Having been youths during the Great Depression, many neoconservatives were essentially supporters of the welfare state, but they also diagnosed some of the ways in which the welfare state could undercut its supposed aims. The Public Interest, a major neoconservative organ, was stocked with articles about how some Great Society welfare efforts might end up not ameliorating but rather entrenching poverty.
However, the neoconservatives were emphatically not proponents of laissez-faire. Not only did they often support robust government efforts; they also had deeper reservations about the dynamics of the market. Irving Kristol famously mustered only two cheers (not three) for capitalism. While the material wealth produced by capitalism was in many ways a good thing, the endless pursuit of profit could also degrade traditional communities and sap important moral virtues. In The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, Daniel Bell offered a sociological elaboration of this theme; the elevation of consumerism in an age of American plenty could undermine the virtues, including prudence and discipline, that a successful market economy requires...
When Hawley denounces the political vision of an autonomous “Promethean self,” that sounds rather like two cheers (or maybe one and a half) for capitalism. Just as neoconservatives looked at an American economic and political system under increasing pressure in the Sixties and Seventies, many of those sympathetic to a “populist” or “nationalist” correction see in the contemporary United States signs of disappointment and socioeconomic strain. In the 21st century, economic growth has slowed by many measures. Deaths of despair have skyrocketed. Partisan rancor and dysfunction hold the Beltway in their grip. Political radicalism, from socialism to the “woke” left to the “alt-right,” has gained new currency in some parts of the public.
These trends have left a black mark in the lives of many Americans. But they also might augur ill for liberal democracy and a market-based economy. Policy reforms to correct them can be less a flight from liberty and more a way to make the practices of liberty sustainable, a theme that has pervaded accounts of liberty in America from Hamilton to Tocqueville to the neoconservatives.You can read the rest here.
There's a bigger tradition of diagnosing the limitations (or de-stabilizing tendencies) of democratic life not in order to end it but in order to make it more sustainable.
In his review of R. R. Reno's Return of the Strong Gods, Samuel Goldman offers a related reflection. Reno, he writes, believes in the importance of deep roots (in family, faith, and community) for the human psyche. We all crave these roots. For Reno, modernity and the "open society" model of the postwar consensus risk cutting us off from this essential foundation.
For one thing, [such a model] is too thin and rationalistic to provide the meaning most of us crave. A few people might be satisfied by the lesser goods of peace and prosperity. Many more are attracted to forms of community that offer greater fulfillment because they demand more of their members. Although he opposes so-called identity politics as another kind of idolatry, Reno recognizes its appeal. If the “open society” does not offer citizens a strong political purpose, it is inevitable that they will seek it in race or sexual orientation.
Second, openness can become an ersatz religion. Rather than a pragmatic strategy to avoid the worst, the refusal to make and enforce judgments is now seen as a virtue — perhaps the only one. Reno is not alone in recognizing that the terms “toleration” and “diversity” have become liturgical affirmations of a new moral orthodoxy...
...The real danger, he argues, is not the appeals to traditional morality, religion, and nationalism that provoke elite liberals to hysterical warnings of fascism. It is the refusal of any sacrifices to the strong gods, which invites them back in new and potentially violent forms.Goldman implies that Reno's project may less be about throwing over "liberal democracy" (he doesn't want to end elections or throw religious dissenters in prison) and more about nurturing those deeper roots of the sacred in order to counterbalance some of the tendencies toward atomization.
Reno’s populism is based on a strategic calculation comparable to the one adopted by architects of the post-war consensus. In a world devastated by an excessive devotion, they promoted disillusionment and restraint. In a society that fosters weak loyalty or reverence, Reno encourages the reenchantment of the world. “Deprived of true and ennobling loves,” he concludes, “people will turn to demagogues and charlatans who offer them false and debasing loves.”
This highlights one of the complexities of contemporary discussions of "populism" and "nationalism." Some see in these movements the project of overthrowing a "liberal" order characterized by civil liberties and democratic governance, while others see in them the possibility of correcting some elements of established orthodoxies in order to make the practices of liberty and democracy more sustainable.
Certainly, many of those idenitified with "populism" and "nationalism" these days are themselves profoundly sympathetic to the institutional principles we associate with "liberal democracy." Josh Hawley doesn't want to repeal the Bill of Rights, for instance. In the beginning of The Virtue of Nationalism, Yoram Hazony makes clear his fundamental support for the inherited norms of political liberty; he thinks that the national model is a vehicle for preserving those norms. Indeed, Hazony argues that political transnationalism might itself be at odds with those things that make liberal, democratic life possible. The idea that a certain ideological rigor can undermine the practices of democracy is not confined to "postliberals," either. One of the themes of Bill Galston's Anti-Pluralism is the way that a fierce neoliberal reaction against populism could itself pose a threat to pluralist norms and institutions.
None of this is to say that certain forms of "populism," "nationalism," and "postliberalism" might not actually be hostile to the practices of democracy and civil liberties. (I tend to think that a lot of "-ism" talk actually obscures some deeper complexities and differences.)
And there is, of course, the second-order question of whether some of the concrete policy solutions offered by populists will actually address those tensions within the heart of (broadly speaking) "liberal" life.
But this does suggest that part of the task of statesmanship for a regime with robust protections for civil liberties and democratic elections might include attending to the deeper social textures and cultural capital that make those things possible. That project of attention has a long lineage, from the American Founders onward.
