As I was composing my thoughts about the Biden–Ryan debate, I returned to my initial response to Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his Vice President.

“Ryan’s nomination, I believe, assures the re-election of President Obama. The basis of my belief is a judgment that Americans generally are guided by a conservative insight, an American suspicion of ideological thought. Conservative insight defeats the conservative ticket.”

I reported this on my Facebook page and a very interesting debate developed, the sort of “serious discussion about the events of the day,” beyond “partisan gated communities,” which I hoped Deliberately Considered would stimulate. Thomas Cushman, the Deffenbaugh de Hoyos Carlson Professor in the Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College, was the critical voice, reflecting on my post and on James Jasper’s on anti-intellectualism, which focused on Paul Ryan. The discussion than took off when I responded and then Aron Hsiao joined us.

Thomas Cushman: Honestly, is it possible that anyone could not look at Biden and see the incarnation of the anti-intellectual? It would seem more sociologically accurate and fair-minded to see that ideologue anti-intellectuals abound in both parties.

Jeffrey Goldfarb: Historically for sure, there have been anti-intellectuals in both parties. I really don’t understand on what grounds you label Biden as such, though. And I think ideological temptations, in the form of magical modern thinking about complex problems, exist among Republicans these days, not among Democrats. I wish this wasn’t so as someone who admires conservative thought.

Thomas Cushman: Really, from my point of view, it seems like Obama is almost completely a magical thinker, who inflects most of reality with a utopian narrative, and therein lies the problem. You can’t govern with a narrative, not a complex modern society in any case. I think Ryan comes across as a kind of intellectual technocrat, icy facts, some basic principles. Romney as well. I was here in MA for the Romney governorship, he was very pragmatic and not an ideologue. I think Obama is, at base, an ideologue, and it is his own words that give that sense to me. This is why Clinton, deep down, thinks he’s an amateur politician. Because he is a utopian and that doesn’t work. As for Biden, well, where to start on making the case against him. If you can look at the behavior and thinking of the two men in relation to each other, and come away thinking that Ryan is the anti-intellectual, I’m not sure what to say.

I would add that loud guffaws, eye rolling, bullying, laughing, etc. are not exactly the hallmarks of what I would consider to be an intellectual habitus. Ryan comes off as studious, serious, even professor-like. One could make that observation despite any political preference. There is nothing intellectual in Biden, no literacy, no depth, nothing but bluff and bluster. Obama at least can claim the mantle of intellectual, but of course for the Americans that is something of a liability in politics. Thanks for listening.

Aron Hsiao: Thomas, it seems to me as if you’re confusing an affect associated with certain social statuses with logical and empirical soundness. The socially constructed quantity of “the intellectual” encompasses both, but as a social construction, it is inflected in the process of reception as a matter of the audience demographic at issue and their culture and values.

Certainly both Obama and Biden are more logically and empirically sound than Romney and Ryan in the substance of the platform, policy specifics, and accounts of our present policy universe. In fact, Romney and Ryan have worked hard, to my eye, to ensure that there is relatively little content in this dimension of their “intellectualism” inasmuch as it is claimed to exist and obtain.

What is often described as Obama’s “utopianism” is in fact an acknowledgment that the social dimension of the world (both practice and ideology) are deeply implicated in and constitutive of policy outcomes, a view that is somewhat unpopular in American circles (note the constant dismissal of sociology and, to a lesser extent, other social sciences as “just politics” or “just utopianism” or “soft and wishful”) despite what history has to tell us about the incredible power, both for good and for bad, that inheres in publics and their quotidian lives and interactions.

Thomas Cushman: Fair enough, but one can be a sociologist — like myself – and feel as if some people read the social dimensions of the world differently than, say, contemporary welfare state liberals. My own sociological awareness is deeply suspicious of state power, as Jeffrey Goldfarb’s ought to be, given our common experiences in looking at state socialism. I think hard sociology is actually the best empirical proof of the dangers of utopianism, as evidenced by the now forgotten classical liberal sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf, who was the best sociological critic of utopianism, with the possible exception of Raymond Aron. Somehow, liberals forgot that the real enemy of freedom was the state and then came to believe that anyone who actually believed that was somehow retrograde or anti-intellectual.

