated that he agreed with everything I had to say.  Smart guy!  In fact, he is, in some ways, the epitome of a Darwinian conservative.  He is a libertarian or classical liberal who is also a Burkean conservative in his respect for the importance of traditional institutions in shaping the moral and intellectual virtues that sustain social order and liberty.  He sees all of this as rooted in the evolved human nature that can be explained by evolutionary science.

6. The question of "political identities" seems to have become obsessive in the United States. We think of the alt-right, or the defenders of positive discrimination, ... Of course, our two countries are profoundly different: France is of universalist and post-colonial culture, but identity and populism becomes more important. Our societies are experiencing major demographic upheavals, which announce political upheavals. What would be the conservative answer to these problems?

          The United States is also “universalist” in being founded on the universal principles affirmed in the Declaration of Independence.  Within that universalist identity, the United States also shows the cultural pluralism of diverse voluntary associations (so admired by Alexis de Tocqueville) and regional diversity across the states in a federal political system. 

          The United States is in general a deeply religious nation, but it has never had an established church at the national level.  The Constitution of 1787 was free of any religious establishment, and it declared “no religious test” for public office.  Some of the states had established churches for a few decades, but by 1830 they were abolished.  Now there is religious diversity across the states.  According to some surveys, Utah and the Southern states show weekly church attendance at 40% to 51% of the population, while the New England states show lower rates of 17% to 20%.

          This is what a Darwinian conservative would expect to happen in a free society: the evolved natural desire for religious understanding will lead to religious belief and practice, although there will be individual variation, and some individuals will live healthy, satisfying lives without religious devotion.

          In such a free society, people find their social identity in their families, their neighborhoods, their friendships, their churches, their clubs, and in many other voluntary associations.  That’s the way our evolved nature as social animals is must fully expressed.

          The alt-right is mistaken in suggesting that American culture depends on white racial or ethnic identity.  Neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution says anything about racial or ethnic identity.  Of course, the United States has suffered from racial and ethnic conflicts, but despite that, American society has become remarkably peaceful in its multiracial and multiethnic pluralism.  I say that as someone who grew up in the American South, saw the violence of racial segregation, and then saw the amazing cultural transformation as the South became racially integrated.  Human beings have evolved propensities to tribalism, but they also have evolved propensities to cooperate for mutual benefit.

7. You take a critical look at Donald Trump in your articles. In France, his presidency continues to feed some hopes in conservative circles. We talk about its good economic results, even its action against "cultural Marxism". Others see the Trump Presidency as the "swan song" of genuine conservatism. What is your point of view?

           Look, let’s agree on the obvious truth before us—Donald Trump is a vulgar man, who has no moral or intellectual virtues.  Conservatives should agree that statesmanship requires good character, and therefore Trump’s bad character makes it impossible for him to lead in the enforcement of any good policies.  He is a silly narcissist who becomes resentful when he suspects people don’t love him as much as he loves himself.  He is a childish man who cannot control his childish impulses.  Consequently, his White House is, and must always be, utterly chaotic.

          Do the French conservatives deny this?  Do they believe that a man without moral or intellectual virtues can be a statesman?

The Incoherence of the French Far Right. The Pretense of Catholic Integralist Theocracy

 

                      

                                                                      Marion Marechal

Today the French are voting in a presidential election.  If no candidate receives a majority of the votes today, there will be a runoff election on April 24 with the top two vote getters on the ballot.

Emmanuel Macron is running for his second term of five years.  He is a political centrist.  Five years ago, he won easily in a runoff against the far right Marine Le Pen.  Until recently, it was assumed that Macron in this election would repeat that easy victory over Le Pen.  

But in recent months, polls have suggested that the race is tightening and that Le Pen could win, which would be a shocking far right turn for France.  Elisabeth Zerofsky has written a good essay for the New York Times on what this could mean for the French far right.  Zerofsky highlights the role of Marion Marechal (Marine Le Pen's niece) in pushing the far right towards a French Catholic nationalism that roots French national identity in Catholicism, which can sound like a move towards French Catholic theocracy in the tradition of Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821) and Charles Maurras (1868-1952).  (I have put a picture of Marechal up at the top to show you one reason for her popular appeal.)

This is what I have called a "metaphysical conservatism," which says that human social order must be grounded in a divinely ordained political order.  But while Marechal and some others in the French far right talk in ways that suggest this, I think this is not the case because they are actually liberal conservatives who reject the illiberal conservatism of Catholic theocracy.  If I am right about this, then a victory for a far-right candidate in this election would not be a radical right turn for French politics.

I first began to think about the French far right four years ago when I was interviewed by Benjamin Demeslay, a journalist writing for the French right-wing magazine L'Incorrect.  I wrote a post about that.  The magazine is edited by Jacques de Guillebon, a Catholic conservative who is good friends with Marechal and who has brought her into a circle of far-right Catholic conservatives.

Here is Demeslay's first question for me:

"You defend a 'Darwinian conservatism' against 'metaphysical conservatism.'  These expressions are enough to surprise the French reader.  The French conservative tradition remains strongly impregnated by Catholicism, a certain counter-revolutionary and anti-liberal tropism (from Joseph de Maistre to Charles Maurras), even a mistrust of 'the Technique' (the essays of the Christian Jacques Ellul or the last Heidegger).  English conservatism, heir to Edmund Burke, is now attracting renewed interest, with the translation of the philosopher Roger Scruton.  There is nothing comparable to your conservatism in France.  How would you define it?"

I explained my "Darwinian conservatism" as a liberal conservatism that is a fusion of classical liberalism and traditionalist conservatism, which is opposed to the illiberal conservatism of people like Maistre and Maurras.  I also argued that Demeslay was mistaken in identifying the sort of French conservatism manifested in L'Incorrect with the "anti-liberal tropism" of Maistre and Maurras.  (In a previous post, I have elaborated on what I mean by distinguishing Darwinian conservatism and metaphysical conservatism.)

