Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2006/03/03/tdr_interview_prof_barry_shain.php
Friday, March 3, 2006
The Dartmouth Review: Neo-conservatives have come under fire recently from “paleo-conservatives” who have said that the neo-cons are not, in fact, conservative. Are you among those who buy that theory? And, what actually defines a conservative?
Barry Shain: I describe and differentiate between varying forms of conservatism using ten identifying characteristics but, at the core of them, I place epistemic humility and a respect for cultural diversity. Neo-conservatives, at least in my assessment, adhere to none of the most important features of conservatism. Most importantly, their thinking is hubristic; they seek to impose on alien cultures their unduly simplistic understanding of American particularlism. Additionally, they verge on being philosophical radical in the very ways that they find objectionable when exhibited by the left.
TDR: Since you say conservatives are epistemologically humble, what are the most legitimate sources of knowledge that can inform the conservative worldview? There’s obviously tradition, there’s history, but are there any other sources?
Shain: Sure, there is also convention. I’m something of a curious conservative. There’s something that separates me from most other American conservatives, but given the centrality of the epistemic humility that I noted earlier, I think it’s fair to call me and others who hold to a non-foundational philosophy, conservative, even though we don’t adhere to the same metaphysical foundations as do most conservatives. I believe that Aristotle and Hume are the most prominent thinkers in the non-foundational conventionalist tradition that I inhabit. For them, and conservatives like myself, convention is vitally important become human beings can know so little with confidence, most particularly about something as complex as human society. Accordingly, almost every effort to make radical changes is bound to lead to unforeseen and, most likely, untoward consequences. This awareness, along with recognition of what is best described as original sin, should push one towards humility and a necessary reliance on tradition. But this also leads to epistemological problems: how does one decide when and what kind of change is necessary? Accordingly, most conservatives fail to recognize that social decisions, even within an intact society, sometime demand that a people choose between competing strands of its authentic history. This is more importantly true when, for varying reason, there is massive cultural dislocation and, then, a foundationally-based conservatism enjoys important advantages over non-foundational variants. More particularly, in the case of America, when societal choices must be made, having an accurate map of American history is important because having a proper range of choices does much to shape the options that will be given serious consideration. This, I believe, is why an accurate view of American history is so important to American conservatives, and why I find so strange the inclusion of neo-conservatives within the necessarily large tent of American conservatism.
TDR: What do you think are the most damaging misperceptions of American history that enjoy a wide currency today?
Shain: I think the current state of American history is a troubling problem and, sadly, among the causes, is too great a reliance on the historiography of political scientists. Because of the shift of attention by professional historians away from subjects of importance and interest, the dissemination of historical learning has been turned over to political scientists, most particularly Straussians, whose skills, interests, and professional competence leads readers and students away from a serious exploration of historical subjects and, the appropriate humility that hopefully follows. In part, this situation developed because so many middle-age or younger historians have turned away from the study of the most pressing questions that continue to enjoy lasting relevance. At least in the historical period in which I work, the Founding, there are still superb historians working, but most are very close to retiring and when they do, we will suffer a dearth of those who are capable of conveying greatly needed historical knowledge to students and the population at large. Indeed, from my perspective, many of the very best histories of eighteenth-century America were written in the 1920s and 1930s. Seemingly, after World War Two, and the apparent ideological needs of the country after its end, there was a movement away from careful studies that were concerned with constitutional and, more generally, complex historical questions that couldn’t be used in service of Cold War objectives. Maybe one of the consequences of the millions of deaths caused by the War, oddly enough, was a shying away from a certain kind of historical seriousness. True or not, the pre-War historians are long dead and the current generation is going to be difficult to replace. Instead what we will be offering our students, at least in those rare enclaves where the right enjoys dominance, are the simplistic lessons that political scientists either believe are true, or more likely, find appropriate for wide-spread dissemination. Such history is rarely accurate and, I am afraid, anything but conservative. And what is sacrificed in such histories is an accurate, complex, and conservative understanding of America that might help limit the hubristic excesses of certain features of our contemporary foreign policy.
TDR: What are some of these neo-conservative falsehoods you think they rely upon to justify their viewpoints?
