Cahoone and "Neutralist" Liberalism

The starting point of Lawrence E. Cahoone's Civil Society: The Conservative Meaning of Liberal Politics is that the "neutralist or proceduralist liberalism" of left and right (i.e. Rawls and Nozick) is inadequate.

[Neutralism] either contributes to chronic social problems or blocks attempts to address them. Most troublesome is the rigid distinction of the political from the social and particularly the cultural spheres of life.

The problem is that "political theory has become more specialized, purified, and rationalized... Active citizenship, the language of public duty, and... cultural context..." have been cast aside by our liberal friends. Politics reduces to "rights, opportunity, and prosperity." For libertarians it reduces to "individual liberty;" for egalitarian liberals to "individual liberty plus cash." Missing from this view of society is the idea that politics and economics issue from society; they are not free-floating universal ideas good in themselves. The Good must be anchored in actual people and actual community.

This notion is the increasingly ubiquitous idea of "civil society" and Cahoone defines it in four ways.

First, civil society expresses the "priority of the social, the conviction that extant societies gain their norms from within, not from government, Church, or military organizations."

Second, Cahoone states the importance of "spontaneity," the idea that civil society lives in a space between the contractual relations of Toennies' "Gesellschaft" and the "Gemeinschaft of shared traditional morality."

Third, civil society is "intrinsically local," arising out of people living together or living near each other. Nineteenth century Populism was an attempt to express this against the hegemony of elites.

Fourth, for Cahoone, civil society means holism, "the total ensemble of social relations and culture." It is that whole that should drive "political affairs."

Of course, it is the holist view, that society and culture should drive politics, that is problematic for our liberal friends. The whole thrust of modern liberals is to short-circuit the local and traditional--experienced by liberals as benighted and cramped--in favor of the universal and global. But it is, of course, their politics of the universal that has bombed the local community to rubble, and bombed until it bounced the local community of lower income folks that have a less robust defense against the hegemony of the elites than the ordinary middle class. It is the opposition to the local and the particular that drives liberal opposition to modern conservatism, modern enthusiastic Christianity, and most recent of all, liberal opposition to the Tea Party.

Lawrence Cahoone, using modern philosophical ideas deveoloped in the last 50 years, says that "neutralist" liberalism can't deliver the kind of society that most of us want. What does that mean? It means that sooner or later, "most of us" will insist on change, whether liberals like it or not.

Frankly, we'd prefer that liberals work with us on this. But there is always the other possibility, that liberals will fight rather than switch.

That would be a shame.

Cahoone's Civil Society

Over the years, I have come to believe in this one infallible rule of life. It goes like this. If I am wondering about some problem of political philosophy, chances are that some chap has written a book solving it.

It's obvious, really. I've been spending most of my adult life working and raising a family. And I'm not quite the sharpest knife in the drawer. Not dumb or something, but certainly not genius category.

Now my biggest problem over the years is this. We conservatives need a thinker who will refound the conservative tendency in the latest and greatest concepts from the world of ideas.

Up to now the best that I'd encountered were Michael Novak and his Spirit of Democratic Capitalism and Berger and Neuhaus and Empowering People.

But they don't light a candle next to Lawrence E. Cahoone and his Civil Society: The Conservative Meaning of Liberal Politics.

Cahoone begins with a critique of "neutralist" liberalism, the idea that liberals are just neutral adjudicators in the world. In fact, of course, neutralism is impossible, because any political action in the world is action towards a vision of the good. Then Cahoone formulates a "postmodern" conservatism using his deep and broad knowledge of 20th century philosophy. And we are talking here of everyone through Habermas and the neo-pragmatists, the latest, greatest idea that at every level of reality that we experience there are irreducible facts that are not just combinations of elements from a lower level.

The point about conservatism, Cahoone writes, is that it looks at society as a whole, that culture, politics, economics, and living-together are all of a lump; in this lump it is culture that is primary.

Liberals have their own heroic story of individuality and democracy and progress, but the values... are worldly and immanent. Modern conservatism contacts ultimacy via a non-political, ultimate transcendence that is left vague.

Conservatism is big on authority, and authority is an interesting space between compulsion and complete freedom.

Hannah Arendt clears a space for authority. Authority can only exist in the absence of both force and persuasion...