In reaction against the French Revolution, Maistre initiated a Counter-Enlightenment tradition of thought based on a theocratic authoritarianism--the idea that all government comes from some unquestioned coercive authority that is divinely infallible and that all such authority is derived from the Pope as God's representative on Earth.  He proposed a restoration of the Bourbon monarchy to the throne of France, ruling under the supreme authority of the Pope in both temporal and spiritual matters.  Atheists, Jews, and heretical Christians (such as the Protestants) should be suppressed.  He claimed that the rationalist rejection of Catholic Christianity and theocratic monarchy was responsible for the disorder that followed the French Revolution of 1789.

Carrying on the tradition of Maistre's thinking, Maurras became the organizer and primary philosopher for Action francaise, a French far-right Catholic royalist organization, advocating the restoration of the House of Bourbon and of Roman Catholicism as the state religion of France.  Oddly, Maurras was himself an agnostic, although it was claimed that he had a death-bed conversion and received the last rites at his death in 1952.  Even though he was an agnostic, he argued that Catholicism was necessary for the social order and national identity of France.  This purely utilitarian view of Catholicism as politically useful for legitimizing monarchic authority alienated some conservative Catholics.  In 1926, Pope Pius XI condemned Action francaise.  Later, some of Maurras's writings were put on the Catholic Church's list of prohibited books.

If you look at the writing in L'Incorrect over the past four years, you will see many references to Maistre and Maurras; and you might assume, therefore, that these French far-right conservative writers have embraced the Catholic theocratic authoritarianism of Maistre and Maurras.  But if you look carefully at this writing, you will see that these gestures toward Maistre and Maurras are vague, and there's no explicit affirmation of Catholic theocracy.

In recent weeks, Guillebon's editorials for L'Incorrect have expressed a frustration that the far-right candidates for the presidency--Le Pen and Eric Zemmour--and French conservatives generally do not understand the "metaphysics of power"--the idea that political power depends on supernatural authority (see the editorials for March 8 and April 6).  The French far right should find their foundation in France's "Christian virtues."  But since they lack a Maurras, they "obviously lack metaphysics."  Guillebon looks to "the depths of the right" to reveal "a right of the soul," but he cannot find it, because the right has no "organic Maurrasism."

"In truth," he observes, "if we knew anything about our history, we would know that one never seeks temporal power without having taken spiritual power: without Saint Remi, no Clovis."

Remi was the Bishop of Reims who, on December 25, 496, baptized Clovis I, King of the Franks, which initiated the Christianization of the Franks and the Frankish empire.  Beginning in 816, each French monarch was coronated in the Reims Cathedral and anointed with the Holy Spirit, so that the French kings ruled by divine right.  Is Guillebon intimating that the French far right needs to revive this tradition of Catholic royal theocracy?

Strangely, however, neither Guillebon nor his writers ever say this explicitly.  And most of what they say indicates that they endorse the liberal principle of separating church and state and reject any reestablishment of Catholicism as the state religion for France, which thereby rejects the theocratic authoritarianism of Maistre and Maurras.

For the past few days, I have been reading all of the articles in L'Incorrect that mention Maistre or Maurras.  I have found a few that come close to endorsing their ideas.  For example, Luc-Olivier d'Algange wrote an article (May 7, 2020) on the political thought of Juan Donoso Cortes (1809-1853), who was a Spanish Catholic counter-revolutionary whose thinking was shaped by his reading of Maistre.  D'Algange groups Donoso Cortes together with Maistre and Rene Guenon as "good masters" for French Catholic conservatives.

According to d'Algange, Donoso Cortes "refutes this first and fatal modern error, which consists in thinking that religion, politics, and philosophy are separate, autonomous domains, which would belong to their respective occupations as impervious to each other as academic specialities, with their jargons, their particular and unusual ends.  For Donoso Cortes, not only is religion not absent from politics or philosophy, but they are always religious."  Against the corrupting materialism of modernity, Donoso Cortes should teach us that "the only possible right is divine right."

But then d'Algange never draws from this the conclusion that Donoso Cortes drew--that the only good form of government is a divine right monarchy that enforces Catholicism as the state religion and persecutes other religions, including Protestant Christianity.

Moreover, L'Incorrect also publishes articles that denigrate appeals to divine right.  For example, consider the recent interview of Renauld Camus (April 7, 2022), who is famous for his "great replacement" conspiracy theory--the idea that globalist conspirators are pushing for waves of immigrants--particularly Muslims--into Europe so that in a few years native Europeans will be outnumbered by foreign immigrants, which will mean the disappearance of European civilization.  (Many of the Trumpist Republicans in the United States have been promoting this same idea.)

In the interview, Guillebon asked Camus: "Is the solution to return to God?"  He answered: "Personally, I do not think so, but I understand it.  Even historically and philosophically, this is very conceivable.  This is probably what Charles Maurras thought.  Yet, it seems to me that this is a somewhat trivial conception of religion.  I am no Maurrasian at all.  Conceiving God as a social necessity testifies to a certain spiritual triviality.  I find that quite undignified.  Certainly, however, it made things a lot easier."

When the question of whether Catholicism should be made the state religion of France is raised, this is rejected.  One can see that, for example, in Guillebon's interview of Pierre Manent and Remi Brague, which Guillebon calls a "dialogue of giants" (January 4 and 9, 2018).  They were discussing Manent's book The Situation of France, in which he argued that Muslims should be welcomed to live in France as long as they respect the religious identity of France as a Christian nation.

Here's the first question that Guillebon asked: "Michel Houellebecq recently told Spiegel that solving the problem of Islam in France would imply that Catholicism would become a state religion.  What do you think?"

Manent answered: "The idea seems to me to be fundamentally correct.  Not that Catholicism is recognized as the state religion, no one is seriously thinking about that, but that the role of the Catholic religion in the history of France, but also in the social life of the country, in the consciousness of the country, is recognized in public forms.  Now, for thirty years, we have agreed to endorse the big lie that there is no Muslim problem by postulating that there can be no problem posed by a religion in our country since we have found the solution to all problems of this kind: secularism. . . . We have become prisoners of a far too restrictive definition of the French regime by reducing it to secularism.  We must broaden our awareness of ourselves, and in this enlargement make an adequate place for Catholicism, which plays such a great role in the history and consciousness of France.  Of course, this cannot take an institutional or constitutional form, and this is where Houellebecq's proposal crosses the boundaries of political reasonableness, as he knows very well."

