I’m trying very hard not to dilute the impact of my book by reporting on every (mind-blowingly fascinating and book-buyingly compelling) factoid I uncover while researching and w-r-i-t-i-n-g my book (the dashes are intended to communicate what a laborious process the actual writing is). But one thing that really does fascinate me — and which doesn’t divulge too much about my book — is the generalized ignorance or silence of mainstream liberals about their own intellectual history. Obviously this is a sweeping — and therefore unfair — generalization. But I read a lot of liberal stuff and have attended more than a few college confabs with liberal speakers speaking on the subject of liberalism itself. And it seems to me that liberals are intellectually deracinated. Read conservative publications or attend conservative conferences and there will almost always be at least some mention of our intellectual forefathers and often a spirited debate about them. The same goes for Libertarians, at least that branch which can be called a part or partner of the conservative movement.
Just look at the conservative blogosphere. There’s all sorts of stuff about Burke, Hayek, von Mises, Oakeshott, Kirk, Buckley, Strauss, Meyer, the Southern Agrarians, et al. I can’t think of a single editor or contributing editor of National Review who can’t speak intelligently about the intellectual titans of conservatism going back generations. I’m not saying everybody’s an expert, but I think everybody’s made at least the minimal effort to understand their intellectual lineage and I think that’s reflected in conservative writing, for good and for ill. I would guess that the same hold true about the gang over at Reason.
I just don’t get the sense that’s true of most liberal journalists. When was the last time you saw more than a passing reference to Herbert Croly? When was the last time you read an article or blog posting where a liberal asked “What would Charles Beard think of this?” This is a little less true of the far left press because, I think, their alienation from mainstream politics is a bit similar to conservative alienation and so they remember their grievances and martyrs better. But for mainstream Democratic Party liberals one gets the sense that the history of their movement is all about action and emotion and very little about ideas. Some of this can be explained away by the nature of liberalism as opposed to the nature of conservatism. Conservatives (and Hayekians) must believe that knowledge is cumulative but progress isn’t chronological. Liberals are under much less of an obligation to remember old lessons and stay loyal to the permanent things. For liberals John Kenneth Galbraith’s legacy, for example, are not his now largely discredited economic ideas, but his still revered intentions for using the government to fix problems. Ask a liberal about his tradition and he will talk about deeds and efforts to remedy injustice, not ideas. This is in keeping with the legacy of William James’ preference for action over thought, though I doubt most liberals know or care that this is so (while I can think of no conservative who wouldn’t be jazzed to be told his idea was “Hayekian” or “Burkean”). This is a huge tactical advantage for liberals in political battles because they can disown old ideas in ways we cannot.
I bring this up because A) I think it’s interesting and B) because I’ve been reading a lot of the “founders” of modern liberalism and I’ve generally been stunned by how alien their ideas would seem to contemporary liberals. I’ll save much of that for the book, but I’ll give you one example of the left’s tactical advantages. In the last year the “neocons” have been skewered by a host of critics, most recently Tim Robbins, for their alleged allegiance to Leo Strauss. It is asserted by a great many of Strauss’ critics on the Left that he advocated lying to the public if it is in the interest of the State or of virtue etc. This is all very tendentious and invariably unfair to Strauss. But since Strauss’ fans are generally conservatives they won’t abandon him, even though he’s dead. Now, even if it were true that Strauss advocated “lying for Justice” or some such, it is laughable in the extreme for the left to be particularly outraged at the idea given the incredibily old pedigree this notion has on the left. Whole schools of Marxist and Leftist scholars endorsed this notion as a doctrine. Georges Sorel’s and others concepts of the “vital lie” animated far more than a few bookish Straussians, it lit fires in the breasts of whole movements. But most liberals probably don’t even know who Sorel was. Rather they inherited the logic and traditions of leftist politics without having to take responsibility for leftist ideas.
Just thinking out loud.