We may characterize, but not explain, the authority in the way Aristotle understands the person with phronesis [practical wisdom or prudence]: the authority is someone who habitually gets it right.

Cahoone has a solid definition for "what government must be or do."

Government must be legitimate and good... These minimal conditions of good government are: assurance of the survival of society... the enforcement of law; prevention of conquest; and avoidance of tyranny, corruption, the intentional punishment of the innocent or the intentional reward of the guilty.

And there is this:

There are four main goods internal to the notion of civil society: membership, freedom, civility, and dignity.

Well, that's a start, and I have not really begun to internalize the breadth and depth of Cahoone's argument. But you'll be getting a lot of Cahoone from me in the near future. After the debacle of Obama we are going to need some really good ideas to get American back to its place as the city on a hill, the last best hope of man for people who must have freedom.

Tactics, Smashtics

You can allow our Democratic friends this. They really know how to do short-term political tactics, using the bully pulpit and the mainstream media to control the political narrative. Now it looks like the president will humiliate the Republicans in the debt-ceiling debate, as the president and the Democrats refuse a debt-ceiling deal with serious spending cuts. Because who could be cruel enough to deny seniors their Social Security Benefits, even for one day?

What the president and the Democrats don't seem to be thinking about is what comes next. It's understandable that they are utterly opposed to any spending cuts before the end of FY2012. But would the president really want to win the election if he knew what is coming after the election?

Sooner or later, after the massive deficits and quantitative easing, the United States government has got to get back to a balanced budget and has got to cut spending. And that means cutting spending on Democratic voters, because there is no other spending. Otherwise we are heading for a sovereign debt default and that is going to hit Democratic voters with a sledge-hammer.

The usual scenario for Keynesian economics is that, after the easy money and the big deficits, the economy is triumphantly back on track and can handle higher taxes and hard money. But what happens if the stimulus fails to bite? Then you are faced either with serious inflation as the easy money really starts to take down the value of money, or a nasty recession as the government gets to the end of its credit and has to tighten its belt. If it then decides to raise taxes as well, then of course, growth will sputter, revenues will decline, and the fiscal situation will worsen.

The big risk for the Obamis is that the economic recovery may not last until the election in November 2012. However the Democrats succeed in blaming eevil House Republicans for starving grannie, the fact is that the average independent voter will be judging the president on the economy. For the average Joe and Jane, the economy is not good, and it's not likely to get better.

Let's close with a military metaphor. In the long retreat of 1943-45 the German Army was still the tactical match of its opponents. The trouble was that it was overwhelmed strategically. And so after every tactical victory it still had to retreat. The same is true of the great Democratic Ascendancy. The trouble with socialism is that it eventually runs out of other peoples' money. And then the people that voted for it are worse of than before. We are seeing this in recent reports of economic Armageddon in the black community.

What does it matter if you can win a tactical victory on the debt ceiling and put off spending cuts? You still haven't solved the sovereign debt problem.

Can't Guarantee SoSoc Payments Mr. President?

Now I'm confused. Back in the maelstrom of 2008 I remember talking to a young Democrat about pensions. Much better rely on the government, he said, than on Wall Street. And at that point in history, he had a point.

But now comes President Obama during a teeny-weeny battle over the debt ceiling, the sort of minor spat we have every two or three years. All of a sudden the president is doing the FICA shuffle. Here is the president reneging on Social Security in an interview with CBS chappie Scott Pelley:

Pelley: Can you guarantee, as president, those checks will go out on August the third?

Mr. Obama: I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.

Wait a minute Mr. President. I thought that Social Security Benefits were protected by a Trust Fund. I thought the Trust Fund was secured inside a Lock Box. So how come all of a sudden on a day in July you up and say, well, who knows if there will be any money to pay those Social Security Benefits? You know, the Social Security Benefits sequestered away in a Trust Fund, hidden away in a Lock Box. I just don't get it.

In fact, I would even go so far as to recall, in deepest sorrow, President Truman's words at the end of World War II. Truman said, after the surrender of Germany:

This is a solemn but a glorious hour. I only wish that Franklin D. Roosevelt had lived to witness this day.

Thank goodness the sainted Roosevelt did not live to witness the day that President Obama threatened America's senior citizens with the suspension of their Social Security Benefits. Here is what President Roosevelt said about Social Security:

We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.