Shain: The strangest thing today in American history is that the only group that supports a decidedly liberal reading of the Founding is one that is on the right, that is Straussian political theorists. How odd is this? The far left, that I assume dominate many departments of history, is too concerned with the particular fate of women and oppressed peoples to have the time to defend American historical liberalism. So who does? Well, those most frequently lauded by conservatives and supported by conservative organizations, that is, Straussians. I suppose, for me, that they are often poor historians is less frustrating, though not necessarily less dangerous, than that their history marginalizes conservatives and yet is supported and feted by the same people it marginalizes. It seems to corroborate the neo-conservative view, occasionally publicly aired, that conservatives are not too terribly clever (or in Brooks’ formulation, akin to the crazy uncle upstairs in the attic). So those who are viewed by many as authentic conservative voices, for example Charles Kessler, regularly lecture and describe America as an enlightened nation. I am sorry to disagree, but America, in the eighteenth century and still today, is a Christian country. If you are dubious and would prefer to travel in space rather than in time, take a quick trip to Europe so that you can see and feel what post-Christian enlightened nations actually feel and look like. It is incomprehensible to me why conservative donors support those who relegate them to the position of some kind of afterthought in the history of a nation that is authentically Christian and conservative. Is it some kind of self-loathing? I have yet to make sense of this strange anomaly. Indeed, American history is not only Christian, but at least until the end of the eighteenth century, it was Reform Protestant. While this did come to an end, more or less, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the persistence of Christian discourse, categories of thought, and social and political institutions endures still. What has changed, indeed a change of epic proportions, is that the population that believes in and defends Americanism is no longer the same one that had done so for most of the past 200-plus years. It is no longer the Northeast descendents of Reform Protestants, both in New England and along its Diaspora, but instead those they reviled and tried to destroy -- Catholics and Southern evangelicals. We remain predominantly a nation of Christians, but today those who shape the political agenda are no longer the same group of Christians who had done so for much of our history. The Northeast elite has lost its religion and, with it, its belief in themselves and in America’s special mission. If you doubt this, just take a look at today’s Supreme Court with five Catholics sitting on the bench. For a student of American history, this is an absolutely unbelievable transformation.
TDR: What about the distinction between those three Christian groups? People have characterized Protestant Christians as being more individualistic, because of the Reformation. Would you agree with this?
Shain: Let me ask you this, where would you rather vacation, in the Protestant areas of England or Germany or in the Catholic lands of Spain, Italy, or Ireland? I think most would answer the latter and, most likely, would think that the people there are more interesting and colorful, well, more individualistic. I think this is suggestive and that when considering the question you posed, most of us just don’t think and, if we were do so, the answer wouldn’t be so elusive. Too frequently, myths are perpetrated and become accepted as common wisdom. One of my favorite ones concerns the meaning of “unalienable,” that we now believe to describe something that can never be taken away. Still today, the strict definition of the word is something far different, and up until the 1850s it was almost never used in the way we do. And yet, most native speakers assume a meaning that, if they were only to stop and think, they would recognize that the word’s parts describe a limitation on the freedom of an agent to act, for example in not being able to sell certain property. I think that the differences between Protestant and Catholic theologies and their relationship to individualism is another example where most people, even fairly sophisticated ones, are simply not thinking and questioning when they claim that individualism is a product of Protestant theology. If you look at the theology of the magisterial reformers, there is no doubt in my mind that there is nothing in their theology that makes room for the rise of individualism. What one might argue, in a more complicated and telling scenario, is that the Reformation by destroying the unity of Christendom allowed Catholic individualist theology to escape the controlling confines of the Magisterium. What resulted, most likely not to the liking of either Catholics or Protestants, was a strange hybrid product where Catholic theology was joined to Protestant ecclesiology, and a bastard outcome evolved into something we today describe as individualism. But for the magisterial reformers—Luther and Calvin—it is hard to discover in their thought anything approaching an autonomous agent; indeed, it is even hard to find anything that measures up to the standards of an individual moral agent. The general characterization that Luther and Calvin regularly offer of agency is that the human being is, more or less, like a horse and this horse is either ridden by Christ or by the Devil. The horse has no choice as to rider. Agency, thus, is not something attributable to humans under the earlier Protestant Reformers in a manner that could ever lead to individualism. And the supposed priesthood of all believers is, as generally characterized, a horrible misconstruction of what Luther actually defended. His goal was to undermine professional mediation not to undercut the necessity of the Holy Spirit or of the intercession of a congregation of fellow believers walking together in Christ.
TDR: How, then, do we square documents like the Declaration of Independence with our Protestant tradition? How does one pursue happiness when one is being ridden like a horse by the Devil or Christ?
