Redstate

Hitchens comments do not really merit any discussion or efforts of rebuttal.

Hitchens is a man full of hate, resentment and contempt who regularly finds fault with Mother Theresa, the Pope, Catholicism and everything else that makes his dark soul suffer in his well deserved ignominy. His talent for verbal diarrhea must be his worst curse as it makes him wallow time after time in the depths of his tortured mind.

The evil acts in the history of this world are by far due much more to bitter and nihilist men like Hitchens than to the Mother Theresas and John Pauls of history. The destitute of this world probably give thanks everyday for the latter because they would surely perish without help and mercy in the world according to Hitchens.

As we are without any evidence of Hitchens ever having helped a human being in his entire sordid life, we really need to waste no attention to his words directed at a man who helped millions.

I think you are being a bit unfair to old John Locke. He lived in an age when cuius regio, eius religio ("Whose the region, his the religion") held sway and people were expected throughout all of Europe (save only the tolerant-before-its-time Netherlands) to give at least lip service to the Religion Set Forth By His Majesty. In Spain or Italy Protestants would have been seen as traitors too.

Hitchens may be a lot of things, but I disagree completely with your assertion that he is animated by "hate, resentment and contempt". More correctly, I don't know what his motivations are, but I do know that he manages to produce consistently thoughtful material that can not be dismissed offhand.

As a dedicated and practicing Catholic, I find his views on the Church hard to read and hard to understand. But I make the effort to do both. It seems to me that your way of dealing with Hitchens is to construct an ad hominum attack, dismissing him as "nihilist" and "sordid". His work is more serious and more demanding than that.

A fine essay, Jay. Well done. You are more charitable toward that bigot Hitchens than I could be.

A friend of mine has said to me that what is needed is that we repent of Liberalism. I agree.

Despite Hitchens unreasoned hatred of the Church, he is often worth reading.  

He is one of the few who understand that liberalism, like conservatism, when properly understood, should be about the betterment of each and of all of us.  Many today seem to have focused so tightly on methods that goals no longer matter.

I think its good to put the arguments into their historic context. In fact, it is quite interesting to compare the competence and scholarship of the Modern Left and their predecessors. The competence of Dewey, the Positivists and the Vienna Circle makes the present Left of Chomsky, Rorty (despite initial promise), Lankoff, and Rawls look academically juvenile. One gets the distinct impression that the leaders of the Modern Left would not have rated as competent graduate assistants in the pre-60s period. Though, I suppose they are at least on the level of Roussaeu - one of the most overrated Liberals in history. For the most part they have let loose their scholarship in pursuit of misguided and incoherent goals and spend their time trying to "Frame" issues. Rhetoric has overthrown argumentation as the "Scholastic period" of the Left has moved to a fideistic period of fanaticism where competence is only decoration rather than a justification.

Alright, I have one minor "tweak" on the genealogy of Liberalism... Locke (despite Alan Simmon's interpretive energies) doesn't create a coherent and stable justification of the state outside of some theological presuppositions. This doesn't undercut your premise at all - just wanted to provide a little charity to Locke. Not too much, but a little...

That is a good point about Locke.  He is much more reliant on God than most liberals, even in the early modern period.  My decision to include him in my essay was his Essay Concerning Human Understanding.  He develops that "punctual self" (in Taylor's phrase) that enjoys a libertarian freedom that really goes pretty far to undermine his general compatibility with Christianity.  

And of course some Straussians have argued that Locke was in fact in rebellion against the Christian order of philosophy (namely, natural law), sought to subvert it from within by pretending to credit propositions that he was actually working to undermine.

...Locke was decidedly on the "outs" with the Stuart House over (among other things) religion.  He was the personal Secretary of the Earl of Shaftesbury -- who was one of the key opponents of first Charles II and then James II.  They were skeptical of the Stuart's "creeping Catholicism."  Locke actually had to flee to the Continent until after the Glorious Revolution because of Shaftesbury's and his differences.  His Letter -- which I believe was originally anonymous -- was written just a year after Catholic James II abdicated.  So, Locke did not have to tailor his writing to satisfy the king.  

I think to understand Locke's writing you have to understand that Europe had been enveloped in religious war for the past century and England was devolving into similar circumstances.  Christianity wasn't the target of his ire, but the institution of organized religion and its place in government.  He believed God had granted rights to the individual and these rights should not be under the domain of the Church or the government.  Classical Liberalism is the foundation of my own principles and I would hope most Americans as well.

As for Rousseau, I see very little linking Rousseau to the modern day Democratic Party, besides the anger he seemed to have.  And, I agree, he's extremely overrated.

Lankoff = Lakoff (i.e. George Lakoff)

The modern education system owes much of its fundamental assumptions to Rousseau. Dewey tweaked it some, but the premise of modern liberal education as principally exploratory vs. being a unifying practice of structured intellectual development toward grasping truth (i.e. the Scholastic perspective that founded most Modern universities) was a straightforward derivation of Emile.

Oh, and the "Greens" owe a lot of debt to Rousseau too...

So the modern Environmental Movement and the Teachers' Unions are really artifacts of Rousseau's philosophy.

Oh, and the Sexual Revolution... Rousseau would have cheered. So, you can thrown in the radical feminist wing. And you don't think someone with that many children that he left as fodder for the 18th century orphanage wouldn't have been out in front of the pro-abortion movement?

I think it is not a stretch in the least to consider the modern day Democratic Party as a coalition of Rousseau's philosophical children.

...I actually have some affection for Rousseau.  As somebody with strong anti-Enlightenment and anti-modern tendencies, I have sympathy (though not agreement) for Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, and I actually think his Social Contract is one of the most amazing philosophical works I have ever read.  

