I’ve been re-reading a lot of Harry Jaffa, spurred by his recent death. He was a superb scholar who left behind two of the best books ever written on Lincoln. His erudition was immense. His prose, though invariably challenging, suffered from none of the characteristic obscurity of his Straussian comrades.
Churchill’s indelible rendering of Statesmanship was Harry Jaffa’s favorite passage from the great Englishman’s voluminous writings. Curiously, though not much of a Burkean himself, the emphasis on this quotation, in various key portions of his writings, evidences a strong pull toward the wisdom of the great Irishman, in this recently deceased great American.
The passage appears in Churchill’s collection Thoughts and Adventures, a reissue of which book I reviewed long ago. In Jaffa’s summary, Churchill is defending Burke, who “had once attacked the British Court and defended the American Revolution, then later had defended the French monarchy and attacked the French Revolution.”
Now the commonality in scholarship hostile to Burke is disparagement of his consistency; among the uncommonly vitriolic, the supposed inconsistency is insinuated as manifesting an undercurrent of venality. He championed the American cause out of a desire for American lucre; he assailed Warren Hastings and the East India Company to propitiate Charles James Fox; he denounced the Jacobins to ingratiate himself to William Pitt’s Parliamentary majority. He was, in fine, a mere trimmer.
That respected students of history, in solemn lectures and orotund discourses, managed to advance and nearly establish these absurdities, only demonstrates how little history one need read, in order to successfully style oneself a student of history. The briefest perusal of the relevant Parliamentary History, in the momentous spring of 1791, when disputation over the French Revolution effected a breach between the longtime allies Burke and Fox that would never close, should dispel any crackpot notion that the former was some calculating snob who rose against French revolutionaries to advance his own political career. Indeed, the date alone should be sufficient: The early months of 1791 had witnessed few massacres, the king and queen were not yet prisoners of the Paris mob, the French revolutionary state still maintained a veneer of order and security. Meanwhile, across the Channel, Parliament echoed with encomia to the new French constitution, to the wisdom of the National Assembly; and with sneers at any prophecies of doom. The lull of 1790-91 was the unfittest time of all for a trimmer to break with the French revolutionary spirit.
When everyone else thought the deplorable but necessary bloodletting was all but over, with true republican liberty seated in the former throne of Gallic despotism, Burke wrote with savage sarcasm all the more potent for its prescience that “they will assassinate the king when his name will no longer be necessary to their designs” and “they keep their sovereign alive for the purpose of exhibiting him, like some wild beast at a fair.” Likewise, in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, published in late 1790, Burke had also set down an extraordinary prediction of revolution degenerating into military despotism: he never lived to see Bonapartism, but he already knew what it would look like, a decade before it appeared.
In the teeth of such solid facts as these, preeminent scholars managed to maintain that Burke did it all for sordid reasons of expedience. The exaggerated inconsistency became their truncheon: maddeningly effective one.
Churchill would have none of this, and this belabored sketch of the historiography behind his contrary judgment may properly situate his famed quotation on Statesmanship:
A Statesman in contact with the moving current of events and anxious to keep the ship on an even keel and steer a steady course may lean all his weight now on one side and now on the other. His arguments in each case when contrasted can be shown to be not only very different in character, but contradictory in spirit and opposite in direction: yet his object will throughout have remained the same. His resolves, his wishes, his outlook may have been unchanged; his methods may be verbally irreconcilable. We cannot call this inconsistency. The only way a man can remain consistent amid changing circumstances is to change with them while preserving the same dominating purpose.
One can select from Burke’s own writings ample support for this view, none pithier than this: “The situation of man is the preceptor of his duty.”
Burke’s dominating purpose was to oppose arbitrary and abusive power -- in America, in India, in Ireland, and in France. His genius arises from his extraordinarily penetrating estimate of “the situation of man” in his time; but his fortitude, his independence of mind, his perseverance gave force to the discharge of his duty. Few men have ever equaled his Statesmanship. Thus we even find a much more radical-minded scholar like Jaffa, whose political teaching was not Burkean, yet continually recurring to the Burkean theme, so ably articulated by another great Statesman of the British Isles.
Comments (38)
I suppose that in those who are unable to recognize principles at all, the fact that in one case you go to war and in another case you don't would seem like inconsistency in character. The fact that they are explained by different circumstances would slide off their minds like off greased teflon.
Burke had the right of it in two completely different revolutions - contrary to nearly all his contemporaries. (You would think that some of these historians might notice that.) Churchill saw the truth about Germany and Hitler for a decade before anyone else admitted to it (and correctly understood the nature of the coming war better than anyone on the Allied side). I would much rather be pitched into the briar patch with the likes of these unheralded heralds of woe than be comforted and assuaged by the likes of Chamberlain and his modern look-alikes in the White House and State Dept and the media circus.
I haven't had the opportunity to read Jaffa's work on Lincoln, but I will have to remedy that. Understanding the right role of a national leader like Lincoln at a time like civil war is an essential facet of piecing together a due understanding of our political order.
Posted by Tony | February 1, 2015 10:43 PM
"the right role of a national leader like Lincoln..."
What a joke. I have never - and will never - understand how a conservative of any stripe can find in that man "rightness" of any stripe. And Jaffa was a revisionist fool, celebrating what has ultimately led to the office of president as one whose power has overwhelmingly outstripped its original designs.