Manent goes on: "In order for Muslims to be welcomed decently and to be able to live happily in France, it is important that they know that they are not in a Muslim nation, that this nation is of Christian character, that the Jews play an eminent role, that religion does not command the State and that the State does not command religion.  We have a complex operation to carry out: to persuade Muslims that we want to welcome them in reasonable numbers, that they have their place in society, and that . . . this nation as a human whole is not, does not want to be and will not be a Muslim society but will remain and wants to remain a nation of Christian brand where the Jews play an eminent role, and where the state and religion know a regime of secularism."

Remi Brague then answers Guillebon's question: "I did not know this interview with Michel Houellebecq, in which it is clear that he overstepped his thought.  Speaking of Catholicism as a state religion, I think he was thinking above all, not of the state, but of civil society, of how a nation should understand itself and how it understood itself until relatively recently."

Notice how Manent seems to contradict himself--first rejecting secularism but then endorsing it.  And notice how both Manent and Brague are liberal conservatives in separating civil society (as a realm of voluntary religious belief) from the state (as a secular public realm separated from religion).  I have written about Brague's metaphysical conservatism--here, here, and here.  But in this interview, he contradicts himself in embracing liberal conservatism.

Notice also that while Manent identifies France as a Christian nation, many of the writers for I'Incorrect identify France as a Catholic nation, so that Jews and Protestants in France would have to be considered as a foreign element along with the Muslims and other religious believers.

Can the French far right plausibly identify France as a Catholic nation?  Of course, in the Ancien Regime before the French Revolution, Catholicism was the state religion, often enforced by the persecution of those who were not Catholics.  But that is no longer true.  Many of the writers for L'Incorrect would say that the tradition of Catholic belief still prevails in French civil society, even if the French state is officially secular.  Is that really true?

For answering this question, Guillebon's interview of Yann Raison du Cleuziou is pertinent (October 29, 2019).  Cleuziou has written a book about the history of "counter-revolutionary Catholics" in France explains the Manif Pour Tous (Protest for All) protests against legalized same-sex marriage in 2013.  Across France, many French people turned out for mass demonstrations against the law that legalized same sex-marriage.  In Paris, one demonstration drew over 100,000 protesters. This was encouraging for the French far right because it seemed to show that support for the far-right cultural agenda was much greater than most people had thought.

In defining what he means by "counter-revolutionary Catholics," Cleuziou quotes from Maistre: "The counter-revolution will not be a revolution in the opposite direction, but the opposite of the revolution."  Many conservative Catholics in France have followed Maistre's lead in adhering to a traditionalist Catholicism that is the opposite of the French Revolution of 1789 and everything that the Revolution represented.

But although there seemed to be a large number of such Catholics in the Manif Pour Tous protests, Cleuziou concedes that their number as a proportion of the French population is actually very small.  According to one public opinion survey in 2019, 41% of the French identify themselves as Catholics, and the representation for other religions is much smaller.  But then roughly equal to the Catholic population is the 40% of the French who identify as "no religion."  It seems that the French are not very religious at all.  Moreover, of those who identify as Catholics, only about 2% attend mass weekly.  The "counter-revolutionary Catholics" turn out to be a very small group after all.

That probably explains why the far-right candidates in today's presidential election are not promoting counter-revolutionary Catholicism, because it doesn't have a broad appeal in France today.

That probably also explains why the far-right Catholics at L'Incorrect do not generally embrace the Catholic theocratic monarchism of Maistre and Maurras.

To find that full endorsement of Catholic theocracy, one has to turn to the "integralists" in the United States--"integralism" being the term first adopted by Maurras.  Edmund Waldstein has nicely summarized Catholic integralism in three sentences:

"Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that, rejecting the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holds that political rule must order man to his final goal.  Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him: a temporal power and a spiritual power.  And since man's temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end, the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power."

Some integralists have suggested that the "Sacramental Kingdom of St. Louis IX" in 13th century France is the model for the illiberal regime that they want to see established, although it's not clear as to how serious they are about this.  I have written briefly about this at the end of a previous post.  I am hoping to write more about this sometime soon.

Like the French far right conservatives, the American far right conservatives (like Patrick Deneen and and Rod Dreher) show the same intellectual incoherence: both endorsing an illiberal Catholic Christian theocracy and endorsing the liberal principle of religious liberty.

They could be coherent if they consistently pointed to the medieval Catholic theocracy of Louis IX as the best regime and then argued for a counter-revolutionary overthrow of liberalism to establish a regime like that of Louis IX.  King Louis of France (1226-1270 CE) was canonized in 1297 by the Catholic Church, and thus the ruling family of France, the Capetians, became joined to Heaven, thereby adding religious legitimacy to their dynastic rule.  Various parts of the saintly King Louis were placed as relics, in different monasteries throughout the territory of France, thus providing religious support for the territorial unity of the kingdom.  By recognizing national saints, an otherwise universalistic, transnational monotheistic religion sanctifies the territorial identity of a nation.

Why don't the far right Catholic integralists in France and the United States strive to restore such a sacramental national kingdom based on a state religion?  Is it because that would be too illiberal for them?

Patrick Deneen Is a Liberal. Really.

A few years ago, I wrote a long series of posts on Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed (2018).  Now, I am thinking about his new book--Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future--that has just been published.

I have been reading Deneen's writings for many years.  For most of that time, I have been bothered by the feeling that I was missing something.  Only recently, I figured out what I have been missing.  

Dineen is not what he pretends to be.  As indicated by his new book, he claims to be an enemy of liberalism, who is proposing a radical "regime change" that would overthrow the liberal regime and replace it with an illiberal regime.  But if you read him carefully, you will see that while he enjoys posing as an opponent of liberalism, he is being dishonest, because he is actually a liberal.