I took a class on the latter work, which was taught by Joseph Cropsey, an old associate of Strauss.  He really opened my eyes on that book.  That is why I did not take the course he taught the following year, on Spinoza's Ethics.  I am perfectly content with my preconceived notions of Spinoza, and have no desire to enlighten them!

that there existed a highly specialized form of education, but no teaching of values within the educational environment.  He complained students were being taught many languages, but not their own in any great detail.  He said our minds have been corrupted as the Arts and Sciences have improved.  He lifted Sparta in high esteem, but denegrated Athens, he thought it was doomed to fail because of its wealth, luxury, art and science.  He calls philosophers charlatans and despises them for confusing men by undermining their ideas of patriotism and religion.  Noit very exploratory in my opinion.

As for the sexual revolution, the man was far from a decent human being.  No doubt, he may have been a great pro-choicer, but I doubt feminists held a promiscuous freeloader as the end all, be all of feminism.

As for the environmental movement, I can't recall him ever mentioning anyhting about that, it's quite possible, however, that I missed it.  I'll to to look it up in a bit.

All in all, I always thought Rousseau was a rabid authoritarian and more closely associated with communism than anything close to the Democratic Party.

Also, his neglected work On the Government of Poland is certainly worthy of study. At times his thinking in that book takes on a positively traditionalist edge.

The great (but unjustly neglected) American critic Irving Babbitt argued at length that Rousseau was at the root of most everywhere that we woudl identify in Liberalism today.

what a libertarian liberal is.  It seems as much an oxymoron as an marxist fascist.  I don't know what your definition of liberal is but I would think at minimum it involves the belief that Government and international instutions are agents for positive change that are meant to moderate and curb the excesses of capitalism and step in where the market is unable, unwilling or would produce immoral or unjust results.  A liberal becomes a socialist when he believes these results can only be achieved by significant direct involvement of the government in the market through control of major industries.  

As for Hitchens, I think he is a little too harsh on the recent history of Church but I agree with his general point on the Church's stance on sexuality.  The Church has downplayed and covered up the abuse scandel in this country. By following an unrealistically strict line on condom use (and even spreading disinformation about the effectiveness of condoms) in the fight against AIDS has contributed to the pandemic in Africa.

As to the ancient history of the Church, you are a little too kind to them.  After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Europe stagnated for 1000 years.  Rather than saving Western civilization as you claim, the Catholic Church actually prevented it from progressing until the plague and the reformation finally destroyed the system it supported.  The Church did this by monopolizing learning and literacy, supporting a governmental system that depended on permanent enslavement (feudalism and the land-tied slavery of surfdom) of most of the population and convinced the people that that was their lot in life, keeping religious services in a language that nobody except the elite understood (a practice that continued until well into the twentieth century), and ruthlessly suppressing non-conformity and other religions (e.g., the inquisition, burning of witches, forced conversions and persecution of Jews).  After the initial flowering the Renaissance in the Roman Catholic countries the great achievements of the Age of Reason and the Industrial Revolution took place in countries where the Catholic church held less influence.

haven't read anything about the man.  My opinion, though, is Locke and John Stuart Mill represent liberalism more than any other scholars today.  At least, the principles of Liberalism I know and adhere to.  It seems it's being argued that the tools some Democrats espouse are synomous with the principles of Liberalism, but I don't think they are.  It's my position that some tools Liberals argue for go against the Liberal tradition, and that's why there is some contradiction in their arguments.  

I don't know what your definition of liberal is but I would think at minimum it involves the belief that Government and international instutions are agents for positive change that are meant to moderate and curb the excesses of capitalism and step in where the market is unable, unwilling or would produce immoral or unjust results.  A liberal becomes a socialist when he believes these results can only be achieved by significant direct involvement of the government in the market through control of major industries.

Again, I think you mix the tools some people wish to use to achieve liberal principles as the actual principles.  A libertarian liberal would adhere to protection of inalienable rights of the individual, but would believe there should be the opportunity to achieve that which is reasonably within your reach.  How to do so is what the debate is all about.  

Socialism sets the "common good" as the goal of all things.  The control of major industries is the tool they want to use to do so.  They have no debate about that and therefore it is easy to suggest that is one of their principles.  It just so happens, such a line of thought is easily manipulated.

 

I respect both you and Mr. Cella quite a bit, but I find portions of this post and Mr. Cella's subsequent comments a bit bizarre.

To argue against "Liberals," 1600-present, is to argue against five or six hundred (or more) different and, in some cases, mutually exclusive ideologies.  Indeed, your shotgun blasts would take out most of the Founders of this nation, who were each liberals of various sorts.  I'm not sure what, if anything, such a broadly put argument accomplishes -- save for a false notion of having understood something.  

If you don't like Hitchens' ideas, argue against them.*  If you despise Locke, discuss.  Dislike J.S. Mills?  Explain why.  Hate Hobbes?  Let's chat.  Annoyed by Adam Smith?  Talk it over.  I'm not sure what you gain, however, by saying you oppose Liberalism -- except the good (unmentioned) parts, which you adopt "with a healthy dose of Burkean prudence."  (Certainly not clarity in communication.)

Incidentally, I have no idea what a "libertarian liberal" is.  Perhaps you mean a so-called "classic liberal":  that is, one who is inclined to distrust the exercise of temporal power by the government, for it requires humans to be something that they are fundamentally not:  good.

von

*Incidentally, I'm hard pressed to find where you actually take on and dispense with Hitchens' arguments.  You think Hitchens is a cad; noted.  But, before you attack a man's character, answer his arguments.