I have neither the time nor the inclination to enter into an extended discussion over this fact (and yes, a fact it is). So I'll be content - as a constant reader of this blog - to be labeled a troll and read what remains of the comments here, undoubtedly ones which roll over in incessant praise of a man whose lack of principle was almost as appalling as was his striving for power...at the expense of the citizenry, no less.
But please rehearse for me - as someone surely will - the morality-play that was the War of Northern Aggression. Please. And please try - just try - to convince me that Burke would have held Lincoln in anything but disrepute and disgust.
Posted by Goodenough | February 1, 2015 10:58 PM
Goodenough, oddly enough I am skeptical too of any claim that Lincoln was right in doing what he did, and that's why I couched my comment as open ended: he was in fact the leader of the US government, and THAT LEADER had a right role. Whatever that right role was, should be susceptible of reasonable historical and political argumentation. I haven't read what Jaffa has to say about the matter, so I am in doubt as to whether he was reasonable and/or supports his position adequately or not. I can't discuss what he gets right or wrong because I haven't read any of it.
I tend to sympathize with the southern claim regarding the right of secession. However: As for the "War of Northern Aggression", just who was it who fired first at Fr. Sumter? Even if one were to suppose that the states had the absolute right to secede, one would have to require as a part of justice that they would have to *negotiate* the issue of federal military installations and what to do about them. One could hardly claim that the federally bought materiel and structure belongs of natural right to the state. Firing on them to take them over when they constitute effectively zero threat to the state, rather than a negotiated settlement, cannot be wholly free of the charge of aggression.
Posted by Tony | February 2, 2015 5:07 AM
I could be way wrong, I suppose, but somehow I don't see that Lincoln & the northern states would have *ever* under any circumstances allowed a peaceful "negotiated" secession by the south. That said, I'm a lot more inclined to "sympathize" with Lincoln's dilemma than Mr. Goodenough seems to be above. Perhaps I'll eventually change my mind after I've read a few more books on the subject, but as of right now I'm not particularly inclined to equate Lincoln with the great Satan himself. "Reconstruction" is a different issue altogether.
Posted by Terry Morris | February 2, 2015 8:52 AM
Intriguingly, early 20th century progressive historians gave Burke and Lincoln basically the same treatment: drastically downplaying the principles at stake in each's circumstances, they presented a picture of the consummate political climber aided by a stock of oratorical skill equal to their ambition. The essentially device was to establish an interpretation of historical events that, without openly accusing either man of cynical insincerity, yet encouraged a general dismissal of the substantive arguments, the real issues to which their set their minds. So for decades students were discouraged from close readings of Burke and Lincoln speeches; and infected with the poisonous assumption that in neither the Civil War, nor the American revolt, nor the Hastings impeachment, nor even the French Revolution, was anything fundamental at stake. Tragic misunderstandings, all of them.
I don't think this bizarre progressive view can survive even a single reading of The Crisis of the House Divided, which, not coincidentally, is why most Lincoln critics appear to never have read it.
Posted by Paul J Cella | February 2, 2015 11:21 AM
You may be right, but even so...SC fired first.
Posted by MarcAnthony | February 2, 2015 11:27 AM
"But please rehearse for me - as someone surely will - the morality-play that was the War of Northern Aggression. Please."
No rehearsals, but the basic outline has remained the same all these years -- slavery was a moral problem that wasn't going away and either the South would eventually get rid of slavery on it's own (ha!) or they would be forced to do so via war.
Back to Paul's excellent post: "Burke’s dominating purpose was to oppose arbitrary and abusive power." What was slavery if not an "arbitrary and abusive power?" Indeed, all those Lincoln speeches that Jaffa lovingly analyzes make this point over and over again. It seems to be that Burke would be no friend to slave-owners.
Posted by Jeffrey S. | February 2, 2015 12:08 PM
I find myself sympathetic to Southern arguments but I, a little tentatively, do tend to fall on the side of the North. The South's justifications for secession remind me strikingly of no-fault divorce: All the fun of a federal government, none of the responsibilities. Political power shouldn't work like that.
As for Lincoln, I think he was an admirable man personally and a brilliant politician. His handling of the war wasn't perfect but I'm not sure if anybody who could have done it better.
Also, his speeches are extraordinary. Nobody turns a phrase quite like Lincoln.
Posted by MarcAnthony | February 2, 2015 3:45 PM
Jeff, quite right. The South that couldn't bear to inquire into the holding of men in hopeless bondage can make no claim of true republican principle. The example is irretrievably vitiated.
By the way, Burke did actually work out a legal plan for reform-toward-manumission -- in 1780! It has an un-PC title but it's an extraordinary document: Sketch of the Negro Code.
Almost fifteen years later a minister in the Pitt Government asked him for this Sketch, which he sent on with a Preface that is pretty impressive as well. In this he calls slavery "an incurable evil," but brilliantly foresees the immense complications: "It is much to be feared, that a trade continued and discouraged, and with a sentence of death passed on it, will perpetuate much ill blood between those, who struggle for the abolition, and those, who contend for an effectual continuance."
Presages of the House Divided.
Posted by Paul J Cella | February 2, 2015 4:22 PM
I can see that possibly being true. I can also imagine Lincoln being so more because of being pushed into it by intransigent Congressional powers than of his own preference, but frankly that's more of a guess than anything I could back up with data. If it is true, how long would Lincoln have held off taking armed forces to the South if the South had not pushed the issue point blank?