Aron Hsiao: I think that Obama’s position on the state is a nuanced one; one of the underlying issues at debate is whether he is a statist at heart (the Right position) or seeks a realization and understanding of the state as a responsive expression of the nature and values of its public (the Left position). The problem, of course, is that the public of the state in question is a deeply divided one in terms of value orientations and everyday life practices, which means that in the wild the argument devolves into a debate as to whether the prerogative belongs to the slim majorities or, in the opposed view, the state is to be effectively abolished as an expression of the irreconcilable differences of the public.

My view is that it is in the interest of the best estimable practical and ethical outcomes, given the history of the 20th century and the modernities that we have already observed, that Obama’s nuanced Left understanding of the state ultimately obtain. But obviously, this is precisely the terrain of the value difference in the first place, so on both sides the argument has tended toward the subtly tautological.

Jeffrey Goldfarb: I go to sleep and an interesting discussion happens, too complicated for me to adequately address here. Just a few quick notes, and then perhaps we can reproduce this as a sustained exchange on Deliberately Considered [and here it is]. Tom, I am looking for intelligent criticism of my position on Deliberately Considered, not just agreement. It would be great to get one from you. I agree that Romney is no right wing ideologue, but he sometimes has tried to appear as such. It is difficult to know where he actually stands, what he would actually do. Obama on the other hand is very clear, at least to me. He doesn’t celebrate the magical powers of the state, as you suggest. He is a principled, pro market, centrist, who thinks the market should function in a setting that is developed with state support and control, including controls that facilitate greater social justice and decency. He is quite pragmatic about this, it seems to me. I don’t see this as having much to do with the previously existing socialism, which we both knew and developed our critical skills studying. Ryan as anti-intellectual? As James M. Jasper analyzed, there is pseudo intellectual quality to anti-intellectuals, which I think is present in Ryan. Further, his true believing anti-statist position is ideological (though he controls this) and especially dangerous. And on Obama again, all politics is formulated through narratives, the telling of stories as Arendt would put it. He is a powerful storyteller who in the last debate lost his voice. I hope he finds it soon.

Thomas Cushman: All very good. I’d be interested perhaps in an interchange on DC [It is starting here]. I am not sure why an anti-statist position is dangerous. It could be of course, but not necessarily. It was the wellspring of the anti-communist intellectuals whom your books taught me to appreciate and model my own politics after. I am searching for a liberalism which is more cautious of the state and have been led to something that is being called neoclassical liberalism, which tries to appreciate egalitarian high liberalism a la Rawls but also stresses greater economic individual liberties over and against the state as one of the best means for achieving self realization and more general societal happiness.

I do agree that there is a pseudo intellectual quality to all these politicians these days. I don’t consider Obama to be an intellectual in the strong sense of that term. As a legal scholar, presumably, he never left us any work by which we could judge his legal acumen. His autobiographies are written somewhat more for the Oprah crowd, and as we know now are creations of narrative rather than deep analysis. The smart people who have worked with him have generally left in frustration by his inability to listen (Larry Summers, for instance). Romney is certainly no intellectual either, but he makes no pretensions to being so. And it is difficult to find a person who worked for him who does not have deep respect for his abilities and successes. I wonder if really the US is actually better governed by intellectuals or managers. Seems to me that modernity demands managers of complexity, and that intellectuals are ill suited to govern in this context.

The discussion continued, packed with intriguing insights and competing judgments. I will post them later. For now, note the key questions that arise out of this discussion: Who are and are not intellectuals and what are their proper roles? Is there a distinction between storytelling based on principle and ideology? What is the role of the state and how suspicious of the state should we be? What are the promise and perils of utopianism? And much more specifically: what have Tom and I learned from our experience studying previously existing socialism and our appreciation of what he calls the classical liberal sociology of Ralf Dahrendorf and Raymond Aron?

