A TRUMPEAN SYNTHESIS?
[TTPer Mike Ryan recently posted on the Forum a remarkable argument for what could be called the Trumpean Synthesis. Skye suggested it be a featured article – even though he has a critical objection (which is the same as mine). I can only agree – thanks, Mike! –JW]
This is what the political situation looks like to me, where we are now, how we got here, and where we are going:
Edmund Burke was an Old Whig from the English Enlightenment. Many consider him to be the father of British Conservatism but not American Conservatism. Burke mildly supported the American Revolution because it was anti-royalist and based on concepts reaching back to the Magna Carta.
Burke wrote that the leaders of the Revolution were men of honor and integrity and very unlike the mob of the French Revolution. The Whigs, the Rockefeller Republicans, and the group we refer to as the country club elite are solidly Burkean. They have a tendency to snoot down their noses at social mobility and use cultural tools to maintain a sort of American caste system.
The core value of the Burkeans is Noblesse Oblige. It means that certain people are born to lead and have a duty to be gracious, generous leaders. Others are born to labor, and the uppity nouveau-riche should be discouraged.
Noblesse Oblige is at the root of the patriarchy and the nuclear family, the ministry, the military, and hierarchy in general. Noblesse Oblige, in the modern sense, originated in Feudalism with all that the landed aristocracy represented.
However… American Conservatism as established by the Founders is less Edmund Burke and more John Locke. Locke is considered a liberal by Europeans. In fact, all of American Conservatism is considered to be liberal from the European perspective because America lacks the cultural tie to Feudalism.
Lockean values include tripartite government, constitutionalism, an enumerated Bill of Rights, and limited government. Locke wrote about Liberty and social mobility and presented the idea that any kid could grow up to be the leader. His ideas were revolutionary and wholly embraced by the likes of Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, and Benjamin Franklin.
America did pretty well with his ideas during the 19th Century, the Century of John Locke. We ended slavery and built the greatest prosperity machine in history, and gave it to the common man.
Along came the 20th Century. The Great Powers feared Lockean Liberty because they feared the loss of royal control. They feared this in their very bones and this fear was a significant cause of WWI. It was a global war intended to put Liberty back in the box and make the world safe for royalty and state bureaucracy. As Antoine Scalia might say, “Making the world safe for Democracy” was pure applesauce.
Sure, the usual suspects of French Revanchism over the Alsace-Loraine, Orthodox Serbian nationalism simmering since the Eastern Church was driven from Constantinople, the renegade Serbian intelligence agency’s assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the aloof Serbian King, Turkish hegemony, secret treaties between the great powers, Joffre’s Plan XVI, etc, etc – all played their parts.
But what really could frighten the Sultan, the Tsar, the Kaiser, the King (s), Napoleon III, and the Progressive Woodrow Wilson sufficiently to blow up the world? The war was a response to the collective fear of Liberty and the reality that enormous productivity gains occur among free men.
By July of 1914, the Old Money had decided that John Locke must die. The guns opened up in August. In short, the political elites then were afraid of the same things that today’s political elites are. Instead of artillery barrages, today’s elites are using Political Islam and mass immigration to contain Liberty. Look at Europe.
WWI succeeded in ending the era of Locke and launching the Progressive Era in the United States. The war broke the monarchies and replaced Royalism with Marx, started the Frankfurt School, and left Edmund Burke alone to defend the family, chivalry, and property rights. Mr. Burke, absent Mr. Locke, was not up to the task.
The Marxists and Progressives quickly learned to attack Burkean Noblesse Oblige, and caused a steady erosion of values and culture. We lost the nuclear family, individualism, a huge chunk of Christianity, several wars, social mobility, and Liberty herself as the political right just retreated and retreated.
A Republican grounded in the philosophy of Edmund Burke is known as a Rockefeller Republican in the USA. Feminists shrieked about the evil patrimony and demanded the replacement of Christianity with Existentialism and Nihilism right up until 1980.
All seemed lost until Ronald Reagan appeared and stood up against the Burkean Rockefeller Republicans. Reagan said:
“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals—if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”
It is a pretty good description of what John Locke wrote about.
