Recasting Conservatism 9780300160796

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Recasting Conservatism

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Recasting Conservatism Oakeshott, Strauss, and the Response to Postmodernism

ROBERT DEVIGNE

Ya/e University Press New Haven and London

Published with the assistance of the A. Whitney Griswold Publication Fund. Copyright © 1994 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Designed by Jill Breitbarth and set in Sabon type by Rainsford Type, Danbury, Connecticut. Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Devigne, Robert. Recasting conservatism : Oakeshott, Strauss, and the response to postmodernism / Robert Devigne. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-0-300-06868-9 1. Conservatism—United States. 2. Conservatism—Great Britain. 3. Conservatism. 4. Strauss, Leo. 5. Oakeshott, Michael Joseph, 1901- . I. Title. JA84.U5D42 1994 93-29941 320.5'2'0973—dc20 CIP A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

To Mom and Dad

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Contents

Acknowledgments • ix Introduction • xi 1. The Redefinition of British Conservatism • 1 2. The Redefinition/ of American Conservatism • 36 3. Establishing and Reestablishing Morality and Authority • 78 4. Restructuring Liberty and Economics • 119 5. The Institutional Aims of New Conservative Theory • 153 6. Undivided and Dual Sovereignty • 190 Notes • 205 Index • 257

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Acknowledgments

I have benefited from the assistance of many persons and institutions while writing this book. Early versions of it were read thoroughly by Rogers Smith of Yale University and Allan Silver of Columbia University. Both scholars create the standard for reading and commentary, combining encouragement, criticism, and advice. An Eisenhower-Roberts fellowship allowed a year of research at St. Antony's College, Oxford University; a Mellon fellowship provided time for both reading and writing at the Center for European Studies, Stanford University. I have benefited from discussions and criticisms of drafts or themes of this book from Samuel Brittan, S. E. Finer, John Gray, Mark Kesselman, Max Beloff, Gillian Peele, Susan Moller Okin, Philippe Schmitter, Miriam Feldblum, and Jean Cohen. John Ransom of Dickinson College discussed with me, in one form or another, almost every theme that is explored in this book. Debra Candreva of Tufts University was an invaluable researcher, reader, indexer, and critic. Students in my seminars on postmodern political thought at Tufts University were an additional resource of ideas. Finally, my wife, Kathleen, provided all of the support that an individual can hope for while engaged in a long-term project. Indeed, I am grateful that Kathleen always makes the journey as enjoyable as the destination. I also am thankful for Michael and Jacqueline, both of whom continue to make their father very proud as they learn to live around Dad's work.

ix

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Introduction

This book offers a new explanation of contemporary British and American conservative political theory. It identifies how conservative theory is responding to postmodernism: to societies in which common civil practices are not assumed to be norms corresponding to an existing independent reality; individual identities are fractured and lack stability; conventions tha instill political and social discipline are not present; groups gain political influence through assertions of power; and political theories have lost all faith, not only in God, but in the human power of transcendence as well. These conditions pose both grave challenges and significant opportunities for the articulation of a persuasive conservative political philosophy. I exposit and contrast the key roles played by Michael Oakeshott, Leo Strauss, and their respective followers in redeveloping conservative political theory in the United Kingdom and the United States. Whereas both Oakeshott and Strauss sought to transcend the contingencies of contemporary politics in order to address the more permanent questions of political philosophy, each theorist's views led him to anticipate and fear postmodernism long before it became a fashionable concept in the academy. Identifying and contrasting this aspect of Oakeshott's and Strauss's thinking, and understanding how it has been interpreted by many of their students and followers, is crucial to developing a clear view of the premises and assumptions of new British and American conservative political thought. xi

Xii Inroduction

This book rejects the view that British and American conservative theory are versions of libertarianism. Asserting that neither theory is concerned solely with enlarging the individual's private domain, the book shows how conservatism in Britain and the United States engages the political problematic they identify with the loss of civil traditions, morality, and authority. It explains how British and American conservative theory envision different institutions as the sources or forms of new authoritative political and civil relations, disputing the view that new British and American conservative theory are similar. Finally, the study distinguishes each conservative theory from previous conservative outlooks in Britain and America. Throughout the book, new British and American conservative political theory are interpreted and contrasted from three traditional concepts: the sovereignty of the state, territorial divisions of political authority, and the relation between state and civil society. The concept of the sovereignty of the central state entails three distinct notions: autonomy, the capacity to act independently; power, ultimate control over other institutions in society; and legitimacy, acceptance as the rightful center of political actions. The concept of territorial division of authority focuses on the political relation between the central institutions in the capital city and subcentral political organizations and governmental bodies within the accepted national boundaries of the state, analyzing how the state attempts to distribute authority by area. The theme of the state-civil society distinction is utilized to focus on how each theory envisions the state influencing the character of institutions that operate in the realm of the polity that is market oriented, privately controlled, or voluntarily organized. Chapters 1 and 2 establish the different constitutionalisms and political objectives of British and American conservative political theory. British conservatism proposes the undivided sovereignty of the legislative office of the central state and the establishment of uniform rules that both restrict the autonomy and authority of intermediate organizations and create procedures that allow the pursuit of private, substantive aims. Attempting to reconcile the political philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and David Hume, British conservative theory advocates addressing the moral crisis of postmodernism by constructing new standards of right and wrong behavior around the self-interested activities promoted and protected by the laws of the state. In contrast, American conservative theory prescribes a dual sovereignty: civil and local, public institutions

• Introduction • xi'i'i •

predominate in domestic politics; a political executive, free of the effective scrutiny of Congress and the media, predominates in international politics. As Montesquieu proposed devolving the task of the judiciary so that the public would become the judge and punisher of its own behavior, freeing the political executive from this odious task, American conservative theory advocates reconstructing political and social morality through the delegation of this contentious sphere of politics to civil and local, public institutions, allowing the political executive to pursue the strategic issues of foreign policy, national security, and crises management. The remaining chapters explain how these differing outlooks and goals of British and American conservative theory are identified with interpretations of democracy, justice, community, authority, liberty, and religion, as well as distinct preferences in economic, social, and foreign policy domains. Chapter 3 identifies each theory's objectives with different interpretations of authority and morality and with separate views of social justice and the relation between church and state. Chapter 4 analyzes how both theories have redefined liberty in divergent ways and developed dissimilar emphases in economic policy proposals, while also establishing distinct points of unity with rational choice theory. Chapter 5 associates each conservatism's new goals with distinctive preferences in social and foreign policy domains. Chapter 6 situates both new conservative political theories among other important political theories in Britain and America. Politics is partly a product of public discussions, debates, assessments, and definitions of reality. The symbolic environment helps structure public outlooks, and political thinking influences the character of this setting. This book is not, however, aimed at illuminating the relation of new conservative political theory to this process. And it doe6 not analyze the relation of conservative theory to the specific policies, beliefs, and actions of the Ronald Reagan and George Bush administrations or the Margaret Thatcher and John Major governments. Those policies and attitudes result from complex constellations of electoral opinion, political opposition, group interests, state structures, political leadership, economic trends, the international environment, as well as intellectual thought. No single study can hope to examine all of these elements fully. My aim is not to explain everything about contemporary conservatism in Britain and America; it is only to analyze and contrast their new intellectual content. Sometimes, less is more.

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Recasting Conservatism

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ONE

The

Redefinition of British Conservatism

M

\ ONSERVATIVE political thought, as most fully expressed by Burke's response to the French Revolution, developed throughout the West in opposition to Enlightenment beliefs that societies could be guided along a secular, egalitarian, and self-governing path. It was characterized by a pessimistic view of human nature, a preference for community or the state when this was in conflict with individualism, and a rejection of political institutions based on rational models of behavior. These core principles did not constitute a set of substantive ideas concerning the best form of government or the best order of society. They defined only a "framework into which the most variegated conservative defenses of the most variegated status quos [could] be fitted."1 Indeed, theorists of British conservatism—Burke, Coleridge, Disraeli, Henry Maine, Michael Oakeshott, among many others—have not espoused one system of political, social, and cultural beliefs. Each has placed different emphases on enhancing the authority of the state, supporting the landed aristocracy and Church of England, promoting individual liberty and incremental social reform, and maintaining a balance of power and Empire. The absence of a single conservative political theory suggests that "new conservatism" is a recurring British phenomenon, as the leading conservative intellectuals redefine political goals.2 The new conservatism in Britain is new because it is in open ideo-

1

• 2 • The Redefinition of British Conservatism •

logical contention with such prevailing postwar views as government responsibility for economic development and social justice. But contemporary conservative political theory is new not only in the situational sense of seeking to displace an old outlook. New British conservative theory not only disputes policies and beliefs, like earlier "new conservatives," but breaks with earlier conservatisms in not identifying the political good with a vision of specifically English history and political development. Earlier conservatives have claimed, like Burke, Disraeli, and Maine, that conservatism grew organically out of the specific genius of English traditions, properly understood. "We know that we have made no discoveries; and we think no discoveries are to be made in morality; nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we were born," wrote Burke. "In England ... we still feel within us, and we cherish and cultivate, those inbred sentiments which are the faithful guardians, the active monitors of our duty, the true supporters of all liberal and manly morals."3 But most contemporary British conservative theorists envision the politically good society irrespective of England's history. Oakeshott does not draw upon an idea of historical progress. Evoking Nietzsche, he claims, "History is a woman." It may seduce or flatter intellectuals or politicians into believing they can distinguish the good from the bad, but history cannot be completely understood, trusted, and utilized as a basis of activity. "A recorded past," according to Oakeshott, "is no more than a bygone present composed of the footprints made by human beings actually going somewhere but not knowing (in any extended sense), and certainly not revealing to us, how they came to be afoot on these particular journeys." Because history is a human construct, it is incapable of establishing an objective standard of progress or the political good. "In short," Oakeshott states, "ideological history is in principle a self-contradiction, and where it has been attempted it is usually a selfconfessed botch."4 This conservatism also is new because it redefines the conservative interpretation of constitutionalism, deemphasizing the role of diffusing political authority across territorial domains. Previous conservatisms have claimed that a territorial division of tasks between the central state and civil and local, public institutions allowed British customs and social practices to flourish, while providing autonomy for the elite. For much of the nineteenth century, conservatism advocated a "thick society," in which the landed aristocracy and Church of England predominated in

• The Redefinition of British Conservatism • 3 • the countryside. In the "parochial constitution" of England, stated Disraeli, "the priest and gentleman, the ancient champions of the people against rapacious Parliaments" represent "the rights and privileges of the multitude."5 In turn, the central state fostered unity among the dispersed elites. "The state," Coleridge noted, "is synonymous with a constituted realm, kingdom, commonwealth or nation; that is where the integral parts, classes, or orders are so balanced or so interdependent as to constitute a more or less moral unit, an organic whole."6 The goal of the thick society was a division of labor in political decision making. The landed aristocracy and Church of England were to be the predominant decision makers in the countryside; the Monarch, Lords, and Commons were to be largely free from public pressure when debating and developing policies on the strategic questions of domestic property relations, foreign Empire, and balance of power on the Continent. As Derek Urwin suggests, "The strategy may be defined as one of territorial accommodation through the recruitment of and collaboration with regional elites who in turn were given representation in central institutions."7 After the electoral reforms of 1867 and 1883-85, late Victorian conservative and Unionist theorists—Maine, J. F. Stephens, James Bryce, A. V. Dicey, William Mallok, W. E. H. Lecky, among others—moved the establishment of an autonomous central elite to the forefront of their views. "When a democracy governs," Maine warned, "it is not safe to leave unsettled any important question concerning the exercise of public powers."8 The expansion of the franchise, he continued, meant that the way the government selected and pursued developing policy had become as important as the policy itself: political authority could not reside outside the central state; the location of substantive political debate must shift from the Parliament to the cabinet; ministers must resolve issues of political substance on their own; during debates in the Commons and Lords, ministers only were to defend government positions and hear opinions. In short, Maine and other conservative theorists called for a preservation of "high politics," in which strategic issues concerning Empire, balance of power on the Continent, sterling, and property relations remained removed from public discussion and debate. Maine thought that the more hidden these changes in the forms of political decision making were, the more effective they would be: There is a fashion among historians of expressing wonder, not unmixed with dislike, at the secret bodies and councils which they

• 4 • The Redefinition of British Conservatism •

occasionally find invested with authority in famous states. In ancient history the Spartan Ephors—in modern history the Venetian Council of Ten—are criticized in this spirit. Many of these writers are Englishmen, and yet they seem quite unconscious that their own country is governed by a secret. There can be very little doubt that the secrecy of the Cabinet is its strength. A great part of the weakness of Democracy springs from publicity of discussion; and nobody who has had any share in public business can have failed to observe, that the chances of agreement among even a small number of persons increases in nearly exact proportion to the chances of privacy.9 In order to preserve high politics, late Victorian conservative theory also recognized the necessity of accepting and accommodating new organizations as mediators between the central state and society to replace the landed aristocracy and Church, which were in decline—local governments, local education authorities, constituency party organizations, and others. Conservatives did not advocate corporatist arrangements with these intermediary institutions "to make associative, self-interested collective action contribute to public policy objectives."10 Conservative theorists proposed to focus these institutions on "low politics"—administration of resources for social services, conflict resolution, law enforcement, primary education—and ensure that they remained dependent on the statutes of the central state. While proposing that intermediary organizations become centers of activity, conservative theory reserved the right of the central state to overrule their statutes and power. Their "authority is clearly delegated and subject to the obvious control of a superior legislature," stated Dicey.11 This apportionment of authority could not be construed as divided sovereignty. As Dicey argued, Federal government means weak government A federation therefore will always be at a disadvantage in a contest with unitarian states of equal resources. Nor does the experience of the United States or of the Swiss confederation invalidate this conclusion. The Union is threatened by no powerful neighbors and needs no foreign policy. Circumstances unconnected with constitutional arrangements enable Switzerland to preserve her separate existence, though surrounded by powerful and at times hostile nations.12

• The Redefinition of British Conservatism • 5 •

Having previously relied on local elites in the countryside to preserve a division of labor between high and low politics, conservative theory now supported a "dual polity"—ministerial resolution of substantive issues combined with a focus on provincial affairs by intermediary organizations. New British conservative theory eschews a constitutionalism that creates a territorial division of labor between the central state and other political and civil institutions. It has elaborated a new interpretation of the separation of powers doctrine that emphasizes coordinating the power of the central state as the sole lawmaking center of the polity, concomitantly deemphasizing the autonomous activities of intermediary organizations in society. This chapter analyzes how contemporary British conservative theory has redefined its political premises and united around these goals. It focuses on the thinking of Michael Oakeshott and Friedrich Hayek. By the late 1970s they had become the most important influences among the intellectuals launching the most comprehensive conservative critique of British politics and society since the late Victorian period. That the mentors of new conservative political theory in the United Kingdom have been writing for over sixty years does not mean that this conservatism is old, as they have made important adjustments in their thinking in recent decades. Indeed, while some critics believed Oakeshott's On Human Conduct, published in 1975, was the parting shot of a retreating conservative outcast, more recent analysts have noted that "15 years later Oakeshott's arguments can be looked upon as ... the opening shots of a new intellectual offensive which achieved some of its political and conceptual objectives in the 1980s."13 Whereas Oakeshott's and Hayek's early analyses argued that state policies were destroying the proper relation between state and civil society, their new analyses concentrate on how the state can reestablish political authority, reconstitute intermediate organizations, and protect individual liberty. This chapter also distinguishes Oakeshott's and Hayek's thinking and situates their respective views in the debate that animated British conservative theory from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. EARLY OPPOSITION THOUGHT

The seeds of new British conservative theory can be found in the opposition by a few intellectuals, most notably Oakeshott and Hayek, to the postwar political principles of "the middle way" or "Butskellism."

• 6 • The Redefinition of British Conservatism •

Adopted by both the Conservative and Labour parties, it ascribed responsibility to the elected government for full employment, industrial transitions, comprehensive social insurance as well as the preservation of private property. By this combination of democracy and elements of negative and positive liberty, the middle way sought to avoid autocracy and class division. During the 1930s and 1940s Robert Boothby, Quentin Hogg, Harold Macmillan, and R. A. Butler had begun to rally Conservative politicians and partisans around this approach to government. Their books, articles, and speeches asserted that the Western countries had changed from entrepreneurial to managerial societies. The preservation of a responsible Conservative party, they argued, required an adjustment to these social changes, a new outlook and a new set of public policies.14 Indeed, most conservative theorists and politicians viewed the postwar adoption of the middle way as a means to preserve high politics, interpreting Keynesianism as a tool for macroeconomic management by the political and bureaucratic elite. Keynes's ideas, most conservatives maintained, did not involve any direct state interference in the economy; the policy elite would merely set the overall framework by using the Treasury and national social policies. Conservatives believed that Keynesianism relieved them of a tremendous burden. They now had a mechanism for obviating the potentially divisive issue of high unemployment. They were free to pursue the questions of sterling, decolonization, and balance of power on the Continent.15 Hayek and Oakeshott differed. Hayek warned that individual liberty, not democracy or planning, was the key bulwark between state and society. The establishment of a defense of individual rights and spontaneous social development created an independent civil society that was a sufficient condition for preserving the autonomy of each sphere. Moreover, Hayek warned, the conflation of democracy and economic planning would hasten, not contain, state interference in society. Hayek envisioned a tragic political scenario caused by middle way policies. State plans and regulation of the economy would restrict the market's capacity for growth and spontaneous social development. Resulting economic dislocation and political discontent would lead the state to engage in more of the politics of resource distribution, establishing new planning structures outside the electoral framework that would lead the state to intrude even more deeply into society. Further economic disequilibrium and political discontent would accelerate a cy-

• The Redefinition of British Conservatism • 7 •

cle of political centralization and the subordination of civil society. There would be a political crisis within the state between those willing to abandon all ideals and institutionalize total planning and those willing to reconsider the commitment to planning. "The inability of democratic assemblies to carry out what seems to be a clear mandate of the people will inevitably cause dissatisfaction with democratic institutions," Hayek stated. "The conviction grows that if efficient planning is to be done, the direction must be 'taken out of polities' and placed in the hands of experts—permanent officials or independent autonomous bodies." If the political leadership did not break from this program and return to policies that developed civil society, a totalitarian order would emerge to destroy both democracy and civil institutions. "It is necessary now to state the unpalatable truth that it is Germany whose fate we are in some danger of repeating," warned Hayek.16 Hayek claimed that the primary problem was intellectual. Although negative liberty had restricted state power and enabled civil institutions and private property to develop, it produced only incremental, prosaic progress. This was not attractive to most intellectuals witnessing dramatic revolutions and progress in science and wishing for comparable transformations in politics. This orientation contributed to a dangerous new approach to the law. Formerly, law emerged from the state's codifying of formalized rules from the common practices of civil society. Social "rules" or practices became the common law, providing a framework within which the individual moved and made choices. Now, the rule of law, elaborated in the doctrine of legal positivism, was associated merely with following legal procedures. This interpretation of the law had gained credence after the unification of Germany, an achievement of the artifice of leadership rather than of evolution; it thereby strengthened the intellectuals' belief that societies could be remodeled by preconceived design. In short, the law had shifted from being an instrument accommodating social progress to one serving the state's plans and designs. "The substantive conception of the Rechtstaat, which required that rules of law possess definite properties, was displaced by a purely formal concept which required merely that all action of the state be authorized by the legislature," Hayek complained. "In short, a 'law' was that which merely stated that whatever a certain authority did should be legal."17 Hayek stated that no political party in Britain appeared capable of stopping this retreat from negative liberty and common law. He claimed