Right, MA, that's kind of how I feel about it: if the southern states had the right to secede, they made a poor showing of when, why, and how to go about it. If they had shown more sense about things generally, one would have more confidence that their basic insights on the nature of the political order were right.
Posted by Tony | February 2, 2015 7:04 PM
And, by the way, is there anyone who feels, as I do, the intense irony of Robert E. Lee of Virginia turning the declaration of Patrick Henry, (one of the first firebrand Virginians for revolution), on its head: "I am a American first, a Virginian second"? They cannot both be right. Was Henry, speaking even before the War and well before the Constitution, just plain speaking through his hat, or was Lee repudiating a 90-year old statement that was true enough at the time and became even more true during 3 generations of America?
Posted by Tony | February 2, 2015 7:12 PM
Also, Goodenough:
Translation: I have no argument, and am blowing smoke, and have just saved myself the trouble of proving otherwise.
See, Goodenough has structured his comment so that no matter how we answer he can always spin it in a way that makes us look bad, because he's given no argument. Therefore whatever we say he can always claim we're missing some important fact or proof he has not given, and does not need to give because we're all sheeple Yankees who were too taken in by the Man to understand the REAL story.
And, if we get annoyed at him, well we're just proving his point! We're labeling him a troll! Wake up sheeple!
I have no patience for craven folks like him, who carefully structure their comments in such a way that they can say whatever they want and content themselves that any response - any at all - proves their point.
To quote the "Sherlock" episode "The Recihenbach Fall": You repel me.
Posted by MarcAnthony | February 2, 2015 8:09 PM
Chesterton was critical of Burke and it might be interesting to explore how the two icons of the Right differ and what this could mean for the conservatism today.
One would expect the American conservatism to sympathize with Chesterton's point below
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A cultivated Conservative friend of mine once exhibited great distress because in a gay moment I once called Edmund Burke an atheist. I need scarcely say that the remark lacked something of biographical precision; it was meant to. Burke was certainly not an atheist in his conscious cosmic theory, though he had not a special and flaming faith in God, like Robespierre. Nevertheless, the remark had reference to a truth which it is here relevant to repeat. I mean that in the quarrel over the French Revolution, Burke did stand for the atheistic attitude and mode of argument, as Robespierre stood for the theistic. The Revolution appealed to the idea of an abstract and eternal justice, beyond all local custom or convenience. If there are commands of God, then there must be rights of man. Here Burke made his brilliant diversion; he did not attack the Robespierre doctrine with the old mediaeval doctrine of jus divinum (which, like the Robespierre doctrine, was theistic), he attacked it with the modern argument of scientific relativity; in short, the argument of evolution. He suggested that humanity was everywhere molded by or fitted to its environment and institutions; in fact, that each people practically got, not only the tyrant it deserved, but the tyrant it ought to have. "I know nothing of the rights of men," he said, "but I know something of the rights of Englishmen." There you have the essential atheist. His argument is that we have got some protection by natural accident and growth; and why should we profess to think beyond it, for all the world as if we were the images of God! We are born under a House of Lords, as birds under a house of leaves; we live under a monarchy as niggers live under a tropic sun; it is not their fault if they are slaves, and it is not ours if we are snobs. Thus, long before Darwin struck his great blow at democracy, the essential of the Darwinian argument had been already urged against the French Revolution. Man, said Burke in effect, must adapt himself to everything, like an animal; he must not try to alter everything, like an angel. The last weak cry of the pious, pretty, half-artificial optimism and deism of the eighteenth century came in the voice of Sterne, saying, "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb." And Burke, the iron evolutionist, essentially answered, "No; God tempers the shorn lamb to the wind." It is the lamb that has to adapt himself. That is, he either dies or becomes a particular kind of lamb who likes standing in a draught.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | February 2, 2015 10:52 PM
"I am a American first, a Virginian second"? They cannot both be right.
This is not a matter of objective right or wrong but of subjective self-identification.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | February 2, 2015 11:21 PM
Chesterton was all wet on Burke and the French Revolution, I'm afraid. So was Belloc. Even Homer nods.
In that particular quotation, which I am familiar with, he neglects everything in Burke's career but the French Revolution, probably because everything in his career before that was dedicated to reform and improvement of despotic conditions. Not Americans must adapt to English colonial despotism, but England must adapt to American liberty. Not Indians must adapt to English superiority, but England must adapt to Indian humanity. In impeaching Warren Hastings -- an eight year process which began with Burke's meticulous marshaling of the evidence of English abuses in India in a parliamentary committee -- his entire idea was that Indians were men just like Englishmen, no less deserving of the security of their lives, livelihoods and property from tyrannical oppression.
Posted by Paul J Cella | February 3, 2015 11:16 AM
Either the self-identification reflects a valid primacy of allegiance or it does not. That is to say, one cannot owe first loyalty to both in the same sense. So which is it? A person who gives first loyalty to Virginia, if it belongs rather to America, self-identifies in a bad way. That's a matter of objective right or wrong.
Posted by Tony | February 3, 2015 7:52 PM
Chesterton is well known for his love of paradox, or merely turning upside down apparently simple truths. He was good at it, and most of the time it worked. Every now and then, though, his love for the trick ran to excess, and he laid a rotten egg. This is one of them.
