A terrific review

I'd like to recommend that you read the intelligent and sympathetic review of Jim Kalb's new book that you'll find here.

It's best to read it in its entirety, but there are a few bits that particularly appealed to me. Here, for instance, is Kalb explaining why the liberal understanding of inclusiveness harms real community:

In fact inclusiveness destroys community by reducing the importance of personal ties, making us interchangeable with others and making our goals as much a matter of individual choice as possible.  There is nothing special to distinguish shoppers at a shopping mall from each other, so there are no divisions among them.  They do not constitute a community, however, because there is nothing that brings them together other than a common interest in acquiring consumer goods.  Each has come for his own purposes.  They have very few positive duties toward each other and they could just as easily be somewhere else, if they found some minor advantage in doing so.

But perhaps the most important part has to do with these papal quotes:

Pius XII, for instance, tells us that “[t]here exists an order, established by God, which requires a more intense love and a preferential good done to those people that are joined to us by special ties,” while Bl. John Paul II speaks of spiritual gifts we receive via our history, our culture, and “the national community to which we belong.”

Kalb concludes that:

If particular cultures and national communities have such importance for the way we become human and connect to God, then an understanding of diversity and inclusion that abolishes legitimate boundaries between them and so makes them nonfunctional cannot be acceptable, and multiculturalism, which deprives every culture of any setting of its own in which it can function as authoritative, must be wrong.

The part that I've italicised is critical, I think, for the argument that religious traditionalists ought to develop.

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A train experiment

Anthony Burrow, an assistant professor at Cornell University, has conducted an interesting experiment on Chicago trains.

He had a group of 110 volunteers ride on the trains and record their moods during the journey. The result was that psychological distress increased when people became a minority within the carriage regardless of what race the volunteer was.

In other words, people of all races felt discomfort being a minority:

Participants' negative mood heightened as the ratio of people from different ethnic backgrounds aboard the train increased, regardless of their own race and after controlling for various factors, such as an individual's personality, familiarity with metro trains and perceived safety of the surrounding neighborhoods.

This suggests that it is kinder and wiser to allow people to continue to live within their own ethnic groups. It is evidence as well that the "white privilege" theory of ethnic solidarity is false, as members of all ethnic groups, and not just whites, feel more comfortable when they are part of an ethnic majority.

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What starts in Sweden...

In 2009 Toys R Us got into trouble in Sweden for "sexism." They were charged with producing brochures showing girls playing with girls' toys and boys with boys' toys.

Here we are a few years later and Toys R Us have declared that they will not market toys by gender in the UK either:

Toys R Us today bowed to anti-sexist marketing demands and pledged to drop gender labelling for its products.

The retailer declared that it would be more “inclusive” when marketing toys for girls and boys, and said it would draw up plans in the long term to remove “explicit references” to gender in its store.

The move follows pressure from a group called Let Toys be Toys. A spokeswoman for the group gave a classic liberal justification for their demands:

Megan Perryman, Let Toys Be Toys campaigner, said: “Even in 2013, boys and girls are still growing up being told that certain toys are for them, while others are not. This is not only confusing but extremely limiting as it strongly shapes their ideas about who they are and who they can go on to become.”

This is liberal autonomy theory, the idea that we should be self-determining individuals and that therefore predetermined qualities like our sex are "limiting" and should be made not to matter.

It's a key difference in the outlook of liberals and traditionalists. A traditionalist would not describe sex distinctions as "limiting." For us being a man or a woman is a core aspect of identity, one that connects us to a larger good or life principle of masculinity or femininity that we then seek to fulfil in our own lives.

Nor is the liberal position as open-ended as Megan Perryman suggests. Her group, Let Toys be Toys, is a member of an international movement, The Brave Girls Movement. This movement encourages girls to cultivate the following qualities:

independence, ambition, adventurousness, courage, healthy risk-taking, strength, intellect, conflict resolution, self-knowledge, creativity, athleticism, leadership, critical thinking skills, generosity, activism, camaraderie and kindness.

It's a list that, with just a couple of exceptions, focuses on getting girls to adopt more traditionally masculine qualities. It's as if the group is suggesting that there is something wrong or inferior with girls being feminine.

Why would they have this focus? One way to see the answer is that feminists have assumed that men set up a patriarchy in order gain an unearned privilege over oppressed women. Therefore, the theory goes, the gold standard in life has been enjoyed by men - so women therefore have to chase after what men have and do.

The other way to see the answer is that liberals are not as neutral about the aims of life as they claim. Liberalism has evolved to treat careers as the ultimate end in life and therefore it is believed that women should be oriented to competing with men in the workplace. Hence the emphasis on ambition, risk-taking, leadership and so on.

Anyway, we trads will continue to celebrate the differences between men and women; perhaps one day it will be a selling point in promoting traditionalist communities.