I find the last question personally interesting. Thomas and I agree in many of our critical observations and judgments. He even maintains that his are informed by my writings (I indeed also appreciate his). Yet, we draw different political conclusions. He asserts that he is surprised by my conclusions, as I am surprised by his. I think such surprise is the stuff that makes for a sound democratic culture. More soon.

There was an interesting exchange on my Facebook page following my last post. I am re-posting it this afternoon because I think it opens some important points and may serve as a guide to understand more deliberately this week’s Republican National Convention. The dialogue reveals alternative positions on conservative politics and the way progressives engage with conservative thought and practice. I think it is an interesting beginning of a discussion beyond partisan intellectual gated communities, as Gary Alan Fine has called for in these pages. I welcome the continuation of the discussion here, hope it illuminates theoretical and pressing practical questions . -Jeff

I opened on Facebook by quoting a central summary of the post. The irony: “Ryan’s nomination, I believe, assures the re-election of President Obama. The basis of my belief is a judgment that Americans generally are guided by a conservative insight, an American suspicion of ideological thought. Conservative insight defeats the conservative ticket.” And then a debate followed.

Harrison Tesoura Schultz: Would you say that the conservatives have become too extreme for most people to believe that they’re still actually ‘conservatives?’

Alvino-Mario Fantini ‎@Harrison: What I always want to know is: “too extreme” in reference to what? Public opinion? (It seems to shift.) In comparison to conventional wisdom? (It, too, seems to change over the centuries.) The problem, I would suggest, is not that conservatives have become too extreme for people but that basic conservative ideas and principles are no longer known or understood, and increasingly considered irrelevant.

Jeffrey Goldfarb: Extremism in defense of liberty is a vice and it is not conservative. So, I think you are both right. People who call themselves conservatives are often not, rather they are right wing ideologues. Too much for the general public, I think, hope. On the other hand, people who are interested in limited government and in the wisdom of custom and tradition, but recognize that things do change, should be able to have a conversation with people who think change is imperative and the government has an important role to play, but know that there are no magical solutions to all our problems in the form of one “ism” or another.

Harrison Tesoura Schultz: Akin’s comments certainly seemed to transgress the conventional wisdom of public opinion. Even Romney’s tax evasions and Ryan’s plan also appear to be striking some of the conservatives I talk to on FB as too extreme as well. It seems to me as if the Republicans themselves are the one’s who are increasingly misunderstanding basic conservative ideas and principles.

Aron Hsiao: My anecdotal and personal impression is rather than defending the abstract ideals of freedom and liberty in many cases, what they are defending (and mistake for these) are a narrow group of substantive individual freedoms that are indeed being lost in recent decades—those that inhered in white, male, and/or U.S. privilege/exceptionalism as individually or as a set of statuses. These statuses did in fact once grant very real social and economic power to those that enjoyed them and/or identified with them, a power that has not been replaced and is not easily replaceable in the case of middle and lower classes. The impulse to preserve these is the nature of the conservatism.

The rejection of enlightenment rationality and epistemology (surely that’s what’s at stake here) is not a critical response for at least some of the current U.S. far right rank-and-file, as was the case for the postmodernists, but an instrumental and reactionary one. The logic, values, and methods of the Enlightenment ultimately demand basic equality between, for example, men and women, or blacks and whites, or Americans and non-Americans, or at least forms of status adjudication that do not rest on skin tone, sex, nationality, or other characteristics that grant privilege by birthright.

To those that have had their status upset and have lost social power as a result (or that see themselves having been cheated of it by previous generations), there is only one answer: since it is clear to them (as a matter of socialization, culture, and values) that there is and (at the practical level of their own interests) *must be* a natural hierarchy of races, genders, nations, populations, etc., in which either they or those that they identify with are in the upper echelons, then any logic or epistemology that threatens these hierarchies (i.e. the Enlightenment and that which proceeds from it, including modern science), or the status and power that they are expected to provide, must by definition and practical exigency be rejected as improper and “radical” in nature.