Nozick, author of Anarchy, State, Utopia, was known as a libertarian, quite different in outlook than John Rawls.  Rawls wrote of the "difference principle," which argues that social and economic inequalities are acceptable if they end up giving benefits to the poor.  This "principle," if stringently applied, results in the enactment of socialist economic policies.

I believe that the strongest argument against Hitchens is his record of communist sympathy during the Cold War.  He has been much more sure-footed during the post-September 11th period.

We were using "liberal" in the modern (post world war I) political sense, not some grand 18th century philosophical sense.  If that is how you are defining "liberal" then I doubt that anyone who believes that representative democracy is a good idea is not a liberal in the classic sense.  Unfortunately, some on the far right of the Republican party who apparently believe that the judiciary should exist solely to enforce the laws passed by the legislature and that the line between Church and State should disappear may not even fit into the definition of classic liberal anymore.

That said, being a liberal is not such a "hard knock" life.  Yeah, it has been tough the last twenty years or so, but we had a good run.

Your comments have misrepresented my original article in several important ways.

(A) Liberalism is generally united in that it:

(1) Is ambivalent about a Greatest Good.

(2) Believes that reason, independent of Faith, can extract lesser-level Goods.

I mentioned both of these.  It is a unifying link among liberals -- among the Rawls's and the Nozick's.  Thus, your comment: "Incidentally, I have no idea what a "libertarian liberal" is.  "Perhaps you mean a so-called "classic liberal":  that is, one who is inclined to distrust the exercise of temporal power by the government, for it requires humans to be something that they are fundamentally not:  good." rests upon a presupposition about liberal philosophy that, in general, has been absent from liberals.  Liberals do not make judgements like this about the moral state of the human person.  This is, in many respects, the essence of the Hobbesian break.  Quoting Laurence Berns: Hobbes thought that the entire philosophical tradition from the Ancients, as well as the Scholastics, had failed to "put moral and political philosophy, for the first time, on a scientific basis."  A fresh start was needed.  This is why Hobbes argues that man is driven by self-interest alone, that this is the ontological principle of man (as opposed to the divided nature of Augustinianism and Scholasticism).  This is an argument that has driven almost all of liberalism.  It is not not not an argument that man is inherently "not: good."  You are conflating Scholastic political philosophy and modern liberal philosophy.  

This is not a matter of "shotgun" blasting, sir.  This is a matter of teasing out broad patterns from the history of philosophy and drawing conclusions about them.  Political theorists all over the world are doing this sort of thing at this very moment.  Graduate students across the fruited plain are banging out qualifying exam essays this very afternoon based upon the presumption that this sort of work is possible -- that Hobbes can be compared/contrasted to Rawls.  Many of them then turn around and put together graduate dissertations finding new linkages and cleavages in the history of political philosophy.  It can be done, and done well precisely because, for instance, though Rousseau and Hobbes have fundamental disagreements, they share important foundational premises that can be evaluated.  This is higher level theorizing: buy the ticket, take the ride.  Or don't.  I don't care.  But don't tell me that I am some shotgunning cowboy who is just prattling on and not getting anywhere -- at least without accusing the whole world of political theorists likewise.  At the very least, appreciate that I made a case in my original post about what unites them and then respond to that case.  Is it your contention that I have erred in bringing forth these two unifying themes?  Upon what grounds do you disagree?  Which authors in the liberal tradition have eschewed both of these, and why should they be considered liberals?  You should provide answers to these sorts of questions before you tell me I am some kind of hack shotgunner.  Don't I deserve the courtesy of being told why I am barking up the wrong tree?

(B) As for Burkean prudence, in referencing Burke I had a very specific meaning.  Adding the word "Burkean" to the word "prudence" was not some kind of flowery style of writing, which is, I presume, what you took it to be.  If you found it unclear, you should read Burke, for he has a very clear definition of prudence -- which, in using his name, I was referencing.  Here is how Harvey Mansfield characterizes Burke's prudence:

Prudence, Burke says, is 'the god of this lower world,' since it has 'the entire dominion over every exercise of power committed into its hands.'  Prudence is 'the first of all the virtues, as well as the supreme director of them all.'  This means, in particular, that 'practical widom' justly supersedes 'theoretic science' whenever the two come into contention.  The reason for the sovereignty of prudence is in the power of circumstances to alter every regularity and principle.  'Circumstances (with which some gentleman pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect.'  Burke emphasizes that the prudence he speaks of is a 'moral prudence' or a 'public and enlarged prduence,' as opposed to a selfish prudence, not to mention cleverness or cunning.

Clear enough?

As for specific liberal innovations that I like.  Well...I'm writing this piece for the public and confessing a particularly non-Orthodox theology (unless you know of a denomination that sits between Calvinism and Arminianism).  I did not think it necessary to say, "Hey!  I like free speech!"  I will say, though, that while I like it, I tend to not believe that anybody has an inalienable right to it, or really anything (or, at the least, how reason alone can indicate that we possess such rights).  Perfect example of appreciating liberal ideas without actually being a liberal.  

(C) As for the liberalism of our Founding, it is certainly true that they adopted a government with proposals originally put forth by liberals, indeed some of them were themselves quite liberal.  However, it is also certainly true that the Founding was actually quite conservative, and the revolution itself was fought in large measure to attain the privileges and rights that British citizens living in the British Isles already enjoyed.  This places them a far cry from the philosophical liberalism of its, or any, era -- just as John Adams is a far cry from Robspierre.