Robespierre, who murdered thousands and condemned monarchs to death, who tried with might and main to eradicated Christianity, being upheld as a THEIST? Well, let's take a look at his own words:
Out of his own mouth Robespierre condemns his own "religion" (the "cult of the supreme being"), one which rejected outright God's revelation of Himself to man in the person of Jesus Christ. If the "perfidious and cruel" outrage God by invoking His name, then surely Robespierre outraged God by invoking his name. Surely his call to a religion that calls on just men to hate evil men (contradicting Jesus, who told the just man to love the evil man) outraged God. Surely his call on men to repudiate Christian worship as being superstition outraged God. Surely a call by Robespierre to be "modest and vigilant in success" is a mockery of the virtue, stinking to high heaven, after telling God and Frenchmen that never before has the world seen such a spectacle worthy of God, and telling the French that they are worthy to honor God merely because they war against kings. This Robespierre, who was more tyrant than Louis ever was, who was more murderous than any 10 priests, who was more cruel than Roman torturers, surely this Robespierre's "religion" is as foul a "theism" as ever made its way in this world.
Burke, on the other hand, was Christian (specifically, Church of England) in every sense and upheld the Christian religion repeatedly.
If you were forced to speak about "rights of man" immediately after the Reign of Terror promoted that phrase in service to torture and murder and suppression of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of press, etc., methinks you might steer clear of claiming those "rights of man," in just those words. You might UPHOLD those rights, such as the rights of Catholics in Ireland to their religion, the rights of blacks to be free of slavery, the rights of Indians to a decent government instead of being run by a corporation.
So, yes, in this case Chesterton got it wrong and Burke got it right.
Posted by Tony | February 3, 2015 8:48 PM
A person who gives first loyalty to Virginia, if it belongs rather to America,
Isn't the precise sense of this 'belonging' the point of contention?
Germany belongs to Europe in several senses, geographically, culturally, even politically, but this fact does not oblige a German to give his first loyalty to the European Union. But equally, many Germans would be found, I imagine, to give their first loyalty to Europe. Why would they be called wrong?
Isn't it is up to the people of Virginia to decide whether they belong to America or not? Why one want to rule this conversation "politically incorrect"?
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | February 3, 2015 10:39 PM
If there are commands of God, then there must be rights of man.
Isn't this precisely the idea of American revolution as well?
Note that Chesterton does not commend Robespierre as theist but having a theist attitude (in this particular argument).
Similarly, he attacks Burke for having a non-theist evolutionary attitude.
Burke in speaking against British oppression in India employed theist attitude-that oppression is wrong-however, the oppression was perfectly in Indian tradition,--history-wise, there is not the slightest thing particularly blameworthy in Hastings etc.I believe Macaulay held that Burke was unfair to both Hastings and the Company rule.
It needs to be kept in mind that Chesterton (and Belloc) sharply distinguished between the political theory behind the French revolution and the actual course of the revolution. Their points are solely addressed to the theory.
The contention is between Burke's "I know nothing of the rights of men but I know something of the rights of Englishmen."
and "If there are commands of God, then there must be rights of man."
I think that the conundrum may be resolved by making a distinction between natural rights (i.e right to life, liberty and property) and
political rights (the right to take part in communal affairs i.e. to interfere in others' property and liberty).
The American revolution (and the English revolution previously) got the balance right-- natural rights are inalienable but political rights must be fought over and won.
However, mainstream American conservatism now holds the political rights to be inalienable and the influence of Jaffa is significant here. Thus Jaffa is entirely anti-Burke. He knows ONLY the rights of men, and not the rights of particular nations. He is thus opposed to particularity and I do not know why he should not be called a liberal.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | February 3, 2015 11:25 PM
I think I've shown here in the OP why Jaffa is not entirely anti-Burke. Far from it. For instance, he recognizes and praises the streak of Burkean pragmatism in Lincoln (i.e., strictly confining his 1858 position to one of firm opposition only to the expansion of slavery, while only work to place slavery "where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction." I noted above where Burke himself anticipated the radical antagonism, tending toward civil strife, that slavery would produce in a free society.
And keep in mind that Burke did not reject the natural right of revolution, or naturals rights of any kind. What he objected to was the race off toward abstraction with little thought toward the practical questions. This is not an evolutionist argument, as against a theistic one; it is a human as against a theoretical one. Here, for instance, in his earliest commentary on the French Revolution, is a pretty clear statement of his view:
I believe Macaulay held that Burke was unfair to both Hastings and the Company rule.
If Macaulay did hold that, he was wrong.
Posted by Paul J Cella | February 4, 2015 8:32 AM
The intent of that phrase, and especially "rights of man" at the end, is incredibly dependent on context. For instance, a Muslim would simply DENY OUTRIGHT that there being commands of God implies anything about rights of man, for an doesn't have any rights, period.
In the French context, half of the revolutionaries (those of the "cult of reason") denied ANY God, and insisted that the rights of man did not depend on Him at all. The other (with Robespierre) denied Revelation and went with a natural theism that, effectively, makes hash of the notion of any positive commands of God, leaving only those via nature. Which were, of course, open to the interpretation of the highest bidder (i.e. the most powerful, Robespierre).
In the American context, while some of the Founders agreed with the notion of a theism naturally discoverable, very few of them denied Revelation as well. Hence the "if there are commands of God" takes on quite a different twist.