Shain: Isn’t it possible that most contemporary readers have little idea what happiness meant when used in the Declaration or, more broadly, in the context of eighteenth-century political and moral thought? Too often, English readers assume that the eighteenth-century meanings of key concepts have remained unchanged over the course of 200 hundred years. This is an illusion, unfortunately, disseminated far too often in “great books” programs or in courses concerned with the history of political thought. It is a pedagogically-created illusion and, I fear, does far more harm than good. The word “happiness” in the context in which it was used in the Declaration, for example, had little to do with what most contemporary users mean today. Then, when used in political, theological, or moral treatises, it regularly referred to a rational condition that demanded that one overcome those very passions that we regularly assume must be fulfilled to achieve happiness. It is hard to imagine that Jefferson and his colleagues in the Continental Congress would have understood it as we do today rather than as they had been taught by almost every authoritative source they were likely to have encountered. And, for such authors, the word happiness was consistently described a living in accord with one’s highest rational capabilities. The expectation was, though this view had begun to be challenged, that if one moved away from rationality, one wouldn’t be happy nor would one be able to add to the happiness of others. Almost every word in the Declaration, but particularly in the second paragraph that has been given so much attention, is regularly misread. It is frightening to me that people read the Declaration and claim that “it means that the authors held that all people were equal in society.” Everyone writing at the time was aware that no married woman could own property and that most people in the Western hinterlands were politically dispossessed. Most of the population in the coastal South or in large Northern towns owned or engaged in commerce involving slaves. Do most people think that the Declaration’s authors were terrible hypocrites or simply liars? I contend that they were neither; instead, they were using words in perfectly good eighteenth-century ways that make little sense to most contemporary readers. Sometime after Lincoln, as a people, we seemingly lost interest in what these words, ones like liberty that I have spend some 15 years studying, had meant. Instead, we apparently developed a greater interest in deciding what meanings we could invent that would better reflect changing contemporary elite sensibilities. But, if you don’t stop to learn what the most important concepts meant when originally used in the Declaration, you must come away thinking that the authors were liars or hypocrites of the worst kind. Again, neither is the case, but to recognize this one must understand that the Declaration’s preamble was written in a language of international natural law for an international audience. For ten years, 1765-1775, American state papers had been written almost only in the language of British constitutionalism and, it was only at the end of the controversy, in 1776, that Americans rejected their dated understanding of the British Constitution and turned to an international forum to make their case for independence. And, necessarily, they did so in the international language of natural law and rights. But, even at this point, of course, they still continued to use words in eighteenth-century ways.
TDR: Within conservatism there has been some debate about the true legacy of Abraham Lincoln. How should conservatives view Lincoln historically?
Shain: I know very little about Lincoln or his policies. The only reason I have some familiarity with him is because of his association, over an extended period, with the Declaration of Independence and its meaning. I do find it a bit troubling, though, that many conservatives find Lincoln to be some kind of secular saint. I, for one, don’t understand why so many Americans had to die for the preservation of a unified nation. I can’t help thinking that Americans would have been equally or better served with two or even three separate polities and several hundred thousand fewer deaths. Lincoln’s celebration and understanding of the Declaration is also very hard to endorse. Lincoln’s take, in his seeming endorsement of something like contemporary autonomy, is also far from anything that one might describe as conservative. He was a man who assisted in the creation of a liberal autonomous view of man, and was willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of men to maintain national unity. You explain to me why a conservative should find anything in his actions or philosophy congenial? Personally, I’m unable to do so. I wrote in Modern Age some time ago, half in jest, that there are two easy tests that permit one to discriminate between an American conservative and neo-conservative: their respective views on Lincoln and on patriarchy and nannies.
TDR: You have said that Straussians and feminists represent significant and similar threats to the academy. What do they have in common?