• 8 m The Redefinition of British Conservatism •

the Liberal party had not embraced the former since the 1906 CampbellBannerman government. Negative liberty had been replaced by the view that the state had to achieve a positive freedom involving increased intervention in social and economic life. From this perspective, the state had the duty to see that citizens were able to take advantage of the opportunities for fulfillment that a reformed political and legal order provided. This interpretation of liberty, Hayek claimed, legitimized state coercion of civil institutions and private property. While the Labour party, according to Hayek, was the fullest expression of this outlook, the Conservative party was unwilling to stop arbitrary rule by the state; it enjoyed the use of state power. "In general, it can probably be said that the conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes," noted Hayek. "Like the socialist, he regards himself as entitled to force the values he holds on other people."18 Oakeshott's criticisms of Britain's postwar middle way principles and policies primarily were based on a philosophical standpoint. To Oakeshott, philosophy is the understanding of the ideas we use in coming to terms with reality. He embraces F. H. Bradley's view that all judgments and understandings involve the bringing of reality under ideas and that philosophy analyzes the different types of understandings developed by the mind to create a coherent reality and organize behavior. "Philosophy in general has not to anticipate the discoveries of the particular sciences nor the evolution of history," stated Bradley. "The philosophy of religion has not to make a new religion or teach an old one, but simply to understand the religious consciousness; and aesthetic has not to produce works of fine art, but to theorize the beautiful which it finds; political philosophy has not to play tricks with the state, but to understand it; and ethics has not to make the world moral, but to reduce to theory the morality current in the world."19 To Oakeshott, philosophy initially entails analyzing assumptions behind activities: for example, the body of knowledge scientists assume during experimentation, the rules of language people assume when talking, the outlook embraced by historians when explaining an event. Philosophers recognize that each of these distinct human activities is animated by different, coherent modes of experience, yet they recognize that each of these modes of experience is based on abstracting some experiences from the total human experience. "On the one hand, a mode of experience, in virtue of its character as a world of ideas, comes before

• The Redefinition of British Conservatism • 9 •

us as that which is satisfactory in experience, a coherent world of ideas," states Oakeshott. "But on the other hand, in virtue of its modality, it must fall short of a fully coherent world of ideas. Thus no mode of experience is merely a mode, for no abstraction can be a mere abstraction."20 While philosophers seek to understand the different modes of thinking that different practices require, they do not maintain their analysis at this level of understanding; they turn on themselves and critically assess the principles they adopt in assessing the assumptions of others. This, in turn, leads to further questioning of the ideas utilized for this purpose. Philosophy becomes boundless theorizing, involving relentless critiques of assumptions. Oakeshott continues, Philosophical experience is, then, experience without reservation or arrest, without presupposition or postulate, without limit or category; it is experience which is critical throughout and unencumbered with extraneous purposes which introduce partiality and abstraction into experience. It is the attempt to realize the character of experience absolutely. And it is satisfied, consequently, with nothing save an absolutely coherent and complete world of experience; it will accept only that which it cannot avoid without contradicting itself.21 Oakeshott rejects the Aristotelian idea that philosophy reveals clues to the better conduct of life. Rather, the more philosophical a philosophy, the more it questions its own assumptions, the more it moves away from practice. A philosopher can understand the abstractions a practice requires but not engage in practice, as this requires assumptions—unquestioned or suspended—which philosophers reject. Philosophers can only understand the cave; they cannot accept the abstractions necessary to engage in activity. Most of Oakeshott's postwar essays explain how the assumptions of science and history were distinct from those of production, education, politics, practical activities, and others and how the conflation of different modes of experience would destroy morality, freedom, and order.22 Human activities, he argued, were based on patterns; not a pattern based on an extrinsic source, but a pattern intrinsic to the activity itself, often identified as customs, traditions, rules, or maxims. These patterns establish the basis for right and wrong behavior, not owing to their correspondence with some objective reality, but owing to their being the sources of coherence in human activity. "They are not, properly speak-

• 10 • The Redefinition of British Conservatism •

ing, expressions of approval and disapproval, or of knowledge of how to behave—they are the coherence, they are the substance of our knowledge of how to behave. We do not first decide that certain behavior is right or desirable and then express our approval of it in an institution; our knowledge of how to behave is, at this point, the institution."23 Like Gilbert Kyle's "knowing how" and Karl Polanyi's "tacit knowledge," these patterns or modes of experience provide the procedures for the pursuit of private, substantive goals. "A particular action, in short, never begins in particularity, but always in an idiom or a tradition of activity. A man who is not already a scientist cannot even formulate a scientific problem; what he will formulate is a problem which a connoisseur will at once recognize not to be a 'scientific problem' because it is incapable of being considered in a 'scientific manner.' "24 When a state attempts to direct these patterns of activities toward rational political goals, the patterns lose both their coherence and their ability to set procedures for the pursuit of private, substantive goals. "The life of a society loses its rhythm and continuity and is resolved into a succession of problems and crises all sense of what Burke called the partnership between the present and the past is lost."25 Oakeshott claimed that the politics that combined different modes of experience also had led to a convergence of high and low politics, undermining the division of labor between the central state and other institutions in society. The central state had preserved its sovereignty by keeping distance from the autonomous civil practices of production, education, and others. Now, as the state pursued programmatic goals in economics, education, health, and other policy domains, it not only would weaken the intermediary institutions and modes of experiences that had developed around these activities, but also would be basing its political authority on fulfilling these goals. Because Oakeshott predicted these policies would fail, he believed the central state, intermediate institutions, and civil practices would lose authority. Contrary to Hayek, Oakeshott did not warn of a peaceful, legal road to totalitarianism. He feared a postmodern world of barbarism or nihilism: a political order without any authority; an incoherent society fragmented over contending interpretations of the truth. "Taking charge, the morality of the selfconscious pursuit of ideals will have a disintegrative effect upon habits of behavior. When action is called for, speculation or criticism will intervene," Oakeshott warned. "It will seem more important to have an intellectually defensible moral ideology than a ready habit of moral be-

• The Redefinition of British Conservatism • 11 •

havior. And it will be assumed that a morality which is not easily transferable to another society, which lacks an obvious universality, is (for that reason) inadequate for the needs of the society of its origin. The society will wait upon its self-appointed moral teachers, pursuing the extremes they recommend and at a loss when they are silent."26 Oakeshott advocated a return to the constitutionalism that had dominated conservative thinking from the late Victorian era to the interwar years. The state should focus on the high politics of foreign policy, sterling, and the preservation of a diffusion of power within society. It should attend to low politics—distributing resources for social services, arbitrating sectoral conflicts—only if political subunits or civil institutions and practices were faltering and threatening the independence of the central state. A conservative, Oakeshott stated, advocates a government that preserves peace through resolving the periodic collisions between different beliefs and interests that are endemic to a society with independent civil practices. "Thus, governing is recognized as a specific and limited activity: not the management of an enterprise, but the rule of those engaged in a great diversity of self-chosen enterprises. It is not concerned with concrete persons, but with activities; and with activities only in respect of their propensity to collide with one another."27 After "attending to the arrangements of society," the state should return to high politics. By ruling in this manner, Oakeshott suggested, the state, while losing nothing in strength, is itself the emblem of that diffusion of power which it exists to promote.... It is the method of government most economical in the use of power. ... It encourages a tradition of resistance to the dangerous concentrations which is far more effective than any promiscuous onslaught however crushing; it controls effectively, but without breaking the grand affirmative flow of things; and it gives a practical definition of the kind of limited but necessary service a society may expect from its government, restraining us from vain and dangerous expectations.28 Although Oakeshott advanced a politics that encouraged differentiation among distinct civil practices and a constitutionalism that reestablished a division between high and low politics, he confessed to being unable to propose the proper approach to a political order that no longer sustained independent civil practices. A key task under such conditions, he noted, would be to transfuse "a specially rich mixture of ideals, principles, rules and purposes" that resembled as closely as possible the char-

• 12 • The Redefinition of British Conservatism •

acteristics of the civil practices that no longer existed. However, Oakeshott continued, the success or failure of such a project was not solely dependent on the efficacy of a political program; it also depended on whether remnants of past civil practices remained in society. "To turn the dry bones of a morality into a living thing is by no means easy— indeed, it is utterly impossible if the sum total of our knowledge is anatomical," warned Oakeshott. "There is, in fact, no way in which a knowledge of how to behave can be made to spring solely from the propositions about good behavior. In the end, the cure depends upon the native strength of the patient; it depends on the unimpaired relics of his knowledge of how to behave."29 Oakeshott was criticized by many as a reactionary for his rejection of both the middle way policies and "Modern Conservatism." More intellectually challenging, however, were the charges that Oakeshott's own philosophy constrained his ability to make a comprehensive political analysis. Oakeshott was analyzing the British political predicament philosophically, criticizing the political practice of combining the different abstractions or assumptions used in coming to terms with reality and organizing experience. Yet, he claimed, philosophy, by definition, could not offer practical prescriptions without denying its philosophical character of eschewing abstraction or assumptions. Indeed, in one essay Oakeshott opposed state management of the economy on the basis of philosophical distinctions between the principles of science and economic production.30 However, in another essay Oakeshott claimed that "political philosophy cannot be expected to increase our ability to be successful in political activity. It will not help us to distinguish between good and bad political projects; it has no power to guide or to direct us in the enterprise of pursuing the intimations of our tradition."31 The idea of a "conservative philosophy" contradicted Oakeshott's philosophy. He could be either a philosophic critic without an alternative or he could suggest alternatives without a philosophy. He chose to do both and was written off by many as either an anachronism or an inconsistent philosopher.32 During the 1960s Hayek's tragic political scenario also confronted contradictions. His predictions that the distinction between state and society would diminish, that statutory legislation would take on a more erratic character, and that nondemocratic planning boards would be initiated were all confirmed. However, Britain enjoyed postwar prosperity, and the state had not crushed civil institutions and private property as

• The Redefinition of British Conservatism • 13 •

plans failed and discontent grew. Indeed, the state often abandoned plans because of popular pressure. Meanwhile, the market remained an organizing mechanism within the British economy while some features of state planning and social programs also had become entrenched. All this lessened the force of Hayek's either/or scenario.33 STEMMING DECLINE

During the 1970s the center of British political discourse shifted from promoting balanced development and middle way policies to that of stemming economic decline and political decay. Britain's growth rates had fallen well below those of other Western polities. Long, bitter strikes periodically suspended economic activity. Labour and Conservative governments were in turn rejected at the polls. State policies became increasingly unstable as governments sought both to placate the public and maintain fiscal responsibility. For example, in the January 1971 White Paper, Conservatives cut £1,072 million from a program they inherited from Labour: the November 1971 White Paper promptly restored £689 million. In May 1973 the chancellor of the exchequer announced cuts of £681 million, only to have a December White Paper add another £392 million; hardly had this been published than cuts of £1,263 million were announced, which were, however, counterbalanced by increases of £1,545 million in plans for 1975/76. No sooner had the 1975 White Paper come out than the chancellor of the exchequer announced modest increases in expenditure plans for 1975/1976 and £900-million-cuts in the projection for 1976/77. In 1977 the Labour government had to turn to the International Monetary Fund.34 It was in this context that the "ungovernability" and "political overload" thesis became influential. It held that an increasing number of diverse groups and institutions were making demands upon the state; the state's commitments were extending well beyond its resources and abilities; the state lacked the authority to hold demands within the limits of the possible. Many intellectuals in Britain began to believe that the problematic of Britain's liberal democracy would not be overcome. "Representative democracy," stated Samuel Brittan, "suffers from internal contradictions, which are likely to increase in time [T]he system is likely to pass away within the lifetime of people now adult. This idea has now become commonplace."35 In this political and economic setting many conservative theorists and

• 14 • The Redefinition of British Conservatism •

intellectuals took up the task of reexamining the political order. The high culture, they concluded, had become hostile to free enterprise and encouraged public division and chaos. Their endeavor was catalyzed by the broadly adverse reaction to the Heath government's Quiet Revolution, an attempt to redress the government's perception of an imbalance between capital and labor through public policies, notably by abandoning an incomes policy, reforming trade union law, lowering taxation, and allowing the market more play as Britain entered the European Economic Community. This hostile response, conservative intellectuals claimed, weakened support for the Heath government, contributed to its abandoning reforms, and led to strikes that occasioned the government's collapse. In the wake of this reversal, Robert Blake—the eminent historian of the Conservative party and long a supporter of the Tory goal of promoting incremental, balanced change—discussed conservatism's need to implement both a new, coherent political outlook and a more doctrinal approach to politics. "It is hard to believe that an administration which felt it had a firm doctrinal base, and an intellectually legitimate ideology, would have diverged so far from the principles which it had been proclaiming before it had come to power," stated Blake.36 Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s conservative theorists and writers debated the premises of Britain's political order. OAKESHOTT'S AND HAYEK'S SHIFTS IN THINKING

Although the shift in British political discourse provided an opening for Oakeshott's and Hayek's critiques of British politics, the two theorists also made important intellectual adjustments during the 1970s and 1980s. As a result, their thinking became more accessible to conservative theorists and intellectuals seeking to redefine the premises of the British polity.37 Oakeshott sought to resolve the tension between his critical, idealist philosophy and his desire to offer an interpretation of the good society. In Experience and Its Modes Oakeshott had emphasized that philosophers transcend the abstractions or assumptions of knowledge made by historians, scientists, and others while engaging in their respective practices in order to understand experience in its totality. In On Human Conduct Oakeshott concentrates on how a philosopher makes assumptions and thinks abstractly in order to complement the quest for a total understanding of experience. He refrains from espousing a philosophy of politics that consists of boundless criticism of postulates and

• The Redefinition of British Conservatism • 15 •

inhibits a formulation of the good society. Rather, he focuses on a theory that posits a "platform of understanding" to deal with the world of political reality and accepts that it is based on abstraction and incomplete knowledge: The engagement of understanding is not unconditional on account of the absence of conditions or in virtue of a supposed terminus in an unconditional theorem; what constitutes its unconditionality i the continuous recognition of the conditionality of conditions. And consequently, this engagement to be perpetually en voyage may be arrested without being denied. The theorist who drops anchor here or there and puts out his equipment of theoretic hooks and nets in order to take the fish of the locality, interrupts but does not betray his calling. And indeed, the unconditional engagement of understanding must be arrested and inquiry must remain focused on a this if any identity is to become intelligible in terms of its postulates. An investigation which denies or questions its own conditions surrenders its opportunity of achieving its own conditional perfection; the theorist who interrogates instead of using his theoretic equipment catches no fish.38 Equally important, Oakeshott abandons a constitutionalism and territorial politics based on a division of labor between high and low politics. He focuses on the central state taking responsibility for the establishment of the rules and practices "previously developed by intermediary institutions and society. These patterns or practices are necessary when individuals and institutions engage in the ordinary routines of civil society: the market relations that allow individuals to pursue private gain; the universities' requirements that enable students to attain degrees; the local education authorities' distribution of funds that provide for a national education system. Oakeshott previously had defined these practices by their intrinsic, self-generating patterns, which were assumed to be conventions or traditions. These independent civil practices had allowed the central state to preserve its distance from low politics, entering this arena only to deal with the periodic breakdown of an intermediary institution or civil practice. Now Oakeshott is no longer confident that either intermediary institutions or society can maintain these practices. In his last essay, he claims that the public is now characterized by an aimlessness and absence of self-discipline: "The Stoic and martial virtues are notably absent from their character. They are a way-

• 16 m The Redefinition of British Conservatism •

ward rather than a listless people; and they are resentful of government, not as a wild and passionate people may be, but in the manner of spoilt children. Indeed, such order as there is among them has for so long been maintained by bribes, that this is the only kind of control they now tolerate."39 Oakeshott finds that the chief problem with independent civil practices generating the rules that allow social interaction is that there is no remedy when they break down. Once disagreements arise over a civil practice, the disputants invoke God, natural rights, freedom, and many other norms to reinforce their interpretations; it becomes too difficult to determine either authentic civil practice or its goodness. "These difficulties never invade the rule of the game," Oakeshott counters; "any question of their authenticity is settled by an accepted rulebook, and the arbitrary character of the conditions prescribed by the rules of a game precludes anything but a relativist consideration of their 'rightness,' and there is no temptation to confuse the two."40 Hence, the authority of a rule cannot be based on its "antiquity, in its current availablity, its traditional acceptance or in the recognition of the desirability of what it prescibes [I]ts authenticity derives from a presumption, namely, that it cannot resist appropriation, rejection or emendation in a legislative enactment."41 Oakeshott asserts that although there are areas in which the central state will not establish a new procedural rule, it must reserve the right to do so if necessary. This new responsibility of the state is envisioned not as a temporary, emergency measure (as in Burke and DeMaistre) to reestablish order and discipline, but as a permanent responsibility.42 The constant theme in Oakeshott's thinking, whether he is emphasizing the coherence created by different modes of experience or the rules established by the state, is the necessity of an obligatory framework within which individuals and associations interact and pursue substantive aims. Of course, there are important new features in Oakeshott's thinking. There is neither a division of tasks between the central state and intermediary organizations nor a distinction between high and low politics. The rules of Oakeshott's central state are formally authorized, less flexible, and more precise than the modes or idioms of experience. These rules are not based upon a public belief that either political subunits or civil institutions and practices developed from society. Finally, the state enforces obligation through power:

• The Redefinition of British Conservatism • 17 •

Agents [are]... related in terms of obligation to subscribe to ... rules of conduct, which differ from what I have called moral considerations in being subject to enactment, repeal and alteration in an authorized procedure, in that conditions they prescribe are narrower, less demanding, and more precisely formulated, in there being an authoritative procedure for determining whether or not an agent has adequately subscribed to these rules, and in there being known penalties attached to inadequate subscription and an apparatus of power to enforce them. This relationship I have called civil association.43 Because Oakeshott often has called civil practices and rules traditions, his approach to them should be distinguished from those of others. Steven Lukes, for example, focuses on how tradition and ritual embody a "mobilization of bias"—an example of the ruling elite consolidating its ideological dominance by exploiting pageantry as propaganda. Lukes analyzes the role and functions of monarchies, rituals, and ceremonies. Oakeshott ignores this interpretation of tradition and deals with civil practices and the state's establishing of obligatory routines in economics, education, political practice, and public interaction.44 Edward Shils, evoking Burkean themes, distinguishes traditions and traditionalism. A tradition is unaware of itself; it is the natural order in the sense that only chaos is an alternative. Traditionalism, in turn, is the ideological attempt to reestablish the belief that a newly reformed political or social practice is the natural, traditional order.45 As Burke noted, such reforms are carefully calibrated and "confined to the peccant part only; to the part which produced the necessary deviation," whereupon the state withdraws and allows the reinvented tradition to become entrenched.46 Oakeshott's analysis of a tradition has some affinity with that of Shils or Burke. While eschewing the current in Burke's thinking that suggested traditions are either inspired by Providence or reflections of unfolding wisdom, he does believe that traditions prevent chaos; they are the guidelines founded through an accumulation of practices in many fields of activity—language, production, education; they provide the resources and boundaries for future activities. However, Oakeshott does not embrace what Shils describes as traditionalism. He rejects the view that political practices can reestablish belief in a broken assumption. In this context, the state's responsibility is not to claim that what was previ-

• 18 • The Redefinition of British Conservatism •

ously assumed was natural, but to establish the proper framework of laws and rules for that sphere of society. Oakeshott's break with a Burkean traditionalism is clear.47 The thesis of Oakeshott's most comprehensive work, On Human Conduct, is that a state does not exist essentially to serve common purposes or interests but to sustain a structure of rules and conventions within which interpersonal and telic conduct can be sustained. He believes that by establishing a framework of law that shuns substantive goals and restricts, rather than mobilizes, the activities of intermediate organizations, the state can create procedures that allow social interaction and the private pursuit of substantive goals. Oakeshott claims there is confusion between two types of laws governing distinct types of associations. There are enterprise associations (for example, trade unions and business companies), in which members are united by the pursuit of programmatic goals. Their rules are prudential instruments for realizing substantive goals. "These rules are contingently related to the purpose concerned," states Oakeshott. "It means... that if any of them were considered in terms of its desirability, it would be judged by its propensity to promote or to hinder the pursuit of this purpose."48 There also are associations of practice (for example, a university), in which general rules allow members to pursue specialized or substantive goals. They are unified solely by their subscription to these rules. "To be related in terms of a practice," explains Oakeshott, "is precisely not to be associated in the reciprocal satisfaction of wants or ... in the pursuit of common purposes; it is relationship in respect of a common recognition of considerations such as uses or rules intelligently subscribed to in selfchosen performances."49 Political problems arise when the enterprise mode of association is adopted by the state as the society becomes dominated by substantive goals and instrumental rules. In contrast, the state in a civil association is an association of practice. It is designed not to impose a pattern of life or to direct public activities or to make people good but to set procedural conditions that make it possible for the public to interact and associate while pursuing their private projects. "It follows," notes Oakeshott, "that they [citizens] are related solely in terms of their common recognition of the rules which constitute a practice of civility."50 Oakeshott further claims that intermediate institutions, including organizations devoted to programmatic goals, may exist within a civil association. However, intermediate institutions must be voluntary;