This explains why he fails to make good arguments against liberalism and for a truly illiberal alternative to liberalism.  His arguments are weak because his heart is not in it.

If you read him carefully, you will see that there are many points in his book where the reader would expect him to defend some radically illiberal practices and principles that would destroy the liberal social order, but then he refuses to do that.  The only explanation for this is that his profession of belief in illiberalism is insincere, because he is a secret liberal.

For example, consider what Dineen says about the legal enforcement of religious belief and practice, which is crucial for any illiberal regime that must reject the liberal principles of religious liberty and toleration.  I will point to three illustrations--his account of Thomas Aquinas's "common-good conservatism," his defense of John Winthrop's Puritan governance in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and what he says about the Lockean liberalism of the U. S. Constitution as it bears on the legal status of religion.

THOMAS AQUINAS ON THE LEGAL ENFORCEMENT OF CHRISTIAN ORTHODOXY

Deneen repeatedly identifies Thomas Aquinas as one of the major proponents of the "common-good conservatism" that Dineen professes to be the best illiberal alternative to liberalism (x, xiii, xv, 46, 48, 96, 125, 131-33, 165).  Any reader who knows something about what Aquinas recommended for the legal enforcement of Christianity would expect Dineen to endorse this as important for his illiberal conservatism.  Remarkably, however, far from endorsing this teaching, Dineen passes over it in silence.

For example, to the question of "Should heretics be tolerated?" Aquinas's answer was no (ST, II-II, q. 11, a. 3).  He explained: heretics "by their sins indeed deserved to be both separated from the church by excommunication and excluded from the world by death.  For it is a more serious crime to corrupt the faith, which gives life to the soul, than to counterfeit money, which supports earthly life.  And so if secular rulers justly put counterfeiters and other felons immediately to death, much more could heretics be both excommunicated and justly killed immediately upon conviction of heresy."  

Thus, Aquinas supported the Inquisition in its mission of investigating and killing heretics.  In 1233, Pope Gregory IX had given the Dominicans the supreme authority over the Inquisition.  Aquinas was himself a Dominican.

This is part of the illiberal conservatism of people like Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), who argued that all stable government requires belief in its absolute divine authority as enforced by the persecution of heretics who deny Christian orthodoxy.  De Maistre defended the violent persecution of heretics by the Spanish Inquisition as necessary to protect Spain from the heresy of Protestantism.

Now, this is a truly illiberal alternative to the liberal doctrines of religious liberty and toleration.  But Dineen says nothing about this.  He says nothing about Aquinas's justification for killing heretics, and he does not even mention de Maistre, who was the true founder of illiberal conservatism.

Today, the most prominent proponents of illiberal Thomistic political thought are the Catholic Integralists, who see Aquinas as expressing the social order of the medieval Christian Kingdom--particularly, the "Most Christian Kingdom" of St. Louis IX in France--in which there was no separation of Church and State, but an integrated fusion of secular and sacred order (Jones 2017).  Remarkably, Dineen says nothing about whether he agrees with the Integralists, although he does defend "postliberal integration" against "liberal separation" (187-237).

As far as I can see, the only good explanation for Dineen's evasiveness is that he cannot bring himself to openly endorse such radically illiberal principles as the fusion of Church and State because he is really a liberal, who believes in religious liberty and toleration.

THE AMERICAN PURITAN FOUNDING:  JOHN WINTHROP VERSUS ROGER WILLIAMS

John Winthrop was an English Puritan lawyer and one of the leading founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630.  Deneen points to Winthrop and particularly his "Model of Christian Charity" sermon on the need for the Puritans to be "one body" in their organic wholeness as a community.   Deneen presents this as an expression of that common-good conservatism of the American Puritans that constituted the other American Founding--the illiberal Christian founding--that provides an alternative to the Lockean liberal Founding expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of 1787 (193-198).

Dineen's readers might then expect that he would explain and defend the illiberal legal principles for enforcing Christian orthodoxy that prevailed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  His readers might also expect that he would defend the illiberal Puritanism of Winthrop and others against the criticisms of liberal Puritans led by Roger Williams.  But, again, Dineen is silent about all of this.  He says nothing about the illiberal jurisprudence of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  And he does not even mention Roger Williams.

The "Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts" (1647) is a codification of laws for Massachusetts that functioned as a constitution for the colony.  Much of it comes from the theocratic regime of the Mosaic laws in the Old Testament (particularly, the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy).  For example, the section on capital crimes includes the following (Lutz [ed.] 1998, 102):

"If any man after legal conviction shall HAVE OR WORSHIP any other God, but the LORD GOD: he shall be put to death.  Exod. 22. 20.  Deut. 13.6, 10.  Deut. 17. 2. 6."

"2. If any man or woman be a WITCH, that is, hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit, they shall be put to death.  Exod. 22. 18.  Levit. 20. 27.  Deut. 18.10. 11."

"3. If any person within this Jurisdiction whether Christian or Paan shall willingly and willingly presume to BLASPHEME the holy Name of God, Father, Son or Holy-Ghost, with direct, expresse, presumptuous, or highhanded blasphemy, either by wilfull or obstinate denying the true god, or his Creation, or Governments of the world: or shall curse God in like manner, or reproach the holy religion of god as if it were but a politick device to keep ignorant men in awe; or shal utter any other kinde of Blasphemy of the like nature and degree they shall be put to death.  Levit. 24.15.16.

. . .

"8. If any man LYETH WITH MAN-KINDE as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed abomination, they both shal surely be put to death: unles the one partie were forced (or be under fourteen years of age in which case he shall be seveerly punished) Levit. 20. 13."

"9. If any person commit ADULTERIE with a married or espoused wife; the Adulterer and Adulteresse shall surely be put to death.  Lev. 20. 19. and 18. 20. Deu. 22. 23. 27."

Capital punishment for adulterers, homosexuals, witches, blasphemers, and those who refuse to worship God in the right way.  Kill them all.  Christians killing Christians for worshiping Christ in the wrong way. That's what a truly illiberal legal system looks like.  