The idea was, I understand, that by making believe that the FICA taxes were earmarked for Social Security people would believe that the government had set up a real insurance program instead of a pay-as-you-go Ponzi scheme. But now at least we know, thanks to President Obama, that it is all a mirage, always has been, always will be.

So now I'm inclined to call up my friend and ask him whether he is still so confident about the safety of his future Social Security Benefits. The thing about relying on Wall Street--meaning for the average person Fidelity or Vanguard or some greedy banker--is that if they run off with my money I can get them put in jail. But I can't do that with your average "damn politician." He'll just fly off on his Boeing 747 into the sunset and look down his nose at me.

He might even laugh at me.

Democratic Death Wish?

I think I see what President Obama is trying to do on the debt ceiling crisis. He is trying to get the House Republicans to agree to a tax increase and thereby split the Republican Party. Maybe. It's worth a try, anyway.

But maybe he should be looking at the big picture. A debt deal that increases taxes now and promises smoke-and-mirror spending cuts tomorrow will continue the present economic malaise of low growth and high unemployment. Will that get the president reelected in 2012?

The chaps at the American Enterprise Institute took a look at recent efforts to fix government budgets. In "A Guide for Deficit Reduction in the United States Based on Historical Consolidations That Worked", Andrew G. Biggs, Kevin A. Hassett, and Matt Jensen found that successful budget deals featured mostly spending cuts. Here is Arthur Brooks's report on their findings:

On average, failed attempts to close budget gaps relied 53 percent on tax increases and 47 percent on spending cuts. Successful consolidations averaged 85 percent spending cuts and 15 percent tax increases. Some of the most successful financial comebacks—like Finland’s in the late 1990s—involved more than 100 percent spending cuts, so that taxes could be lowered. The spending cuts by the successful countries centered on entitlements and government personnel.

It really isn't that hard. Government spending is a weight on a nation's economy. If you want to get the economy moving then you have to reduce government spending. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.

I wonder if the president isn't missing the forest for the trees. It's possible he could get the Republicans to bollix themselves up and agree to a tax increase. And maybe that would get the president reelected in 2012. Or maybe not.

But the fact is that we are coming up to a crisis point where the American people are going to have to decide what kind of country they want the US to be. I just feel that the best way for liberals to keep their high-tax, high-spending state is to avoid budget crises. The liberal line works best if we are just considering one issue at a time, so that we can focus on the emotional appeal of the usual victims suffering from a lack of health care or housing or counseling. If we have a big crisis then people are going to be ready for a big deal and they are going to be more receptive to deep cuts in wasteful spending.

Just saying.

Debt Ceiling Chicken

Count me stupid, but it seems to me a no-brainer that whatever deal comes out of the debt-ceiling talks it can't include a tax increase.

Why? Because it's pretty obvious to me that, after the gigantic spending increases and tax increases of the Obama administration, the only thing left is spending cuts. The run up of the national debt in the last couple of years is putting the nation in sovereign debt default territory, and that is something that will press especially hard on Democratic spending constituencies (from spending cuts) and government employee pension funds (from dollar devaluation and debt restructuring). To protect their supporters the Democrats must come up with a deal.

Radio-host Rush Limbaugh understands this instinctively when he says that there is no pressure on Republicans to come up with a deal. It is President Obama that has a problem. The economy is floundering on his watch. The national debt is climbing into the stratosphere on his watch. And the health of all those Democratic spending programs depends on the health of the tax-paying economy.

Don't forget that a majority of Americans are against any lifting of the debt ceiling. Gallup's May 13 poll found Americans 47% to 19% against any increase in the debt. (Yes, I know. They would certainly prefer an increase in the the debt to giving up their government benefits).

I suppose that the president and the Democrats believe that they can win the PR battle over a debt default just like President Clinton won the battle over the government shutdown in 1995. To which I say: Maybe. There's a big difference between now and then, and the #1 difference is that Bill Clinton was a political genius and President Obama is not.

But the political gamesmanship, of course, is merely a sideshow. The bigger reality is that the Keynesian prescription for getting out of a recession has failed. It has failed because it misunderstands the problem. A recession is not a temporary period of indigestion that can be cured by a couple of pills of stimulus. A recession is the result of the failure of investments made in the previous boom. In the immediate case, a huge boom in housing has collapsed. For growth to resume we must repair the credit system (i.e., the underwater borrowers) by liquidation of the malinvestments of the previous boom so that all loans are once again above water and paying interest.