• The Redefinition of British Conservatism • 19 •

otherwise they force an individual to pursue substantive aims against his or her will. The member of a programmatic organization "is free because his situation is a choice of his own and because he can extricate himself from it by choosing to do so Freedom here is conceptually tied to the choice to be and remain associated."51 Yet a state by definition is a nonvoluntary, coercive institution; it cannot allow its citizens to obey laws according to their preferences. Henceforth, a state that pursues purposive goals forces its citizens to pursue substantive aims. "To be a member is to have surrendered choice in these matters."52 In short, those intermediate organizations that have programmatic goals can pursue their aims, but they cannot infringe upon the autonomy and authority of the state. As will be seen in chapter 5, this approach to programmatic group interests has influenced policy proposals by conservative theorists toward trade unions, local governments, and local education authorities. Oakeshott also has elaborated a new interpretation of constitutionalism. As he places responsibility on the central state for a stable framework of rules in society, he proposes a centralization of state structures, advocating a "pure doctrine" of separation of powers. The "offices of government," he claims, must be based on three "departments," the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary. To each of these branches, there is a corresponding identifiable function of government, namely, creating law, administering law, interpreting law, respectively. This arrangement fuses rather than checks state power. The legislative branch, Oakeshott insists, must be the sole source of law making. The judiciary is concerned solely with considering public conduct in respect to the laws enacted by the legislature. It is to deliberate not over the desirability of laws, but in respect of an activity's conformity with the conditions of existing legal obligations. At the same time, the executive branch is to focus exclusively on establishing the authority of the legislative and judicial branches by creating the organizational apparatus required for enforcing their decisions. The executive is "an instrument for implementing, not formulating and issuing, prescriptive utterances. The consideration here is... power."53 Oakeshott's identification of the separation of powers as a doctrine that coordinates branches of the state rather than limits the state evokes themes of early modern political theorists—Marsilius, Sir Walter Raleigh, Hobbes, and others—who focused on the state's need to coordinate different functions in order to consolidate power over society. Oakeshott's objective is similar. Indeed, he notes that his view of the

• 20 • The Redefinition of British Conservatism •

modern state "was superbly pioneered ... by Bodin and by Hobbes."54 He formerly had embraced a constitutionalism that diffused power across the territories of society in order to preserve the autonomy and authority of the central state. Oakeshott now prescribes a separate and distinctive power of the legislature: it is the exclusive lawmaker in the polity; therefore, he advocates a constitutionalism that coordinates the functions of the state so it can establish this power over society.55 Oakeshott claims that his separation of powers doctrine is not a constitutional theory. Constitutionalism, he argues, addresses the questions of the shape of the legislative center, and these are questions of political prudence, not political principles. The lawmaking office may be responsible to a representative assembly, a mixed parliament, or a monarchy. It depends on which will provide the lawmaking center with the most authority. To support a legislature based on democracy "is to express a belief that its authority to enact laws will be more confidently acknowledgeable than that of a legislature assembled and constituted in any other manner," states Oakeshott. "It forecasts nothing about the jus or injus of its enactments." Oakeshott's central political concern is that the legislative center have power over the entire lawmaking process. "In short," he concludes, "the first condition of the rule of law is a 'sovereign' legislative office."56 Oakeshott appears to claim that the lawmaking center must limit itself while maintaining civil association, that is, a system of laws and rules that abstains from having substantive goals but provides conditions for people to interact and associate while pursuing their aims. Legislators deliberate in the civil association, but they must refrain from establishing laws requiring the state to pursue programmatic goals. Legislative deliberation consists solely of discussions of the institutions and social practices that have faltered, thus requiring the state to institute formal procedures to which all members must comply while pursuing private aims. Politics in the civil association "is concerned with determining the desirable norms of civil conduct and with the approval or disapproval of civil rules which because they qualify the pursuit of purposes, cannot be inferred from the purposes pursued."57 Oakeshott claims the legislative center must shun programmatic statutes or substantive goals, yet he belittles the idea of placing restraints on it. The legislative center of the civil association, while claiming to be an expression of the rule of law, will not place itself under the rule of law: "The rule of law has no need of any such beliefs or institutions;

• The Redefinition of British Conservatism • 21 •

indeed, more often than not they are the occasion of profitless dispute, and when invoked as the conditions of the obligation to observe the condition prescribed by lex they positively pervert the association; they are the recipe for anarchy."58 Although Oakeshott subordinates all intermediary institutions and civil practices to the rules of civil association developed by the legislative center of the state, the legislative center remains above the rule of law. Oakeshott's civil association has a normative focus of establishing procedures that allow social interaction and the pursuit of private, substantive aims, but Oakeshott will not raise this normative concern above the principle of legal positivism whereby rules established by the state according to authorized procedures constitute laws that all citizens are obligated to obey. In short, Oakeshott's critical underlying principle is establishing the autonomy and authority of the legislative center of the state. It is Hobbesian liberalism.59 Oakeshott's civil association is a statement of political philosophy that establishes a standard for evaluating a political society; it is not a program for political action. He envisions protracted struggles to create laws consistent with the principles of civil association as he recognizes that the modern European state is "an ambiguous association, a strange and perhaps unstable mixture of civil and enterprise associations." Tongue in cheek, he points out that it took nearly a century for the Marylebourne Cricket Club to establish its rules as authoritative in the sport of cricket in England.60 Over time, he suggests, the state may advance toward establishing a civil association by pursuing three general tasks: distinguishing between the laws of a civil association and those of an enterprise state; identifying those intermediary institutions and practices in society that have broken down and require new rules of procedure; establishing the authority required to enforce these laws.61 During the 1970s, Hayek too altered his analysis of the British political predicament. Rationalism in politics is no longer manifested solely by quasi-scientific projects aimed at organizing political and social life. It also is expressed by the refusal to accept all rules and conventions that cannot be explained and justified. Previously Comte, Saint-jSimon, and Marx were the archetypical intellectuals whose scientism afforded the theoretical basis for opposing a political order based upon individual freedom. Now, a blending of Marx and Freud, or of Comte and Rousseau, provides the theoretical underpinning to those who seek liberation from the requisites of liberty and order.62 More important, Hayek no longer emphasizes that it is the prosaic

• 22 • The Redefinition of British Conservatism •

character of market societies that renders them vulnerable to intellectuals' attack. He now claims that unlimited democracy—political authority centralized in the representative assembly, the unlimited scope of statutory legislation—is the central threat to liberty. Unlimited democracy has produced not extreme dirigisme, but intermediate organizations seeking to exact privileges from the state. These units of pressure politics are returning liberal democracies to a state of nature in which people pursue common ends in small groups. Western civilization has been based on political associations of general rules—often forbidding the individual to do what his or her instincts demanded, no longer demanding a common set of goals—yet it is being destroyed by the competition among groups. Like Oakeshott, Hayek now claims that the central struggle is between two modes of association: those of substance and those of general rules. Our present difficulty is that we must constantly adjust our lives, our thoughts and our emotions, in order to live simultaneously within different kinds of orders according to different rules. If we were to apply the unmodified, uncurbed, rules of the microcosmos (i.e. of the small band or troop, or of say, our families) to the macro-cosmos (our wider civilization), as our instincts and sentimental yearnings often make us wish to do, we would destroy it. Yet if we were always to apply the rules of the extended order to our more intimate groupings, we would crush them. So we must learn to live in two sorts of worlds at once.63 The threat of legal positivism, Hayek continues, is no longer expressed principally by political leaders and intellectuals organizing social development according to preconceived views, but rather by democratic governments legislating in response to the political pressures produced by intermediate organizations. Hayek's concern is not only state control of society, but also the destruction by organized groups of all stable mores and rules. "This legalized corruption is not the fault of the politicians; they cannot avoid it if they are to gain positions in which they can do any good. It becomes a built-in feature of any system in which majority support authorizes a special measure assuaging particular discontent."64 Contrary to Oakeshott, Hayek proposes a specific structure of government as necessary for an association of general rules. He rejects such proposals as the one by Oakeshott that refuse to restrict or limit the powers of the lawmaking center of the state. "An omnipotent parlia-

• The Redefinition of British Conservatism • 23 •

ment, not confined to laying down general rules, means that we have an arbitrary government."65 He proposes a model constitution that divides the government according to functions and creates a system of checks and balances.66 This institutes an elected government assembly whose sole function is to administer government resources (public law) and an elected legislature whose sole function is to set down general rules protecting the individual's private domain (private law). A constitutional court appointed by the legislature would resolve conflicts between the two elected bodies. The legislative branch would be prevented by law from utilizing the state to seek programmatic goals. From Hayek's perspective, the lawmaking center must be subordinate to the rule of law as expressed by civil association: "The power of all authorities exercising governmental functions ought to be limited by long run rules which nobody has the power to alter or abrogate in the service of particular ends."67 Like Oakeshott, however, Hayek argues that new laws are needed to restrain and reconstitute intermediate organizations. He says that the state must define the rights of the individual in relation to organizations. British private law, he claims, has been concerned solely with establishing rules that address infringements of one individual upon the private domain of another. However, little in private law protects the individual from intermediate institutions. Hayek is especially concerned by laws granting trade unions closed shops, secondary boycotts, and picketing.68 Oakeshott and Hayek's similar views on both restricting the political influence of intermediate organizations and creating a civil association that does not pursue purposive goals offers an important basis of unity between the two theorists. At the same time, Oakeshott's separation of powers doctrine and legal positivism enhance the authority of the legislative office of the central state and, indeed, place it above the rule of law. In contrast, Hayek's mixed government doctrine limits the authority of the state, including its legislative office, by placing it under rules of law. All of these issues would be debated as British conservatism sought to define a new constitutionalism.69 TWO CONSTITUTIONAL THEORIES

Discussions of a constitutional crisis and breakdown of conventional social practices became important, divisive features of conservative intellectual discourse during the 1970s and early 1980s. Some of the state's

m 24 m The Redefinition of British Conservatism •

most basic features—the electoral or party system, the role of Parliament and the position of the House of Lords, and even the unitary character of the Constitution—were called into question. The debate was conducted primarily in the context of despair over erratic public policies, economic decline, and the state's inability to enforce statutes. The group that dominated the debate (best represented by Oakeshott's views) supported a view of parliamentary sovereignty, insisting that the legislative center of the national government must regain authority and become the sole lawmaking center of the polity. Another group (best represented by Hayek's views) supported a garantiste constitutionalism, an organization of the central state under the rule of higher laws, for the purpose of restraining arbitrary power. The fundamental issue was the authority of the rule-making center versus the rule of law. The advocates of parliamentary sovereignty claimed that restraints on the political center would exacerbate problems originating from an erosion of the central state's authority. The garantiste constitutionalists countered that restraints on the central state were necessary because political divisions were too deep to enable Parliament in its present form, a single representative assembly, to establish a civil association.70 Since the advent of modern constitutionalism there has been a debate as to whether parliamentary sovereignty in the United Kingdom is an expression of garantiste constitutionalism. Important British constitutional theorists—William Blackstone, John Austin, Dicey, among others—have rejected the conflation of the two concepts, reiterating Hobbes's thesis that "however much the fact may be obscured by complicated constitutional and legal forms, law is the command of a discoverable, physical sovereign authority armed with power."71 However, since Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws, constitutional theorists outside of Britain have downplayed the British distinction between parliamentary sovereignty and the placing of government under the rule of law. "One is brought to wonder why the emphasis is laid on the letter so much more than on the spirit of the law of the constitution," Giovanni Sartori complains in discussing British constitutional theory. "What really matters is the end, telos. And the purpose, the telos, of English ... constitutionalism was, from the outset, synthesized by one word: the French (and Italian) term garantisme."72 Now, however, British conservative political theory was clearly distinguishing parliamentary sovereignty and garantiste constitutionalism as expressions of different political ends.

• The Redefinition of British Conservatism • 25 •

The debate began after Edward Heath's U-turn and did not end until Margaret Thatcher's second parliamentary victory in 1983. While proposing specific policies to expand market relations, many writers identified with conservatism—Hayek, Lord Hailsham, Leslie Scarman, Paul Johnson, Nevil Johnson, John Gray, and William Waldegrave, among others—offered a variety of reforms intended to place restraints on the central government: two elected assemblies of government, proportional representation, written bill of rights, lawmaking powers for an independent judiciary.73 This created an interesting dilemma for those with a deep allegiance to the Conservative party. If enacted, the proposals certainly would mark the end of party government (as the moderate political opinion prevalent in Britain surely would generate coalition governments and interparty bargaining). They also would restrict parliamentary sovereignty by means of a Bill of Rights or lawmaking powers for the judiciary. "If it be asked where under such an arrangement 'sovereignty' rests, the answer is nowhere," stated Hayek. "Since constitutional government is limited government there can be no room in it for a sovereign body if sovereignty is defined as unlimited power."74 The British state tradition of high politics would be compromised. However, garantiste constitutionalists believed that neither parliamentary sovereignty nor party government continued to express either constitutionalism or high politics. Parliamentary sovereignty expressed constitutionalism when the varying interests and views of the Monarch, Lords, and Commons influenced statutes or when the Commons reflected a balance of classes. Party government in this context, they continued, preserved high politics by creating a political center ultimately responsible to these mixed interests. Now, they complained, laws were produced by a majority party of a single representative assembly. "The sovereignty of the law and the sovereignty of an unlimited Parliament are irreconcilable," wrote Hayek. "Apparently a free constitution no longer means the freedom of the individual but a licence to the majority in Parliament to act as arbitrarily as it pleases."75 Exacerbating this problem, Nevil Johnson added, was the absence of a political elite with a uniform outlook: Political scientists may choose to identify 635 or 1,000 or perhaps 2,000 persons as constituting the political elite But to do so is merely to identify officeholders and a group of "influential" said to be close to them. This is a narrow concept of an elite, specifying

• 26 • The Redefinition of British Conservatism •

next to nothing of the qualities in virtue of which its members establish a claim to respect authority qua elite. Indeed, the problem which faces the conservative political theorist as well as the conservative politician is that there is no longer a ruling class, something which has nearly always been at one and the same time a social and political phenomenon.76 British politics, the reformers continued, were now low politics—competing parties submitting to public and sectoral demands for reallocated resources. The British government was overloaded. "We are living," Hailsham summarized, "in an electoral dictatorship."77 Garantiste constitutionalists doubted whether public opinion could be reshaped so as to shun the option of state management of political and social development. Consequently, restrictions on the activities of government were necessary. A democratic government that did not exist under formal restraints created by divided and balanced political structures would inevitably legislate programmatically in response to the most powerful political pressures placed upon it. These writers feared that a Burkean prejudice against an artificial or contrived reform would prevent conservatives from embracing this outlook. "It means recognizing that Montesquieu or Hamilton, Madison and Jay," Nevil Johnson noted, "are better guides to constitutional re-appraisal than the Burke of the Reflections on the Revolution in France."79 During the 1970s these reformers gained a following among both intellectuals and Conservative party members. In 1975 Keith Joseph made a well-publicized speech advocating a Bill of Rights to preserve individual liberty from the threat of Parliament.79 However, the advocates of parliamentary sovereignty did not hold a Burkean prejudice against structural change. The constitutional crisis, they countered, emanated from the central state's establishing of alternative centers of political authority while pursuing the politics of allocating economic resources. From 1963 through 1977, they charged, Conservative and Labour governments had abandoned high politics and attempted to integrate decision making between the national government and intermediary organizations. National Economic Development Councils, Industrial Reconstruction Boards, Regional and Sectoral Investment Agencies, Quangos, National Referendums, Consultive Council on Local Government Finance were only a few of the attempts by both party governments to devolve decision making in order to improve micro-

• The Redefinition of British Conservatism • 27 •

economic policies, public initiative, and collaboration among producer groups and government. These policies and structures, they charged, had enabled intermediate organizations to drag the central state into open battles over the allocation of economic resources. Moreover, some intermediate organizations, as encouraged by the left in Labour, had sought to take advantage of their enhanced power to establish themselves as autonomous centers of resistance to Parliament. "To proceed further in the direction of delegated power," Roger Scruton argued, "is to cause an increasing fragmentation of the state and an increasing vulnerability to corruption."80 Unfortunately, these writers bemoaned, the devolutionary strategy of the 1960s and 1970s had upset the character and functions of Britain's intermediate organizations. Consequently, the central state had to reestablish political authority over the alternative centers of power that now existed. Scruton, expressing a separation of powers doctrine similar to that of Oakeshott, stated, Montesquieu's division—into legislative, executive and judiciary— is not a division into separate governments, each with a separate regional sphere. On the contrary, it is a division of central power, which depends upon centralization if it is to be effective It is the business of government to establish sovereignty over all de facto powers: over criminals, business, trade unions, local councils, and over any other organization that may threaten the freedom and trouble the life of the ordinary citizen.81 The proponents of parliamentary sovereignty argued that the proposed restrictions on the central state through garantiste mechanisms—proportional representation, two elected chambers, written bill of rights, judiciary with lawmaking powers—would deepen the present crises created by divided authority. Oakeshott argued that the central state could not be placed under the restraint of a higher law or independent judiciary. The rule of law, he countered, has no room for a so-called Bill of Rights (that is, alleged unconditional principles of jus masquerading themselves as law), or an independent office and apparatus charged with considering the jus of a law and authorized to declare a law to be inauthentic if it were found to be "unjust." Such considerations and institutions may perhaps have an appropriate place where association is in terms of interests and jus is no more than an equitable accom-

• 28 • The Redefinition of British Conservatism •

modation of interests to one another, but they have no place whatever in association in terms of the rule of law.82 For these writers, statutes enhancing centralized authority and individual liberty were required to reestablish liberty and order. Laws restricting the activities of intermediate organizations—local governments, local education authorities, and trade unions, among others—would enable the central state to regain the autonomy to act independently, reestablish the power of ultimate authority, and gain acceptance as the rightful center of political action. At the same time, the market would be introduced as the central organizing mechanism of the economy. This would enhance both liberty and order by reestablishing spontaneous discipline through the price system. In short, the advocates of parliamentary sovereignty wished neither to place restraints on the authority of the central state nor to return to the old institutional framework that segregated the issues between the national state and other organizations. These theorists and writers produced a new mixture of Tory ideas of authority and individual liberty in order to establish the legislative office of the central state's undivided authority.

