The topic is Goldberg’s new book, The Suicide of the West. One of its themes is that we should appreciate the achievements of modern Western civilization. That also seems to be a theme of Steven Pinker’s latest book. One excerpt from the podcast:
if we don’t civilize people to understand this distinction between the micro- and the macro-cosm, what inevitably happens is that the logic of the microcosm, the desire to live tribally which we’re all born with, starts to infect politics. And if you are not on guard for it, it can swamp politics. And this is why I would argue that virtually every form of authoritarianism, totalitarianism–whether you want to call it right-wing or left-wing–doesn’t really matter to me any more. They are all reactionary. Because they are all trying to restore that tribal sense of social solidarity
This reminds me of what I wrote about a few weeks ago concerning the intellectual dark web. By the time you read this post, I expect that I will be much of the way through Goldberg’s book, which came out on Tuesay.
You can take anything that Goldberg says about conservatism at apply it to communism. He says conservatism is a set of principles undermined by poor personal character – well guess what comrade, communism was also a set of ideas that was betrayed by wreckers and smugglers. He says that the fundamental exceptionalism of the US is a commitment to human equality – hey, communism was also all about equality too. He says that the American creed is secular at its core – same thing for communism! Goldberg says that the American creed can be found in certain books, like the Federalist papers or the declaration of independence – have you read Marx and Lenin? Communists also have a fetish for old books. He regrets that conservatism has lost touch with its intellectual vanguard, now that its been taken over by Hannity and Trump – have you visited your local DSA chapter lately? They couldn’t agree more.
My criticism of Goldberg would be that at its core, conservatism is against any utopian schemes. If conservatives believe anything, it’s in incremental change. Trying to build a non-tribal, thoroughly secularized society is a utopian scheme, in fact I’d say it’s the most utopian scheme of all. Goldberg says that liberal democracy is contrary to human nature, but for years conservatives would quote Churchill’s “low but solid ground.” I suspect that Churchill hasn’t changed but Goldberg probably has.
Please let us know. I have never read anything Goldbrerg has written, as I understood him to just be a simple cultural warrior (fighting for a side I’m not really on, and thus not his target audience). But the podcast piqued my interest.
Goldberg like the Progressives seems to regard human universalism/egalitarianism as a sacred absolute. Yet we are constituted by our particular identities. It is not a matter of two extreme alternatives, universalism on the one hand, and tribalism on the other. Rather the problem is how to maintain core human relations while giving recognition to the fact that people prefer for the most part to be with their own kind.
Robert Putnam has shown the loss of social capital and trust brought about by diversity, a loss not only between groups, but within groups. Pretending that this can be ignored or overcome is nonsense. Human beings are not generic specimens of a universal humanity, but always practitioners of specific cultures. The question then is how they can somehow rub along peacefully together. Attempting to obliterate these realities is utopian and leads to disaster.
This is a good critique of Goldberg’s book, by one of his NRO colleagues, gently pointing out that Goldberg’s simplistic, rigidly “anti-tribal/anti-natural” version of “liberal democracy” is self-defeating, along the lines of the comments by andrewknorr and Thucydides above:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/off-the-shelf-suicide-of-the-west/
I haven’t read the book yet, so you’ll have to let me know whether he preemptively addresses what I think will be the obvious progressive replies to the general argument.
But from what I’ve come across, the gist is that maintaining The Miracle depends on preserving some instiutions and ideas which were present at its origin, and the progressives will merely reply, “No, it doesn’t. Only the good bits, of which our list is much shorter than yours, and the rest must go. We’ve changed a lot, and we’ve still got the miracle. Furthermore, just as we’ve made the most progress while eliminating our most unjust historical vestiges, so too does future progress depend on continuing to perfect our society by eradicating lingering social injustices. If anything, more miracle depends on more radical negations of bad traditions.”
I’m guessing Goldberg will have a hard time proving the indispensibility of anything the progressives want to change in anything but very vague and abstract terms. “The Miracle depended on free speech.” – “No. The Miracle never did and does not now depend on hate speech, so we must ban it.”
I would make a different criticism, which is that a lot of the material prosperity side of the miracle derives most clearly from technological innovation and functional markets, and much more uncertainly from the whole suite of values and institutions in place after the American founding, however desirable they may be. This is a fact which is easily observable when looking at the growth in wealth in recently poor and still illiberal countries around the globe.
Do the past 40 years of Chinese growth constitute a similar miracle? It certainly does. The Chinese seem to have done it without most of what I’m guessing Goldberg claims is necessary in terms of individual liberties, though they may be desirable as ends in themselves instead of as mere instruments.
What about the national capacity to accomplish amazing technical feats? Well, the Soviets were able to make nukes, and now even the North Koreans too. They needed the tech and the smarts, but not the rights and individualism.
“The Miracle” is high IQs populations + non-totalitarian governments + whatever initial conditions got the industrial revolution going but its now self reinforcing on its own if you maintain the first two. The governments don’t need to be perfect, and its clear that mixed economies with not totally efficient markets are good enough so long as they retain some of the most high value capitalist innovations (like a functioning price system or LLCs).
All the rest of enlightenment values may or may not improve quality of life, but aren’t really necessary to have first world countries with decent economics and social outcomes. As Handle notes above, Asian technocratic government accomplishes it just fine without enlightenment values.