From Both Barrels [republished from Imag. Conserv]

"From Both Barrels: Gregg, Pixar, Pogo, and Olson"

-Brad Birzer

Forgive the scattershot tendencies and directions of this post.  Just lots of short items written quickly from my hotel room in downtown Portland, just blocks from Powells (which I’ve yet to visit).

A few book recommendations

I’m currently reading Sam Gregg’s new book, Wilhelm Roepke’s Political Economy.  Written in a more academic but equally engaging style than his last book, The Commercial Society, Gregg’s new book presents Roepke in the light of Christian Humanism and the 19th and 20th century papal encyclicals on economics, society, and social justice.  While Gregg clearly admires Roepke, he also justly criticizes the humane economist for several of his views.  Not surprisingly, Gregg’s book has been a joy, and I’m eager to finish it.  I will be reviewing it fully over at the University Bookman.  I highly recommend it.

Nostalgia and Order

Reposted from The Imaginative Conservative:

I agree completely with Bruce and Barbara that real change will need to come from communities and from talented individuals working within stable and functional communities that support them.  This truth, of course, takes us all the way back to Aristotle’s Politics.  “Man is, by nature, meant to live in a community.”  Should he opt out, he will be a beast or god.  Either way, he ceases to be human.  

The true conservative should seek to conserve that which is most humane within us and in those who came before us.

The question for us is: how does one form a community or communities in a world that moves at the speed of sound and, even more often, at light.  Do we form communities around needy individuals, around educating our children, around debating conservatism on the web?  And, what sustains such communities?  How do we limit the bad communities while encouraging the good?

Perhaps, Barbara, this gets to your point that conservatives tend to be nostalgic.  I wonder, though, if it’s rather that we tend to be mythic--that is, we are storytellers.   We want to place our own existences within a larger existence (that is, a community--perhaps even a community of our own selves over time, within our lifetimes, moments separated from moments, events separated from events).  

Our childhoods and early adult years do seem somewhat golden.  Not necessarily because they were, but because we know how they turned out and how our choices played out.  We know what good decisions worked and what bad decisions didn’t.  We know ourselves by reflecting on a past that has become, in our minds at least, simplified.  Maybe this is the nostalgia we conservatives have--a longing for something in hindsight that seems clear?

Few of us on this blog could, however, be accused of being backward looking.  While I can’t speak for Bruce, Gleaves, or John C., I can say with absolute certainly that you (Barbara), Winston, John R., John W., and I love our gadgets and our technologies.  Steve Jobs holds a rather high place in each of our minds.  Though, I think we each admire him for his aesthetic sense as much for his entrepreneurial drive.  Probably not one of us think much of his political and religious choices.  My main point being, we each love things that are here and now, and we each have a certain hope that things are getting better, especially if it has a glowing partially eaten Apple (ah, the forbidden fruit) on it.

When Tom Burns and Christopher Dawson released the first issue of ORDER in 1928, they found a large audience.  “Probably we shall get no further than the paradox that we are of a revolutionary nature yet with order as our idée force.  The Cherubic Doctor, Chesterton, has said somewhere ‘If the world is good we are revolutionaries, if the world is evil we must be conservatives.”

We find ourselves in the same position.  Some things we desire came or flourished in the past; we want to conserve these things, if only in memory.  Some things, though, we know to be conserved for self-interested and selfish reasons (human slavery, for example).  Therefore, we need a measurement that transcends left and right to judge that which should be conserved and that which shouldn’t.  This measurement has to be what is humane and just.

Leviathan, Our Greatest Enemy

[Posted from Winston Elliott's Imaginative Conservative Website]

Winston, again, thanks much for initiating and continuing this conversation.  I very much appreciate the quotes from Kirk’s talk, “The Chirping Sectarians,” and I’m assuming you’re in agreement with the arguments presented.  

More on this in a bit.