Instead, a logic and epistemology must be found that appears to unconditionally support (or even provide a “restoration” narrative about) essentialist status and power hierarchies, and selective readings of certain strands of Christianity (which holds strong traditional authority for them, an additional affinity and congruence) fit the bill.

In other words, to my eye the Tea Party isn’t about defending Liberty (capital ‘L’) but rather a set of practical liberties that can no longer be taken with (for example) people of color, women, the colonial and postcolonial “other” places, etc.

The ideological substance in the equation conflates this narrow set of practical freedoms with Freedom (capital ‘F’), asserts that that the hierarchy that once granted them was Natural (capital ‘N’), and thus also asserts that the enlightenment worldview and all that proceeds from it (i.e. science, equality, the democratic impulse) are thus destructive of Freedom (again, capital ‘F’) and Nature (and another capital ‘N’).

Note that this opinion is neither scientific nor expert, but merely personal and with significant qualifications. It is not meant to characterize all of American conservatism today and proceeds primarily from my having many family members (both immediate and extended) that are Tea Partiers. It’s likely therefore to be highly regionally, economically, and culturally idiosyncratic.

But it is one reading of at least one current in the present political milieu.

Jeffrey Goldfarb: Interesting note Aron. I wish this discussion appeared on Deliberately Considered itself [which I am now acting upon]. All points have been interesting, it seems to me, Schultz’s and Fabino’s, as well as yours. As far as your note, in contrast to your primary concerns, I am interested in understanding the form of the commitments of present so called conservatives and try to explain why many “conservatives” are actually not conservative. They are ideological rightists instead. You are doing two things: illuminating the seamy side of conservative thought (its attachment to custom as it enables privilege) and understanding present day “conservative” motivations. I worry about your second move. Following it exclusively leads to the cynical dismissal of those one disagrees with. On the other hand, if one carefully analyzes your first move, this is avoided. Seems to me it is especially important to do so when the “conservatives” who you are thinking about are family. I must admit, that is very far from my experience. I know no Tea Party supporters personally, only rarely overhear them in public places. They exist for me mostly as characters in the media spectacle.

Aron Hsiao: … With regard to dismissal, I understand your concern but feel somewhat differently—I take each point to suggest the need to take the issue very seriously. Apart from its sins, one of the insights of postmodernism is that it is difficult to persuade or even engage others about points using one system of knowledge, lexicality and epistemology when they specifically reject it and employ another. The same holds true in the opposite direction.

Yet there are practical issues—dare I say, lives—at stake in politics. Ultimately, like you in some ways (but probably not in others), I think that common dismissal of the Tea Party and the far right is wrongheaded, not to mention undemocratic in nature (never mind that the Tea Party itself is undemocratic in nature, and that this is precisely one of its biggest values). To dismiss it out of hand and reject it without acknowledging and understanding its worldview is to (a) commit the same sin of which we accuse them, strengthening rather than weakening the prevalence of that worldview and (b) render ourselves powerless to influence or engage with that movement in a way that remains ethical or moral within our own worldview. And of course we ought also to take it seriously because of the outcomes that it seeks (and has had some success already in achieving), many of which are, to say the least, undesirable to the other half of the population.

______________

Here the discussion on my Facebook page ends. I did receive, though, a personal note from Fantini, which takes the discussion one step further and which I am posting here with his permission:

Jeff: Aron’s lengthy post screams for a response to be written in time I don’t have! Let me share with you what I’d like to say:

Point 1: Conservatism is not, as Aron says at the outset, simply an attempt to preserve white, male privilege. That is an old and tired argument. The most recent attempt to revive this trope is The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin. The book conflates the old, throne-and-altar conservatism of Old Europe with the Anglo-American variety rooted in Edmund Burke and elaborated by Russell Kirk—and, thus, Robin cannot avoid but concluding that conservatism is nothing but a defense of hierarchy.

In short, I think what has been provided is a post-modern caricature of conservatives and their world-view.