And, even if I cede the point that the Founders were as liberal as Bentham or anybody, where does this place me?  It simply means that I have some fundamental problems with the philosophical orientation of our Founders.  Well, guess what?  I had those anyway.  For goodness sake, you saw me reference Bonaventure of all people...where do you think my philosophical preferences lie?  (Hint: I got no problem with a nice healthy philosophical distance from Jefferson.)  Generally, they're with pre-modern Catholic philosophy, at least in their methodological presuppositions (I personally do not much care for the grand synthesis of Aristotle and Christianity).

(D) As for the similarity between libertarianism and big government liberalism, you are forgetting that I am discussing philosophical liberalism, which (and again, I cannot repeat this enough) is characterized by ambivalence about the summum bonum and the epistemological supremacy of reason.  This is a sense that unites both philosophical streams.  It is what links all of 'em together.

(E) As for specific liberals, I have a great affection for many of them.  I wrote both my undergraduate thesis and my masters paper on JS Mill.  I named one of my cats Popper, the other cat Hayek.  I mentioned above that I have affection for Rousseau.  Again, this is higher-order theorizing.  I can dislike the general philosophical tradition in which this philosophers are placed, and still appreciate many particular points or attitudes within their respective philosophies.  

(F) As for Hitchens, I never said he was a cad.  Actually, I never said anything about his character in general.  I did say something about what I inferred to be his general philosophical orientations, and I did comment I thought he awoke on the wrong side of the bed.  Neither of these concern character.  I did, of course, say that his work is characterized by consistency, but I am not sure that consistency is one of the necessary constituents of the cad.

(G) As for my argument against him, I suggest you go back and reread, noting paragraphs 1 through 5.  I am not sure how much more I can say against him after having attacked the very premise of his piece and the methodological absurdity behind his judgment of guilty.  Would you like me to get into more specifics of Church history?  Some more people who did good things and what they did?  Is it not enough to say that (A) he is manipulating the facts and (B) subjecting them to a patently absurd moral standard?  If both of these points are admitted, does he still have a leg to stand on?  If so, what is the leg?  

Broad point: when one repudiates a man's methodological approach, one need not "answer his arguments."  Specific substantive arguments are derived, in part, from methodological principles.  Once the latter have been put aside, the former no longer are valid.

I think this is the last I will say on this issue, for I honestly do not much care for the way you communicate your thoughts.  Comments like "I'm not sure what, if anything, such a broadly put argument accomplishes -- save for a false notion of having understood something." are not at all polite, especially when they come in the middle of what I consider to be a nonstop misrepresentation of my argument.  I do not think you gave my piece a fair or thorough read.  Which is fine.  It is your time, it is your prerogative.  But I find it aggravating that, after such a shotgun read, you respond by saying that I am shotgunning!  It is one thing to be rude, it is another to be ironically rude.  That's just too much for this fella.

my definition of liberalism. It is very specific and specifically relates to my case against Hitchens. Several respondents have not made note of this definition (well, definition is too strong a word -- call it the unifying characteristics of liberal thought).

Liberal thought is characterized by:
(A) Ambivalence about the summum bonum, greatest good.
(B) Conviction that reason is epistemologically supreme.

This is a principle that unites both Rawls and Nozick. In terms of substantive similarities, it ensures that most liberals will advocate (1) some sphere of freedom (corresponding with characteristic (A)) and (2) a secular society (corresponding with characteristic (B)), or at least a society where religion is subjected to the purposes of the state, as with Rousseau and Hobbes.

Re: After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Europe stagnated for 1000 years.

This is a caricature at best.

After Rome fell, Europe, especially Western Europe, went into civilizational free fall for several centuries but not because of anything the Christian Church did (there was as yet no Roman Catholic Church as such at that era), but because of a series of demographic disasters that reduced the continent to near-barbarism. Recovery was very gradual, but it began in earnest in the 800s AD, although in Western Europe the onslaughts of the Vikings and Magyars halted the recovery for another two centuries, though Byzantium enjoyed a renaissance in the East during the period. From 1000 AD on however European civilization had definitely regained lost grounds and Europe was growing again. New technologies came into use, trade expanded, nation states began to coalesce, and learning once again flourished (re: Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Okham, Roger Bacon, etc.). The disasters of the 14th century again retarded progress, but the Church had no blame there either.

As for feudalism, no one in their right mind would advise such a system in today's world, but was it really any worse than the slave-based economies of the Greeks and Romans?

Finally as for the use of Latin, it was the lingua franca of Western Europe much as Greek had been in the Roman Empire or as English is today. Moreover it took some centuries before people actually acknowledged that the Latin daughter languages like French and Spanish were in fact distinct languages not just crude popular dialects of Latin. I would agree that the Church should have modernized its languages by the late Middle Ages, still it does make sense in a way for an international institution to maintain its own common tongue. As late as the 18th century educated men throughout Western Christendom could talk to one another in this "dead" language no matter what their birth tongue, which not such a bad thing after all.

is so broad that most modern day American conservatives fit quite handily under that tent too. You have to go quite far out to the margins to find people (e.g., the theonomy folks) who do not in today's America.

good differ among Liberal thinkers?  For Hobbes, the greatest good would be the achievement of felicity (fleeting achievements or the best we could hope for) and Locke and Mill don't really discuss a greatest good as far as I know.  Classical Liberalism as I've seen it defined would revolve around the idea that personal liberty is the primary value above all else.  (1)It argues for the defense of the autonomy of the individual, either from the tyranny of the majority or the government.  (2) The protection of private property as the only way to have a free society.  (3) The right to think and believe what you want--freedom of concious.  The summun bonum and its opposite the greatest evil, summum mallum, was discussed by Hobbes as one reason to establish government, but I've seen it nowhere else.  Anyway, I see no reason why your two final points wouldn't be true, but I think I'm missing something on your first point "A," but also I think you leave out important Liberal characteristics with your definition..