Barbara, I’m very glad, but not at all surprised, that we are almost entirely in agreement on the issue of a Conservative-Libertarian alliance.  My only complaint with your post is that it’s way, way, way (yes, I repeated the word) too short.  You have beautifully-stated and thought-out insights; I very much hope this is simply an outline for your autobiography.  Your experiences at Hillsdale, Heritage, the Reagan Administration, and the Center for Renewal and your Christian journey would be a rewarding read for all of us.  Given what you’ve seen and what you’ve done, especially with the role and power of communities, you could certainly be the de Tocqueville or Brownson of our day.

Ok, a few thoughts on your ideas, Winston.  First, I’m defining the “state” as something different than Burke did.  Maybe I should not be redefining things, but I certainly don’t think that Burke’s understanding of a state applies much anymore.  What he feared most--that the French Revolutionaries would capture and redefine this term-- seems to have become the case.  A state is no longer merely a government based on relations, political exchanges, and talents (for good or ill).  It has instead become what C.S. Lewis and Christopher Dawson understood it to be: a centralized authority assuming the powers of traditional religious authorities.  It had readopted--whether under the title of dictatorship or democracy--the Oriental idea of Caesaro-papism.

“If the new State threatens the freedom of the Church and the individual conscience, it is because it is itself taking on some of the features of the church and is no longer content to confine itself to the outside of life--the sphere of the policeman and the lawyer,” Dawson argued in 1935.  The State now “claims the whole of life and thus becomes a competitor with the Church on its own grounds.” (Dawson, Religion and the Modern State, 44)

Or, as Tolkien flippantly put it, (and I’m paraphrasing here because I didn’t bring his letters on our western Odyssey) after he declared himself either a philosophic anarchist or an unconstitutional monarchist, “I would allow a person to use the term ‘state’ once.  After that, I would have him executed.”

Second, everyone of the contributors to this site is Christian.  As such, we have a duty to see the person rather than merely the politics of a person.  Assuming we could even come to a conclusion as to what defines a “libertarian,” we still have a duty to see first the person and second the libertarian.

Third, I’m not convinced we could define a libertarian as this or that, one thing or another, without serious exceptions.  Libertarianism, beyond the fear of the state, is as diverse as the persons who claim the title.  Again, I appeal to Classical Liberals for whom I have had or continue to have a healthy and serious respect: Grover Cleveland; E.L. Godkin, Sterling Morton, Albert Jay Nock, Friedrich Hayek, Larry Reed, Jim Otteson, Mark LeBar and many others.

Kirk himself admitted how much Nock and Isabel Paterson influenced him.  And, while Kirk certainly disliked terms such as “libertarian,” he possessed strong individualist, anti-statist, and Old Whiggish views and tendencies.

For what it’s worth, I do think modern state is an evil, no matter how necessary.  Not only does it attempt to homogenize us individually and destroy or attenuate the institutions of subsidiarity, but it wields, sometimes gleefully, the power to remake the world in its image or destroy those who stand in its way.  In our own American case, we only have to look to what the Federal government did in creating the first federal police force in 1850 with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, in nearly exterminating the Nez Perce Indian culture in 1877, in harassing Japanese Americans in the 1940s, in targeting civilians in Japan and Germany during World War II, in keeping American Indians chained to reservations, and on and on and on.

As I see it, our politicians are--generally--either fools or corrupt, and our bureaucrats (the ones really in charge) are--again, generally--self-serving, obsessed with power and conformity.  The Marines seem good, and, perhaps, the National Park Service (except for their management of their restrooms; in this, they’re worse than McDonalds).  What other federal agencies or institutions might a conservative promote?

The Department of Energy, the Department of Education, NASA, the EPA? 

Well, some thoughts as we traverse the undulating grasslands of western Washington.

Day Seven, Birzer Odyssey: With Absolute Certainty

Day 7; driving westbound on US12, somewhere between Helena and Missoula, Montana; July 15, 2010

As I type this, we’re approaching some new range of mountains, the Family Birzer moving continuously toward the Pacific, slowly and steadily following in the footsteps and paddle strokes of the Corps of Discovery and its leaders, William Clark and Meriwether Lewis.  Though I’m not looking at a map at the moment, I’m assuming this new line, growing larger and larger in our approach, is actually the beginning of the Rocky Mountains.  We’ve already crossed through the Little Belts, the Judiths, and the Big Belts.  Each grows in drama and commands the attention of the mortal.