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A new party in Germany

The breaking up of political orthodoxy is a good thing for us. So I was interested to read that a new German party, the Alternative for Germany, has been formed. The party is challenging the status quo by calling for the abolition of the euro and for changes to the immigration system.

At the moment the party is only polling at around three per cent which is unfortunate as you need at least five per cent to get seats under the German system. However, what's interesting is that the founders of the party are very highly educated people. Six of the original ten founders hold doctorates, giving it the nickname of the "professors' party". It's a good thing to see shifts in thinking amongst this class of the population even if it doesn't go as far as we would like.

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What are the liberal advantages?

The liberal team has done better than our team over a long period of time. Therefore, we have to carefully consider where they have managed to get an advantage over us, so that we can learn to improve our game.

So how have liberals managed to do better? There are a range of answers that have been given to this question.

1. Class interests

It helps if your political philosophy serves the class interests of an influential and wealthy class of people in society.

Historically, liberalism had support from the Whig aristocracy (who wanted to contain royal power) and then from the rising commercial classes.

Traditionalists did have some support from the landed gentry, but the power of the landowning classes in general (in the UK) was broken by the early 1900s.

The situation now is that right-liberals tend to get support from business associations, whilst left-liberals get it from trade unions.

What could traditionalists have done to have preserved a base of support? One possible opportunity might have been to appeal to local manufacturers and manufacturing workers whose position was undermined by globalisation.

2. An institutional base

It was once the case that universities and the established churches were considered conservative institutions. But, as we know, they were captured by the left.

Without an institutional base it becomes much more difficult to assert influence in society. The lesson here is that institutions matter and have to be defended.

Traditionalists have to now consider either retaking existing institutions or building new ones.

3. The intellectual underlay

The way that Western intellectual history has developed has aided liberalism. Some of the commonly observed problems include:

i) Nominalism. A view that the world is made up of a collection of individual substances; there are no essences that give a common nature to classes of things.

ii) Scepticism. A view which doubts our capacity to obtain reliable knowledge of external reality.

iii) Scientism. The view that the methods employed in the natural sciences are the only authoritative way to gain knowledge of the world.

We have to take philosophy seriously and develop our own views in areas such as epistemology (theories of knowledge).

4. Moral persuasion

Liberals have learned to present their philosophy in highly moral terms, based on a certain understanding of freedom, equality and justice.

It has proved to be influential not just with those who are intellectual enough to wish to follow moral principles consistently, but also with those who wish emotionally to attach themselves to a moral cause.

What can we do? There are two ways of recovering ground here. The first is to criticise liberal morality, by bringing it back to its political starting points, by showing its internal inconsistencies and by demonstrating its destructive consequences. The second it to assert a morality of our own. We can do this by insisting on our own understanding of freedom, equality and justice and also by invoking other moral qualities, such as loyalty and patriotism.

We're not as good at this as we might be; we tend not to speak with moral conviction.

5. Creative spirit

Liberals often assume, as a starting point, a blank slate individual. So it's easy for us to think that we have a better understanding than liberals of human nature.

But what liberals have recognised about human nature is the existence of a core instinct to express a creative spirit in the world, for instance, by shaping the world around us and by making something of ourselves.

By attracting people in whom this creative spirit is strong, liberals have an advantage, as these are the kinds of people who are most likely to act in the world to bring about changes in society and within the human personality.

How can we make ground here? I think we have to emphasise our own understanding of a telos (a purpose or end) that individuals and communities seek to fulfil in life. We can't offer as open-ended a realm of creative spirit as liberals, but we can offer one that has greater depth and meaning, and that requires all our attributes of intellect, character, physique and spirit to carry through. We can return to an ideal of a public spirited man, one who seeks not only to defend what is best in his society and tradition, but to add to it creatively. We can make the term "progress" our own so that it has the sense of a creative effort to push forward and improve our own cultures and traditions.

Above all, we need to learn to speak and write in a way which expresses our own instinct to act creatively in the world. We must do this better than our liberal opponents.

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We're breaking the mould

I had a go at completing a political compass that supposedly tells you where you fit on the political spectrum. As I suspected the compass could not cope with someone who does not belong within the current left-liberal vs right-liberal political framework.

I ended up close to the very centre of the compass:

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How is history made?

When I write a post describing a positive political strategy or some political work that is happening on the ground I often get comments that assert grandly that some factor beyond our control renders all activity useless.

It's a bleak attitude, one that denies the effect on the world of our own creative spirit. It is this creative spirit that is mostly responsible for making history (though factors such as the economic organisation of a society or technological changes can influence things as well.)

For all their materialism, liberals are very much attuned to exercising their creative spirit on the world. This might even be one reason for their success over past centuries.

Liberalism might even be seen as an impatience with any "limiting" factors on an individual's creative spirit. Liberals want to be able to express this spirit in a wholly "unencumbered" way, as an abstracted "uncreated" individual inhabiting an "uncreated" environment.