So, when Dineen praises the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a model for the illiberal Puritan regime in America, his readers would expect him to praise these laws of Massachusetts and recommend them for his new illiberal regime for America.  Surprisingly, he is totally silent about them.  And his readers must wonder what his silence means.

His readers must also wonder why he is silent about the debate between John Winthrop and Roger Williams over the Mosaic theocracy that was established in Massachusetts.

A few months after Winthrop planted the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, Williams, a Puritan clergyman, brought his family from England to the colony.  He was welcomed by Winthrop as a "godly minister."  Williams and Winthrop largely agreed in their Calvinist theology.  But while Winthrop and the other leaders of the colony believed that the government must be an Old Testament theocracy that coercively enforces the true Christian religion by punishing pagans, apostates, heretics, and atheists, Williams believed that the New Testament taught that there must be a separation of church and state that protects "soul liberty"--the freedom of conscience that is the right of all individuals.  Williams was the first person to use the term "wall of separation."  And while Winthrop and the others believed that the authority of the Massachusetts government was ordained by God, Williams believed that earthly government was based on the free consent of the people without any divine authority.  Government was to serve "civil interests" rather than "spiritual interests."  This showed the split between the illiberal Puritanism of Winthrop and the liberal Puritanism of Williams (Barry 2012).

Previously, I have written about why I think Williams was right in showing the Biblical basis for liberal Christianity, particularly as rooted in the New Testament in opposition to the Mosaic theocracy of the Old Testament.

In 1635, Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  He fled south to Narragansett Bay, where he bought some land from the Narragansett Indians and established a settlement that he called Providence, which later became the colony and state of Rhode Island.

In 1637, Williams and a dozen or so families drafted a political compact for Providence that they all signed.  They agreed that each of the men would have an equal vote in its governance.  Remarkably, there was no mention of God--unlike all the other founding documents of every other English settlement--and the new government was said to serve the "public good . . . only in civil things" (Lutz, 162).  So this was the first government in the New World to be based on the separation of Church and State and the "soul liberty" of all individuals.

In 1644, Williams published his masterpiece--The Bloudy Tenent, of Persecution, for cause of Conscience, Discussed, in A Conference betweene Truth and Peace.  This 400-page book was one of the most comprehensive treatises about the freedom of religion ever written, and it became one of the classics of liberal political thought.  It exercised a pervasive influence on later writings defending religious liberty, such as John Locke's Letter on Toleration (1689).

It is surprising, therefore, that in identifying Winthrop as the illiberal Puritan founder of American political thought, Deneen says nothing about Williams and about this founding debate between illiberal and liberal Puritanism.  Deneen's readers must wonder why he did not want to defend the illiberal theocracy of Winthrop against the arguments of Williams for liberal Christianity.

Deneen cannot say anything about this debate between Winthrop and Williams, because if he did, he would have to recognize the contradiction between the liberal voluntarism of the Reformed Protestant covenantal community espoused by Williams and Winthrop's call for organic wholeness.  Central to Puritan theology is the idea of covenants--between God and man and between men in society--that rest on free choice.  As Perry Miller observed (in The New England Mind): "The individual voluntarily promised to obey civil and scriptural laws, for the seventeenth-century Puritans believed that meaningful obedience could only grow out of voluntary consent, never out of coercion."  Thus, Winthrop's attempt to form his followers into one body ran against the voluntarist grain of Puritanism that was expressed by Williams.  Deneen does not want to explicitly take a side in this debate, because if he did, he would have to admit that he is on the side of liberal voluntarism.

"NO RELIGIOUS TEST" IN THE CONSTITUTION

Deneen's readers must also wonder why, in taking the side of the Antifederalists in their criticisms of the Constitution of 1787, Deneen says nothing about those Antifederalists who attacked the "no religious test" clause of the Constitution as a denial of America's identity as a "Christian nation" (Deneen 2023, 95, 123, 168-73).

Article 6, section 3, of the Constitution stipulates that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."  Previously, I have written about the importance of this clause in establishing the liberal principles of religious liberty and toleration for the United States.

Before the adoption of the Constitution, most of the states had a religious test requiring that the officers of government be Protestant Christians, and thus excluding Jews, Catholics, Muslims, and atheists.  In some cases, even dissenting Protestants were excluded.  With the passage of Thomas Jefferson's Statute on Religious Freedom in Virginia in 1786, Virginia became the first state to protect religious liberty.

But then, in the decades after the adoption of the Constitution, all of the states dropped religious tests for office and those other provision of their constitutions that established state churches and punished those outside the established church.

In the Ratification Debates, some of the Antifederalists objected to the "no religious test" clause.  For example, at the North Carolina convention, David Caldwell objected to this as "an invitation for Jews, and Pagans of every kind, to come among us," and he worried that "this might endanger the character of the United States" (Bailyn 1993, 2:908).

If Deneen is rejecting the liberal principles of the Constitution, why doesn't he argue against the "no religious test" clause and argue for illiberal religious tests that would exclude non-Protestants from public office?  Does this suggest that he does not want to openly deny the liberal principle of religious liberty because he is actually a secret liberal who rejects the illiberal theocracy of a politically enforced religion?  Certainly, as a Catholic, Deneen would want to defend religious liberty for Catholics in a predominantly Protestant America.

So Dineen must be a liberal.

SIX FAILING ARGUMENTS

If Dineen really is a liberal, that would explain why his attempts at arguing against liberalism fail.  I see at least six failures.

He fails to provide accurate interpretations of liberal political theory.

He fails to exercise any critical judgment in reading his favorite authors who criticize liberalism.

He fails to consider empirical evidence for liberalism's success.

He fails to provide a coherent argument against liberalism.

He fails to see how the American Founding established a true "mixed regime."

And he fails to provide any attractive illiberal alternative to liberal social order.

I will examine these failures in my future posts.

REFERENCES

Bailyn, Bernard, ed.  1993.  The Debate on the Constitution: Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters During the Struggle over Ratification.  2 vols.  New York: Library of America.

Barry, John M.  2012.  Roger Williams and The Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty.  New York: Viking.

