As I understand it, Blond’s argument goes something like this: Both the political Left and political Right have embraced a philosophy of radical liberal individualism, which undermines civic virtue and communal solidarity by valorizing individual choice above all else. Consequently, our political system oscillates wildly between government encroachment and radical deregulation because political rights have become wholly contingent on our relationship to the state. Blond seeks to revitalize conservative politics by restoring what he terms classical liberalism, which emphasizes civic virtue, subsidiarity, and explicitly moral political goals that go beyond maximizing choice. In the realm of ec0nomics, Blond calls for breaking up “corporate oligopolies,” local competition, and encouraging poor and working class citizens to become “stakeholders” in the economy (shades of Bush’s “ownership society?”). In the realm of politics and civic life, Blond stressed the importance of civil society and spoke out in favor of radical decentralization, a concept he explicitly links to Catholic subsidiarity.

Despite my nasty libertarian streak, I found a lot to like in Blond’s talk, particularly in his enthusiasm for decentralization and local competition. My only quibble is that while Blond’s diagnoses are often compelling, his proposed solutions are sometimes less so. When talking about the importance of political subsidiarity, for example, Blond spoke of “giving democracy back to the streets,” which sounds more like a Students for a Democratic Society slogan than a concrete political program. “Driving capital to the periphery” and decentralizing our financial system sound great in theory, but I’m still left to wonder how economic subsidiarity works in practice. One important caveat: I’m new to Blond and was late to the lecture, so my first impressions may not do justice to the Red Tories’ program.

Blond’s philosophy also seems better suited to cultural renewal than, say, political or economic reform. His most compelling examples of Red Toryism in action – A Birmingham neighborhood taking back the streets from pimps and drug dealers; the persistence of Northern Italy’s artisan economy – struck me as the result of cultural factors that aren’t easily replicated or recreated through state action. When we do transmogrify a cultural agenda into a political one, the results are sometimes messier than anticipated, which may have been what Ross Douthat was getting at when he asked Blond about the parallels between his philosophy and Bush’s compassionate conservatism at the end of the presentation.

One last observation: Blond spoke movingly of the plight of poor and working class citizens stuck in low-wage service jobs with no prospects for social mobility. His economic vision stresses the importance of creating stakeholders – skilled artisans, small businesspeople, and so on -  who feel more invested in their communities. This reminded me of the American experience after World War II, when millions of returning GIs received free college educations and federally-backed homeownership loans helped create the American middle class. But while these programs were largeky  successful, they’re not exactly models of decentralized governance. Is Blond willing to compromise or moderate his small government sympathies to create new economic stakeholders? I ask because state efforts to create or impart social capital – from public schools to the Federal Housing Administration to Bush’s compassionate conservatism – are rarely characterized by decentralization or subsidiarity.

Exit question: Is liberal society, as Blond suggests, fundamentally dependent on older traditions, cultural practices, and civic institutions? Does radical individualism undermine these institutions? I know Blond isn’t the first to make this argument, but his prognosis was both unusually grim and surprisingly persuasive. I’d be curious to hear what the League’s commenters and contributors have to say on the subject.

“I have this crazy notion that there is a point where  Red Toryism and the kind of libertarian ideas E.D. is promoting could work together.”  ~ Chris Dierkes

I suppose I’m either hopelessly conflicted about my own political and social views and values (“beloved but somewhat confused” as Bob Cheeks would have it), or else I’m working slowly toward a sort of synthesis that I don’t think is properly represented in the modern American political spectrum.  That is, I envision something that embraces limited government, free markets, and so forth, but without the unhealthy emphasis on individualism, corporatism, and consumerism so infused to our modern conservative and libertarian movements.  I’m not saying we should demonize these things, but they should be cast in their proper roles – as byproducts of liberty and prosperity, rather than as the be-all-end-all of our lives and politics.  Along with this, I’d like to see a politics that emphasizes limited, efficient government but does not demonize all government and all actions of the state (save military, of course) and works to govern, regulate, and so forth in the least intrusive, most effective way possible.  This would almost certainly require a severing of ties between big government and big business – as well as big government and big labor, for that matter.

And of course, culturally, I’d like some sort of progressive traditionalism that at once embraced the need for progress (social, economic, technological, etc.) as well as the irreplacable value of tradition.  Cultivating tradition and traditional values while at the same time embracing progress often seems a hopeless task, but I think that under the surface, it’s also the modus operandi of the ages.  This give and take is always with us.  I’m fairly traditional in many ways – with a strong belief in the nuclear family, in the importance of one parent staying home with the kids, and so forth, yet for those same reasons I support gay marriage, I support womens’ rights, etc.  (A stay at home parent can almost as easily be a dad, after all).  It’s why I believe in social equality and include the rights of the unborn as part of that social equality.  Indeed, I think a pro-life movement that embraced cultural diversity, sexual equality, and homosexual gay rights would be a far more successful movement in the long run, though in the short term….

So Chris mentions this potential fusion of Red Toryism and Libertarianism, and I think that’s the right trajectory for a political movement to reshape America – a more “progressive” conservatism, to be sure, and one that places emphasis on the small, the local, the communal and decentralized, but also on economic freedom and human rights.  I see a number of good ideas which could spawn from such a hybrid: [Read more →]

It’s true, the free market is a system sans morality, a system of personal choices and determinations, and our political leaders should do their utmost to make sure that all the players within it are playing by the rules.  But the notion that markets are “amoral” and thus not to be trusted is nonsense.  Blond’s distrust of markets is entirely misplaced, and would be better served by a distrust of the state’s distortion of those markets.

Blond’s critique of the free market is born out of its failures, and namely the failure of competition and the rise of monopoly.  This may be a true assessment of some markets (and certainly has its place when thinking about financial firms classified as ‘too-big-to-fail’), but I think Blond let’s his personal preference for all things local color his assessment a little too much.  And he almost entirely ignores the state’s role in creating or sustaining monopolies (let alone the state monopolies themselves, like the UK’s health system)  He laments the rise of multi-national grocery stores and Wal*Mart: [Read more →]

Why and how is the political philosophy that is most evidently social, and claims all righteousness and power as a result in fact so asocial and unilateral? The answer is that, for the most part, socialism is founded on liberalism and liberalism is founded on a hatred of society [....]

But this autonomy can be protected only if others do not violate its bounds; and this is a role that can be played by the state only. The state then becomes the great policer and equaliser of humanity, and through the general will it must reconcile each individual with every other. As such, the state must strip society and people of all differential ties, beliefs and values in order to ensure equality and fairness; naked and denuded we now stand equal and alone before the state as the ultimate guarantor of our freedom.

Thus does modern liberalism underwrite all the great totalitarianisms of our age, from the terror of revolutionary France to the Cultural Revolution of Mao in China.

Now that’s quite a leap if you ask me.  I was at one point quite taken with many of Blond’s arguments.  Lately they’ve struck me as quite a lot more hollow than I once believed.  Or at least riddled with a few more holes.  This next passage is a particularly seductive bit of rhetoric: [Read more →]