I can grant more readily that Burke did not use a theistic mode of argument against the French Revolution. This is hardly a severe condemnation. I often use a non-theistic mode of argument when arguing morality against atheists and Muslims and Shintoists. The mode of argument chosen depends greatly on the mutually agreed premises, and it speaks hardly at all to the underlying belief structure of the one choosing that argument.
I don't know what you mean by "fought over and won". If you mean there is no such thing as a political right that hasn't been won by war and conquest, that seems silly as well as perfidious. If you mean those rights which have to be worked out in the nitty-gritty of the political push and shove are therefore political rights, that's hardly enlightening as a DISTINCTION, since winning the agreement of all parties that *natural* rights are real rights also takes political push and shove, and sometimes actual fighting too.
I know plenty of conservatives (though possibly minority) who acknowledge quite readily that voting, democratic forms, etc, are just one form of a legitimate political order, as is monarchy, and therefore having the political right to participate in ruling and exercising that right is *dependent* on the circumstances of the polity, not a "natural right". The notion that all rights are natural rights being the uniform conservative position is just not valid.
I get the sense that you are rejecting that historical realities can be in opposition to NATURAL rights, or perhaps that natural rights don't exist if history denies them. If the Greeks oppressed the Hebrews for 2 centuries by demands contrary to the natural law, the fact of long custom and "tradition" doesn't imply that the Hebrews no longer have the natural rights so denied by the Greeks. And if the Romans come in after the Greeks and continue the same oppression, the fact that the Romans are simply continuing the same traditional oppression that the Hebrews had already been subject to doesn't mean that the oppression escapes being "blameworthy" thereby.
Posted by Tony | February 4, 2015 9:50 AM
Paul Gottfried seems to characterize Jaffa as a wily enemy of civilization. I have read Burke. I have not read Jaffa. I had been inclined to accept Gottfried's characterization until I read your article today.
Is Gottfried wrong?
Posted by Howard J. Harrison | February 5, 2015 9:26 AM
He's wrong. The article rings bitter and hackneyed, though it is not without warmth or interest. I am naturally repelled by the constant references of borderline relevance to Israel, Bronx Jews, Zionism, etc; as also by the repeated insinuations of venality among conservatives who respect Jaffa, as if Claremont money was buying readers of Crisis of the House Divided and A New Birth of Freedom and the true source of their success as scholarship; or as if Straussian academic conniving were the true (though secret) reason why conservatives admire Lincoln.
Of course Jaffa should not be read uncritically. Ideally, his books should be read alongside their source material from Lincoln, Douglas, Webster, Jefferson, Calhoun, etc. Good historical work on this age in American history abounds, supplying ready context for the various crises of section strife, the policy struggles of territorial expansion, the shifting framework of political parties, the 1858 Illinois Senate race, the 1860 Presidential race, and origins of the Civil War. Dispute will never end on these things. Gottfried would do well to confront Jaffa's claims on these matters, and show us why he is wrong about Lincoln, or right about Lincoln which makes him wrong about the world, rather than plunging into these tiresome old tales about the Zionist/imperialist wing of the GOP.
Posted by Paul J Cella | February 5, 2015 10:46 PM
Bedarz, I am not opposed to the conversation, that's why I raised the issue to begin with. I think it is definitely a conversation worth having.
What I doubt is that the issue can be settled by pointing to the subjective aspect of loyalty and merely allowing that different people put their loyalty in different places. That's true as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. Are we obliged to give our loyalty in some measure?
For instance, we think that a man who would cease to be loyal to his wife, who would gravely doubt her fidelity at the first dubious indicator of possible infidelity, is lacking in loyalty that is her due. He ought to be more loyal than that. Whether he feels like doing so is immaterial to whether he ought to.
The loyalties we owe the different communities we belong to are different according to the nature of those communities and our relation to them: we owe a different measure or level of allegiance to the local town than to the state. If the concept of "polity" means anything at all, there is for most of us a highest political order to which our due allegiance is the highest (most complete), Some would say that this allegiance must cap and regulate all other political allegiances. For Americans, that polity would seem to be either the state or the union comprising the United States, it could not be both and it could not be that for some their highest political allegiance is due to the state and for others their highest allegiance is due to the United States. The question of where it is due is capable of being resolved by an objective standard.
I am not opposed to the prospect that in some places and times the political order is itself undergoing a change in nature, so that what was once X polity is now part of Y polity. Indeed, history suggests that this very thing happens a lot over long enough stretches of time: the Duchy of Burgundy becomes a part of France. People no longer owe their primary loyalty to Burgundy. There will always be doubt about the extent to which this is happening or has happened at a given moment during the process, since it is inherently a situation of flux, just as it is hard to pin-point precisely when what used to be a rabbit becomes a wolf who ate the rabbit. Nevertheless, once the change is complete the picture settles down. We know the wolf isn't just "bits of rabbit, squirrel, and deer stuck together". I think it is apparent that America was in formation as an entity during the 1700's through 1760's, enough so that when Pat Henry made his quote it wasn't an idiotic thing to say, and it was if not definitively true it was (arguably) more true than otherwise. IN 1750 colonialists didn't owe very much loyalty to Americans in other colonies, (though even then there was something). By the time the independent colonies fought and won the French & Indian war, fought a revolutionary war together, lived under the Articles of Confederation, and then formed the Constitution and unanimously voted to join the Union, the polity was as real (in the political order) as baby just born is a real thing (in the order of living substances). By 2 generations later, I think, there should have been no doubt whatsoever as to the definitive reality of polity and the due loyalty Americans owed the United States, the question is what kind of loyalty was that which she was due. primary, or secondary? Or something else?