You're wrong about Hitchens. While he may not be right on everything, his writings are not "verbal diarrhea". In fact, he's one of the best non-fiction writers I've ever read. Read his book "A Long Short War", a compilation of his Slate pieces defending the intervention in Iraq, and I think you will find that Hitchens is one of the war's most eloquent and powerful defenders, right up there with Mark Steyn or Victor Davis Hanson. He was masterful in two LA Times Book Festival debates over the war in Iraq against Robert Scheer and Mark Danner. His Washington Journal appearances are always must-see TV (to borrow a phrase). Also check out "www.hitchensweb.com" for tons more of his stuff, recent and older.  

Simply put, there is no better defender of the Bush foreign policy than Christopher Hitchens. I think if you take another look at his writings you might just come to agree with me on that.

I'm basically assessing Hitchens on his own terms. Here is a man whose means of discussion are opinions stated as fact ("[the movie] Passion is based on one of the four contradictory gospels"), and character assasination ("I've been told that an evening with Mel Gibson is a long and graphic series of anal sex jokes").

Everything of course either very detabatle or totally unverifiable wrapped in highly-sounding prose. In other words, the Noam Chomsky school of pseudo-intellectualism.

All in all, evrything Hitchens says is not worth any discussion energy.

I did not like Hitchens' screed either, partly because of the Calvinist attitude which Jay mentions. Frankly, it read much like screeds against Islam in the modern era. The defense of Catholicsm that Jay offers , grounded in past achievements centuries old, is rather reminiscent of the "Golden Age" arguments put forth by more revisionist assessors of Islamic history. I am not one of them, but neither do I accept the principle that a religion (as a belief system) can be held accountable for the actions of its adherents.

I may not be fair to Hitchens; if his intent was solely to castigate th Church and not Catholicism as a whole, then his argument may have more water. But Jay's defense is of Catholicism, not the Church per se, and so I find myself much more sympathetic.

on April 1st entitled "Papal Power;

John Paul II's other legacy"

Hitchens arguements here largely attempt to hold the church accountable for the actions of it's governing body.

A few years ago, it seemed quite probable that Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston would have to face trial for his appalling collusion in the child-rape racket that his diocese had been running. The man had knowingly reassigned dangerous and sadistic criminals to positions where they would be able to exploit the defenseless. He had withheld evidence and made himself an accomplice, before and after the fact, in the one offense that people of all faiths and of none have most united in condemning. (Since I have more than once criticized Maureen Dowd in this space, I should say now that I think she put it best of all. A church that has allowed no latitude in its teachings on masturbation, premarital sex, birth control, and divorce suddenly asks for understanding and "wiggle room" for the most revolting crime on the books.)

Anyway, Cardinal Law isn't going to face a court, now. He has fled the jurisdiction and lives in Rome, where a sinecure at the Vatican has been found for him. (Actually not that much of a sinecure: As archpriest of the Rome Basilica of St. Mary Major, he also sits on two boards supervising priestly discipline--yes!--and the appointment of diocesan bishops.) Even before this, he visited Rome on at least one occasion to discuss whether or not the church should obey American law. And it has been conclusively established that the Vatican itself--including his holiness--was a part of the coverup and obstruction of justice that allowed the child-rape scandal to continue for so long.

Not least because he ascribes motives that do not exist.

and his accountability is, I think, a matter of John Paul II's legacy, and not related to the issue of whether the Catholic Church, or Catholicism as a whole, have been net posotives or negatives for mankind.

Come on now. I have laid out specific critiques of various Liberal philosophers many times over the years. Here is brief critique of Mill, for example.

But I have also regularly expressed sympathy and admiration for many of the great Liberals despite my irreconcilable differences with them. A good example is Rousseau.

The point is, at least speaking for myself, that I have concluded that Liberalism, despite many admirable features, is freighted by errors so grave as to be fatal to any society that adopts it fully. It must be resisted and defeated, even as we take from it all the good that we can.

I'll add that even science and mathematics flourished in Middle Ages, which in turn gave them great advances in engineering and mechanics. How could they not, having invented Romanesque architecture?

There was Buridan, who among a dozen other things developed the theory of impetus, an enormous advance in physics. There was Oresme, who understood many principles we now attribute to Galileo or Descartes. The mediaeval Schoolmen understood market economics. A good portion of the learning of the Renaissance was simply the absorbing of all that had been achieved and discovered in the preceding centuries by mediaevals nourished by the Catholic Church.

Moreover, as you hint, though Western Europe fell into decay after the collapse of the western provinces, the Eastern Empire survived for a further thousand years. We call it Byzantium by they understood themselves as Roman.

My apologies; a very long response (such as yours) deserves an equally detailed reply.  Unfortunately, I don't have the time to do it justice. Still, I'll try to respond as best I can in the time I have.

First:

(A) Liberalism is generally united in that it:

(1) Is ambivalent about a Greatest Good.

(2) Believes that reason, independent of Faith, can extract lesser-level Goods.

Point 1 is not a mark of liberalism per se (for many members of the liberal tradition, as you have defined it, do believe in a "Greatest Good").  Point 2 is also not a mark of liberalism; rather, it is shared in certain key respects, with so-called Burkean prudence (incidentally, at Paul Cella's suggestion of a year or so ago, I did start taking a more serious look at Burke).

Second:

Liberals do not make judgements like this about the moral state of the human person.  This is, in many respects, the essence of the Hobbesian break.