Through our many miles, we have encountered the friendliest of people; grasses, tall and short and everything in between; sunrises, light, and color beyond compare; the most outrageous of claims on billboards; coffee shops and natural co-ops and granola dispensers; monuments to the cultural and demographic expansion of the American frontier, some patriotic and sincere, some jingoistic and self serving; geologic manifestations dating back millions of years and archeological remains nearly two thousand years old; herds of wooly headed and horned bison; corrals of horses; re-enactors, museum interpreters, and naturalists who possess the deepest of knowledge and passion for their subjects, finding boundless energy in answering a million niggling questions; statues to white men, Indian women, Newfoundland dogs, and American buffalo; dolls of our first progressive president; thriving forests and diseased spruces; lodgings ranging from the tacky and putrid to the classy and brilliant; warning signs and icons smacking of the worst patronization; pride, vanity, and haste in the young, the middle aged, and the old; and an excellence in architecture, service, community, and ability.  

The Family Birzer has, in short, seen much of America rarely seen by the rest of America, but much that is simply common in humanity, east, west, north, south, gentile, Jew, male, female, bond, and free.

The Family Birzer has hiked across Pishkuns and next to seemingly uncontrollable mountain streams.  It has stood on cliffs of great heights, and it has surveyed that which it has crossed.  In all, the Family Birzer has demonstrated a willingness to explore far beyond a father’s hopes and desires.  On one such hike, I took the older children on, exploring a steep precipice, while Dedra waited with the two youngest, each needing a rest.  The five year old, Harry said: “I know I won’t get left behind, I’m one of the important Birzers.  So are you, mommy.”

As we approach this new range somewhere between Helena and Missoula on a U.S. 12 that seems to have little in common with its Jonesville, Allen, and Quincy counterpart, learned English descriptives begin to fail.  How many times over the past week have I thought: majestic; sublime; overwhelming; profound; Edenic; fantastic; pristine; angelic; beatific; sacramental; sublime; overwhelming . . . . In the end, I realize, I’m not capable of giving proper words to what I see and feel beyond trite statements, made by many long before I did.  Language, at least for me, fails in the vastness and diverse scope of the American West.  The landscape has changed almost moment by moment since we crossed into North Dakota so many days ago.  High, low, ascent, descent, curve, high, low, ascent, descent, curve, high--all movements experienced in this immense landscape.  

Through it all, I can only write with absolute certainty this one thing: my soul has been moved throughout the West of North Dakota and Montana, even when my inherited language fails me.  Indeed, my soul soars, even where my logic, education, and training desert me.  

I can also state this with some certainty, but a certainty not of the reasonable faculties: around every corner, over every incline, across every stream, through every stand of aspens and ponderosa pines, I expect to see my relatives who have left this world smiling at me, through the very thin veil that separates time from eternity.  I see my maternal grandmother, maternal grandfather, cousin, and daughter looking back at me, reassuringly.  Somehow, they reside in a place that perfects the near perfection I glimpse here.

This is all I can write with any clarity in the bounds of this world, though I, with Tolkien’s Niggle, stand squarely on it.

If you're interested in what can be captured by the camera's eye, please click below:
http://gallery.me.com/bradleybirzer#gallery

Decision at the Marias

My second response to the idea of a conservative-libertarian alliance, reposted from Winston Elliott's IMAGINATIVE CONSERVATIVE:

Thanks, Winston (and Bruce).

A few, random thoughts regarding the current posts.

Conservatism, as I see it, can do little in this world of sorrows without allies.  An alliance of the humane right--those who oppose the growth of Leviathan, Demos, and Mars at home and abroad--seems nothing short of prudent.  Conservatives, libertarians, Catholics, Jews, Protestants, virtuous Ciceronians, and non-bomb throwing anarchists, should fight together, defending all that is good in our western tradition.

Any success, of course, is unforeseeable.  This uncertainty of victory, however, doesn’t lessen the duty to fight as men.

