I appreciate this exchange, Morley. I like it when we can find common
ground. And I like it when your challenges prod me to further clarify
what I do and do not think.
In this post, the challenge I find most stimulating is when you say:
I still say that you are a conservative, although, as you
indicate by the quotes, it is not an accusation. You have essentially
the same view of powerstates as Scott Ritter, also a conservative and a
courageous and admirable man (now a fireman)… That is because you (and
Ritter) blame the people, not the power system.
First there’s the issue of whether or not I’m a conservative. Second
there’s the question of whether or not I “blame the people, not the
power system.”
To both, I think the answer is “yes and no.” But more no than yes.
With respect to my being a conservative, I have come to respect SOME of
the basic value commitments of conservatives– such as that good
character is important, that standards are important. (Of course I’m
talking about REAL conservatives hear, not the sociopathic
power-mongers that lately have been seducing American conservatives.)
My book DEBATING THE GOOD SOCIETY: A QUEST TO BRIDGE AMERICA’S MORAL
DIVIDE (1999, M.I.T. Press) was my effort to find that “higher wisdom”
in which the truths of the conservatives and those of the liberals are
integrated.
So in that way, in my own journey from my 20s (in the late 60s) up to
my mid-40s to mid-50s (in the 1990s), I did come to see more need to
include the kind of conservative values that I, and other members of my
countercultural generation, thought superfluous.
On the other hand, if one looks at my main political goals for the
world –1) that equality of political power I spoke about in the last
comment, 2) the displacement of the cult of national sovereignty in
favor of the rule of law in the intersocietal system, 3) the greater
subordination of the drive for wealth to the needs of the planet, 4) a
more general taming of the forces of the market system to allow more
voice to other kinds of values that can be expressed through a
democratic polity, 5) less tribalism and more embrace of the diversity
of humankind and more respect for the rights and values of all earth’s
life-forms– my agenda doesn’t seem all that much like what most
conservatives have on their minds.
So, on the first count of am I a conservative, that’s why I say, yes and no, but more no than yes.
Now to that second point, about my being a conservative BECAUSE I blame the people, not the power system.
Let me start by saying that I believe that you are quite right to
identify that dichotomy as quite central in differentiating the
conservative/right worldview from the liberal/left worldview.
And I can see how my earlier comment about the role of the American
people in the current decadence of the American system would seem to
identify me as one of those who, like the conservatives, finds the
locus of responsibility in people rather than in systems.
But let’s take a closer look at whether your diagnosis (Schmookler is a
conservative) can be inferred from that particular symptom (Schmookler
writes about how the American people got complacent and lazy and slept
while their democratic system got stolen from them).
You know, Morley, at least from my PARABLE OF THE TRIBES, and perhaps
also from two others of my main books (OUT OF WEAKNESS, and THE
ILLUSION OF CHOICE), that I have spent much of my adult life
emphasizing the role that the evolution of power systems plays in
shaping cultures and people.
The P of T argues that the bloodiness of history is not a reflection of
human nature, as many (especially the conservatives) assume, but is a
function of systemic forces unwittingly unleashed by humankind as a
by-product of our creative capacity for cultural innovation. O of W
argues that it is the historical experience generated by those
destructive social evolutionary forces (described in the P of T) that
has made humankind as crazy and tormented as we generally discover our
kind to be. And I of C argues that the market economy has an inherent
dynamic, a systemic logic, that drives the societies that do not
control it adequately to evolve in directions not chosen by the people
but determined by the system, including the transformation over the
generations of the values held by the people.
Also, when it comes to the concept of “blame,” I pretty much reject it
out of the same analytic perspective that leads me to believe the idea
of “free will” is –ULTIMATELY–an incomprehensible notion. I see all of
us as best understood fundamentally as “the fruit of the world” out of
which we emerge and in which we develop.
So in some very fundamental ways, I DO find power systems responsible
for the course of social evolution, and I do NOT incline toward blaming
people.
If that’s the case, though, why did I say such things as
If the American liberal powerstate is decaying, I would
suggest, it is because the complacency and laziness and lack of moral
and intellectual discipline of affluent America has rendered its
citizenry incapable of defending itself against that downhill slide.
The answer has to do with THE PARTICULAR HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT under question.
Yes, the laziness and complacency and lack of moral discipline of the
American people are, in some sense, the result of systemic forces at
work in the culture at large. Epidemiologically, if the whole
neighborhood is going bad, it is not at the individual level that
responsibility is to be found. I’ve put forward my own theory of the
systemic source of this epidemiological breakdown in moral discipline
in my article on this site, “The Challenge of Affluence.”
So again, it is not a matter of blame.
And again, why do I focus on that dimension? It is not because I think
that is THE PLACE where the corruption is located: I believe the
corruption is pervasive throughout the culture. Rather, IT IS BECAUSE I
BELIEVE THAT IS THE PLACE WHERE THE BRAKE TO THE CORRUPTIVE PROCESS
MUST BE APPLIED.
Let me put it this way. I would not focus on the corrupting forces that
are driving toward unjust power BECAUSE I ASSUME THAT THERE ARE ALWAYS
CORRUPTING FORCES THAT WILL SEIZE POWER IF GIVEN A CHANCE.
When Jefferson said that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, he
ASSUMED that IF GIVEN A CHANCE there would be dictators and
power-grabbers and greedy forces that would take whatever power they
could get.
Therefore, if you accept that the opportunistic virus of corruption is
always present in the body politic, ready to erupt when the immune
system of the body is weakened, one looks to that immune system and not
to the virus to explain the outbreak of the florid disease (such as we
have now in America).
In this particular instance, therefore, it is to the weakening of the people’s vigilance that I believe we should look.
This is not the only place to look, but it is the place where change
MUST come before we can expect very much to change in those other
dimensions of the system (the political system, the media, the rise of
fascistic forms of capitalism) to change very much.
(I do also believe that a change of leadership at the top CAN –if it is
discontinuous from the norm– also effect a change in trajectory for the
society as a whole, either for the better (like FDR) or for the worse
(like GWB). And that’s why I spend some of my energy here looking for
what possibilities there may be for a surprise on the upside to repair
the damage caused by this ongoing surprise to the downside.)
Writings 
Subscribe to this comment's feed