Which liberals?  Where?  Is Liberalism confined to Hobbes (who was immensely influential, but did not have so much influence on, say, Martin Luther King)?  You make a statement like "Liberals do not make judgements like this about the moral state of the human person" and seem to presume that you've arrived at some self-evident truth about all that has ever been described as "Liberalism."  I think that's a mistake.  Better to talk about the specific thinkers with which you disagree.

Third:

As for the liberalism of our Founding, it is certainly true that they adopted a government with proposals originally put forth by liberals, indeed some of them were themselves quite liberal.  However, it is also certainly true that the Founding was actually quite conservative, and the revolution itself was fought in large measure to attain the privileges and rights that British citizens living in the British Isles already enjoyed.

Yes, the Founders used the traditional rights of British subjects and the British common law as the basis for many of their greivances, although they extrapolated from those traditional rights a larger pattern of "self-evident" rights.  But you're wrong that the American Revolution was in any respect "conservative."  It was a radical notion that one had the right (even duty) to fight for one's natural rights for freedom and justice; the resulting government that the Founders ordained bears every mark of their radicalism.  Indeed, though the Founders surely borrowed from and used the past, their creation was wholly liberal.  

Fourth:

I never claimed you called Hitchens is a cad; I said that I got from your piece that Hitchens is a cad, but that I didn't see a particular answer to Hitchens' arguments.

In the paragraphs that you cite, your post essentially argues (essentially) that "the Catholic Church also did a lot of good."  Fine; noted and agreed.  I am, after all, the product of a Catholic law school and can personally attest to the many good things done by the Catholic church, both today and over the ages.  (Among other things, admitting me well after the application deadline and then smoothing over things with my original choice in Boston -- all so that I could follow my future wife to Chicago.)  But Hitchens' argument wasn't primarily (or even generally) about the bad or good things done by the Church, 55 A.D. - present.  It was about Pope John Paul II's legacy, and whether he deserved all the praise that he received.  Or whether, in Hitchens' view, some of his work fell short.  Your post never addresses these arguments, which were the central thrust of Hitchens' piece.

(I, for one, found Hitchens' timing to be particularly poor; still, the points he raises will someday need to be answered, and they haven't been yet.)

That's it for now.  And I'm sorry if my commenting style annoys you; but I'm hard pressed to see where I "misrepresented" your post.  

(My apologies for any typos in the above.)

Paul, we've had this debate before, so I won't bore you too much with it again.  I'm still trying to identify the purported "Liberal" to stand against.  Yes, of course, certain folks in their time and era can be described as "Liberal" or "Conservative."  I'll even admit to a "Liberal tradition," albeit a very cacaphonous one.  But progress in the world has, by and large, been the product of the Liberals of an age pressing the boundaries of society, and Conservatives pushing back and keeping this whole experiment in society from falling off the tracks.  

It seems that a lot of your complaint is directed to enlightenment thinkers; you don't like everything they had to say.  Well, neither do I. But I'm not in "opposition" to Locke any more than I'm in "opposition" to his opponents.  Locke made arguments that had never really been made before.  Sure, more than a few were misfires; sure, he was an ugly bigot (not by way of excuse, but he was hardly the only one in his day and age).  But the world would be a much poorer place to have not heard those arguments, and the response thereto.  Indeed, much of the benefit of Locke are the changes that he forced his opponents to make.

(Sorry for any typos in the above; I'm in a rush.)

I don't think I want to get involved in this discussion about liberalism with you. You are, in my judgment, arguing against Political Theory 101 here in your denial of my claims about philosophical liberalism which is, once again, different from American contemporary political liberalism. I am not sure if you are up to speed on this distinction, for I would argue most vociferously that MLK II was not a philosophical liberal.

If you want a list of liberals who demure from making ontological/normative judgments about human beings or about the summum bonum, get a survey book on political philosophy. Strauss and Cropsey have a good one. I'd be very interested in seeing which liberal political philosopher argues that the purpose of human existence is a certain activity (as opposed to a modal argument about maximization/minimization). Here's a list of fellows you might consider examining in detail: Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Helevetius, Bentham, James Mill, JS Mill, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Smith, Paine, Wollstonecraft, Constant, Berlin, Hayek, Popper, Dworkin, Galston, Guttmann, Hart, Kateb, Kymlicka, Macedo, Nozick, Rawls, Raz, Sen, Walzer. (I apologize for the crudeness of a list like this, but I feel I should to do something to indicate that we are discussing what I do for a living. Whether this gives you pause is, of course, up to you, but I felt I should make the point perfectly clear.)

I am placing Hitchens in this camp. This means that, philosophically speaking, he is different from many political liberals that you might run into on a day to day basis. I am highly skeptical, for instance, about Teddy Kennedy's credentials as a philosophical liberal. This has a very specific meaning.

Its meaning, by the by, cannot be dissociated as you seem intent to do. Both ambivalence and primacy of reason are characteristics of the liberal mind. It is irrelevant if some non liberals have one characteristic and others have the other. Liberalism is the possession of both of these.

And Burke is not in the primacy-of-reason camp. Not in the way that I mean it (and, in my defense, implied when I discussed the bottom-to-top treatise style of liberal theorizing). Burke explicitly denies the human ability to use reason to theorize in the abstract. Indeed, the whole essence of prudence places him in opposition to liberals precisely on this point -- reason will just not do certain things for us, Burke argues, thus we must be prudent and deal with circumstances as they are presented to us.

As for your third point, well, again, I think you are way out of your league when you say, "But you're wrong that the American Revolution was in any respect "conservative."" You are basically peeing into the wind of 50 years of American political development scholarship. If you want to tell Bernard Bailyn that his Ideological Origins of the American Revolution is balderdash, I admire your courage. But I will not be standing with you.