There have been, of course, many other attempts during the 20^th century to dismiss the ‘conservative mind’ as nothing more than a genetic predisposition or a “mental defect”. (Richard Hofstadter’s 1964 essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”, famously tried to dismiss conservatism as an extension of a psychologically paranoid personality.) But these are all reductionist arguments and I don’t think one can say that they represent serious efforts to engage with—let alone understand—conservative thought.

2. Conservatism is not an outright ‘rejection’ of Enlightenment rationality but rather a criticism of it. That alone, however, does not a conservative make. Conservatives have such criticism in common with, well, almost any critic of the ‘Modern Project’—and that includes people on the Left.

3. The source of the ‘impulse’ toward natural hierarchies, as Aron argues, is not simply confined to conservatives reflexively trying to maintain a pecking order—any pecking order. May I suggest that order and hierarchy are simply extensions of the nature of man, of human societies and of political communities everywhere (regardless of political orientation, party affiliation or ideological stance)? A pecking order has emerged in all regimes, from early nomadic tribes, to principalities on small islands, to the brutal regimes that emerged [precisely to do away with one pecking order] in Russia, China and Cambodia.

4. Finally, I think Aron mischaracterizes what the Tea Party is about. I don’t know any conservatives—except perhaps a few old-school, unreconstructed reactionaries in the Old World, all of whom are probably in their 90s and are still raging against  the break-up of the Holy Roman Empire—who believe in rigid hierarchies, with little or no social mobility, or limited economic freedom. Nor do I know any conservatives who are against the scientific advances proceeding from the Enlightenment. Furthermore, the democratic impulse that he speaks of began to emerge as part of our ‘worldview’ centuries before, not from the Enlightenment.

In short, I think what has been provided is a post-modern caricature of conservatives and their world-view.

I think this is an important discussion and hope it continues, unsettling the certainties of left and right. Next a post from Hsiao on a political platform that moves further in this direction.

In the past week, I have published in Deliberately Considered and posted on my Facebook page a series of reflections on the implications of the nomination of Paul Ryan as Vice Presidential candidate of the Republican Party. And I have explained that the basis of my understanding of the present situation is a conservative insight concerning the dangers of ideological thought. The replies have been quite illuminating. The discussion starts with an interesting American irony: amusing, perhaps more.

Ryan’s nomination, I believe, assures the re-election of President Obama. The basis of my belief is a judgment that Americans generally are guided by a conservative insight, an American suspicion of ideological thought. Conservative insight defeats the conservative ticket.

Yet, on the intellectual front, there are few conservative thinkers who would illuminate this. Exceptions? Andrew Sullivan, perhaps also David Frum. (Anyone else?) But because these two are so guided, few, if any, conservatives recognize them as comrades in thought.

Aron Hsiao in a reply to one of my posts on conservative intellectuals explains the factors involved:

“The essence of the moment is that the mainstream demographic blocs of the Right have, as an ideological move, adopted anti-intellectualism as a central tenet of conservatism. Any marriage of democratic practice and political epistemology at the moment therefore precludes the conservative intellectual; if someone is intellectual in the slightest, the Right will disown him/her. They are the oft-maligned “RINOs” (Republicans in Name Only). To make matters worse, any intellectual at the moment of any value is loathe to be associated with the totality of the present (i.e. recent form of the) conservative project in America and thus tends to gravitate toward the (D) party. My suspicion is that rationally informed self-selection (they have careers and statuses, after all) results in a state of affairs in which few serious intellectuals can be found in the (R) party…”

Aside from the way he uses the term ideology, I agree completely with Hsiao. The implications are indeed scary.  I explained my understanding in my last post. I think it can help us understand the unfolding electoral debate.

Ideologists are more enamored by the purity of the ideological position, than they are committed to factual reality. This week we observed the strange case of the Republican candidate in Missouri Senate race, Congressman Todd Akin. Akin knows about wondrous powers of female biology “from what doctors have told him.” In cases of “legitimate rape” the reproductive system shuts down, according to the Congressman. I wonder what he thinks about the rape war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and beyond? From such ideologues we also “know” that there is no human induced climate change and that evolution is just a theory, persuasively challenged by creationist “science.” With the incredible power of the ideology induced human mind: fiction becomes fact; fantasy (in the technical Freudian sense of wish fulfillment) becomes science. Human suffering is ignored. Faced with a serious anti-abortion ethical dilemma, a new science is born.