THE IDEA OF AUTHORITY

It is difficult to define the outlook of the conservative theorists advocating parliamentary sovereignty by means of the concepts of contemporary political theory and political science. Parliamentary sovereignty does not explain the different forms of authority the British central state can establish. For example, the goal of the contemporary advocates of parliamentary sovereignty is the same as that of the late Victorian conservatives: establishing an autonomous, authoritative, and legitimate political center. However, late Victorian conservative thought advocated fostering intermediate institutions and a distinction between high and low politics, while contemporary conservative theory does not believe a division of labor between the central state and other organizations can continue to preserve an authoritative political center. At the same time, contemporary conservative advocates of parliametary sovereignty argue that the central state must devise comprehensive and precise statutes for intermediary institutions and civil practices. Ferdinand Mount summarizes:

• The Redefinition of British Conservatism • 29 •

First, authority must reside and be seen to reside where it is, in theory, supposed to reside. A headmaster should be allowed to act like one. A manager should be left to get on with managing. Trade union general secretaries should carry out the will of their members and be subject to periodic election by them. Second, authority should be clearly limited to the purposes for which it is appropriate. An education authority's function is to maintain or improve standards of education in its area; it is not an agency for socialization or indoctrination. A brush company's purpose in life is to make brushes; an institution of learning's task is to uphold and advance scholarship; neither body is to be hijacked into serving as a getaway car for political or social causes. These limits on proper authority are in part a matter of self-limitation—of a true understanding of their calling by the members of the body in question— but also of precise and specific wording in statutes and other authority-defining rules.83 Nor does Sartori's distinction between semantic constitutionalism and garantiste constitutionalism help define the debate that developed within British conservatism. Garantiste constitutionalism, according to Sartori, is a "frame of political society, organized through and by law, for the purpose of restraining arbitrary power," while semantic constitutionalism "ratifies existing power arrangements for the sole benefit of the prevailing power holders."84 Although this distinction identifies the character of the garantiste current in British conservatism, semantic constitutionalism suggests a veil for the status quo to aid those in power. It does not help identify the new relation between state and society that the contemporary advocates of parliamentary sovereignty envision. Similarly, the distinctions drawn in comparative politics between strong and weak states or stateness and statelessness do not clarify the political emphasis of the conservative advocates of parliamentary sovereignty. These concepts are based on the central state's functional links to other institutions in society, identifying its capacity to mobilize activities within civil society—education, industrial development, employer-union bargaining.85 In contrast, the conservatives advocating parliamentary sovereignty seek an authoritative central state that restricts, rather than mobilizes or directs, intermediate institutions. A concept such as authoritative liberalism does combine the emphases of the advocates of parliamentary sovereignty on enhancing both the

• 30 • The Redefinition of British Conservatism •

authority of the state and individual liberty. Unfortunately, however, the idea of authority has been stretched and used in various ways by political science, limiting its efficacy in explaining this current in British conservative theory.86 In comparative politics, the authoritarian regime has been proposed as a conceptual model for analyzing the degree to which nondemocratic regimes incorporate social sectors.87 Some analysts use this model to account for recent Conservative party governments' attempts to weaken working-class power. The use of the authoritarian model, however, must overlook conservative theory's view that their program can succeed in a democratic context. Other analysts recognize this contradiction and define new conservatism as authoritarian populism. This combination of contradictory concepts— one suggesting mass exclusion, one suggesting mass participation—creates more confusion than clarity.88 Additional confusion has been created by influential critics such as David Marquand, who identify the authoritative current in conservatism as a nonideological complement to economic liberalism. From this perspective, establishing political authority is not a conservative goal, but an instrument to support the expansion of market relations.89 The idea of authority used by British conservative theory has a long tradition in British political theory and practice. It is based on the belief that people cannot attain substantive agreement and that a society will dissolve if the state is not endowed with the authority to maintain interaction and coordinated activity. It was most comprehensively expressed in the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes.90 British conservative theory has adopted this approach to political authority in different forms since the French Revolution. To repeat, Burke, Coleridge, and Disraeli believed that a thick society which left political decision making in the countryside to the landed aristocracy and Church of England preserved the central state's authority and autonomy around the strategic questions of Empire, balance of power, and property. Late Victorian conservative theory believed that ministerial resolution of strategic issues combined with a focus on provincial affairs by intermediary organizations would enable the central state to retain political authority and autonomy. The distinctive features of the contemporary conservative theory's idea of authority, as most comprehensively expressed by Oakeshott, are the emphasis on the separate powers of the central state and a concomitant deemphasis on intermediary institutions in the society.

The Redefinition of British Conservatism • 31 ARGUMENTS OF FEASIBILITY

The conservative theorists and writers who are intent on reestablishing parliamentary sovereignty and the authority of the central state believe that their outlook is not at odds with the Conservative party's attaining political success in the contemporary democratic setting. An important explanation they offer is that the postwar predominance of the state in managing social development was an aberration produced by the twentieth-century's two total wars. In these conflicts, they claim, the British found their traditional instrument of war, the navy, of limited use in defeating land-based, industrialized Germany. To prosecute these wars, the state mobilized all resources, including, through the introduction of conscription, all available manpower. They argue that mobilization, more than any other factor, was the basis on which a managerial outlook toward social development became the predominant political force in Britain.91 British conservative theory rejects the view that periods of reduced international tensions occasion greater efforts at domestic political and social engineering. Oakeshott explains that during war "the latent or not so latent ingredient of managerial lordship in ... the modern state comes decisively to the surface and is magnified." The institutions of the state, he continues, that are utilized for collecting revenue or maintaining civil order often become devices for managing resources and directing members of society after the war is over. Oakeshott states that the persistent warfare that has plagued Europe since the appearance of the state system also has familiarized Europeans with the idea of the state as an enterprise association. "Continuous warfare," he concludes, "has been the chief nourishment of the belief that a state is properly understood in these terms."92 Now, many decades after World War II, conservative theorists and writers point out, Britain has far fewer international commitments, the protection of America's deterrence doctrine, and an independent nuclear deterrent. These conditions afford the state an opportunity to develop a civil association. New British conservative theory is not being generated by "Little Englanders." It advocates continuation of Britain's role in the balance of power on the Continent, an American military presence both in the United Kingdom and on the Continent, support for a stiffened American orientation toward undeveloped countries hostile to the West, and a modernized, British nuclear deterrent.93 These policies, they note,

m 32 m The Redefinition of British Conservatism •

may contribute to Britain's becoming engaged in international conflicts and destructive wars. However, these efforts do not require the British state to manage many spheres of the society in order to ensure national security. This is the decisive question, conservatives insist, for determining the influence that war and military preparation play on the character of a nation's political association. "War and military preparation," Oakeshott notes, "imposes this [enterprise] character upon a state more or less completely, not in proportion to its destructiveness, but in proportion to the magnitude of the claims it makes upon the attention, the energies, and the resources of the subjects."94 Another rationale that the Conservative party has been offered for building the authority of the legislative center in the present democratic context stems from divisions within the Labour party. A new left wing, as represented by London's Ken Livingstone and Arthur Scargill of the National Miners' Union, has conceived a municipal and guild socialist outlook. In contrast to a Bennite concentration on national plans and national investment boards, the new left emphasizes the development of autonomous socialist organizations and local governments as instruments of resistance to the state.95 This policy, conservatives claim, threatens the sovereignty of Parliament and necessitates a powerful, central state apparatus capable of defending independent civil institutions, while breaking up and outlawing those institutions that violate and undermine the new laws of the state. "The point is," says Mount, "that socialism of this variety does not play by the rules and has no right to be given the benefit of the doubt.... Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander."96 After 1979, divisions within British social democracy, including a major third party movement, also provided these conservatives with rationales for positing the political efficacy of their outlook. The split in the opposition occasioned by the Social-Democratic party created an opportunity for the Conservative party to introduce major changes in social structures. For example, the Conservative government now could privatize the nationalized industries, which would have been unthinkable public policy when the Tories were closely competing with Labour. In turn, a privatization policy based on rules that spread share ownership deep within the working and middle classes would both enhance individuals' civil independence and reduce the political efficacy of appeals for state management and class conflict.97 Most of these writers dismiss the idea of the Conservative party becoming a permanent majority party, but they believe that statutes that,

• The Redefinition of British Conservatism • 33 •

among other things, privatize firms, diminish council estates, increase home ownership, weaken trade unions, and reshape the educational system will redevelop the social structure so as to solidify support for the new conservatism while also building support for an opposition party with a nonmanagerial approach to political and social development. Consequently, the middle ground or vital center of British politics will shift from contention over emphasis within the middle way framework to debates over policies that marginally influence civil association. Some claim that these policies will help create conditions whereby conservatives will, finally, be able to trust democracy. These writers also appeal to the elitism of Conservatives, to the traditional Tory belief that the Conservative party includes the most capable individuals of Britain's key political and civil institutions. Only an organization that expresses the views of this elite can lay claim to authority. "A strong Conservative party," Peregrine Worthstone states, "used as an instrument of a governing order—that is what the weak now feel the need for, and would respond to, if only they could be convinced that such a body existed." The Tories, they continue, should not give up the key role of the Conservative party in maintaining political authority.98 OAKESHOTTIAN AND H A Y E K I A N UNITY

The Thatcher governments did not introduce the political reforms of central government proposed by garantiste constitutionalism. For reasons well beyond the scope of this study, Conservative party governments of the 1980s and 1990s did encourage economic liberty, weaken intermediate organizations, and strengthen the authority of the national state." The unity between Oakeshottian and Hayekian conservative theorists and writers was based originally on a common desire to extend the laws of civil association and reduce the influence of intermediate organizations. During the 1980s these groups became more unified. Hayek retracted his general denunciation of conservatism as the Thatcher governments established a tight monetary policy and weakened intermediate organizations.100 In turn, Scruton, an advocate of the more authoritative current in new British conservatism, praised Hayek as "one of the great thinkers of our time."101 Some intellectuals who had advocated garantiste reforms changed their opinions after witnessing three consecutive parliamentary victories by the Thatcher-led Conservative

• 34 m The Redefinition of British Conservatism •

party. Lord Hailsham, for example, a decade after describing Britain as an electoral tyranny, reversed course and claimed that the British system of government is superior to America's because it concentrates political power in one elected assembly.102 Other theorists have changed premises. John Gray, for example, had been a follower of Hayek and an advocate of garantiste constitutionalism. In 1984 he predicted that conservatism would abandon the policies that had unified Hayekian and Oakeshottian conservatives. "We should anticipate the abandonment over the next few years by hitherto friendly conservatives of the classical liberal policies which they have only fitfully implemented," he noted. "And we should have cogent arguments to give them as to why these policies have been less than fully successful."103 Gray later rejected garantiste constitutionalism and embraced an Oakeshottian interpretation of conservatism in British politics.104 Whether the strengthening of the central state, the weakening of intermediate organizations, and the enhancement of economic liberty will fundamentally alter public opinion is likewise beyond the scope of this study. This has become the central issue in the study of public opinion in Britain. Conservative theorists and writers follow these analyses closely and remain concerned whether reform of the political structures eventually will be necessary. On the one hand, all were deeply disappointed by the Alliance's poor parliamentary showing in 1987 and postelection split, both of which were a setback to the goal of displacing Labour as the main opposition party. T. E. Utley, the publicist and speechwriter for both Enoch Powell and Thatcher, expressed this concern during the run-up to the election of 1987 as it became apparent that Labour had preserved its position as the opposition party. It is possible, he suggested, that a responsible opposition can be formed only by reforming political structures. "I hope ... some Tories will have the sense to see that easing the way for the emergence of a new opposition is a long-term national interest," Utley stated. "It is possible this could be achieved only by introducing proportional representation."105 On the other hand, conservative theorists and writers were emboldened by the Labour party's poor showing in the election of 1992. Although a debate about reforming the state structures along garantiste lines would become sharper if Labour gained a parliamentary majority, British conservative theory will not embrace easily garantiste constitutionalism. It is too radical a rejection of conservatism's longstanding, highest political goal—the central state's autonomy and ulti-

• The Redefinition of British Conservatism • 35 •

mate authority. New conservative theory has been willing to reject other Tory traditions to maintain this goal. It breaks from previous conservatisms by shifting the responsibility for establishing authoritative civil and political relations from intermediate organizations to the central state. It also breaks with previous conservative constitutional doctrines in formulating an interpretation of the separation of powers that coordinates the power of the central state. Of course, previous conservative theories had stressed defending the autonomy and authority of the central state, whereas new conservative theory articulates the aim of regaining, rather than retaining, the autonomy and authority of the central state. This shift has required conservatives to develop a constitutionalism that eschews a territorial division of labor while promoting and legitimizing the legislative office of the central state's undivided authority.

TWO

The Redefinition of American Conservatism

D

I HERE is no American Oakeshott. None of America's contemporary conservative theorists developed a comprehensive critique of American politics over five or six decades.1 New conservative thinking in America has grown out of heterogeneous academic disciplines—political philosophy, law, and the social sciences. Straussians, neoconservative social scientists and publicists, rational choice theorists, and originalist constitutionalists have been among the most important contributors to new conservative political thought. I want to identify the premises and aims of new American conservative political theory mainly through an analysis of its development among writers in two groups: the political philosophers Thomas Pangle, Harvey Mansfield, Jr., Allan Bloom, Herbert Storing, Jr., Carnes Lord, and Walter Berns, all of whom were deeply influenced by Leo Strauss, and the neoconservatives James Q. Wilson, Irving Kristol, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Nathan Glazer, Michael Novak, Richard John Neuhaus, and Peter Berger, most of whom were cold war liberals.2 During the 1970s writers from these two groups united around important themes, forming the core of a new conservative theory in America. The contributions of rational choice theorists and originalist constitutionalists are discussed later. This chapter begins with Leo Strauss's construction of a history of political philosophy, focusing on his analysis that the logic of liberalism 36

• The Redefinition of American Conservatism • 37 •

produces the convergence of philosophy and society—leading to the undermining of the idea that a liberal society is good and the diminishing of a political executive's capabilities to lead a nation to prosperity and greatness. It reveals how many contemporary Straussians have modified Strauss's framework in adapting it to American politics. Turning to the neoconservatives, I identify how these writers reinforced the Straussian critique of liberalism. While the Straussians focused on the theoretical roots of liberalism's degeneration, neoconservatives emphasized the problematics that postindustrialism created for liberalism. This chapter then discusses the new conservative constitutionalism created through the convergence of Straussians and neoconservatives and contrasts their political objectives with the aims of British conservative theory. It concludes by contrasting new American conservative theory with the thinking of Strauss. PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIETY

Leo Strauss ascribed to philosophy an understanding of the moralities and laws constructed by humanity as it attempted to bring order and meaning to the world of nature.3 The truth understood by philosophy was that all truths were opinions and interpretations. "One is forced to go beyond opinions toward the consistent view of the nature of the thing concerned," Strauss stated. "That consistent view makes visible the relative view of the contradictory opinions; the consistent view proves to be the comprehensive or total view."4 Although philosophers identified many of the permanent problematics of humanity, they were incapable of transcending all limitations and finding the natural right. Philosophers, while attempting to stand above the assumptions of society, constructed truths in order to philosophize and hence never found the whole or natural truth. More could be seen from the philosophers' cave than from the public's cave, but it nevertheless remained a cave. Revising Plato's most famous parable, Strauss wrote that if a philosopher sought the light of the sun, "he would first have to try to reach the level of the natural cave, and he would have to invent new and most artificial tools unknown and unnecessary to those who dwelt in the natural cave." Once the artificial basis of all thinking is understood, "the idea of a final account of the whole, of an account which as such would not be 'historically conditioned,' appears to be untenable for reasons which can be made manifest to every child. Thereafter, there no longer exists a direct

• 38 • The Redefinition of American Conservatism •

access to the original meaning of philosophy, as quest for the true and final account of the whole." As philosophers understand that artificial assumptions preclude their ability to find the whole truth, they recognize that all assertions of truth, whether produced by religion, science, or politics, are acts of will.5 Philosophy and society, Strauss insisted, must be separate. The philosophical life was necessarily esoteric. Few had the willingness or ability to subordinate all practical questions to contemplation. Few had the ability to bring the process of ceaseless analysis to fruition. Philosophy also called into question all opinions, assumptions, and laws of the society; therefore, if philosophy was not hidden and conducted esoterically, it would either destabilize a regime that allowed philosophy or lead to the condemnation of the philosophers, or both. At the same time, political societies were necessarily vulgar: the public demanded a government by consent; the wise must contend with competing visions of the good society; and most philosophers hesitated to devote full attention to the city. Finally, the contingencies created by force and accident, particularly contentious relations with other regimes, militated against creating a regime according to philosophy.6 "The solution to the problem of justice obviously transcends the limits of political life," Strauss noted. "It implies that the justice which is possible within the city, can be only imperfect or cannot be unquestionably good."7 Strauss's distinction between esoteric and exoteric knowledge contributed to his view of the problematic relation between philosophy and society. Only the few who attempt to look down, debate, and evaluate the meaning of mores, conventions, and laws gain esoteric knowledge, while public acceptance of those mores and laws is exoteric knowledge. A mixture of these two approaches to knowledge produces the worst of both worlds: public debate of fundamental assumptions produces chaos; philosophers engaged in public debate create sophistry. "It would seem," Strauss stated, "that freedom to hold and defend every opinion one wishes, while a great good for some men, is incompatible with the common good."8 To Strauss, philosophy did not necessarily create a light of liberation. Rather, evoking Nietzsche, Strauss indicated that individuals often were troubled by the philosophical understanding of the world as a dark cave. "The strength of spirit," stated Nietzsche, "should be measured according to how much of the 'truth' one could still barely endure—or to put it more clearly, to what degree one would require it to be thinned down,

• The Redefinition of American Conservatism • 39 •

shrouded, sweetened, blunted, falsified."9 Strauss did not disagree with Lucretius's Epicurean philosophy: the atomic foundation of humanity and nature; the ultimate meaninglessness of life; the contingent character of our standards of right and wrong; the refutation of any possibility of life after death; the finite nature of the world. However, Strauss did disagree with Lucretius's proposal to replace the salutary myths of religion among the public with philosophy. "One may therefore say that philosophy is productive of the deepest pain," Strauss noted. "Man has to choose between peace of mind deriving from a pleasing delusion and peace of mind deriving from the unpleasing truth."10 The philosophers' written texts respect the separation of philosophy and society by combining esoteric debates among the few around the most fundamental questions while assuring the many that these questions are settled. "The proper work of a writing," Strauss wrote, "is truly to talk, or to reveal the truth, to some while leading others to salutary opinions; the proper work of a writing is to arouse to thinking those who are by nature fit for it."11 As philosophers are aware of the contingent nature of both truth and morality, Strauss proposed that they be radical in thought only and prudently respect the prevailing public moralities and truths. "For moderation is not a virtue of thought: Plato likens philosophy to madness, the very opposite of sobriety or moderation; thought must be not moderate, but fearless, not to say shameless. But moderation is a virtue controlling the philosopher's speech."12 The fundamental predicament for political philosophy was reconciling "the requirement for wisdom with the requirement for consent."13 Strauss did not offer that philosophers resolve this tension by finding common ground with the public around moral and political virtues. Instead, Strauss advocated that philosophy be protected by politics and that philosophers cultivate the prevailing political opinion while preserving philosophy's autonomy and recruiting new philosophers. "In what then does philosophic politics consist?" asked Strauss. "In satisfying the city that the philosophers are not atheists, that they do not desecrate everything sacred to the city, that they reverence what the city reverences, that they are not subversives, in short, that they are not irresponsible adventurers but good citizens and even the best citizens. This is the defense of philosophy which was required always and everywhere, whatever the regime might have been."14 Accordingly, philosophers deemphasize a public function for philosophy in contributing to a good society. The exoteric position of philosophers on the

• 40 • The Redefinition of American Conservatism •

good society is what Alfarabi described as the "art of kallum," or the reconciliation of religion and politics, which contributes to a public belief in a regime's intrinsic justice, and limits the potentially destructive role of philosophy in society: If the principles valid in civil society are diluted natural right, they are much less venerable than if they are regarded as secondary natural right, i.e., as divinely established and involving an absolute duty for fallen man. Only in the latter case is justice, as it is commonly understood, unquestionably good. Only in the latter case does natural right in the strict sense or the primary natural right cease to be dynamite for civil society.15 Strauss primarily elaborated political theory through the construction of a history of political philosophy. This history was not a derivative report on the writing of others. On one level it was reminiscent of what Nietzsche described as a "monumental history," directed "to the active and powerful man, to him who fights a great fight, who requires models, teachers and comforters and cannot find them among his associates and contemporaries."16 As Nietzsche explained, monumental histories serve intellectual aristocracies who are aiming to change the spirit and culture of an epoch: they forge unity among intellectuals around a new, alternative worldview; they instill confidence in both the leader and the group by providing examples of how great men had risen above prevailing norms and contexts. "Suppose someone were to believe," said Nietzsche, "that it required no more than a hundred productive men, raised and active in a new spirit, to put an end to the cultural refinement which has now become fashionable in Germany, how it would strengthen him to realize that the culture of the Renaissance was raised on the shoulders of such a group of one hundred men."17 Strauss, of course, believed that the formation of an intellectual aristocracy was a most important task, albeit its function would not necessarily revolve around changing the prevailing moral and political truths.18 To Strauss the materials of political philosophy were solely textual. Contemporary settings influenced political philosophers by creating norms that they had to respect to avoid persecution. Machiavelli was interpreted as responding to ancient political philosophy, most notably to Xenophon's Education of Cyrus and Hiero. Locke was interpreted as responding to Hobbes, who in turn responded to Machiavelli. Approaching modernity, Rousseau was interpreted in the light of Locke's