Traditionalists don't go to this extreme. We gladly accept our position as created beings, as it is through our identity and our particular relationships that we find our deeper loves and fulfilments. So it is within a definite context that we express our creative spirit.

The contest ought not to be between "creative spirit liberals" and bleak spirited traditionalists. If it is, then of course we deserve to lose.

We will make a real contest of things when we prove ourselves to be stronger as creative spirits, stronger because we begin as meaningfully embedded human personalities rather than as abstracted individuals.

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Enjoyable meeting

We had another get together of the Eltham Traditionalists last week. Once again we had a new face and the conversation was very engaging (so much so that we stayed a bit after closing time until the staff finally reminded us of the hour).

Why meet up? It's an important step along the way in building a political alternative. It helps to establish a personal connection between people who would otherwise be isolated. It also gives a focal point for people to gather around.

It's not the end point. If things go well, numbers and branches will grow and that will then create wider political opportunities. The important thing now is to do the groundwork to allow this to happen.

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Attractive architecture by Lutyens

Here's a place I wouldn't mind owning. It was built in 1902 at Thakeham, West Sussex, and designed by the famous English architect Sir Edwin Lutyens (click on the photos for a better view).

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Stay at home dads still barely register

There are not many fathers in the U.S. who are choosing to be stay at home dads. If you look at the graph below you'll see that the number of married couples with children under the age of 15 has declined over the past 18 years; the number of stay at home mums has increased slightly; and that the number of stay at home dads (the green line) has risen but is still negligible.

It seems unlikely at this point that a role reversal family with a breadwinning mother and a stay at  home father will challenge the traditional family.

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Two Catholic quotes

Catholic social teaching is sometimes too universalistic to fit in well with traditionalism. But sometimes there is a considerable overlap. Here, for instance, is Pope Paul VI analysing liberalism back in 1971:

35. On another side, we are witnessing a renewal of the liberal ideology. This current asserts itself both in the name of economic efficiency, and for the defense of the individual against the increasingly overwhelming hold of organizations, and as a reaction against the totalitarian tendencies of political powers. Certainly, personal initiative must be maintained and developed. But do not Christians who take this path tend to idealize liberalism in their turn, making it a proclamation in favor of freedom? They would like a new model, more adapted to present-day conditions, while easily forgetting that at the very root of philosophical liberalism is an erroneous affirmation of the autonomy of the individual in his activity, his motivation and the exercise of his liberty. Hence, the liberal ideology likewise calls for careful discernment on their part.

The part that I bolded is the starting point for my own criticisms of liberalism. So I can at least claim the support of Catholic social teaching in this respect.

Here's another good quote, this time from Pope Benedict (at the time Cardinal Ratzinger) in 1986:

[O]ne cannot abstract from the historical situation of the nation or attack the cultural identity of the people. Consequently, one cannot passively accept, still less actively support, groups which by force or by the manipulation of public opinion take over the State apparatus and unjustly impose on the collectivity an imported ideology contrary to the culture of the people.

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The Senate race in Australia

An article in The Age has reignited my interest in the forthcoming Australian elections. It seems that the smaller parties have done preference deals with each other, so that it's possible for one of them to win a Senate seat with only two per cent of the vote.

In NSW this might lead to Arthur Sinodinos of the Liberal Party losing his seat. I profiled Arthur Sinodinos a couple of years ago. He called gender and race "human constructs" and backed mass immigration. I wouldn't exactly be heartbroken if he were to lose out to someone from a smaller party.

The lesson is, once again, that political opportunities arise for those who put themselves in a position to take them. We should keep building up a traditionalist movement with the aim of one day competing for these Senate seats.

I checked out some of the Senate candidates for Victoria. There are lots, so I wasn't able to go through each website. Sad to say, the Democratic Labour Party has gone the wrong way since the last election. They now have a policy of wanting non-working spouses to get superannuation, which further undermines the male provider role (and increases taxes). They also want to expand the level of immigration rather than contain it. I think we can now safely write them off as an option for us.

There is also the Stable Population Party. This party does at least want to limit the size of the immigration programme. But there are two main problems with this party. First, they are anti-natalist, meaning that they want to discourage incentives for Australian parents to have children. That's counterproductive in my view. The current birth rate in Australia is well under replacement level and this then leads to calls for mass immigration. The second problem with this party is that they emphasise liberal values such as non-discrimination and globalisation - but these values then feed into the idea that people are interchangeable and that population transfers don't matter.

The Nationals are closely tied to the Liberal Party. They do want border protection, but have little to say about immigration or population policy in their manifesto. They seem to be most focused on delivering resources to rural areas. Interestingly, they have put a revision of divorce and alimony laws into their manifesto.

There are some other options for Queensland voters. There are two candidates standing for the Australian Protectionist Party, which is an economically protectionist and socially conservative party. There is also One Nation, a party I have little knowledge of, but their manifesto is still committed to zero net migration.

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