Deneen, Patrick.  2018.  Why Liberalism Failed.  New Haven, CN: Yale University Press.

Deneen, Patrick.  2023.  Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future. New York: Sentinel.

Jones, Andrew Willard.  2017.  Before Church and State: A Study of Social Order in the Sacramental Kingdom of St. Louis IX. Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Academic.

Lutz, Donald S., ed.  1998.  Colonial Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History.  Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

Williams, Roger.  1963.  The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution.  ln The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, vol. 3 of 7.  New York: Russell and Russell.

The Crisis of the House Divided in 2024: Trump and the Antiliberal Tradition in America

Some Americans shocked by Donald Trump's MAGA movement have insisted: "This is not who we are."  President Biden has adopted that as the main theme of his campaign against Trump--that Trump and his MAGA movement are trying to overturn those moral and political principles that have always defined the American people. 

But now some historians are saying that Trump's political movement has deep roots in an American antiliberal tradition that has always been set against the liberal tradition that originated in the American Revolution and the liberal principles of the Declaration of Independence: since 1776 America has been split in two--a liberal America that embraces the ideal of equal liberty for all in the Declaration of Independence and an antiliberal America that rejects it.  

Two new books make this argument:  Robert Kagan's Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart--Again and Steven Hahn's Illiberal America: A History.  In this post, I will respond to Kagan's book.

Kagan elaborates an argument that he first set forth in some articles in the Washington Post.  He makes two claims.  The first is that the American presidential election of 2024 will be like the election of 1860 in manifesting what Abraham Lincoln called the Crisis of the House Divided, which will provoke a rebellion against America's liberal democracy comparable to the South's rebellion in the Civil War.  The second claim is that this crisis in 2024 is only the most recent expression of a struggle between liberalism and antiliberalism that has been woven into American history ever since the American Revolution and most dramatically displayed in the American Civil War.

Kagan predicts that if Trump wins, he will become a dictator in punishing his enemies and exercising unlimited power in violation of the Constitution; and his supporters will allow him to do this.  If Trump loses, he will say the election was stolen, his supporters will deny the legitimacy of the federal government, and those state governments under Republican control will refuse to accept Biden's presidency, and perhaps secede from the Union and form a pro-Trump confederacy.  Either way, American liberal democracy will be dissolved.

This is possible, Kagan argues, only because the many Americans who support Trump reject the liberal principles of the American Revolution, and consequently they will justify Trump's illiberal behavior.  Trump's supporters show that they belong to an American tradition of illiberalism that stretches back to the origins of American politics.

Kagan sees the Declaration of Independence as the statement of the radical liberalism of the American Revolution--that all men are created equal and equally endowed with unalienable natural rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that governments are instituted by consent of the people to secure these rights, and that when any government fails to secure these rights, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish that government and to institute a new government that seems to them most likely to secure their safety and happiness.  

Throughout American history, the most fundamental political debates have been about how best to extend that equality of rights to all Americans.  Kagan agrees, therefore, with Lincoln's belief that this equality of rights in the Declaration was meant to be the "standard maxim for free society" that would be "constantly looked to--constantly labored for--and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated and therefore constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere" (Speech on the Dred Scott Decision, June 26, 1857).

But from the beginning in 1776, according to Kagan, these principles have been rejected by many Americans who have embraced a racial, religious, and ethnic antiliberalism, in which America is defined not by its commitment to human equality of rights but by its identity as a white Protestant Anglo-Saxon nation.  The American antiliberal groups have included the slaveholding South, the post-Reconstruction Jim Crow South, the Ku Klux Clan in the 1920s, the anti-immigration movement that led to the Immigration Act of 1924, the Dixiecrats of the 1940s and 1950s, the John Birch Society conservatives, the antiliberal conservatives associated with William Buckley, the supporters of George Wallace, the movement for Pat Buchanan, the New Right around Ronald Reagan, and now the antiliberal populists who have taken control of the Republican Party under the leadership of Trump.

Kagan believes that Trump's MAGA populism shows all the elements of American antiliberalism.  The racial element is white nationalism: all white groups have voted in greater numbers for Trump than for his opponents.  The religious element is Christian nationalism:  many of Trump's most fervent supporters want to restore America's identity as a Christian nation.  The ethnic element is Anglo-Saxon and European nationalism:  Trump's anti-immigration stance is predominantly opposition to immigrants of Hispanic, African, Middle-Eastern, and Asian ethnicities.  America is for Americans, and those Americans who do not support Trump's ethnic, religious, and racial vision of America are not true Americans.

Although I agree with much of what Kagan says, I disagree with him on three points.  First, he fails to make a good intellectual argument for the Lockean and Lincolnian interpretation of the Declaration of Independence.  Second, he fails to see that over the past 250 years of American history, the liberal tradition has ultimately prevailed over the antiliberal tradition--even among American conservatives. Finally, he fails to see that as a consequence of that triumph of the liberal tradition in America, Trump and his supporters have neither the guts nor the guns for fighting a civil war to overthrow that liberal tradition.

THE LOCKEAN AND LINCOLNIAN DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Kagan identifies the liberal principles of the Declaration of Independence (particularly in the first two paragraphs) as a concise and elegant statement of John Locke's political philosophy, and so the liberal tradition in America as based on the Declaration is a Lockean tradition of thought (13, 17, 30-31, 34, 41, 151).  Kagan says nothing, however, about Claire Rydell Arcenas's argument that the Declaration does not show Locke's influence at all.  He should have responded to her by showing the many clear echoes of Locke's language in the Declaration, as I did a few years ago.

Kagan should also have responded to Pauline Maier's claim that Lincoln's elevation of the Declaration to being America's statement of the "standard maxim for free society" was Lincoln's mythic invention.  Lincoln saw the highest moral standard for American politics stated in the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence--particularly, the assertion that "all men are created equal." But Maier argued that from 1776 to 1790, almost no one thought that opening section of the Declaration was important.  It was only later, after the Jeffersonian Republicans had transformed the interpretation of the Declaration, that the "self-evident truths" of the second paragraph became the most important part of the Declaration.  