In the 1930s, T.S. Eliot gave a profound speech regarding the role of the Catholic in the modern world.  In it, he said “The Catholic should have high ideals--or rather, I should say absolute ideals--and moderate expectations: the heretic, whether he calls himself fascist, communist, or democrat or rationalist, always has low ideals and great expectations.”

This is as true of the conservative as of the Catholic.  A conservative-libertarian alliance would only further the ends of the conservative in his search for the reflections of the good, the true, and the beautiful in this world while simultaneously reminding man of his fallen nature.

Would a conservative become lost in a pan-right alliance, as you justly ask Winston?  Not necessarily.  In fact, a true conservative should be the last to lose what should be conserved.  Additionally, because he’s not an ideologue and because he believes in principles, not ideological sound bites, he should remain steady in his own convictions.  More importantly, he knows that God rules this world and all of Creation, and that His truths are timeless and absolute--not subject to anything but interpretation and implementation by men.  Men can lose truth, mock it, or ignore it--but it remains there to be uncovered, generation after generation, eon after eon.  

Additionally, the state is, at best, a necessary evil.  At worst, it’s an intolerable tyranny, whether soft or hard in its oppression.  Conservatives recognize this truth, generally, but libertarians feel it in every fibre of their being.  For America, there is no greater danger at the moment than the outrageous growth of the state--in every aspect of our lives.  

Finally, I don’t think we can justly identify all libertarians, for example, with utilitarians.  Some libertarians are utilitarian, to be sure.  Frankly, I don’t think it’s ever possible for a conservative to ally himself with a utilitarian of any stripe with any hope of success.  By definition, the utilitarian rejects the humane.  But, many libertarians--at least the ones I know and read--reject any non-humane understanding of the human person and the world.   Godkin, Nock, Otteson, etc., embrace liberalism in its best sense--wisdom of things beyond this world.

Anyway, some ill-formed thoughts.  Thanks for the blog, Winston.  It’s necessary and good, to be sure.

Under Montana Skies--a reply to Winston Elliott

I just posted this at Winston Elliott's excellent new blog: "The Imaginative Conservative."

----

Winston,

As always, your leadership--intellectual, moral, and creative--is essential to the survival of the conservative movement for the next generation.  Thank you for organizing this.

As you know, I’m traversing the West with the Family Birzer.  So much of what you’ve already posted deserves comment, but I’m ready to collapse after hiking in badlands, plains, and mountains; chasing five kids through playgrounds, grasslands, swimming pools, forests, and parking lots; and driving across 2/5 of the United States.  So, I will limit my comments.

First, I don’t think “libertarianism is a false friend” as posted in the article reposted by you, reposting Clint, reposting Esolen.   Libertarians have been, and, in my humble view, will continue to be, the brethren of any thriving conservatism.  At the moment, one of the (not the only) greatest problems is the massive growth of the state--from creeping socialism to leaping socialism.  And, we’ve leapt into a mess, a mess that makes the timid liberalism of Clinton seems downright agreeable.  Well, not really, but hopefully my point has been made.  As demonstrated so clearly in his short but deadly time as president, Obama has proven himself the successor not of Humphrey, Carter, and Clinton, but of Wilson, FDR, and LBJ.  We are in dangerous and perilous times.  The libertarians so readily remind the conservatives of the glories of the individual (no matter how fallen) and the dangers of collectivism.  Are there still disagreements between conservatives and libertarians?  Of course.  But, no more so than between serious Roman Catholics and serious Reformed Christians.  