The general consensus in APD is so much against what you breezily claimed that Gordon Wood, in The Radicalism of the American Revolution argues that the revolution, while conservative in its ideology, was radical in its results. The premise of his piece is that he grants the general scholarly APD conclusion that the revolution was largely conservative in its outlook, but asserts that it had a radical element to it (i.e. its effects were radical). The fact that he published a book in 1991 (not 1891) called The Radicalism of the American Revolution should tell you everything you need to know: this was a novel point to make. At the end of the book, you discover that the overall impression of APD is that it had conservative ideological elements and radical effects (which is what I had claimed in the last post).

Again, you are free to pee into this wind (and, I should say -- that if you can pull off the above argument in a systematic manner, asserting that there was nothing conservative about the Revolution, the Greenstone Award for Best Book in Politics and History would be all yours), but do not tell me that I am the one with urine all over my face.

And, as for your fourth point, well we are just going to have to agree to disagree because what you got out of this piece, what you inferred was Hitchens's argument ("It was about Pope John Paul II's legacy, and whether he deserved all the praise that he received.  Or whether, in Hitchens' view, some of his work fell short.") seemed to me to be the tiny tip of a very large iceberg. It seemed quite clear to me that Hitchens real trouble was not with the performance of the Pope as leader of an organization that could be much better, but as leader of an organization that has sowed nothing but superstition, death, devasatation, war and horror. Don't refuse to mourn the pope because he was a lousy pope. Refuse to mourn him because he was a pope in the first place.

And, anyway, my methodological argument works just as well even if I radically misread Hitchens's piece. Hitchens is judging the Pope by his own moral intuitions, which the Pope never shared, and based upon his "transgressions" declaring him unequovically guilty.

The last word is yours, if you wish it.

...downright Hegelian to me. The broad social benefit is in the dialectical process between liberal and conservatives.

It seems to me that you are casting a very wide net here, Von. This net actually seems wider than the net you castigated me for having cast. I mean, all I said was that group X had characteristics Y in common. You are making an argument about social and philosophical history itself -- the meta trend.

And, the reason I think you are having problems finding the general liberal is that you are only looking at substance. You are not looking at method. The reason that a fella like Nozick -- a hard core libertarian -- and a fella like Rawls -- a quasi socialist -- are taught together in courses all across America that go along the title "Liberalism" is because they share certain methodological orientations. Just like Iris Young -- author of Justice and the Politics of Difference -- is very liberal in the political sense, her philosophical work is very anti-liberal. What matters is not whether you want more or less government, but why you want it.

Here is a good example -- a course taught this spring at the University of Virginia by George Klosko. Here is the syllabus for the course, called "Liberalism and Its Critics." (I actually took this course in 2000, but it was taught by Colin Bird that year -- and I must say his course requirements were less stringent!)

Wow! That's an interesting spin given the anti-intellectualism of the early church. I think it's more plausible and accurate to give the Muslims and the Abbasid caliphate in particular credit for preserving the ancient classics.

I'm not really buying what you're selling with this line. This sort of broad statement is tantamount to the ones the lefties use about America because of its treatment of the Native Americans. The picture is infinitely more complicated.

This anti-intellectualism would be from the church that produced and celebrated the whole sphere of Catholic thought, right? This would be the Church of Augustine, of Aquinas, of Scotus, of Suarez, of Ockham, of Anselm, of Bonaventure, I gather. I do not know how anybody could read Aquinas and not walk away thinking that he was anti-intellectual.

In fact, if you want to consider a quality/quantity matrix of philosophical output, the 13th century would rank up there with the 18th and 19th centuries (and, for my money, I take Aquinas over Hegel and I don't look back). Just because modern man generally does not care about it does not mean that this is not the case.

This is "anti-intellectualism?"

I feel a very strong reaction to accusations that the Catholic Church was anti-intellectual. It smacks of the conceit of modernity. I think it grossly denigrates the contribution of Catholic philosophy, both as wonderful philosophy in itself as well as its contribution to our precious modern philosophy.

And, it is true that the Muslims were those who had preserved the writings of the Ancients. But this does not imply that the Catholic Church condemned Greek thought. Far from it. When Aristotle was brought to the West, he was celebrated, studied and synthesized. In that action, he was preserved. Surprisingly, the Catholic Church did not endorse a massive book burning outside the Papal Office of every copy of Aristotle's De Anima. Rather, they celebrated -- and canonized -- the man who found a way to unite Aristotle with Christianity.

But of course, I never said the church preserved the "classics," so I am not sure why it is in quotation marks. I also did not use the word "preserved." I said "the key center of" -- which is different from "preserved," as it also implies production.

I don't think I want to get involved in this discussion about liberalism with you. You are, in my judgment, arguing against Political Theory 101 here in your denial of my claims about philosophical liberalism which is, once again, different from American contemporary political liberalism. I am not sure if you are up to speed on this distinction, for I would argue most vociferously that MLK II was not a philosophical liberal.

You misunderstand my point.  As mentioned below, I don't deny a liberal political tradition.  (Indeed, I expressly said the opposite, albeit to Paul and not you.)  I'm not arguing against Political Theory 101.  I simply deny the utility of talking about "Liberals" outside of a specific framework, and without an agreed-upon set of presumptive definitions.*  

Indeed, as you seem to acknowledge, you need only shift your sights a little and Martin Luther King -- whom pretty much everyone outside of the Political Science community would regard as "liberal" -- becomes a nonLiberal (change in capitalization intended).  It's not because "your definition is right and everyone else's definition is wrong."  Nor is it because "you get it and everyone else doesn't."  It's because you're employing a very specific definition that is not generally employed, and you find it useful for the kinds of categorizations you'd like to make.  (Which are not, by the bye, the kinds of categorizaions everyone wishese to make.)  