In my previous post, I answered Maier by arguing that the political philosophy of the Declaration was widely recognized beginning in 1776 as necessary for the moral justification of the Revolution, although George Mason's language in the Virginia Declaration of Rights was quoted more often than Jefferson's revision of that language, and as Maier admits, Jefferson's language had the "same content" as Mason's.  Then, beginning in the 1790s, the Jeffersonian Republicans began the tradition of quoting Jefferson's language as the most concise and eloquent statement of the founding principles of the American Revolution.  So, when Lincoln appealed to Jefferson's principles in the Declaration, he was not creating a myth but extending a tradition that had emerged early in the American founding period. 

But while Locke, Jefferson, and Lincoln all agreed that we can justify the human equality of rights as "inherent in the nature of being human"--as originally expressed in the state of nature--Kagan insists that they were wrong because liberalism is "a choice, and, at root, a faith" for which there is no rational proof or justification.  "Either one believes in its principles or one does not" (13-14).

This is not much of an argument for liberalism.  Indeed, it's not an argument at all, but rather a groundless "faith" or "choice."

Kagan simply assumes without proof that there is no empirical argument for natural rights as "inherent in the nature of being human."  He thus ignores the evolutionary historical evidence that Locke was right about the state of nature as the original condition of our human ancestors and that the American Revolutionaries were right about their being in a state of nature.  I have written about this in some previous posts.

Kagan asserts: "Since the dawn of humankind, people have been ruled by tyrannies of one form or another.  That is the norm" (10).  He offers no proof for this assertion.  And he does not respond to the evidence that I and others have presented to show that democracy is natural for human societies, because it arose in our earliest evolutionary history in Paleolithic hunter-gatherer bands, so that it is part of our genetically evolved human nature.

Contrary to Kagan, liberalism does not depend on a blind "faith."  Locke, Jefferson, and Lincoln were right in seeing that it can be supported with reasons and evidence that show how our natural rights arise from our evolved human nature.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE LIBERAL TRADITION IN AMERICA

Even if there is a good case to be made for liberalism, we have to wonder how successful it has been in persuading the American people.  If American history since 1776 has been a perpetual struggle between a liberal tradition and an antiliberal tradition, has one side emerged as stronger than the other?

Kagan's answer is unclear.  Sometimes he says that "large numbers of Americans" or "millions of Americans" are on the side of antiliberalism, and at other times he says that "half the country" is antiliberal.  But then he also says that at the founding "the great majority of Americans" were antiliberal.  And yet in the 1950s, antiliberalism "had fallen into minority status in both parties."  He also says that in recent history "the core antiliberal constituencies were declining in absolute numbers in the country at large, but as a percentage of Republicans, they were growing in both numbers and influence."  He quotes Glenn Ellmers (a scholar at the Claremont Institute) as saying that "most people living in the United States today--certainly more than half--are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term," because only "the 75 million people who voted" for Trump in 2020 are true Americans.  (Previously, I have written about how Trump has split the Claremont Institute, with people like Ellmers taking the side of Trump against Jaffa's legacy of Lincolnian liberal conservatism.)  But then Kagan says that no more than "tens of millions of Americans will follow Trump wherever he leads."  (See pages 3, 5, 8, 77, 89, 94, 124, 135, 141, 161, 182, 196.)

In the final paragraph of his book, Kagan concludes that the future of American liberalism looks good--if it can survive the 2024 election:

"Meanwhile, the overall long-term prospects for American liberalism are actually bright, if only because the demographic shift is a reality that can't be blinked away.  White supremacy is another Lost Cause.  As America becomes increasingly multiracial, multiethnic, and multicultural, and as it becomes impossible for any single ethnoreligious group to dominate American politics and society, the appeal of liberalism as the only means of holding such a society together should grow.  Many white people may not change their attitudes toward other racial and ethnic groups--after all, they haven't changed in two hundred years--but their ability to fight to preserve their hierarchies will diminish because they will be too badly outnumbered.  That is why 2024 is the year when the antiliberals hope to overthrow the system.  It may be their last chance" (217-18).

I agree that the "demographic shift" towards a "multiracial, multiethnic, and multicultural" America favors liberalism.  But I also believe that there has been an intellectual shift in the moral and political culture of America that favors liberalism.  If we don't see that intellectual shift, that's because most of what Kagan identifies as antiliberal conservatism is only a pretense of antiliberalism that disguises an underlying liberal conservatism.

For example, Kagan speaks of Patrick Deneen as one of the leading antiliberals in America today (176, 185).  But as I have argued, if you study Deneen's writing carefully, you will see that he is actually a liberal!  As an illustration, you will notice that while Deneen praises John Winthrop's Massachusetts Bay Colony as the antiliberal founding of America--in contrast to the Lockean founding in 1776--Deneen refuses to defend the theocratic code of laws in Massachusetts--such as capital punishment for adulterers, homosexuals, witches, blasphemers, and those who refuse to worship God in the right way--because Deneen believes in the liberal principle of religious liberty, and so he's on the side of Roger Williams rather than Winthrop.

If you wanted to see a true model of antiliberalism, you would have to look beyond American history to Joseph de Maistre. In reaction against the French Revolution, Maistre initiated a Counter-Enlightenment tradition of thought based on a theocratic authoritarianism--the idea that all government comes from some unquestioned coercive authority that is divinely infallible and that all such authority is derived from the Pope as God's representative on Earth.  He proposed a restoration of the Bourbon monarchy to the throne of France, ruling under the supreme authority of the Pope in both temporal and spiritual matters.  Atheists, Jews, and heretical Christians (such as the Protestants) should be suppressed.  He claimed that the rationalist rejection of Catholic Christianity and theocratic monarchy was responsible for the disorder that followed the French Revolution of 1789.  Even the most extreme right-wing Catholic Integralists in France today who profess to be in de Maistre's tradition can't endorse his theocratic authoritarianism.