Alvino-Mario Fantini, a conservative intellectual who has contributed to Deliberately Considered, I believe understands the problems here, the need to distinguish conservative thought from right-wing ideology. He responded to a commenter on my Facebook page, which he took to be an unwarranted dismissal of a significant conservative thinker. He asked:

What do you mean when you say “these days, Russell Kirk would be considered an ‘intellectual’ ?” Was he not? His seminal work The Conservative Mind was the work of a deep thinker (not an activist): an elegantly-written overview of literary and political examples of the “conservative imagination.” If anything, Kirk rejected ideology and would likely have very little to do with many of today’s GOP leaders.

Fantini shares my judgment that a serious debate between the left and the right needs to happen and hasn’t. He agrees with Gary Alan Fine that we live in partisan gated communities and that our ideas and our politics are diminished as a consequence. Fantini testifies that an important American conservative would have been appalled. Perhaps the most tragic consequence is that one party is now mired in an ideological fog, seducing a significant part of the public through ideology empowered media, i.e. Fox and company.

It is with this in mind that George Finch, disagrees with my observations and conclusions concerning the nomination of Paul Ryan. Finch noted on Facebook:

With all due respects, this country is very ideological, one that is based in the sanity of private property, individualism, the wisdom of the market, and a god-like capitalism. All are related of course. To top it off government is now seen as incompetent and part of the problem, not part of a solution. Ryan can appeal to this better than Romney, and with the right pr (lies) they may not scare people. Obama like most of the Ds do not help as they are now deficit hawks and have shifted to the Right and their ideology over the years. Obama will cut the safety net , and Ryan and his folk can use this to counter the D’s attacks and confuse people. The issue is not whether there are any Conservative intellectuals, but how far close we are coming to a form of Friendly Fascism.

And I responded:

I am not so sure that the American population is quite as nutty as you think, or that the market is worshiped in the way right wing ideologues hope and you fear. I think, and hope, that these things are in play and that the Republicans have over played their hand. I fundamentally disagree with you on Obama. He is not a deficit hawk and I think he has long fought the shift to the right and it is most clear now. Friendly Fascism is an epithet. I think it warns of the dangers of the rise of the hard right in one party, not both. Here again is a strong reason to vote for Obama and the Democrats.

Finch concluded the exchange by conceding that he has been hard on Obama, hoping that I am right in my electoral prognostication (“I would vote for a stale, bug infested baloney sandwich rather than Romney”), but asserting that Obama may be the conservative I have been looking for, given his commitment to stability and support of existing institutions and realities.

We, Finch and I, apparently, will vote the same way in November, though our reasons will be different. He will vote for “not Romney – Ryan,” holding his nose as he votes for a conservative, while, I, as a centrist who wants to move the center left, will vote for Obama, a centrist who wants to move the center left. Finch as a left-wing ideologist (as he and Hsiao understand the term) will vote against right-wing ideologists and their policies. While I will vote against ideology and a set of political principles with which I don’t agree, and vote for a candidate who I think is principled but also against “isms,” a politician looking for meaningful dialogue with his opponents, but holding to his own positions and visions, as he beautifully describes the reinvention of the American Dream. Finch, I suppose, imagines that the Romney – Ryan ticket is likely to win, given the pervasiveness of right-wing ideology in the American population. I agree that there is a problem, but think and hope that an ideology aversion will prevent this from happening.

I found this discussion here and on Facebook illuminating. It gets me thinking about the tension within conservative thought between anti-intellectualism and opposition to ideology, i.e. as I put it previously, opposition to all “isms.” We suffer from the former, would greatly benefit from the latter, in my judgment. And I am not convinced with Pait, as he responded to my last post, that ideologists get things done, while those who oppose modern magical thinking don’t.  But I agree with him, it is a challenge. More soon.