• The Redefinition of American Conservatism • 41 •

and Hobbes's response to Machiavelli and the ancients. Reaching Nietzsche and Weber, we have a history of political philosophy as responses to great books. The only philosophers that Strauss did not analyze in the context of prior philosophies were Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle. The ancient writers of Greece were not as confused by the conflation of the natural and conventional as later philosophers because they did not have to peer through the truths created by previous political philosophers. In turn, the ancients created truths that influenced all future political philosophy. "In all later epochs, the philosophers' study of political things was mediated by a tradition of political philosophy which acted like a screen between the philosopher and political things, regardless of whether the individual philosopher cherished or rejected that tradition," commented Strauss. "From this it follows that the classical political philosophers see the political things with a freshness and directness which never have been equalled."19 Strauss's history of political philosophy also provided a medium for his integration of esoteric political commentaries into a larger intellectual project. As Strauss noted while discussing Alfarabi, a writer can hide controversial political statements more easily when commenting on the work of others. "Farabi avails himself then of the specific immunity of the commentator or of the historian in order to speak his mind concerning grave matters in his 'historical' works, rather than in the works in his own name."20 Finally, Strauss's history of liberalism is reminiscent of the theme common to Plato, Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche, and Arendt, namely, that the logic of liberty is one of progressive deterioration until an individual, group, or class finds that unlimited liberty for themselves requires either instituting tyranny over society or anarchy. It is most similar to Nietzsche's argument that since Descartes's attempt to establish belief on doubt, successive waves of thinkers doubted more and more until Kant found that "the subject could not be proved—nor could the object," and objective standards of thought were lost.21 THE ANCIENTS AND M A C H I A V E L L I

The best-known feature of Strauss's history is the distinction he draws between ancient and modern political philosophy. The ancients sought public consent in the context of a politics that preserved the autonomy of philosophy from society; the moderns sought public consent in the context of a philosophical expression of politics. The ancients advocated

• 42 • The Redefinition of American Conservatism •

hierarchy, nobility, and virtue; the moderns highlighted the pursuit of self-interest in civil society. The ancients encouraged the political obligation of citizens, the moderns the rights of citizens. Machiavelli is Strauss's transition figure in this movement from the ancients to the moderns. A comparison of Strauss's exposition and commentaries on ancient political philosophy in Natural Right and History and on Machiavelli's political philosophy in Thoughts on Machiavelli is critical to understanding both Strauss and a key feature of new American conservative theory. Strauss maintained that the ancients and Machiavelli had many important points of agreement. Indeed, Machiavelli did "not bring to light a single political phenomena of any fundamental importance which was not fully known to the classics."22 Their central point of political unity was the embracement of the poetic idea of greatness: the political importance of individuals who seek immortality through heroic deeds that found and preserve prosperous political societies. Based upon this common understanding, both the ancients and Machiavelli developed similar views on the role of political mores and the relation between morality and immorality in political regimes.23 According to Strauss, both the ancients and Machiavelli understood that although political principles were required to bind a society they should not guide a nation's foreign policy. International relations were based on power, not principles. "Are the maxims of foreign policy essentially different from the maxims on which gangs act? Are cities not compelled to use force and fraud to take away from other cities what belongs to the latter, if they are to prosper?" Strauss noted in explaining the thinking of Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, and Cicero. Therefore, Strauss continued, the ancients believed that the principles of the common good that existed in a society were merely expressions of collective aggrandizement: "Experience shows that justice by itself is ineffectual. This merely confirms what was shown before, that justice has no basis in nature. The common good proved to be the selfish interest of the collective. The selfish interest of the collective is derived from the only natural elements of the collective, namely of the individuals."24 Strauss uses similar language in explaining Machiavelli's view that immutable political and moral principles are irrelevant to the conduct of foreign policy and the pursuit of the common good. "When the existence of the fatherland is at stake, one ought not to be concerned with justice or injustice, with compassion or cruelty, with the laudable or the infa-

• The Redefinition of American Conservatism • 43 •

mous," Strauss stated. He noted that one may object to Machiavelli's severance of moral principles from political activity "by saying that it abolishes the essential differences between civil societies and bands of robbers, since robbers too use ordinary modes among themselves whenever possible. Machiavelli is not deterred by this consideration. He compares the Roman patricians, the most respectable ruling class that ever was, to small birds of prey, and he quotes Livy's observation that a certain chief of pirates equalled the Romans in piety."25 In Strauss's commentary on Aristotelian natural right he extended the idea that moral and political norms must not guide foreign policy to domestic politics as well. After distinguishing the "Socratic-PlatonicStoic natural right teaching" from that of Aristotle, he identified Aristotle's view that natural right is changeable. Strauss commented that this view is acceptable only as it is interpreted by Averroes and Marsilius. While Aristotle's mutable natural right was based on a compromise or mixing of positions of different classes, the latters' view of changeable natural right was based on an understanding that although the utility of political principles binding a society was dependent on their appearing inviolable, statesmen must be ready to transcend these maxims when resolving national emergencies. These "sad exigencies" should be "covered with the veil" of the society's political principles as much as possible, yet "civil society is incompatible with any immutable rules, however basic; for in certain conditions the disregard of these rules may be needed for the preservation of the society; but for pedagogic reasons, society must present as universally valid certain rules that are generally valid.... The unqualified rules are not natural right but conventional right."26 Strauss attributed the same position to Machiavelli. On the one hand, a prosperous political society needs good, stable norms for "the majority of men living together" so that they will not "be disturbed by one another and by their government in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property." On the other hand, political rulers, while respecting public norms and rules, must understand the necessity of periodically having to transcend them in order to preserve themselves and the good citizens against the bad citizens as well as against foreign powers. In short, Machiavelli believes that most people must "comply with certain simple and crude rules of conduct (the prohibitions against murder, fraud, theft and so on) and to cherish such qualities as gratitude, kindness, faithfulness and gentleness; but he contends that the same needs which make man dependent on other men compel him to form political societies the

• 44 m The Redefinition of American Conservatism •

very preservation of which requires the transgression of those simple rules no less than their observation, as well as the practice of those virtues as well as their opposites."27 Strauss also suggested that Machiavelli, like the ancients, recognized that humanity was bad when living in a state of nature, that is, without the laws and beliefs of a political society. Indeed, Strauss's ancients and Machiavelli believed that the public became morally virtuous by habituation in society, a process requiring "laws, customs, examples and exhortations."28 Machiavelli, like Plato (but unlike Aristotle), further recognized that if moral virtue presupposed a political society, a political society presupposed founders who stood beyond any morality in order to found the society that eventually inculcated morality. As Strauss put it, "Morality is possible only after its condition has been created, and this condition cannot be created morally; morality rests on what to moral men must appear to be immorality."29 Strauss added that this lesson from Plato and Machiavelli—that moral societies presupposed rulers who stood beyond prevailing norms of the good and bad—was not relevant only for the founding of a political society: "The situation in which the foundation took place recurs whenever society as a whole is in grave danger from within or without. In all such situations, the modes used by the original founder must be used again if there is to be society and its offspring, morality. Morality can exist only on an island created or at any rate protected by immorality."30 Finally and most important, Strauss's ancients and Machiavelli believed that the good regime utilized and accommodated people of different ambitions. On the one hand, Strauss's ancients believed that the statesman's political activity was animated by the desire to gain fame and immortality through contributing to freedom and empire; politics was a vehicle toward personal excellence and happiness; statesmen recognized that history would judge the nobility of their actions. On the other hand, the public primarily desired self-preservation, immediate gratification, and security. What ultimately distinguished a good political society from a gang of robbers is that it accommodated the ambitions of the statesman as well as those of the public. "Being sensitive to mankind's great objects, freedom and empire, they sense somehow that politics is the field on which human excellence can show itself in its full growth and on whose proper cultivation every form of excellence is in a way dependent," Strauss noted in explaining the ancients' view of the statesman. "The city is essentially different from a gang of robbers be-

• The Redefinition of American Conservatism • 45 •

cause it is not merely an organ, or an expression, of collective selfishness."31 Strauss ascribed the same position to Machiavelli. The statesman, according to Strauss's Machiavelli, pursued fame and immortality and was thus "liberated from the concern with life and property, with goods which may have to be sacrificed for the common good." In turn, the public, whose primary concerns were self-preservation and security, required and sought prosaic moral virtues such as honesty, gratitude, kindness, and compliance with rules of justice; they were too weak to desire radical individual autonomy and fame. Whereas the statesman sought immortality through political heroism, the public sought it through a life of goodness and a rewarding afterlife. "The society which is most conducive to the well-being of the large majority of the people and of the great is the good republic," Strauss stated in summarizing Machiavelli's teachings.32 "The wise rulers who act with a view to their own benefit will enlist the cooperation of the ruled, who likewise act with a view to their own benefit, in such activities as cannot but be detrimental to others. Since the many can never acquire the eternal glory which the great individuals can achieve, they must be induced to bring the greatest sacrifices by the judiciously fostered belief in eternity of another kind."33 To summarize Strauss's views on the continuity between ancient and Machiavellian political philosophy, he argued that the ancients and Machiavelli agreed that a public belief in truth in politics was necessary to unite political societies but incompatible with efficacious foreign policy, crises management, and the creation and maintenance of morality itself. Therefore, the good regime bound a society in political principles and provided autonomy for the few who, while seeking fame and immortality, led the regime to prosperity and greatness. Strauss believed that the fundamental distinction between ancient and Machiavellian political philosophy was their different views of the relation between philosophy and poetry. According to Strauss, philosophy required independence from the mores and laws that exist in a political society, religion promoted loyalty to these norms and rules, while poetry could promote either attachment or detachment to them. "Philosophy which, anticipating the collapse of the walls of the world, breaks through the walls of the world, abandons the attachment to the world; this abandonment is most painful. Poetry on the other hand is, like religion, rooted in that attachment, but unlike religion, it can be put into the service of detachment."34

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According to Strauss, ancient political philosophy, as most fully expressed by Plato, respected the philosophers' and heroes' different quests—the former aimed to understand the truth, the latter aimed to make the truth. The ancient philosophers, recognizing that political societies were based on mutable laws and conventions, attempted to transcend the things that were nomo and live according to what was immutable—physei. Understanding the truth required subordinating the will to engage in political activity and turning away from temporal questions of law and morality. Yet the ancients were aware that philosophy required political societies with laws and moralities. Hence, they developed poetic forms of discourse that hid the realization that all political activities were a product of the will and promoted salutary myths among the public that promoted attachment to the political regime. In politics, the ancients primarily were concerned with influencing the gentlemen or the landed aristocracy, who would seek immortality through the establishment or preservation of a prosperous political society; the ancients were conservatives who called for strict moral supervision of all changes in society in order to perpetuate religious and moral truths. In contrast, Machiavelli identified and mocked a unifying thread in philosophy and Christianity—both sought fulfillment outside of human experience—and he lowered the aims of humanity to what could be attained here and now. Machiavelli took the ancients' understanding that all truth is a product of the will and, rather than developing poetic forms to hide this understanding, utilized poetry to spread it. Hence, Strauss asserted that Machiavelli's literary style differed from that of the ancients. While Plato and Machiavelli were in agreement that tyrants played a role in founding a moral, political society, "Plato makes a nameless stranger state this demand primarily in the name of an absent and nameless legislator." Plato writes with "great caution the case for a tyrant preparing a republic in which moral virtue can be practiced."35 In contrast, "Machiavelli proclaims openly and triumphantly a corrupting doctrine which ancient writers had taught covertly."36 Machiavelli's singular concern with the poetic idea of immortality also led him to redirect the goals of philosophy. The idea of truth as a product of the will is no longer put forward as the basis for a philosophical life according to nature on the fringes of society; it is now utilized to promote activities that will enable humanity to conquer problems and nature. Moreover, as Machiavelli was cognizant of the political ruler's requirement to address public ambitions in order to meet the

• The Redefinition of American Conservatism • 47 •

exigencies of international politics, he began the process whereby the public and society became the center of the the philosophers' attention. In short, Machiavelli "achieves the decisive turn toward that notion of philosophy according to which its purpose is to relieve man's estate or to increase man's power The cave becomes the 'substance.' "37 THE PROGRESSIVE DETERIORATION OF LIBERALISM

Thomas Hobbes is Strauss's first comprehensive, modern political philosopher. Like Machiavelli, Hobbes inverted the ancients' relation between philosophy and society. However, whereas Machiavelli subordinated philosophy to the poetic idea of immortality, Hobbes encouraged the subjects' self-interest. "Machiavelli wrote a book called On the Prince; Hobbes wrote a book On the Citizen" Strauss stated succinctly in discussing their respective aims with regard to philosophy.38 Hobbes and Locke, according to Strauss, began three waves of modern liberal thinking that led to both the confluence of philosophy and society and the destruction of public certitude in the good society." This first wave of modern liberalism put forth an idea of natural right and promoted a vision of a good society, of the "ought." But these were vulgar, debased visions of the political good, whereby philosophy utilized rational, scientific precepts to espouse a polity in which the political good was identified with individual self-interest. The second wave, most fully represented by Rousseau and Burke, sought to defend the political association from both rational political formulas and a self-interested political morality. However, their arguments that humanity was a product of irrational histories that could not be reshaped by scientific theories of politics further diminished belief in objective standards of right and wrong. Their attempts to reformulate the good political regime— whether that of the general will or the unfolding of history—continued to diminish political responsibilities by projecting that the will, not fixed standards of God or nature, expressed the political good. To Rousseau and Burke, "is" was the ought. Nietzsche and Heidegger, having learned from the century of historicism that followed Rousseau, understood truth as a local or historical convention and philosophy itself as a construct. They created the third wave of modern liberal thinking whereby neither philosophy nor society was rational, claiming there was neither wisdom nor consent, neither an ought nor an is—only action. The conflation of philosophy and society had culminated in the loss of the hi-

• 48 • The Redefinition of American Conservatism •

erarchical standards of both philosophy and poetry. We were facing the postmodern world, in which "the only standards that remained were of a purely subjective character, standards that had no other support than the free choice of the individual. No objective criterion henceforth allowed the distinction between good and bad choice.... The attempt to make men absolutely at home in this world ended in man becoming absolutely homeless."39 Nietzsche's and Heidegger's espousal of truth as a construct destroyed political philosophy and the belief in a good society. Max Weber, Strauss continued, salvaged a role for the intellectual by developing a value-free methodology that analyzed cultures, institutions, and regimes. Consequently, political philosophy was displaced by an ethically neutral social science. To Strauss's regret, relativism, rather than the propagation of a politics that protected philosophy, became the requisite for political inquiry.40 Strauss claimed that the contemporary crisis of liberal democracies reflected the conflation of philosophy and political society.41 While philosophers were required to suspend their judgment in order to theorize, it was politically dangerous when the public questioned assumptions. "Natural right," Strauss noted, "would act as a dynamite for civil society."42 The wars and totalitarianism of twentieth-century Europe resulted from the public's inability to distinguish the politically good from the bad, creating conditions in which strong will, organization, and commitment to action dictated political development. America's continued belief in its founding principles had enabled it to avoid these calamities. In postwar America, however, Strauss argued, pluralist social scientists had begun to adopt the European outlook. Believing that the combination of tragedies in Europe resulted from contention over political principles, rather than from the denigration of political principles, American social scientists had begun to disparage theories that posited standards of a political right and wrong; they thereby unwittingly contributed to bringing about a closer relation between philosophy and political society. As Nietzsche complained that the militarily defeated French had actually gained victory over Europe by imposing a skeptical philosophy upon it, Strauss regretted that a militarily defeated Germany had actually won by imposing a similar philosophy upon America. "It would not be the first time," Strauss stated, "that a nation, defeated on the battlefield and, as it were, annihilated as a political being, has deprived its con-

• The Redefinition of American Conservatism • 49 •

querors of the most sublime fruit of victory by imposing on them the yoke of its own thought."43 During the 1950s and 1960s Strauss predicted that if these views went unchecked the public eventually would lose its belief in America as a good society. In the short run, this lack of clear political standards would contribute to America's losing the will to lead the worldwide struggle against totalitarianism. In the long run, the conflation of philosophy and society would contribute to America's developing the worst features of democracy—an equation of good and bad, elite and mass, and the victory of passion over reason: The new political science . . . ever more reflects the most dangerous proclivities of democracy. It even strengthens those proclivities. By teaching in effect the equality of literally all desires, it teaches in effect that there is nothing of which a man ought to be ashamed; by destroying the possibility of self-contempt, it destroys with the best of intentions the possibility of self-respect, by teaching the equality of all values, by denying that there are things which are intrinsically high and others which are intrinsically low as well as by denying that there is an essential difference between men and brutes, it unwittingly contributes to the victory of the gutter.44 The contemporary political predicament was to prevent the confluence of philosophy and society. However, this required maintaining public belief that liberal society was good when the logic of liberalism undermined belief that this was true. "Liberal relativism," Strauss wrote, "has its roots in the natural right tradition of tolerance or in the notion that everyone has a natural right to the pursuit of happiness as he understands happiness."45 Strauss did not offer a specific remedy for either the American political predicament or for the corruption of liberalism. He rarely left the esoteric world of high thought, preferring to construct a history of political philosophy. Nonetheless, his discussions of political problems through historical analysis of political philosophy influenced many intellectuals and followers, who formed one intellectual pole of new American conservative political thought. THE DETERIORATION OF LIBERALISM IN AMERICA

Since the 1950s many of Strauss's students and followers—Joseph Cropsey, Herbert Storing, Harry Jaffa, Wilmoore Kendall, Allan Bloom, Mar-

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tin Diamond, Werner Dannhauser, Thomas Pangle, Walter Berns, Harvey Mansfield, Jr., Ralph Lerner, Nathan Tarcov, Carnes Lord, among many others—have continued his historical program.46 They continue Strauss's critique of behavioral social science, particularly the postwar tendency to identify American democracy with pluralism.47 Many also employ Strauss's paradigm for a history of political philosophy as a method of analyzing American political thought. However, they modify Strauss's history. Whereas Strauss analyzed political thought in relation to ancient political philosophy, most of these writers analyze American political thought in relation to the primal role of the founding theory. "The founding documents are the premise of a gigantic argument, subsequent propositions in which are decayed or decaying moments of modern thought, superimposed on relics of antiquity," states Joseph Cropsey. Jeffrey Tulis elaborates: American politics today, and American political development since the founding can usefully be treated as a layered text, the first layer of this text-polity is formed by the political theory of the founders. Because subsequent attacks on that theory have sometimes gained public legitimacy without also altering constitutional and structural features of the regime, this thought can be viewed as superimposed upon the founding theory altering without obliterating the original layer. The dilemmas of modern governance may be located in that theoretical space between the layers of political significant thought that form our political culture.48 Straussians ascribe to the American founding theory some of the same qualities that Strauss attributed to the ancients and to Machiavelli.49 They assert that the American founding theory accommodated and utilized two types of ambition—the public desire for self-preservation and security and the poetic desire for fame and honor. The first was expressed primarily through the founders' promotion of the quest for private property. "What is praised," according to Pangle, "is... the enlightened, calm, and prudent pursuit of security and ease for oneself and for the society in which one finds oneself."50 The founders' principal method of both encouraging this self-interest and preventing it from becoming politically dominant was representation in the extended republic—a form of government that limited both the state's role in society and the control of legislation by a single faction. The establishment of local communitarian and religious standards of political and social