As compared with de Maistre, almost all American conservatives today--even those who pretend to be antiliberal or post-liberal--are really liberal conservatives.  You can see that in the debate that has recently emerged between the "National Conservatives" and the "Freedom Conservatives."  If you compare the "statement of principles" for National Conservatism with that for Freedom Conservatism, you can see that they agree in affirming the liberal principles of individual equality and liberty, and thus reject any ethnoreligious antiliberalism.  

For example, in the National Conservatism Statement, the section on "God and Public Religion" includes this: "Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private.  At the same time, Jews and other religious minorities are to be protected in the observance of their own traditions, in the free governance of their communal institutions, and in all matters pertaining to the rearing and education of their children.  Adult individuals should be protected from religious or ideological coercion in their private lives and in their homes."  

That's a long way from the theocratic coercion of Winthrop or de Maistre.

Here's the section on "Race" in the National Conservatism Statement:  "We believe that all men are created in the image of God and that public policy should reflect that fact.  No person's worth or loyalties can be judged by the shape of his features, the color of his skin, or the results of a lab test.  The history of racialist ideology and oppression and its ongoing consequences require us to emphasize this truth.  We condemn the use of state and private institutions to discriminate and divide us against one another on the basis of race.  The cultural sympathies encouraged by a decent nationalism offer a sound basis for conciliation and unity among diverse communities.  The nationalism we espouse respects, and indeed combines, the unique needs of particular minority communities and the common good of the nation as a whole."

This "decent nationalism" is a liberal multiracial and multiethnic nationalism.

What we see here is the ultimate triumph of the liberal tradition in American history.  The critical turning point in that history was the Civil War.  That war was a test of whether a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal could endure in a war with a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are not created equal.  The victory of the Union over the Confederacy was, as George Fitzhugh sadly conceded, the victory of John Locke over Robert Filmer.

Moreover, there is a good argument for saying that the military superiority of the Union over the Confederacy really was in some ways a product of the Lockean liberal culture of the North.  Consider, for instance, how the greater population of the Northern states over the Southern states arose from differences in migration.  Before the Civil War, the migration of white Southerners to the North was three times greater than the migration from the North to the South.  At the same time, seven-eighths of the immigrants from overseas settled in the North.  (This later became important for the Union army: 24 percent of all Union soldiers were born abroad [McPherson 1997: ix].)  In the 1840s alone, the population growth in the North was 20 percent higher than in the South (Kagan, 70).  Proslavery Southern leaders saw this population growth in the North as the single greatest threat to the South, which is why they fought so hard to expand slavery into the western territories, and thus increase the number of slave states.

What we see here is what evolutionary scientists call cultural group selection through migration and assimilation, in which countries with cultural traditions of freedom have higher fitness than countries that are less free.  John Locke understood this, which is why he argued that free societies benefited from having open borders, so that they could attract migrants from less free societies.  The freer societies with a growing population of productive and inventive people become the more prosperous and powerful societies.  In this way, people "vote with their feet" in favor of freedom.

And of course, not only did many white Southerners migrate to the North, many slaves ran away to the free states, forcing Southern slaveholders to demand that people in the North capture these fugitive slaves and return them to slavery.  That's why the debate over the fugitive slave laws was so intense.

Because of its larger population, the Union had a larger pool of men from whom soldiers could be recruited.  Consequently, the Confederate soldiers were badly outnumbered by their opponents: of the 3 million Civil war soldiers, over 2.1 million (70 percent) were Union soldiers.

Now, of course, once Reconstruction was ended, the Jim Crow South did preserve some of the Southern antiliberal tradition for almost a hundred years.  But even that was eventually defeated by the liberal tradition of the Civil Rights Movement, signaled in 1965 by an American President from the South, speaking before a joint session of Congress, declaring: "We shall overcome."

TRUMP HAS NEITHER THE GUTS NOR THE GUNS FOR A CIVIL WAR

But then is it likely, as Kagan predicts, that after the election of 2024 Trump will lead his MAGA movement in a new rebellion against the American liberal tradition that will provoke another civil war?  After all, if the people do have the right to overthrow an unjust government, as the Declaration of Independence says, and if Trump and his supporters believe that the American liberal regime is unjustly oppressing them, then they should be willing and able to launch an antiliberal rebellion.

I don't think so.  As I said three years ago, the response of Trump and his supporters to his defeat in the 2020 election shows that they do not have the guts or the guns to rebel against the American liberal political order.

He did not have the guns because military leaders such as General Mark Milley (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) made it clear that they would not allow the military to support a presidential dictatorship.  And he did not have the guts because he lacked the courage to assert his dictatorial will in violation of the Constitution.  He displayed his unmanly weakness on January 6 when he failed to lead the march on the Capitol as he had promised earlier in the day, and instead he watched the attack on TV at the White House, as if it were an entertaining TV drama.  Later, he meekly condemned the insurrectionary violence that he had inspired, and he told the insurrectionists to "go home with love and in peace." As Nicholas Fuentes of the white nationalist "America First" internet broadcasts said, Trump on that day proved to be "very weak and flaccid."

Kagan writes:

"What we are witnessing, however, is not a political battle but a rebellion.  The events of January 6, 2021, proved that Trump and his most die-hard supporters are prepared to defy constitutional and democratic norms, just as revolutionary movements have in the past.  Though it may have been shocking to see normal, decent Americans condoning a violent assault on the Capitol, that event demonstrated that Americans as a people are not as exceptional as their founding principles and institutions" (215).

But as shocking as the January 6th insurrection was, it could have been much more shocking.  Trump could have ordered the military to support the insurrectionists and to take control of the Capitol.  And he could have ordered his MAGA supporters to rise up and follow his leadership as the American Caesar.  He didn't do that because he didn't believe that Americans would support an antiliberal revolution to overthrow the American constitutional order.

By contrast, in 1861, Southern political leaders could count on there being a sufficiently strong antiliberal tradition in the South to support a Confederacy of states in rebellion against the national government.  

I am not convinced by Kagan's suggestion that when Trump wins or loses the presidential election of 2024, there will be such a strongly antiliberal MAGA movement that it will support Trump in becoming an antiliberal dictator.