Posted by Tony | February 6, 2015 6:44 AM
As I said earlier, I haven't read anything by Jaffa except an isolated article or two. So I don't know much of what he advocated. But I find Gottfried's article very puzzling. Supposing that he is accurate that Jaffa put equality as the defining concept of conservatism, (or at least one of a very small handful fundament of such defining concepts), and then declaring that this now represents conservatism, seems just wrong to me. Wrong anecdotally, because I know of plenty of conservatives who simply don't agree that equality represents such a fundamental notion of conservatism, and many of whom would even contest that theory even being PART of conservatism at all. So I don't recognize Gottfried's description as being accurate to conservatism at large.
And wrong conceptually, because of two things: first, nothing about "equality" ties it formally to "conserving" anything. Secondly, because (as suggested above) there are more important things that conservatives push than equality, things that in principle would oust equality as a bedrock principle. Now, maybe Jaffa's conservatism ignores the formal incoherence of putting equality as the defining concept of conservatism, but conservatives at large don't.
Maybe what he means is neo-conservatism. That would be more plausible, and perhaps enlightening as a thesis. If Gottfried re-wrote his article inserting for his described picture of Jaffa's brand of thought "neo-conservatism", the whole thing would make more sense. Maybe it would even be a true picture of Jaffa's thought. It wouldn't speak well of Gottfried that he could readily inter-mix conservatism and neo-conservatism as if they were the very same thing, as if the one stood for the other, as if they were co-extensive with each other, as if they had the same formal content.
Posted by Tony | February 6, 2015 10:49 AM
The equality that Jaffa primarily addressed himself to must be understood in its historical context. His two celebrated works, around which most of his influence orbited, are unmistakably framed by the momentous buildup of particular historical forces and personalities, as America wrestled with irreconcilable principles of self-government. Indeed, Jaffa only contributed essays not books to the course of the Civil War itself, to the assassination of Lincoln, or to the tragic history of Reconstruction. So this nebulous principle of equality, from which (it is alleged) conservatives should flee, cannot be set adrift from the concrete circumstances in which it arises in Jaffa's scholarship.
Tony, the question of whether to affix a neo preface to Jaffa's conservatism is a plausibly interesting one. Certainly he wrote more like a liberal, in certain superficial ways, in Crisis of the House Divided, than he did five years later when he penned one of the more memorable lines of modern political oratory, Sen. Goldwater's "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice ... moderation is the pursuit of justice is no virtue." But the fact that Jaffa exerted major influence on the Goldwater campaign makes him a pretty early-blooming neocon, I should think. Few neocons were even voting for Goldwater, much less advising his campaign.
Posted by Paul J Cella | February 6, 2015 10:19 PM
That's why I left the question of whether Gottfried's depiction is valid:
And maybe it would not be a true picture. Just as a for instance: nothing in PRINCIPLED conservatism eschews demanding equal treatment of things that are equal, so the very strong conservative principle of retaining just laws and wholesome customs would in a concrete case, and within a specific context, require of a conservative that he shout out for EQUALITY. Such a demand for equality would be consistent with conservatism without helping to define conservatism as such. It would not be a claim that conservatism consists in an overarching insistence on equality. And so maybe Gottfried misunderstands Jaffa's reliance on equality in Lincoln's context. But it does seem, to me as a neophyte learning about the Civil War period, somewhat odd to cast Lincoln as some kind of a proto-conservative.
Posted by Tony | February 7, 2015 8:25 PM
the Duchy of Burgundy becomes a part of France. People no longer owe their primary loyalty to Burgundy.
I would put it the other way around. It is the people shifting their primary loyalty that causes changes in the political order.
I would discount any notion of people owing their loyalties to some political order. It is people first along with their subjective loyalties and the political order results from summation and clash of these political loyalties.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | February 9, 2015 3:19 AM
Well, I will go along with you this far: the process is usually dynamic, and thus there is a certain amount of a feedback loop or cyclical thing. A goes ahead and makes step 1, and because A made step 1, B feels free to take step 2, and seeing B take step 2 gives A a sense that he ought to take step 3, etc. For a process that usually takes more than a single generation, it is IMPOSSIBLE that the process continue through to completion without seeing people's subjective loyalties being placed in direction X and responding to that reality.
But eventually the obligation (to give loyalty) is real, and it doesn't sit merely as an observation of subjectively given loyalty that is turned on its head "as if" it were an obligation. That's nonsense. It would mean that as soon as a person FELT like he didn't want to be loyal to his polity, he could disobey any and all laws he felt like without violating any obligation. It would mean there is no such thing as a polity. It would mean that man is not a rational social being, but must needs be either an irrational social being (like most materialists say) or a rational anti-social being (like Hobbes thought). No, man ought to love his community, and that ought resides in his nature. He can repudiate it only by failing to be fully human.
Posted by Tony | February 9, 2015 11:29 PM
I fully agree that "man ought to love his community" but his is the key word: and who can presume to tell a man which community he belongs to?