• The Redefinition of American Conservatism • 51 •

moralities (the contribution of the Anti-Federalists) both complemented and mitigated this self-interested ethos. However, because the American founders also were concerned with founding a national government that could pursue a general public good, they believed it was necessary to generate the political virtues of patriotism, wisdom, and justice. Rather than encouraging public virtue, Straussians argue, the founders promoted the poetic idea of greatness through providing the few individuals who aspire for political honor and fame with opportunities to lead the nation to political prosperity. "The American republic," Epstein states, "need[ed] a substitute for the direct concern with the public good which Montesquieu claimed for small republics. Madison finds this substitute in the possibility of selected men being wise enough to see what is necessarily remote in a large republic."51 Mansfield argues that the Federalist Papers addresses the few individuals who aspire to achieve fame through political nobility, while avoiding statements that could be construed as insults by the selfinterested majority; hence, the distinctive characteristics of the noble ambition for political fame and the vulgar desire for property are covered up. Hamilton, for example, "implies that it is to the interest of a president to set risky and lofty goals for himself," meaning that the presidency requires political virtue; "but he wants to call that virtue 'interest' so as to keep it within the bounds of the republican principle and not suggest the idea of aristocracy or monarchy."52 Pangle says that Hamilton openly projects the idea that the Republic requires the leadership of those few who seek fame and immortality through political virtue: "Like Hume and Machiavelli before him, Hamilton dares to declare openly what the classical theorists and poets only wondered about with caution. The noblest men, those who are presumably most familiar with the beauty of the moral virtues, are not ruled by the love of those virtues but by the love of the reward they may bring."53 According to Straussians, the founders believed that the more permanent branches of the national government—the Senate and the presidency—would provide opportunities for individuals to gain reputations for wisdom, patriotism, and love of justice through service in government. "The people, in turn," states Epstein, "can benefit themselves by putting a few men in situations in which those men can think of themselves in a way different from that in which the numerous representatives and multitudinous citizens are able to think of themselves."54 The founders' focal point for political virtue was the presidency. Elected by repu-

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tation from among other notables, the political executive was not to be responsible to any constituency in society; and in contrast to parliamentary systems, the presidency was not to derive its authority from the legislature. A presidential selection system, in short, was designed to attract the few individuals who aspire to achieving fame for their political virtue. "Hamilton's understanding of virtue admits and allows for the desire for reward," writes James Ceaser. "The office of the presidency was designed by the founders to attract persons of the highest ambition or virtue, and the selection system was meant to point their ambition in the proper direction."55 Most important, a goal of the founders' constitutional doctrine of the separation of powers was to provide opportunities for presidents to act alone and gain reputations for patriotism, justice, and wisdom. The primary reason for American constitutionalism is the prevention of tyranny, states Mansfield: "But separation of powers has another purpose—to appeal to virtue."56 The administration of a government for a long tenure occasioned the president a possibility of attaining political immortality. In the absence of a long tenure in the presidency, those few individuals who aspire to become famous for political nobility would either eschew the office or develop potentially erratic political programs. "The noblest mind is not discouraged by the prospect of loss of power as such, but by the loss of opportunity to continue the great works which will bring him fame," Epstein writes. "Such a man, faced with an exclusion after four years, would either not seek the presidency at all, or he might try to achieve great works which could not be accomplished quickly."57 The founders' separation of powers doctrine also established executive prerogative in foreign policy and crises management, policy domains that required decision making under conditions that could not be anticipated. Hence, executive prerogative required the president to transcend prevailing laws and norms of right and wrong, thereby providing the executive with opportunities to gain fame by leading the nation to victories and greatness. Mansfield, noting that Publius warned of the disadvantages of excluding "the noblest minds" from the republic, concludes, It appears that consideration of the noblest minds introduces us to necessities to which only they have, or are, the answer. With all due respect for virtue in ordinary citizens, it is really these extraordinary men who will make or break the republic. And "make or

• The Redefinition of American Conservatism • 53 •

break" refers not to mere survival or stability, but greatness. When the recognition that the republic can survive in emergencies only with the aid of such men is incorporated in the constitution, it becomes the recognition that republics really employ their preeminent virtue and abilities in order to become great. Hence the constitutionalizing of necessity is elevated to the appreciation of greatness.58 In sum, the Straussians' American founders, like Strauss's ancients and Machiavelli, believed that the good regime needed policies and beliefs to address the public's humble ambitions, while also providing political autonomy for the few who sought fame and immortality through leading the regime to prosperity and greatness. Leadership by the nobly ambitious was the prerequisite for a polity that primarily revolved around the public's prosaic desires. Since the 1960s interpretations of the American founding by Gordon Wood, Bernard Bailyn, and J. G. A. Pocock have stimulated debate about republican political thinking during this period. Here, republicanism expresses a distinct pattern of thinking transmitted through Cicero, Machiavelli, James Harrington, Bolingbroke, and the American revolutionary leaders. These political theorists and leaders, Wood and others maintain, advocated political and social structures—bicameralism, landed aristocracy, and mixed classes, among others—in order to encourage political leaders to foster homogeneous, virtuous political communities.59 The Straussians diverge from this interpretation of republicanism and early American political thought. The American founders did not aim to foster homogeneous political communities. Although political virtues were encouraged among the political leadership, standards of personal morality and self-control were encouraged among the public: temperance, work, monogamy, local community, parenthood, private religion, private property, and family. Furthermore, these social mores were not treated as ends; "rather that through such a policy individuals and the nation as a whole may grow more prosperous, safer, and stronger in world trade—and thus in the long run may enlarge gratifications or at any rate power to procure gratifications."60 Indeed, Straussians insist, one cannot understand the fundamental tension animating American politics without understanding the role played by these various moralities and virtues. The American founders, they argue, are "modern republicans." Or, to invoke Strauss's history,

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they express the first wave of modern liberal thinking. The founders may well have encouraged both political virtue among a small elite and moral virtue among the public, but these virtues remained subordinate to the liberty of the individual. Although the founders were similar to Strauss's ancients and Machiavelli in understanding that a patriotic, energetic, wise, and noble leadership was necessary to create political prosperity and that social mores were vital to fostering personal ethics and selfcontrol, they differed from them in recognizing that these were auxiliary to "the pursuit of happiness" of the individual (as distinct, say, from virtue, salvation, or greatness). "The trouble with modern constitutionalism," observes Mansfield, "is that civil liberties and man-made constitutional forms are made subordinate to the natural end of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness Hence, we are willing to jettison our liberal constitutional forms if they do not achieve their end."61 Herein lies the tension that has animated American politics since the founding. On the one hand, American constitutionalism and mores encourage a leadership and an ought that binds political society. On the other hand, both are subordinated to the self-interested activity of the individual. Because the liberty of the individual stands above the virtues of the politically and morally good, these virtues must periodically reestablish the political cohesion that liberty undermines. The problem, states Pangle, is that "human beings, as individuals and in the mass, can be brought to their senses by grave threats or in times of emergency; but what is to keep them in their senses as the more routine years pass, especially in a flourishing commercial and liberal society? The problem of mass moral education remains pressing despite—or even because of— economic progress."62 Joseph Cropsey characterizes this tension in American politics as a conflict between Machiavelli and Hobbes: From its inception modernity has exhibited two moral meanings or tendencies, one inspiriting, reminding man of his earthbound solitude and presenting the world as an opportunity for greatness of some description, the other pointing toward survival, security and freedom to cultivate the private and privately felt predilections It is the thesis of this paper that the parchment regime is dominated by the strand of modernity that invokes preservation and privacy—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.... [W]e are aware that the two elements ... do not simply coexist side by side but live in a condition of energetic tension.63

• The Redefinition of American Conservatism • 55 •

During the 1950s and early 1960s Straussians claimed that postwar political scholarship, as reflected in the works of Robert Dahl, analyzed and propagated democracy solely as a mechanism through which the common people are represented. To evoke Strauss's history, this represented the second wave of modern liberal thinking—consent, or the is, became the ought. The problem was that such thought ignored the fact that the task of the polity was not merely to reflect the character of the common people but to shape it. Throughout this period a small group of Strauss's students and followers engaged in a number of political controversies concerning McCarthyism, school prayer, state's rights, and desegregation. Some (notably Jaffa) played roles in the Barry Goldwater movement. Yet most remained on the margins of American political and intellectual life.64 The student movement of the 1960s provided the impetus to many politicians, research institutes, and publications to avail themselves of the Straussian interpretation of politics. Straussians asserted that the movement reflected the culmination of the deterioration of liberalism: the opposition to the Vietnam War signified a loss of commitment to defend democracy and liberty; the shift in emphasis in demands by minority students from rights to empowerment expressed a waning commitment to the American ideals of political and civil liberty and the emergence of nihilism; the students' new cultural orientation, emphasizing experimentation with drugs, sex and "vulgar" music meant that licentiousness was acceptable; last, student resistance to canons of political thought and traditional academic standards marked the end of political philosophy in American higher education.65 To invoke Strauss's history of political philosophy, America's highly educated had entered the third wave of modern liberal thinking: there was neither wisdom nor consent, neither ought nor is—only action. The spirit of Nietzsche and Heidegger now dominated the American university. 'The American university in the sixties was experiencing the same dismantling of the structure of rational inquiry as had the German universities in the thirties," comments Allan Bloom. "Whether it be Nuremburg or Woodstock, the principle is the same. As Hegel was said to have died in Germany in 1933, Enlightenment in America came close to breathing its last during the sixties."66 This open challenge to political and moral certitude would lead to the displacement of the public mores that had held back the progressive deterioration of liberalism. The public would be without an ideal of the political and moral good, unable to

• 56 • The Redefinition of American Conservatism • discern the good from the bad, the rational from the licentious. Political decay would be inevitable. Bloom summarizes: The old view was that, by recognizing and accepting man's natural rights, men found a fundamental basis of unity and sameness. Class, race, religion, national origin or culture all disappear or become dim when bathed in the light of natural rights, which give men common interests and make them truly brothers.... The immigrant did not abandon old daily habits or religions, b u t . . . subordinated them to new principles. There was a tendency, if not a necessity to homogenize nature itself. Openness has rejected all that. It pays no attention to natural rights or the historical origins of our regime It is open to all kinds of men, all kinds of life-styles, all ideologies. There is no enemy other than the man who is not open to everything. But when there are no shared goals or vision of the public good, is the social contract any longer possible?67 Public nihilism, Straussians warn, is dangerous to both society and philosophy. What is valuable as esoteric or hidden knowledge to the philosopher—the eternal questioning of values—is destructive as exoteric knowledge. As Pangle claims, "But what is, from the point of view of philosophic truthfulness, the wrong of a defect, is for mankind at large— and therefore for the philosopher himself—the advent of a lethal danger."68 The danger, in short, was that philosophy and political society had been joined. Straussians initially feared the loss of the public's moral certitude owing to the deterioration of liberalism and the conflation of philosophy and society; they also became alarmed that the new liberalism was contributing to the loss of autonomy of the national executive. The reforms of the presidential selection process of the 1960s and early 1970s diminished the role of political parties as intermediaries between the president and the public. As the institutional space between the two collapsed, the presidency became totally dependent on public opinion. "It is an invitation to open the political system to continual upheaval without any end or purpose," Ceaser warns. The reformers, Ceaser continues, express a third wave of American modern liberalism (originated by Woodrow Wilson; the previous two had been developed by the founders and by Martin Van Buren) that is devoid of political principles; it believes in change and action. "This enthusiasm for electorally stimu-

• The Redefinition of American Conservatism • 57 •

lated change represents an ill-conceived, and probably ill-fated, attempt to provide for good government by means of a formless process rather than by institutional forms," Ceaser charges. "Liberalism today is a label without a program."69 Jeffrey Tulis argues that the weakening of the political parties identified by Ceaser, along with the development of a national, electronic mass media, exacerbates a constitutional crisis that has been developing since the turn of the century. Like Ceaser, he blames Woodrow Wilson and a third wave of American liberalism. This liberalism grafted an "interpretation" of the executive as mobilizer of public opinion and change onto the "text" of the presidency, an office, as originally intended by the founders, designed to enhance solitary deliberation and action over a few decisive questions. Presidents, Tulis complains, now are judged as public leaders of general change while holding an office that is structured to focus the executive's attention on the most strategic issues, not on the day-to-day issues of domestic politics. Although the founders, according to Tulis, had reserved a presidential prerogative for mass leadership during crisis, the new interpretation of the presidency treats all politics as a crisis requiring mobilization and action. Such "reinterpretation of American politics altered elite and public understanding without changing the political logic of the Constitution," Tulis states. "Presidents are, as it were, caught between two layers of systematic thought, the product of a political hybrid."70 The result, Tulis warns, is the loss of presidential autonomy and effectiveness. Mansfield too believes that institutional space between the president and the people must be reconstructed if the government is to control the people. "Control the people," he remarks sarcastically. "What statesman could speak so frankly of the first necessity of popular government?" Evoking Hamilton, Mansfield states that the freedom of Americans is guaranteed by the preservation not of a Bill of Rights but of the institutional forms of the Constitution; recalling Strauss, he charges that these institutional forms are denigrated by a liberalism that identifies liberty as a historical convention rather than a fixed standard or ought. "Today rights are not distinguished as natural or civil because human beings are understood fundamentally as changing, historical beings rather than natural beings with a fixed definition," Mansfield states. "When rights are defined historically, they are in practice impossible to distinguish from wants." As the idea of rights has deteriorated, Mansfield continues, American voting has become understood more as the

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registry of wants, in turn leading to the loss of the founders' view that the task of government was to "add reason" to the will of the public. Like Ceaser and Tulis, Mansfield criticizes the new liberalism for emphasizing political leadership's capacity for leading the public. "Our praise for charisma," Mansfield warns, "is a sign that we no longer consider popularity to be an evil, or the evil, of popular government."71 From the perspective of this political context—the deterioration of liberalism among the educated elite, the confluence of philosophy and political society, the loss of political autonomy by the political executive—the philosophers had to leave the life of contemplation and turn to the city. To many Straussians, the task of contributing to theories of "statesmanship" had become more important than contributing to philosophy, as the fate of both philosophy and liberty were in doubt. "Just as in politics the responsibility for the fate of freedom in the world has devolved upon our regime," Bloom argued, "so the fate of philosophy has devolved upon our universities, and the two are related as they have never been before."72 During the 1970s and 1980s, many students of Strauss interrupted their work in the academy to become political commentators and contributors to a new American conservative political theory. Bloom set aside the study of Plato, Rousseau, and Shakespeare to write a polemic calling on the American university to defend a core curriculum of "great books" to preserve both philosophy and liberal democracy.73 Thomas Pangle set aside the study of Plato and Montesquieu to analyze the values and policies necessary for developing an active American foreign policy and to analyze the relation between America's founding principles and contemporary predicaments.74 Harvey Mansfield set aside the study of Bolingbroke and Machiavelli to write a polemic against the new liberalism associated with the Democratic party, claiming that its relativist ethos contributes to the American people's incapacity to discern the political good from the bad.75 In philosophy and political science departments where the Straussian outlook predominated, programs on political philosophy and statesmanship were adopted. More important, dozens of those who followed or were influenced by Strauss were invited to join staffs in the federal government, think tanks, and publications to initiate and espouse a new conservative political outlook. Indeed, some of Strauss's students have become defensive about the number of Straussians active in politics. "Most of the Straussians in Washington went there because they could not find jobs in the universities," Mansfield

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claims, in responding to Richard Rorty's charge that Strauss's students and followers have adopted a fundamentally different approach to political activity from that of their mentor.76 NEOCONSERVATISM AND POSTINDUSTRIALISM

Before analyzing the conservative political program that Straussians helped develop, it is important to identify how they were buttressed by neoconservatives who developed a similar analysis of liberalism's corruption. During the 1960s, this influential group of social scientists and publicists also became critical of American political development. It included, among others, James Q. Wilson, Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Daniel Bell, Peter Berger, Michael Novak, Robert Bartley, and Norman Podhoretz. Many of these writers had been Progressive-Liberals after World War II, advocating national social reforms and containment of the Soviet Union. During the 1960s they became critical of the character of social reforms, dismayed at the campus unrest surrounding the Vietnam War, and disturbed by new cultural orientations among youth.77 When many citizens with higher education supported the "new politics" of the Democratic party in 1972, they claimed America had entered a new stage of class conflict. Kristol charged, The more "cultivated" a person is in our society, the more disaffected and malcontent he is likely to be—a disaffection, moreover, directed not only at the actuality of our society but at the ideality as well. Indeed, the ideality may be more strenuously opposed than the actuality Radicalism, in our day, finds more fertile ground among the college educated than among the high-school graduates, the former having experienced more exposure to some kind of "adversary culture," the latter ... having its own kind of "popular" culture that is more accommodating to the bourgeois world that working people inhabit.78 Like the Straussians, the neoconservatives believed there was no longer a sufficient relation between private liberty and the responsibilities that the public must exercise to preserve freedom. Whereas Straussians emphasized the theoretical roots of America's new troubles, the neoconservatives connected America's political predicament with postindustrialism, claiming it had contributed to the development of three major

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political weaknesses in America: the absence of a public ideal of distributive justice; modernist culture; the entry of gnostic intellectuals into key sectors of the polity. All were incapacitating the American public, preventing them from making political decisions necessary for the public good while enhancing the political influence of adversary intellectuals. The neoconservatives claimed that America had undergone three transformations in its economic base and mores.79 The agrarian economy and frontier expansionism had promoted a yeoman ethos, and the industrial revolution featured the values of Horatio Alger. The virtues of frugality, industry, sobriety, reliability, and piety influenced the demos. Most important, the yeoman and Alger ethos established an effective public philosophy concerning distributive justice. It provided the public with a standard to judge the relation between an individual's moral character and the distribution of power, privilege, and wealth. These were also in accordance with a general Protestant ethic which maintained that America provided the conditions to pursue God's will on earth through labor, piety, discipline, and temperance. However, the postindustrial economic system, based on information processing and characterized by impersonal, bureaucratic institutions utilizing rational techniques of management, was not sustained by a standard of distributive justice. The diffusion of science among many sectors of the public also undermined the religious reinforcement of ideals of justice. Recalling themes of Joseph Schumpeter, the neoconservatives feared that the acquisitive ethos was culturally naked, not legitimized. This undermined democracy by creating a citizenry for whom the public good was associated solely with acquisition and selfrealization. It had upset the American public's ability to make hard decisions—war and peace, financial solvency, economic change—that must be made for national well-being.80 The neoconservatives also drew on explanations of conflict in European society during the dawn of mass society and applied them to the postindustrial age in America. Led by Daniel Bell, they favored an analysis of modernism as an intellectual response to changes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: revolutionary developments in transportation and communication; loss of religious belief; the public politics and mass production of mass society. Modernism expressed itself in various ways. One was stylistic, an experimentalism in forms, an insistence on the simultaneity and immediacy of the artistic experience. In the premodernist view, the spectator contemplated art. Now, the artist

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created an immediate sensual impression. Modernism also expressed the theme of human life as a self-creating experience. The aim? More experience. Nietzsche asserted that only experience was authentic. Dostoyevsky believed that at the end of all experience lies only the certainty of death. To accept a goal or an end was to acquiesce to a restraint. One must never cease striving, one must never be satisfied with any end. Modernism was high culture—it was not concerned with "reaching" the public (indeed, public acceptance was a sign of failure), and many of its themes were critical of the debasement of human ends created by mass production and mass politics. Until World War II, European modernists often united with either the radical right or left in opposition to liberal democracy. Modernist movements appeared among American intellectuals during the turn of the century and interwar years. However, as American intellectuals were more isolated from the opinion-forming classes than their European counterparts, modernism had less political influence. It held interest only among a tiny cultural avant-garde in a few urban centers.81 The neoconservatives argued, however, that structural changes identified with postindustrialism enabled a vulgar modernism to become the mass culture of America. The explosive postwar expansion of higher education exposed millions to modernist tastes and attitudes, while also educating them in the spirit of rationalism. This resulted in an emphasis on the new, whether by design or spontaneously, while creating a bias against such customs and traditions as monogamy, frugality, and religion. Suddenly, such authors as Paul S. Goodman, an Upper West Side beat, and Allen Ginsberg, a Greenwich Village bohemian, became celebrities.82 Postindustrialism also established national telecommunications and electronic mechanisms as the key transmitters of culture. The cultural centers of New York and Los Angeles, where modernism reigned, began to instill an urban modernist culture in the nation. This new cultural orientation had a particularly receptive audience in the disproportionately large cohort of college-educated persons born after 1945, who in the new economy came to hold a large number of positions requiring symbolic and technical skills. Thus, according to these writers, what appeared in the early 1960s as a counterculture movement against the prosaic virtues of frugality, sobriety, and piety quickly became the dominant culture in America. Neoconservatives claimed that a public modernism that glorified shock, sensual pleasure, and violence while