The Rockefeller Republicans hated Reagan and his synthesis of John Locke with Edmund Burke and wanted no part of this Liberty and Meritocracy thing. They fear Meritocracy more than Communism. Why?
Because just as the Kaiser and Kings feared the end of monarchy before WWI, the Rockefeller class feared (and still fears) the self-made man. It is a jealousy thing. They have a visceral hatred of Laissez Faire and the need to compete for social rank. The entitled on both the left and right hate John Locke.
The Republican Establishment is doing its best to restore Edmund Burke as the lone philosopher of the right, and the Establishment is executing a long-term plan to drive Reagan’s merger of Locke with Burke into the ashbin of history.
Their hostility towards merit is so great that they have been willing to de-industrialize America and impoverish great swaths of the nation in order to destroy the Reagan Coalition. Stop a minute and ponder this and all that this means.
Mitt Romney is Edmund Burke to his core. He is not a royalist, but is an elitist exhibiting the view that he was born into leadership, and must act with Noblesse Oblige. He has an aristocratic pretense, is a member in the Old Boys Club, but he lacks the stomach to fight.
Mitt Romney’s arrogant dismissal of the 47% and the ability of economic freedom to offer an optimistic vision cost him the election. Romney was unable to withstand the same old political correctness that has withered and drained the Old Right since WWI.
Romney’s fear of the self-made cost the United States our position as the moral leader of the world. You see this demoralization in the heroin addiction, productivity loss, urban riots, and profound destruction of work ethic that has occurred since the 2012 election.
The TEA Party was an attempt to re-introduce John Locke and the philosophy of Liberty back into the Republican Party. The TEA Party combined Burke with Locke as Reagan did. However, this time, the elites were ready and stomped out the lights.
I believe that Trump is a second go at the revolution against the Rockefeller Republicans and is a second go at restoring Liberty. This time however, it’s a hybrid of the philosophical Pragmatism of William James being mated with the Liberty of John Locke. This combination has never been tried before and might solve the greatest problem of Liberty, which is the ability to get everyone to pull in the same direction when needed.
However, Pragmatism, as a political philosophy is inconsistent and lumpy, and prone to periodic failure (bankruptcies). Trump combines the go-go juice of Pragmatism with the discovery process of Liberty. We are heading for a wild ride and a very consequential epoch. Big wins, big failures. Big changes.
Jack Kelly and Jack Wheeler, you are correct. Trump will shelve Burkean Conservatism and the concept of Noblesse Oblige. It is possible that America will prefer Pragmatism/Liberty to Rockefeller Elitism or Reagan’s Elitism/Liberty which would shelve Whiggish Conservatism for a long time.
Rockefeller Republicans have as much to fear from Trump as Kaiser Wilhelm had to fear from a Bill of Rights one hundred years ago. But the Trump supporters are right also, we need to awaken John Locke and make America fluid and free again. We must.
What do we do? We want to eliminate the left and we have been given a double-sided broad sword in Trump. We love Liberty and long for the culture of Liberty brought forth by Reagan and Thatcher.
Yet, we don’t want to see the elegance, culture, kindness, and wisdom of the ages washed away by replacing the values of the well-bred with the all-against-all that Pragmatism alone might bring. Edmund Burke arose to maintain chivalry and compassion in a world of tyrants. We like chivalry and compassion.
We need a tripartite philosophy that includes the synthesis of Burke and Locke that Reagan created, with the blocking and tackling of Pragmatism. We should be thinking of Trump as something new and powerful, a new synthesis of philosophies.
Our goal should be to maintain the Chivalry and Noblesse Oblige in local matters of family and community but we should also be willing to use the broad sword of Pragmatism to cut the head off the left. Trump’s synthesis is capable of destroying Progressivism as effectively as Reagan’s synthesis destroyed Communism.
Is it possible to create a new American Enlightenment that synthesizes, Burke, Locke, and Pragmatism? If we can, we will dominate the universe. If we can’t, then we will become sick, pathetic Europe.
Skye comments:
Mike, I wish you were an advisor in Trump’s inner circle. What I fear is that Trump is a terrific salesman of his narcissistic self, but that there is nothing but pragmatism between his ears. If Trump has Reaganesque principles, he has been doing a remarkably good job of hiding them.
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