Dan Knauss outlines his political beliefs in the New Pantagruel’s forum, and I find myself agreeing with much of what he says:
In the past, I probably would have voted for FDR as a conservatizing Social Democrat concession from a Socialist standpoint of displaced German-Americans who had a big distrust of state powers and fairly medieval and family-based conception of socialism.
Conservatism has always been Statist to the extent that the mainstream of the tradition is Anglo-Protestant. Protestantism and Statism are integrally related, excepting the fringe reactionaries: radical Calvinists who want their own states if they can’t take over the existing state, and Anabaptists who lean anarchistic.
Consider the 2 Kingdoms: Augustine writing in the profound decay of the empire when the vandals are killing and enslaving the commoners describes a fundamentally different mentality than Luther writing during the profound growth of the aristocratic territorial state when the aristocracy is killing and enslaving the commoners. Think about that for a while.
If mainstream Conservatism historically has had a pro-monarchist Tory bent, it is a post-Restoration Anglican/Episcopal monarchism, which is romantic nostalgia grafted onto practical whiggery. This is all the more evident in the American offshoot.
Anti-statist Conservatism, if it excludes most Libertarians, is a fringe handful of philosophically conservative anarchists, those radical Calvinist and Anabaptists, and the largest part of this fringe would be the odd gamut of anti-Statist Catholics. All of these people see a highly decentralized social order as the ideal model. Catholics of this sort see it as having been realized at a high level by about the 15th century in Europe and ruined by the consolidation of power in monarchical bureaucratic states over against the church and commons. They think (correctly) that this change was enabled by the Reformation in which the reconceived protestant church was completely manipulated and coopted by the secular state. The radical Calvinists and Anabaptists perceived this when the state commenced killing and suppressing them. They don’t grasp their part in their own screw-over, but they really want to go medieval too in what is a rejection of the refortmation as a political event. Of course this is often romance as well, or truly bbelieved principle not put into any real action because one likes to have indoor plumbing, etc.
I am only an anti-statist in theory; I am not an activist for the downfall of the state. Were it to become sufficiently corrupt and weakened, I would probably make that jump, along with many other people, out of necessity. Natural response to power-vaccuums. When the federal system fails, the maximum political articulation will contract to the states or state-sized regional entities, or smaller units, depending on the degree of disorder that emerges. I think this will eventually happen–it always does, as no political organization larger than a city-state is a sustainable enterprise in the long run. Our system is, I believe, reaching its end. Probably in the near future of our own lives, but maybe later. Ironically, the longer it takes, the worse it will be. However, I think it’s worth propping up the current system for the order and benefits it affords until the drawbacks for me outweigh the benefits.
A purely rational calculation would be to instigate secessionist movements and regional confederacies now, but even though almost everyone can see how this would be rational, they can’t admit it. It is “not practical” mainly because we have an ingrained superstitious devotion to our version of the imperium. American society is now like a class waiting for a teacher to show up. 5 minutes pass after the bell, then ten. Who will be the first to leave? Will someone get up and clown around? Will someone assume leadership and start talking about what the group should do? We’re just sitting and complaining now.
Posted on 7 June 2006