Second, and very much related to the first point, we MUST form alliances, pan-Right alliances, anti-bureaucratic alliances, humane alliances.  As Owen Barfield wrote in 1940: “I mean the impression it gives of a sober effort to build up and maintain a common stock of thought rather than to startle with a series of sparkling individual contributions—like a commonwealth of the spirit, in which there is no copyright.” [Barfield, “Effective Approach to Social Change,” Christian News-Letter, July 24, 1940]

Third, imagination is absolutely critical to ANY non-ideological and humane way of life.  As you know, one of my favorite books is Barfield’s Poetic Diction (1928).  In it, he wrote: men “do not invent those mysterious relations between separate external objects, and between objects and feelings, which it is the function of poetry to reveal.”  Instead, Barfield continued, “These relations exist independently, not indeed of Thought, but of any individual thinker.” (Poetic Diction, pg. 72) 

Further, men “in the development of consciousness, have lost the power to see this one as one.  Our sophistication, like Odin’s, has cost us an eye; and now it is the language of poets, in so far as they create true metaphors, which must restore this unity conceptually, after it has been lost from perception.  Thus, the ‘before-unapprehended’ relationship of which Shelley spoke, are in a sense ‘forgotten’ relationships.  For though they were never yet apprehended, they were at one time seen.  And imagination can see them again” (Poetic Diction, pp. 72-72).

As Barfield understood in his Oxford senior thesis (Poetic Diction), all men and women of good will who reject the objectification and deconstruction of the human person; the collectivism of governments, schools, and bureaucracies; and the deadening and dampening illness of our conformist culture MUST reclaim what is rightfully ours, given to us by God and nature--our natural order, our desires for stabile and orderly community, justice, love, and charity.

Yours, under a Montana sky,

Brad

Day 1; the Defining Day of a Trip

July 8, 2010, somewhere in Sand County, Wisconsin, I-94, westbound

If we want to make it to Fargo in one day, we should leave around 7:00, I suggested. My wife thought I was unrealistic. We should really shoot for 7:30, she wisely said. After all, we need a good night's sleep before such a long journey. We left the house around 8:35, four cats fleeing from our screaming wheels as we departed our driveway in a mad dash.

Today has been our day to "fly" as quickly as possible across the federal interstate highways of the western Great Lakes--through northern Indiana, around Chicago, next to Madison, across the Twin Cities and north by northwest to Fargo. Ok, the "North by Northwest" reference is a little gratuitous, but I did see a crop duster performing a well-coordinated spiral decline over a corn field a few hours ago.

The kids, over all, have been quiet, though we (that is, the family Birzer; well, ok, the family Birzer aged eleven and under) did experience our first nosebleeds in memory of our existence as a family. Three of them today, to be exact. Our eleven year old had one, our five year old had two. I hesitate to speculate as to what caused three such "novel" events this afternoon--travel stress, climate change, phalanges in wrongful places? Aside from these moments, the day has been relatively quiet.

We have nothing against Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, or Minnesota, it should be noted. Actually, we find all four states to be quite beautiful, and who can resist the beer and cheese curds of Wisconsin? The Dells looked rather enticing as well--especially to the kids. "Wow, let's stay there tonight," came the collective cry as we passed by the exit at 69.6mph.

Dedra even experienced an unexpected pilgrimage of sorts. . . . somewhere in the outskirts of the western Chicago suburbs, we spied, from the corner of our eyes, a pink and gray building. The Mary Kay Cosmetic Distribution Center. Dedra, armed with sun glasses and recently-applied lipstick, modeled proudly at this secular shrine to inner and outer feminine beauty. Dedra glowed. But, then, she always does.

We're eager to get to Fargo tonight. No Michigan-based Birzer has ever stepped foot in the city--today will be a first for seven of us. Much to my surprise, my mom informed me via the phone this afternoon that this will also be my first time in the state of North Dakota. We had taken a family vacation in 1971 to South Dakota, and I had always (well, for the past 39 years, that is) assumed we had visited both Dakotas. I was dead wrong. I've been to every state in the continental U.S except Vermont and Rhode Island, I proudly informed a friend a few weeks ago. If one counts time as non-linear, my statement will be true as of roughly 11:30 tonight. But, really, one should accept linear time--especially when one is a professional historian.

One final piece of advice for those contemplating such a trip. Don't ever pull out of a Panera parking lot with you, the gentle driver, having left the Honda van gate open, having totally ignored its openness, and then having proceeded up the onramp of a federal interstate highway at roughly sixty five miles an hour. Wind pressures change, strange burning smells circulate into the van; wives get upset, and kids get hysterical. Additionally, some items might have gotten lost.