Right now the economy is still in the process of liquidation. There are still millions of people with underwater and/or non performing loans. The capitalist system depends on a functioning credit system, and that means that more or less every loan is collateralized by assets that are worth more than the principal loan amount, and that the debtor is currently paying interest on the loan and is expected to continue to do so.

President Obama's big mistake was to take his eye off the ball. He should have focused like a laser on getting the bad loans off the books and/or properly valued so that bank balance sheets and individual consumer balance sheets were restored to health. But he didn't, and now he is reaping the whirlwind.

And it will get worse before it gets better.

Modernity's Original Sin

Hey, said the serpent to Eve. Eat that apple and you could learn a thing or two.

So she could and so she did. But the thing about the apples from the tree of knowledge is that the knowledge they bring doesn't solve anything. It just raises the stakes.

That is the point about Original Sin. It isn't the sin itself, its the self-consciousness. Back in the old Garden of Eden you can live your life away in the bliss of ignorance. If you live, you live. If you die, you die. But after acquiring knowledge and the power it brings, life is no longer the simple bliss of ignorance. Life is serious; life has responsibilities.

So it was in the Dawn of the Modern Age. Bliss it was to be alive, and to be young was very heaven. Mankind ate anew from the Tree of Knowledge, and the new sciences, the triumphs of instrumental reason, burst like flowers into bloom. But then came the bitter fruit, the responsibilities of power, and the reality of the modern Original Sin.

Instrumental reason, the Enlightenment, write Horkheimer and Adorno is a dance of domination, domination over nature and domination over man. "What men want to learn from nature is how to dominate it and other men."

It was the businessman that first applied this dictum in the years right after the Crusades. They built rational, efficient plantations on Cyprus, and eventually in the West Indies, to grow and refine sugar. They made tons of money, and they enslaved men and women to work the plantations, first Muslim slaves on Cyprus, and then Africans from West Africa. It ended up a huge, global business, and many fortunes were made and country houses built upon it. But the ruthless pursuit of wealth, made by rational planning and by enslaving men and women as mere factors of production, inspired a moral movement of rejection, the anti-slavery movement, that curbed and humbled this pure application of instrumental reason to business. And from that time we have always demanded of businessmen that they limit their appetites and their plans, treading lightly on the earth, and dealing gently with men. It turned out, anyway, that it was better that way.

But it was not just in business that the modern knowledge of instrumental reason could be applied. The new educated elite wanted to apply instrumental reason to politics, to make government equal and rational, to build a perfect society, carefully administered in every department, articulated in every joint, peaceful and just. But, Horkheimer and Adorno warned: "Enlightenment behaves towards things as a dictator towards men." And so it was that the effort to build a perfected, articulated society led to the most awful and cruel dictatorships ever known. In Nazi Germany, 6 million Jews killed; in Russia 10 million Ukrainian peasants killed. In China 30 million peasants killed in the Great Leap Forward alone.

When capitalism committed its Original Sin with plantation slavery, the educated middle class rose up in a moral movement that socialized this new force, creating a new moral culture to critique and to humanize capitalism, the efficient calculating monster.

But it has proved much harder to socialize instrumental reason when applied to politics and government. This is not hard to understand. The new educated class was just the social agent to critique and tame the economic monster. But it has proved remarkably resistant to the many critiques of its own monument to instrumental reason: big government and administrative bureaucracy. Instrumental reason applied to business created the bourgeoisie of merchants and manufacturers and barons of finance. Instrumental reason applied to politics created the educated class that occupies the commanding heights of government, education, and culture. It has the means to marginalize its critics and it uses it.

We humans must socialize the government monster, and tame this monstrous force. It will take a moral movement, just like the anti-slavery movement. It was already envisioned, two hundred years ago by Edmund Burke, but his sentiments did not grow into a moral movement. Not then.

But now that we see the failures of big government all around us, and its profoundly mechanical, un-social, in-human culture, it is time to rise up and develop the moral critique of rational, instrumental, big-government politics. It is time to put the "social" back in society.