In other words, as I said at the outset (and have repeated several times), discussing "LIBERALS" is not a particularly useful endeavor.

I am placing Hitchens in this camp. This means that, philosophically speaking, he is different from many political liberals that you might run into on a day to day basis. I am highly skeptical, for instance, about Teddy Kennedy's credentials as a philosophical liberal. This has a very specific meaning.

You know a great deal more about the philosophical underpinnings, if any, of Hitchens' and Kennedy's work than do I.

As for your third point, well, again, I think you are way out of your league when you say, "But you're wrong that the American Revolution was in any respect "conservative."" You are basically peeing into the wind of 50 years of American political development scholarship. If you want to tell Bernard Bailyn that his Ideological Origins of the American Revolution is balderdash, I admire your courage. But I will not be standing with you.

By what standards?  Obviously, as I noted (there seems to be a lot of mis- and cross-reading, here, and I don't put the blame solely on you), the American Revolution had several conservative elements.  So I was a bit overbroad when I summarized with that line.  But the Jacobians certainly viewed the American Revolution as horrifically liberal -- using the ordinary sense of the term.  So did most of the monarchs of Western Europe.  

And, as for your fourth point, well we are just going to have to agree to disagree because what you got out of this piece, what you inferred was Hitchens's argument ("It was about Pope John Paul II's legacy, and whether he deserved all the praise that he received.  Or whether, in Hitchens' view, some of his work fell short.") seemed to me to be the tiny tip of a very large iceberg

Well, now that's just silly.  You did read the Hitchens' piece?  It was primarily about the Pope -- his stand on AIDs, etc.?  It was entitled "On Not Mourning the Pope: Thoughts over the grave of John Paul II."?  And you're suggesting that I'm the one "inferring" a thesis?

Incidentally, if you're trying to convince me that you know more political science than I do, you have.  Well done.  I'm not sure how telling me you have knowledge, however, addresses the point that you're not communicating your knowledge very well.  

von

*I'm not arguing that such is a bad thing, only that you should recognize the overbreadth and confusion generated by your useage.  

not only in the tyrannicides of antiquity, but also in the Dutch revolt against Spanish rule in the late 1500s and in the British Parliamentary rebellion against Charles I, and again in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Indeed, I would say that, philosophically, our Revolution resembled 1688 (philosophically that is, since 1688 involved no bloodshed where 1776 did) far more than it did the French or other continental revolutions that followed.

the notion that the early Church was anti-intellectual. The Church Fathers were steeped in the common learning of antiquity, and the basis of much of patristic theology is a modfied but quite recondite neo-Platonism. When some Christians expressed misgivings about educating their children with Pagan lore, the Fathers dismissed those fears by praising Greco-Roman culture as a fitting soil in which the seed of Christian faith could most naturally flourish.

If you are going to cite apocryphal tales like the burning of the library of Alexandria, you should be prepared to defend such claims, as no serious historian (as opposed to certain anti-Christian pop writers) believes that such an event ever took place (the Muslims too are probably innocent of such a deed; the Library in fact was not burned by anyone, except much earlier during the riots of the third century AD).

One can certainly disagree with this or that position that the Church Fathers held (Augustine, IMO, was off the rails in a good many things; Chrysostom's anti-Semutism is a serious blot on his saintliness, etc.) but one cannot in any way charge those gentlemen with being ill-educated, learning-hostile Know-Nothings, or reprentatives of an ancient booboisie.

Particularly the passage of the English Bill of Rights (which the founders of the US drew upon); but I wouldn't be too quick to draw parallels.  

Also, for the further benefit of Horserace, let me repeat that my comment that the American Revolution was unconservative was a profound overstatement.  

but I wouldn't be too quick to draw parallels.

IOW, let's not forget that there was a strong element of anti-Catholic bias and sectarian violence.  And King James was, by most accounts, attempting to reform -- it's just that the Protestants in Parliament wouldn't trust him.

Having ancestors who wear orange on July 12th, I'm a bit oversensitized, perhaps, to such things -- and their aftermath.  

Here is a man whose means of discussion are opinions stated as fact

We wouldn't want to do that, would we.

Re: Also, for the further benefit of Horserace, let me repeat that my comment that the American Revolution was unconservative was a profound overstatement.  

The American Revolution threw off the authority of a distant monarch and established a republic, in which it was similar to the Dutch revolt against Philip II. Otherwise, it left society unaltered. Compared to what happened a few years later in France, or in the 20th century in Russia, the American Revolution was fairly conservative. Its liberality lay not in its results but rather in appealing to a specific set of philosophical principles, whereas the Dutch had more or less simply said, "We Protestant, Philip's Catholic and we've had enough of his religious tranny."

Its liberality lay not in its results but rather in appealing to a specific set of philosophical principles,

Well, I wouldn't go that far, either.  The "result" of the American revolution was a (for the time) unique form of republican government.  Yes, it drew on older (and other) republics and democracies.  But it was wholly different from, say, the developing English Parliamentary system and Constitutional monarchy.  (Indeed, the rejection of the monarchy was itself a profoundly "liberal" idea -- again, using the ordinary sense of the term.)

Jay got the very essence of contemporary liberalism: a weird mixture of value-relativism and self-righteousness.  This strange combination explains why it is so difficult to debate with a liberal on value-relativism.  A liberal generously accepts all acceptable opinions, but, obviously, cannot accept an attack on liberalism's basic principle.  Self-righteousness tells the liberal that those who contradict value-relativism are enemies of the human race.