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attacking success, patriotism, and conformity had come to dominate the national vehicles of mass culture, movies, music, novels, and television. Moreover, neoconservatives continued, postindustrialism's need for symbolic and technical skills had created a polity dependent on intellectuals—the so-called new class. Included in this group are scholars, scientists, authors, major editors, and journalists. This sector, which had been out of the mainstream of American political and social life, now held a strategic position within an information-based economy, particularly the telecommunications media, and were circulating ideas throughout the polity. The American polity is going through an "institutional reorientation," declared Kirkpatrick, in which the power of business and labor was being replaced by the disproportionate political influence of the new class. Unlike business or labor, she continued, the new class did not wield influence through the control of money or manpower; it controlled "the meanings that constitute a culture and . . . the symbols through which those meanings are expressed."83 Neoconservatives evoked the themes, if not necessarily the intentions, of Lionel Trilling and Eric Voegelin in discussing the political problematics created by this new class. Trilling suggested that adversary politics and culture were inherent in intellectuals, independent of the political and social setting, because their creative orientation led to hostility toward the status quo.84 Voegelin claimed that the intellectual was the contemporary carrier of gnosticism: a form of utopianism that Voegelin described as a deep-seated, persistent tendency in Western thought to transfer Christian hopes and symbols of salvation from an otherworldly orientation to an "intramundane range of action." To Voegelin, communism, liberalism, fascism, scientism were all attempts to merge heaven and earth.85 Kirkpatrick summed up how the new class was both adversarial and gnostic: The rationalist orientation creates disenchantment with concrete people, places, and practices The habit of measuring existing practices against abstract principles inevitably leads to discontent with the status quo, and the belief that reality can be brought into conformity with principles creates a predisposition to act to remedy unsatisfactory situations. Rationalism, optimism, and activism have been and still are the source of liberal and radical political action. They also are characteristics of the politics of the new class.86

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Postindustrialism, in sum, had created public confusion over political and social mores and had given intellectuals a disproportionate political influence. Like the Straussians, neoconservatives attacked the intellectuals for utopianism—the belief that freedom was the ability to pursue a course of action without restraints. "Thought set free from experience," wrote Kirkpatrick, "is unlimited by the constraints of experience or probability.... Failure to distinguish between the domains of thought and experience, of rhetoric and politics, is, of course, the very essence of rationalism."87 Like the Straussians, the neoconservatives recognized that utopianism often freed the philosopher and artist from the constraints of paradigms and forms. The idea that the artist was a creative genius, Bell noted, meant that he "need not regard the laws of society and its authorities" and "be guided by the inner necessities of the expansion of the self—to embrace new experiences."88 However, the absence of restraints among the public created a polity incapable of distinguishing right and wrong. "That society," Bell continued, "lacking a culture derived from its empty beliefs and desiccated religions, in turn, adopts as its norm the life-style of a cultural mass that wants to be "emancipated" or "liberated," yet lacks any sure moral or cultural guides as to what worthwhile experiences may be."89 While broadly criticizing the culture created by postindustrialism, neoconservatives focused on the policy consequences of the new class's Utopian attempt to establish their ideas as immediate political reality. Thus the idea of equality could not be expressed in equality of opportunity but rather in equality of result, contributing to public policies that, rather than empowering the individual, increased dependence on the state. The new class, they suggested, also sought to attain peace immediately through policies that unilaterally disarmed America despite the continued existence of tensions and conflict in the world. In addition, the new class opposed American support for authoritarian regimes irrespective of the position such regimes occupied in America's geopolitical strategy or the political character of the opposition forces they confronted, while remaining willfully blind to the necessarily incremental process of democratic reform.90 Neoconservatives suggested that new class utopianism also promoted institutional changes that encouraged a politics based on power rather than on substantive principles. Their sponsorship of reforms of the political parties and Congress had aimed to introduce immediately a democratic ethos in these institutions. These reforms—open primaries, a

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weakened committee system—while removing vestiges of corruption, limited these institutions' capacity to promote deliberation and political bargaining. "Whereas the period 1890-1920 was the great era of institution building," James Q. Wilson complained, "the last decade or so has been one that has criticized, attacked, and partially dismantled institutions.91 At the same time, the new class was transforming the new transmitters of political reality to the American public, the telecommunications media, into a vehicle for exposing the difference between the ideal and the real. Now, the neoconservatives suggested, the American political world was dominated by a medium that concentrated on facile exposures of how political events consistently violated this or that American value, thereby eroding public belief in the nation's political principles. Both of these developments—the weakening of political institutions and the strengthening of the telecommunications medium—promoted demagoguery rather than circumspection and negotiation. Verbal skills and symbolic manipulation rather than experience and substantive mastery became the keys to political success. This, in turn, heightened the influence of the new class.92 STRAUSSIAN AND NEOCONSERVATIVE CONVERGENCE

The neoconservatives, believing that postindustrialism had eroded public belief in the veracity of the political and social mores required for a stable liberal democracy, advanced a political prescription similar to one offered by the Straussians: the development of public policies and institutions that conduce to public standards of a political and moral good and bad. "The essential first step," stated Wilson, "is to acknowledge that at root, in almost every area of important public concern, we are seeking to induce persons to act virtuously, whether as school children, applicants for public assistance, would-be lawbreakers, or voters and public officials."93 The Public Interest for Spring 1971 contains an example of the unity that began to appear in the early 1970s between Straussians and neoconservatives. It indicates their respective foci at that time and also shows how American conservatism was developing a territorial component as part of its new political outlook. Walter Berns, a student of Strauss, discussed the necessity for republics to maintain a substantive moral underpinning. The contemporary trend of the Supreme Court to

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strike down local censorship laws, he wrote, signified a decline in the distinction between passion and reason, bad and good, and contributed to the corruption of democracy. In the same issue, the political scientist James Q. Wilson reviewed the research methods of recent studies on the relation between culture and character. He saw fundamental flaws in both procensorship and libertarian positions. Because persons could not be isolated from culture, it was impossible to prove the effect of books or movies on an individual's character. Because social science was not competent, its agnosticism should not determine policy. Wilson estimated that local community control of censorship should be retained.94 As Straussians and neoconservatives converged, each helped the other overcome their respective weaknesses. The Straussian history of political philosophy provided a theoretical explanation for recent changes of emphases in American liberalism. However, as most had been hidden intellectuals, they had little knowledge of how to construct or transmit an exoteric program. In turn, many of the neoconservatives were offsprings of the New York Intellectuals. They were well schooled in public writing and debate.95 Many edited publications that helped shape the opinions of elites: Robert Bartley of the Wall Street Journal, Norman Podhoretz of Commentary, Joseph Epstein of American Scholar, Irving Kristol of The Public Interest. Because many neoconservatives were social scientists, they were practiced in analyzing social structures, public policies, political organizations, and public opinion. Some of them, however, were immature political theorists. Many had embraced endism, the idea that the age of conflict over fundamental political principles was over.96 As Mansfield states delicately, "The neo-conservatives have the education and confidence of intellectuals, but probably in reaction to liberal intellectuals, their work lacks the sweep one expects from intellectuals.97 Consequently, the Straussians provided a theoretical underpinning while the neoconservatives provided an understanding of policies, structure, public opinion, and public writing. The Straussians emphasized the need for changing America's constitutionalism, neoconservatives focused on the problems with contemporary public policies. PROSAIC REPUBLICANISM

New American conservative theory maintains that a morally mature demos helps sustain liberal democracy. "What is distinctive about the contemporary period in my view," observes Wilson, "is the collapse of the

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Victorian popular culture and of the moral legitimacy of the institutions embodying it."98 Conservative theory affirms that moral development can be instilled primarily through reconfiguring the structures and ethos of civil and local, public institutions so as to set codes of just and unjust behavior and ideals of public good. The core components of their liberalrepublican orthodoxy are two: a reintroduction of communitarian values in social life to strengthen parochial, ethnic, racial, and religious bonds; a private, risk-taking orientation toward economic development that rewards the virtues of independence and creativity and discourages the vices of dependence and acquisitiveness. American conservative political thought offers a prosaic vision of political morality and community. They are constituted partly by local public determination both of what is moral and what is culturally acceptable in the realms of religion and state, public expressions of patriotism, censorship laws, education curriculums, and abortion regulations, among many others. This process of local, parochial decision making strengthens ethnic, racial, and religious bonds and fosters public homogeneity and community. In the words of Peter Berger and Richard Neuhaus, We want frankly to assert that 'tribe' and 'parochial' are not terms of derision. That they are commonly used in a derisive manner is the result of a world view emerging from the late eighteenth century. ... [T]he result is that the enemies of particularism ("tribalism") have become an elite tribe attempting to impose order on the seeming irrationalities of the real world and operating on premises that most Americans find both implausible and hostile to their values.... Politically, we would argue that it is not the business of public policy to make value judgments regarding the merits or demerits of various identity solutions It is the business of public policy not to undercut, and indeed to enhance, the identity choices available to the American people." This interpretation of community has the political advantage of addressing issues of immediate salience, affirming local prejudices, and encouraging self-government. It has been reinforced by original intent constitutionalists—Robert Bork, Michael McConnell, Lino Graglia, and Joseph Granno, among others—who assert that states and local communities have the right to determine their own laws unless they violate a clearly stated principle of the Constitution. "Where the Constitution

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does not embody the moral or ethical choice, the judge has no basis other than his own values upon which to set aside the community judgement embodied in the statute. That, by definition, is an inadequate basis for judicial supremacy," writes Bork. A community's moral and ethical values "are matters concluded by the passage and enforcement of the laws in question. The judiciary has no role to play other than applying the statutes in a fair and impartial manner."100 All of these views on the location of political sovereignty differ fundamentally from those of British conservatives. Whereas British conservatives insist that the legislative office of the central state maintain ultimate authority in all spheres of society, American conservatives prescribe divided sovereignty for many domestic political, social, and cultural issues, arguing that local communities should determine these matters unless they involve a clearly stated principle of the Constitution. Associating community with local self-government also enables conservatism to remove the national government from many political controversies; the central state gains autonomy as the political conflict shifts to the states and local communities; the national government now encourages debates in local associations rather than being the target of political debate. "A people cannot be active unless it knows how to associate," notes Mansfield, "but such association requires as its precondition a constitution that allows and encourages it, the mother association that gives birth to free responsible associations throughout a free society but does not try to rule their activities."101 Many political debates take on the character of low politics, revolving around the character of local public institutions rather than the general functioning of the national state. "The whole point about federalism and decentralization," Kristol summarizes in advocating the repeal of Roe v. Wade, "is to see to it that such controversial issues do not distract national politics from its truly important concerns."102 In addition to promoting a shift in the process and location of political debate and conflict, conservatives have a program for redesigning the ethos and structures of civil and local, public institutions: corporations focused on risk-taking investment; families on care for the young, old, and handicapped; schools on shaping citizens; churches on moral development; neighborhood organizations on social welfare. This agenda requires, they insist, a change in the territorial character of public policies. New conservative theory advocates a devolutionary, rather than a national, approach to public policy. Many suggest that as postindus-

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trialism has produced mass education and prosperity most Americans are capable of choosing from a variety of public and private institutions for social services; universal public policies are too cumbersome to target the specific needs of a variegated sector of the American public. Glazer, looking back, summarizes his old view as a liberal: "We have a sea of misery, scarcely diminished by voluntary charitable efforts. Government then starts moving in, setting up dikes, pushing back the sea, and reclaiming the land, so to speak." He now summarizes his new outlook: Decentralization, like participation, is a means of adapting social services to different needs and tastes of beneficiaries and clients, in this case less by the direct route of participation than by route of bringing authority closer to those upon whom or whose benefit it is exercised. In the case of a federal state, decentralization can be to states, to cities, and smaller communities or even to nongovernmental or quasi-governmental organizations carrying out functions that public bodies might exercise. The forms of decentralization are so many that no general overview can be given.103 New conservative theory's emphasis on promoting a social morality and local communitarianism does not imply that these values are envisioned as ends or goals. They are primarily encouraged as auxiliaries to the self-interested activity of the individual. It prescribes a morality based upon what Maclntyre describes as "secondary virtues": their existence is subordinate to a higher primary end; they do not help us in identifying what is that higher end; they are based on the assumption that we already are pursuing those goals and they are to aid us in that quest.104 Indeed, adopting a commercial republican position, conservative theory insists that the individual pursuit of liberty and prosperity is a necessary virtue for a morally developed public. National and state governments can help foster this character, they argue, through policies that encourage entrepreneurial risk and free labor.105 Moreover, private property is not only a means to a better republic, it is an end of the republic. A striking example of the twentieth century's retreat from liberal natural rights, states Pangle, "is the shameful dilution of property rights and inheritance rights of individuals and families."106 Mansfield points out that Locke formulated the proper principle toward property for modern constitutional states: "Property is a convention or form enlarged out of its matter so that it becomes an end in itself. We know then that if anyone's property is insecure, everyone's is insecure.... However rich

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or poor one may be, all profit from having a right to property; and in a sense ... all profit equally This is the connection, so often hastily dismissed today, between property rights and human rights."107 William Schambra puts forth the idea that the Reagan administration devised the proper approach to promoting both self-interested economic activity and community. By reestablishing the promotion of commerce through the stimulation of individual self-interest, Reagan embraced the "primary object" of the American statesmen. At the same time, he continues, Reagan did not abandon communitarianism. Rather, "we now look again ... to state and local government and private associations to satisfy the American yearning for community." Both emphases—private property and local community—"indicate a sort of instinctive return to the healthy separateness and tension of the two American political traditions."108 Other proposals for the public good also avoid infringing upon the individual's pursuit of self-interest and prosperity. For example, most conservatives oppose the reintroduction of conscription, a device generally employed by the European state to establish political obligation among its citizens. Conscription, they argue, violates citizens' rights to individual liberty. Moreover, the contemporary lack of consensus in foreign policy would dilute any conscription policy to some form of national service. Large sections of American youth would opt to serve the state by devoting their energies to domestic social policies, and this in turn would require the enlargement of the state apparatus to a point where it would threaten individual liberty.109 SEPARATE POWERS OF THE PRESIDENCY

American conservative political theory does not advocate fostering a substantive political unity at the national level. It ridicules, for example, the idea of a national aim or purpose. "We do not have a national purpose," Neuhaus states. "We do not have a leadership cohort in American life capable—except in time of war—of defining a national purpose."110 However, conservative political thought recommends an active and energetic section of the national state. Building from Locke's, Montesquieu's, and Publius's statements on executive prerogative in national emergencies and foreign policy, new conservatives advocate a separation of powers theory that provides a vehicle for the poetic idea of greatness in foreign policy and national security.111

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Conservative theory asserts that the constitutional doctrines of mixed government and separation of powers are relevant to different policy arenas. The president is one player among many in domestic politics, a member of a mixed government. The chief executive's domestic lawmaking focus is to moderate and restrain the legislation emanating from the federal government (unless there is a major crisis), thereby delegating most domestic issues to civil and local, public institutions. At the same time, conservatism puts forward the separation of powers doctrine in foreign policy. As the state system operates in a Hobbesian state of nature, so the chief executive must be a unitary power fettered neither by law nor Congress. Gary Schmitt and Abram Shulsky make the constitutional argument: By culling out executive from legislative power and housing it in a largely independent and unitary office, the framers were signaling their intent to move decisively away from the incompetence of congressionally dominated government, particularly in the areas of war and foreign affairs. They wanted "more decision, more dispatch, more secrecy, (and) more responsibility." And those were more likely to be found "where single men," not "bodies" exercised power.... [T]he presidency possesses unity and is capable of acting with the greatest expedition, secrecy, and fullest knowledge—in short, with greatest efficiency.112 In general, conservatives claim, Congress should be a body in which the executive branch defends and debates broad foreign policy goals; it should not manage foreign policy. Late Victorian British conservative theory elaborated this view of the Parliament after the electoral reforms of 1868 and 1883-85. Just as Maine told British Conservatives that ministers must resolve decisions on their own and only use the Commons to defend government positions and hear opinions, so Kirkpatrick states, "Congress does have an important role to play in clarifying broad themes ... [and in] debate [B]ut it cannot be a managerial center, trying to direct the details and implementation in foreign policy."113 Herein are contemporary American and British conservative constitutionalism most similar—in projecting themes of undivided sovereignty, in aiming to enhance the authority and autonomy of the central state. However, whereas contemporary British conservatives claim that these constitutional principles are for both domestic and foreign policy, American conservatives claim that they are mainly for foreign policy. British

• The Redefinition of American Conservatism • 71 • conservatives' separation of powers doctrine replaces a territorial politics that divided tasks between the central state and intermediary organizations, claiming the legislative office of the central state as the sole power or lawmaking center of the polity. American conservatism's separation of powers doctrine complements territorial politics. Local public and civil institutions are to predominate in domestic politics, the presidency is to prevail in foreign policy. American conservative theory advocates a dual polity of high and low politics. Accordingly, Oakeshott and Mansfield praise different theorists that each deems offered the proper complement to liberalism—authority or the poetic idea of greatness. To Oakeshott, the most accomplished theorists are Jean Bodin, Hobbes, and Hegel.114 He believes that their views on the state have two key features. First, all espoused the central state's undivided authority while legislating, administering, and adjudicating general rules. "Civil authority is the attribute of an office," Oakeshott writes in his commentary on Bodin. "It is la puissance de donner loy a tous en general et a chacun en particulier, to administer this law in judicial proceedings, and to authorize and appoint to subordinate magisterial offices." Second, Oakeshott maintains that Bodin, Hobbes, and Hegel put forward civil laws which are unrelated to substantive aims as conditions to be subscribed to in conduct. "They do not specify a public 'interest' (there is none), but a public concern with the manners in which private interests are pursued."115 In contrast, Mansfield prefers Locke, Montesquieu, and Publius. Each, according to Mansfield, advocated limiting the arbitrary rule of the state in domestic politics and encouraged liberty; yet all provided the executive with the autonomy required for an active foreign policy and crises management. Mansfield explains that Montesquieu's constitutionalism featured a domestic lawmaking process that was to be limited by the mixed role of different legislative bodies, including that of the executive. On the other hand, the executive was the undivided sovereign around foreign policy and national emergencies. "The law-making (or enacting) power is vested in the representatives of the people, but it can be checked by another part of the legislature using the faculty of preventing. The executive power cannot be checked," Mansfield says of Montesquieu's constitutionalism.116 Indeed, as British conservative theory claims that the legislative center must not be limited by the rules of civil association that govern the rest of the polity, American conservative theory suggests a presidential pre-