The political nature of man co-exists with his freedom. Unlike animals, he can choose which polity or political order to give loyalty to.
The choice is made day to day. The polities have not come down from heaven. It is precisely these freely given loyalty today that keeps a polity in being.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | February 10, 2015 10:37 PM
Physical reality, among other things. A man cannot pretend that his PHYSICAL presence in New York City is an irrelevancy to whether he abides by the laws of New York City, or to whether he should treat the people around him in a neighborly fashion.
Family reality does also. A man cannot pretend that he came into the world out of the forehead of Zeus. He was born to a mother and father. He can decide to _forsake_ his obligations to them, but he cannot decide NOT TO HAVE obligations to them.
And so on. Each facet of man's living engages people around him. He can indeed choose to live in a different place, to work in a different job, etc, but none of the choices he makes means that he can decide wholly out of his own will which obligations he has to others: if he lives in a place, he has obligations to those near him.
Posted by Tony | February 11, 2015 7:46 PM
I appreciate the force of your arguments. However, they would make all political change impossible or at least immoral. But political changes occur and are not held to be illegitimate per se.
Perhaps, since Americans lack the experience of frequent political changes including drastic changes in the polity itself, the notion of a polity itself existing on the sufferance of day-to-day freely given loyalty seems odd
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | February 11, 2015 10:37 PM
I used the word community for a reason. You are making the mistake of equating the community of people who comprise the body politic with the polity itself, and with the government by which the polity expresses its general political authority. Both of these equations are wrong.
The people of France were a community of people with obligations to each other both before Napoleon made the polity an empire, and after. They continued to be a single community after they ditched the Napoleonic government and re-formed the monarchy. They continued to be the same underlying community with mutual obligations after they ditched the monarchy and re-formed a Republic. And so on, about once each generation for the next 100 years. The community is an underlying reality deeper than the political order it has.
Hence it is perfectly possible for a person like Alexander Solzhenitsyn to remain loyal to the COMMUNITY that was Russia, even while he detested the Soviet statutory framework and the government that maintained it. His works contributed to the political reformation of Russia's state and its government, while leaving intact the underlying integrity of Russia as a community. He was forceful in his writings precisely because he remained loyal to Russia and fiercely loved Russia as such a community.
The community of people who constitute the body politic are a SOCIETY. The social bonds they have with one another are very complex, and run in a thousand different directions and levels. One large aspect of those connections is *political*. Thus one aspect of a given society is the polity by which it is organized as a LEGAL entity. And one aspect of the polity is the government by which it expresses its authority to rule the society in the political arena. But society itself is not the government, and it is not the political entity that expresses PART of its totality. This is why a society can reform its government and can re-mold its political organization. And why it is neither impossible nor immoral to seek to reform the political order while affirming the underlying obligations of love and goodness to the community.
Posted by Tony | February 12, 2015 8:46 AM
This is the proposition that we are discussing:
"it could not be that for some their highest political allegiance is due to the state and for others their highest allegiance is due to the United States."
I agree entirely with you regarding Community. Only, I would add a subjective element to the community-feeling that underlies community. I fail to understand why it would be wrong for a pre-Civil War Texan or Virginian to say that his community feeling extends only to Texas or Virginia. After all, Texas is pretty large place with sufficient population to satisfy all the community-feeling person might have.
There were many Russians, Solzhenitsyn among them, whose community feeling extended upto Ukraine. But Ukrainians disagreed and formed a separate polity. Who was wrong here?
Also, one can very well have a community extending all over America without insisting that all Americans must be a single polity. After all, many great nations have largely existed in disunited polities e.g. Germany, Italy and India. So I have reservations about the idea that the polity is "the highest political order to which our due allegiance is the highest (most complete)". In medieval Europe, it was hardly so. I do not see why the (contingent) norms of nationalism should rule us absolutely.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | February 13, 2015 12:02 AM
OK, let's take your example of early modern Italy or Germany well before unification, say 1820. You are right that there was a community of "Germans" that extended to many different states of Germans: Bavaria, Prussia, Saxony, etc. There was a community that in some sense united them, but it did not unite them as a single polity. Each state was an independent state that did not owe FORMAL duties or allegiance subserviently to any higher organized entity as of moral and political obligation. This is the same thing as saying that each state was its own polity. The entity to which Bavarians owed their highest, most complete and comprehensive allegiance was to Bavaria, not to "Germany". (The former existence of the "Holy Roman Empire" might have qualified that, but such entity had not existed in reality for a couple hundred years). To the extent that there was a higher organized entity at all, it was more in the nature of a confederacy of like-minded independent states than a true polity in its own right. (Thus the qualifying word "subserviently".)
Today in Germany, it is indisputably the case that there is such a higher entity that is a polity in its own right, that makes both Bavarians and Saxons owe political allegiance to a single entity. I have already said that in time of transition there will be a condition in which the allegiance that is due is undergoing a transformation that will be, as flux conditions generally are, neither wholly fish nor wholly fowl. It would be typical in such conditions for one person to feel greater allegiance to Bavaria and another Bavarian to feel greater allegiance to Germany. But I reject that such a difference between various individuals represents a condition in which each is simply FREE (in the moral sense, not the legal sense) to _choose_ where he will put his allegiance as a mere matter of preference.