Shain: I think both are more concerned with fostering, from their particular perspectives, salutary myths than uncovering historical truth. And such tendentiousness, in my opinion, is not consistent with the highest and most defensible goals of the academy. Because of this, I think both, to varying degrees, are threats to the integrity of the university. Of course, feminists, because of the much greater power they exercise are a far more pressing threat, but in the world of American conservatism and in the teaching of American history in departments of political science, the threat that Straussians present should not be ignored. I have often found myself uncomfortable, for example with the stances of numerous conservative organizations that seem to ignore the scholarly trespasses of Straussians while castigating those committed by feminists. None of this, by the way, do I assume, is necessarily linked to scholarship of Leo Strauss. I think these dubious tendencies, most particularly in regard to American matters, developed after the deaths of two superb students of American political thought, Marty Diamond and Herb Storing. They were both dedicated scholars and sought the truth and followed it wherever it led, be the outcome convenient or not. It seems that those scholars who came to prominence after them have not followed them in their work habits and in their commitment to the truth. Their prominence among American conservatives, I fear, has been bad for history and, quite likely, bad for America and American conservatism. I remember, when still in grad school, an exchange that I had with Tom Pangle in which he accused me of exposing myths that were needed to protect American democracy, and in so doing, of writing in the tradition of Carl Schmitt. It was pretty clear to me that what Tom was accusing me of was describing, truthfully and faithfully, central features of early American history. More particularly, what warranted his attack was my demonstrating that American political thought and practices was importantly shaped by Reform Protestantism and not some idealized enlightenment. I don’t know how you can do decent history when fostering, creating, and supporting salutary myths is your most important goal. With this, then, we are back to the problem of epistemic arrogance that I believe so antithetical to conservatism and why a complex understanding of history is so essential to the health of America and American conservatism.
TDR: What is the state of Colgate today?
Shain: Colgate is probably not too dissimilar from Dartmouth, but our offensive line-men are mostly in the neighborhood of 300-pounds, while yours, I believe, are more likely around 250. This, oddly enough, matters. The Colgate faculty would like to change this and much more. I suppose if they were able to institute a quick admission test it might preclude those men with 17-inch plus necks. It is clear to me that the faculty wishes Colgate were a different place; indeed, they wish that they were at a different place. They are generally uncomfortable with Colgate students, some faculty even openly disdain them for their, more or less, traditional views and practices. Here, to the dismay of some on the faculty, the boys are boys and the girls are girls. A significant and powerful minority of the faculty wish they could create a different university and they’re trying their hardest to do so. The students, however, are wonderful and appreciate those members of the faculty who are capable of taking them on exotic voyages to new lands. Being a member of the faculty is like being an operator of a ride at Disneyland – you take students on make-believe trips and they only have to look, they don’t have to get off. On the whole, the faculty is diligent and competent, but the ones that don’t teach well or conduct enough research, are too often busily trying to transform the school and view Colgate, like any number of other liberal-arts colleges, as a platform for social experimentation. Their goal, in the broadest terms, is to create students who will think and act like them. They too are hubristic. Happily, our students have shown remarkable powers of resistance (alcohol is a particularly potent aid) but, in the process, too often they have developed a cynicism regarding knowledge that is worrisome. With such challenges in mind, I wish that we had the same resources as you do at Dartmouth, that is, a Board of Trustees truly subject to alumni pressure. This we are lacking and, accordingly, I fear that the activist members of the faculty and Board at Colgate will prove successful in achieving their most basic goal, the diminishment of masculinity among Colgate males. This I have been fighting for nearly a decade, with I must admit, absolutely no success. Still, though, the students are the great strength of the school.
TDR: How do you characterize masculinity?
Shain: It’s not easily defined; possibly its one of those things that you know best when you see it. Still, many of the virtues that we associate with pagan rather than Christian thought are readily associated with masculinity. What immediately comes to mind is courage, an indifference to pain, the willingness to defend even with one’s life, family and country, and a certain socially valuable creativeness that is often as destructive as it is constructive. I think that masculinity has a natural quality to it, but that it is necessarily socially constructed and that all successful societies find ways to encourage masculinity while channeling its most destructive adolescent features. To achieve this, jails, marriage, and armies are particularly valuable. I have no doubt that the proper control and use of masculinity is one of the most important goals of political and social thought. My opposition to my colleagues isn’t that I believe that raw adolescent masculinity, at its peak in testosterone, should be allowed to run rampant without mediation; it’s that I think too many of my colleagues want to create androgynous geldings rather than properly socialized men. The most progressive members of the faculty seem to believe that the proper goal is to create entities that are able to find an androgynous balance within them. My fear is that such an outcome would be both socially costly and individually dangerous. As I think the tragedy of 9/11, particularly, if I remember correctly, Flight #93 demonstrated, our culture still needs masculine males, not only professional ones.
TDR: Do you have any book recommendations for undergraduates that might fill in some gaps in their education?
Shain: What I recommended to one of your colleagues was the Greening of America . I think it is a frightening book that aptly describes the enemy on the left. Herbert Butterfield’s The Whig Interpretation of History is a little book that I think captures, in distressing ways, American historiography as it is currently practiced on the right.