Sure, it would even be plausible to state that in a certain limited sense each person was free to put his greater allegiance in either entity. But that limited sense has real limits, it is not just a subjective matter of preference: each person is not free to completely ignore his sense of where the greater good of the affected communities sits. It would be immoral for a Bavarian to believe, based on his own estimation of all the competing goods and evils, and his recognition that although Bavaria used to be the one polity to which he owed his allegiance, that issue is now capable of being changed, and that it would be best all around for the whole common good if Bavaria ceased to be the highest independent polity and Germany came to be that entity, and yet choose to support Bavaria as his final completely independent polity based solely on personal profit. His freedom to select would be a freedom of conscience taking in known facts, not a freedom to act against conscience and its resolve about the good.
And so a mere description of the 2 individuals and their conclusions about the good would be that they differ by different subjective evaluations of the good. But because their choices morally remain constrained by good conscience, when one political entity finally wins out as the single entity to which the vast, overwhelming majority of people find their allegiance, EVENTUALLY even a person firmly convinced (earlier) that the good would have been better served in the opposite direction must give way and accept the moral obligation to give up on his own earlier estimation and put his allegiance in the entity chosen by the people. Eventually, after months or years or decades, he becomes no longer morally free to reject the obligation to ally himself with the winning entity, he comes to be required by concrete conditions to be loyal to the polity that his society itself has formed and made the highest and most complete entity of their political allegiance.** He is not free to pretend his society's choice does not impinge on his obligation and his conscience.
And aside from such times of flux and transition, there is no plausible way to say that a person has no moral duty to give his political allegiance to a polity, and that he is free to give it wherever he subjectively prefers to do so (or not at all) - not and still hold that the notion of polity means anything real. From 1740 to 1790, America was in such a condition of flux. From 1815 to 1855, she was not. In those 25 years, one full generation, from 1790 to 1815, the US and its states underwent the process of consolidation and settlement of the prior changes, to become firmly settled as the complex of entities in residence. In 1855 Virginia, there were no applicable conditions that concretely constituted those conditions of flux and transition that made it possible for an upright moral person to elect, following his conscience, to CHANGE his highest formal allegiance from one to the other. And thus in those conditions there was no due basis for one Virginian to hold for the US and another for Virginia about the very self-same question of loyalty. The truth was settled in one place only, and should have been recognized equally by both parties.
** There are possible qualifications in respect of a larger society with formally and officially mixed allegiances. But such mixed allegiances will be distinct about different matters under different jurisdictions. In such a case, one individual might owe community A greater allegiance about matter X, and owe community B greater allegiance about matter Z. But such different loyalties should rest equally on two similarly situated individuals, not differ subjectively.
The matter is indeed contingent and does not rule us absolutely. I am fine with the notion of "nation" being more of a social qualifier than a legal-political one. There is no absolute moral norm that a nation of people must be a single polity. My original question was one that is open to DIFFERENT possible solutions: the sense of irony that I have about Patrick Henry and Robert E. Lee and their opposing statements is not that Henry was right and Lee was wrong. It is that it is implausible that BOTH were right - at least if we take both speaking with respect to the same matter. Logically, that might mean that Pat Henry was the one who had things wrong. I would be OK with a claim that Henry was wrong and Lee was right (or more so) backed up with a plausible theory of polities, statehood, federalism, and so on. What is not plausible is a theory that people are morally free at any time to place their greatest political allegiance anywhere they please, including changing it from one to another at any time.
Posted by Tony | February 17, 2015 11:31 AM
While I appreciate your careful thought, I think there are some considerations you neglect:
1) The time of flux and transition where it is permissible for people to hold varying opinions about ultimate allegiance, is not an extraneous thing but occurs precisely due to the fact that people are holding or have begun to hold differing allegiances.The time of flux that begin in 1740 simply reflects the fact that some significant proportion of people begin to withhold allegiance from the British monarchy.
Per loyalists, there people would be immoral to withdraw their allegiance for by their acts, they unsettled a settled matter and launched a time of flux and transition .
1b) Why would not call 1855-1865 a time of transition and flux in America? Had South successfully seceded, how could have you avoided to call it so?
And so, is your evaluation of moral or immoral dependent on the contingent result of a war?
2) Evaluation of common good depends upon a prior judgment of common i.e. one's community. This judgment is inextricably subjective. All attempts to define by borders etc beg the question. Borders result from community-feeling and do not produce or morally oblige community-feeling.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | February 18, 2015 12:33 AM
My approach has the advantage of side-stepping the interminable discussions over the rightness or wrongness in the Civil War. Simply, the self-definition of a polity is not a matter of rightness or wrongness. A polity just is. Why Kurds lack a state while Andorra has statehood, why Hawaii belongs to US and Panama doesn't. These questions have answer in free choice of people and the brute force they invested in their choices. Moral rightness or wrongness does not enter.
Posted by Bedarz Iliaci | February 18, 2015 1:10 AM
Your approach has the simplicity of denying that men are inherently social and rational (i.e. moral) beings, such that their foundational social choices are inherently moral choices. Sure, if we want to ditch that men are beings of morality, your approach works. Or, if we want to deny men being social in their very natures, so that social relation is a mere accidental accretion to any and every man, that too is simple.
In other words, your simplicity is that of getting rid of WHAT MAN IS really, and deals with a simplistic abstraction that is a cardboard cut-out of "man".
Posted by Tony | February 18, 2015 6:30 AM