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rogative to circumvent the law. This prerogative, American conservative argue, belongs exclusively to the president. Otherwise, states Mansfield, "when all branches or even all citizens have a prerogative power, no one has responsibility because no one has a definite responsibility."117 Equally important, the presidency is the constitutional form that expresses the public good: a stable foreign policy; national security; crises management. These policy domains are beyond the rule of law, and presidential prerogative is required so that the executive can manage them effectively. "Laws cover only what is general and predictable," Mansfield states, "and need always to be supplemented by a discretionary power, the executive."118 Recognizing that this power can be used either incompetently or for immoderate ends, Mansfield nevertheless believes that most executives' ambition for acquiring lasting fame will lead them to use it judiciously and well, to ensure that prescribed changes are retained: An able executive will make his quick reactions consistent with his general program, so that his quickness is not merely willful but somehow connects to his lasting effect. By making executive power republican, the Framers did not cleanse it of its Machiavellian potentiality. But they did make it possible—though not as likely as they said—for a great man to represent a free people. Executive power endangers, rescues, ennobles representative government.119 Presidents must be aware, conservative theory warns, that public per ception of presidential abuse of prerogative will contribute to new laws that limit the powers of the presidency. Gary Schmitt asserts that there is no resolution to the tension between executive secrecy and democracy. The presidency, he insists, cannot refrain from acting in secrecy. "We begin to understand better the function of secrecy in popular government when we recall that the Constitution itself was formulated behind closed doors," Schmitt notes. "The thought that justifies actions of this type is that the interests of the people, the end for which popular government exists, are often best served by seemingly non-popular means." Nevertheless, Schmitt continues, democracies jealously defend their power and will weaken presidential autonomy if they feel power is being abused. "Thus," Schmitt concludes, the "president... should be sure that his use of such measures does not make the people wary of it."120 Many conservatives maintain that the Reagan administration became caught

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in the dilemma of preserving national security through secrecy when Congress shifted over funding the contras. As Michael Malbin states, "Thus, the immediate policy that the president thought would leave the country in the best strategic position involved risking support for the institutional powers he and his successors would also need to achieve the same long-term objective."121 Contemporary conservative theory's view of the presidency should be distinguished from that of Progressive-Liberal writers who also advocated enhancing the power of the presidency during much of the twentieth century. Woodrow Wilson, James Macgregor Burns, Samuel Beer, and others criticized the theory of mixed government as a fetter on national democracy. Mixed government, they charged, had contributed to a split in American political culture—democracy associated with local government (what Progressive-Liberals called the Jeffersonian heritage), national government insulated from democratic pressure (what Progressive-Liberals called the Hamiltonian heritage). These theorists and analysts proposed that the president combine the functions of national representative, legislative leader, and unitary executive. This would enable the president to overcome congressional opposition to both national social policies and an actively engaged foreign policy: "He must gain leadership of a big national party and guide it in seizing and holding majority status," wrote Burns in describing the mobilizing presidency. "He must publicize his and his party's program and goals with such clarity and conviction that he can help convert latent and amorphous popular attitudes into a powerful public opinion bolstering his cause. He must build structural support in his personal following by merging it with his national organization or by creating new political units."122 American conservative theory does not envision the president as a persistent mobilizer of public opinion. Mobilization is a presidential prerogative reserved for national emergencies. "America has become habituated to forward and assertive presidential behavior," Schmitt warns. "[L]etting well enough alone seems almost heretical."123 Conservatives maintain that Reagan's concentration on shaping public opinion was required in order to lessen the federal government's responsibility for domestic legislation, reversing a trend of five decades. In general, they insist, the president's general focus is not one of shaping public opinion. "To think of leadership as prerogative is useful because it is compre-

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hensive," states Tulis; "so understood, leadership includes both the power to further popular will and the power to counteract it, according to necessity."124 Publius for Spring 1987 offers a conservative vision of America's proper constitutional forms. Gary Schmitt and David Nichols find that American constitutionalism expresses both the poetic idea of greatness and liberalism. Schmitt highlights Thomas Jefferson's views on the presidency. He suggests that Jefferson, the founder associated with opposition to enlarged executive powers, held two views of the presidency. Jefferson believed the executive branch was part of a mixed government in domestic politics but invoked the separation of powers doctrine in foreign policy; he believed the executive must have undivided and, if necessary, extraconstitutional powers on matters of national security, military engagements, and territorial acquisitions. David Nichols contends that Herbert Croly's argument for national democracy and community overlooks the agreement forged by the founders. In domestic politics, Nichols states, it was agreed that mixed government would limit national public policies, ensuring individual liberty and small republics as the generators of community. In sum, Schmitt and Nichols describe a constitutionalism that reconciles the poetic idea of greatness and liberalism: the executive is to have the autonomy to pursue honor and fame through political activities that enhance political prosperity, and the mixed government is to limit the national state's penetration into civil society, ensuring liberty.125 TRUTH AND POLITICS

American conservative theory has worked out a program with three important features. It calls for a substantive political unity at the local rather than national level. It seeks to institute a political and social morality that would augment and sustain, not supplant, individual liberty. Finally, the new conservatism, while advocating an active foreign policy, eschews a national political consensus, advocating a presidential high politics in foreign policy. A contrasting of this new conservative theory with that of the mentor of many contemporary conservative theorists, Leo Strauss, reveals its rationale and aims. New conservative theory appears to break with Strauss. To invoke Strauss's history, conservative theory is attempting to reestablish "the first wave of modern political thinking." It projects civil and local, public

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institutions as generators of political and social mores that will sustain, but not supplant, the pursuit of individual self-interest and prosperity as the American ought. Strauss asserted that such an outlook led to a regime's pursuing the low (self-interest) instead of the high (reason), yet many conservative writers celebrate this shift in emphasis. Michael Novak notes, If the reconciliation of the common good with free persons in their weakness and division is one of the most crucial of all human tasks, we do well to heed the principle of lowliness. The most realistic solutions are not likely to be grand or lofty, but humble and concrete. Looking for them in the wrong place, or in the wrong mode, we are quite likely to miss them altogether. The principle of lowliness ... is the most reliable of guides in political philosophy.126 Indeed, as American conservative theory has altered the aim of the good society, it has reevaluated the liberalism of John Locke. Many conservative theorists distinguish between the natural law liberalism of Locke and the philosophic pragmatism of Dewey, James, and Woodrow Wilson. Locke, they assert, maintained a standard of right and wrong and a form of communitarianism. Moreover, they suggest that Locke, like themselves, underlined civil institutions as the primary sources of community, claiming that Locke envisioned religion, family, and schools as civil institutions required for a polity that encourages the individual pursuit of liberty and property. Nathan Tarcov claims, "His understanding of human nature exhibits a profound appreciation of human sociality, and families and churches play crucial roles in Lockean civil society. Locke teaches not a narrowly calculating selfishness but a set of decent moral virtues."127 In contrast, new conservatives continue, the philosophical pragmatists conceived a pluralism that failed to develop civil institutions that could provide a communitarian basis for American individualism. On one level, this distinction between Lockean liberalism and pragmatic liberalism is not a break with Leo Strauss. Each, according to Strauss, was a different wave of liberal thought that expressed liberalism's progressive deterioration. However, the interpretation of Lockean liberalism as the expression of the good society lowers or debases Strauss's interpretation of it. Strauss recognized that Locke and other early modern liberals invoked some ideas of public good. However, they

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identified the public good with the self-interested activity of the individual. Locke aimed to establish rights, Strauss insisted, not duties: Locke's teaching on property, and therewith his whole political philosophy, are revolutionary not only in regard to the'biblical tradition but with regard to the philosophic tradition as well. Through the shift of emphasis from natural duties or obligations to natural rights, the individual, the ego, had become the center and origin of the moral world, since man—as distinguished from man's ends—had become that center or origin.128 Strauss never suggested that a Lockean liberalism was sufficient for maintaining liberal democracy. The difference between Strauss and contemporary conservatism can be explained, in part, by their divergent aims. Strauss rarely left the esoteric world of high thought, and he analyzed political thinking in relation to his understanding of Socrates, Plato, and ancient political philosophy. Contemporary conservative theorists contribute to an exoteric world of politics and analyze political thought in relation to their understanding of the American founding. Whereas Strauss constructed a theoretical paradigm, present theorists contribute to conservative thinking that appeals to both politicians and the public. Virtue, conservative theory suggests, can be attained without fundamentally altering the individual's pursuit of personal goals and prosperity. At the same time Strauss rejected Lockean liberalism as an expression of the good society, he did express an awareness that the resolution of liberalism's problematics required respecting aspects of modernity. Modern political thought, he believed, had created "a kind of society in which the classical principles as stated and elaborated by the classics are not immediately applicable. Only we living today can possibly find a solution to the problems of today."129 Strauss suggested that political philosophy had something to offer to constitutional forms that both preserved national security and created ideas of public good and truth, mitigating liberalism's degeneration. Constitutional forms, Strauss continued, expressed the character and end of a regime. In the case of democracy, for example, the form reflected the end of equality. Invoking Aristotle's mixed regime, he suggested that a constitution could establish forms that expressed different ends. Under these circumstances, the form that expressed the preponderant or authoritative end set the tone of the polity.130

• The Redefinition of American Conservatism • 77 •

From the perspective of different constitutional forms expressing different ends of the polity, contemporary conservative theory can be reconciled with Strauss. Contemporary conservatism advocates a polity that establishes local democracy as preponderant around issues of social morality and community, complemented by an executive branch that is preponderant around national security. The end of national security is not a classical virtue, but it enables some, notably the philosophers, to pursue the virtue of contemplation. As Strauss affirmed, the philosophers' primary political aim is to preserve philosophy. American conservative theory also is attempting to address the desire of Strauss's ancients and Machiavelli for poetic greatness by accommodating and utilizing the two types of ambitions existent in a polity—the public desire for self-preservation and security and the noble desire for fame and honor. The public's ambitions are addressed through a prosaic political and social morality that encourages private property, religion, and local community, while the few who aspire to honor and fame are being addressed through a separation of powers doctrine that prescribes the national executive's autonomy in foreign policy and crises management. Finally, contemporary conservative theory is attempting to address the problematics that Strauss identified with the public's lack of belief in truth. This lack of public certitude is not theoretically wrong; however, because political societies are bound by transcendental beliefs, it creates dangerous political conditions. Otherwise, politics is based solely on power and organization. At the same time, conservative theory shares Strauss's view that international politics is based principally on power and organization and that foreign policy must be based on a political executive's realism, not on abstract truths. In short, American conservative theory, like that of Strauss, advocates establishing a belief in truth in politics while recognizing that truth and politics are ultimately incompatible. Conservative theory's program encourages the pursuit of private property as an ought and local majorities as the generators of public truths, while establishing an executive branch capable of pursuing national security with realism.

THREE

Establishing and Reestablishing Morality and Authority

T

HE intellectuals who have redefined conservative political thought in Britain and America believe that their polities no longer generate traditions sufficient to sustain themselves. Conservative theory must adopt to postmodernist societies, in which norms and conventions that instill political and social discipline are lacking, by articulating an outlook and a program that establish and reestablish traditions. Yet British and American conservative theory each view tradition differently. The British view tradition primarily as assumptions underlying practices in diverse activities—language, production, education, science—and providing the resources and boundaries, the liberty and order necessary for individuals and institutions to interact and pursue their aims. The Americans view tradition as civic and religious mores that enable the public to maintain standards sufficient to sustain a liberal democracy. Each conservative theory's approach to establishing traditions expresses different views of morality and authority. The British advocate a law- or rule-governed morality: a morality that makes life respectable and unobjectionable by allowing people to interact in peace while pursuing private aims. The construction of this form of morality requires the state to exact public obligation to respect rules that apply to all of the members of the society; noncompliance will be met with sanctions. American conservative theory advocates a morality of aspirations or substantive oughts. The creation of such moralities generally is identified 78

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with polities exerting great efforts to achieve noble ends. As Richard Flathman suggests, "Such moralities elevate human beings and societies over and above their present level and spur them on to achievements over and above what they think they can achieve."1 American conservatism's morality of aspirations aims to sustain the individual pursuit of liberty and prosperity, the satisfaction of needs as presently understood. A similar difference animates British and American conservative views of authority. To invoke Richard Friedman's distinctions, the British maintain that the state must be "In Authority": "The authority relationship will then appear as an elaborate contrivance designed to achieve agreement at the procedural level in face of disagreement at the substantive level." The Americans maintain that the state must be "An Authority"; its claim to govern is based on representing substantive principles—not on a procedural framework.2 The substantive principles, however, are to be primarily generated by civil and local, public institutions rather than by the national state. These differing views of tradition, authority, and morality produce divergent institutional emphases: British conservative theory advocates the creation of a uniform framework of rules by the legislative office of the central government; American conservatives call for redevelopment of the ethos and shape of the civil and local, public institutions. In chapters 4 and 5 I discuss ideas of liberty and public policies emanating from these distinct perspectives. Here I analyze how these contrasting outlooks contribute to opposite views of social justice and the relation between religion and the state. Social justice generally has been identified as a theme of the liberal-left; religion vis-a-vis the state has been assumed to be a premise of conservatism.3 BRITISH CONSERVATISM'S RULE-GOVERNED MORALITY

British and American conservative theory have differing evaluations of social justice. British conservatism maintains that social justice undermines the authority of the central state by creating an extrinsic source of authority and encourages social policies that weaken a free economy. American conservative theory believes that political societies are sustained by members' internalizing of norms of authorities that transcend the state. It strives to articulate principles of social justice that will encourage a social morality that both binds the citizen to local, communitarian norms and generates the individual pursuit of prosperity.

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English conservatism's traditional position is that social justice is intrinsic to the civil practices, institutions, and laws emanating from the nation; therefore, the state is not required to generate substantive principles of social justice. "Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts," wrote Burke. "Wherin, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenour of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression." This continuity of history, Burke continued, provided the moral anchorage that prevented liberty from degenerating into unbridled license. "Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity."4 The English statesman preserved justice, Disraeli concurred, by doing without abstract political goals that weakened the historically articulated institutions and class structures, which both mediated the relation between the subject and state and prevented England from dividing into two nations. "Political institutions, founded on abstract rights are mere nullities," he wrote. "The only certain and legitimate foundation of liberty is law; that if there be no privity between the old legal Constitution of a country and the new legislature, the latter must fall; and that a free government on a great scale of national representation is the very gradual work of time, and especially of preparatory institutions."5 Social justice became a fundamental principle of the liberal-left during the first half of the twentieth century, but British conservatism continued to resist embracing it as a political principle. As most fully expressed by T. H. Marshall, social justice was identified by the liberal-left with the claim that citizens have a right to comprehensive social insurance. "By the social element of citizenship," wrote Marshall, "I mean the whole range from the right to a modicum of economic welfare and society to the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in the society. The institutions most closely connected with it are the educational system and the social services."6 In twentieth-century British politics, the state intermittently pursued this goal of social justice. For example, the Liberal government of 1906

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introduced unemployment and health insurance policies and compulsory, free primary education. During World War I the governing coalition promised to expand these social policies. As the state mobilized all resources to prosecute the war effort, they promised comprehensive social reform and a "home for heroes" after the war. However, British interwar governments, most notably the Conservative Baldwin governments, concentrated on questions of Empire, limited trade unions' rights, and, with the exception of unemployment insurance, introduced only marginal changes in social policy—the Housing Act of 1923, the Widows and Old Age Pensions Act of 1925. During World War II, the all-party government promised social justice once victory was attained in the anti-Fascist war. Memories of broken promises after the previous war contributed to Labour's victory in 1945. Moreover, the leaders of both governing parties, shaken by the two total wars and depression of the previous three decades, now were prepared to utilize the state to bring about more social equality. As the welfare state was launched, Harold Macmillan, Robert Boothby, and other so-called Modern Conservatives claimed that the association of social justice with comprehensive social insurance was consistent with the Disraelian theme of One Nation.7 New British conservative theory rejects the idea of social justice. This criticism is partly a product of idealist philosophy or, more specifically, British conservative theory's embracement of Oakeshott's interpretation of Hegel's view that an objective spirit, rather than a reflective ethics, is the basis of morally good and bad behavior. As F. H. Bradley, the philosopher who helped Anglicize Hegel and influenced Oakeshott's formative thinking, stated, "The view which thinks moral philosophy is to supply us with particular moral prescriptions confuses science with art, and confuses, besides, reflective with intuitive judgement. That which tells us what in particular is right and wrong is not reflection but intuition."8 Rejecting the view that certain political and social mores express fixed or essential characteristics of human nature, Oakeshott and British conservative theory assert that morality is an artifice that is learned. Human beings are histories of experiences, and different individuals are expressions of distinct experiences. "This inseparability of learning and being human is central to our understanding of ourselves," states Oakeshott. "It means that none of us is born human; each is what he learns to become. It means that what characterizes a man is what he actually learned to perceive, to think and to do, and that the important differ-

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ences between human beings are differences in respect of what they have actually learned."9 The basis to an individual's learning is the inheritance of the human achievements in a specific political society: "an inheritance of feelings, emotions, images, visions, thoughts, beliefs, ideas, understandings, intellectual and practical enterprises, languages, relationships, organizations, canons and maxims of conduct, procedures, rituals, skills, works of art, books, musical compositions, tools, artefacts and utensils—in short, what Dilthey called a geistige Welt."10 As Shirley Letwin explains, morality or spirit has a vernacular character: An affable cannibal may stop to chat before boiling and the missionary may try to persuade him that men are not for eating. But if he is a sound stalwart cannibal, not seduced by soft words or frightened by foreign gods, he will after all proceed to the pot. And the missionary can save himself only by killing the cannibal. The cannibal's understanding of men does not include the sanctity of human life and we can offer no rational necessity why it should. ... This is the unpleasant truth hidden in the nonsense about the nothingness that threatens us.11 Because everything is dependent upon opinion, societies are themselves exhibitions of intelligence. The idea of universal norms of social justice, however, presupposes an extrinsic source of morality—God, "society," or a universal reason. As all of these views are human constructs, each is logically inconsistent; hence there is no objective basis to forging a substantive political morality, and all attempts to establish human constructs as objective political standards will encourage either tyranny or discord. "Normativists appear to be oblivious to the fact that there is nothing like agreement about the substance and implications of the 'higher norms' they invoke, not even when the same name is used," writes Letwin. "Some normativists are egalitarians and dirigists, whereas others are libertarians. Indeed there are almost as many different conflicting projects as there are normative philosophers, and allowing 'higher norms' to be substituted for authentic law is bound to produce just such a chaos of conflicting opinions as the rule of law is valued for preventing."12 A morality or spirit consistent with humanity's inability to develop objective, substantive beliefs is rule-governed—the adherence to the practices that allow individuals to interact and realize their will through the pursuit of private, substantive aims. Morality is a practice without

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any extrinsic purpose; it is concerned with good and bad conduct, not outcomes. "And moral relationship," adds Oakeshott, "is not association for the achievement of a common purpose... it is relationship solely in respect of conditions to be subscribed to in seeking the satisfaction of any wants."13 In his earlier writings, Oakeshott, like Hume, emphasized that standards of good and bad behavior were generated by the "customs, traditions, rules [and] institutions" of the social practices in civil society. "They are the coherence, they are the substance of our knowledge of how to behave," claimed Oakeshott. "We do not first decide that certain behavior is right and desirable and then express our approval of it as an institution; our knowledge of how to behave is, at this point, the institution."14 Here, the state encouraged moral behavior by protecting the autonomy of the diverse practices and institutions in civil society. "Thus, governing is recognized as a specific and limited activity," Oakeshott noted, "not the management of an enterprise, but the rule of those engaged in a great diversity of self-chosen enterprises."15 In his later writings, Oakeshott stresses that a rule-governed morality requires the state to generate uniform rules applicable to all members of society. The key requisite now is an authoritative, undivided state capable of legislating, executing, and enforcing laws that establish a uniform framework of procedures that do not pursue a substantive goal. "The first condition of this mode of association," Oakehott says, "is for the associates to know what the laws are and to have a procedure, as little speculative as may be, for ascertaining their authenticity and that of the obligations they prescribe."16 In contrast to other theorists who have advocated a rule-governed morality, most notably Henri-Louis Bergson and H. L. A. Hart, Oakeshott places exclusive emphasis on the state's function in generating such a morality, refraining from accepting their view that a common identity among citizens also is necessary for such a morality. "Indeed," Oakeshott writes, "there is no end to the variety of the minorities of interest into which they may circumstantially compose themselves or the collocations (sex, family, race, profession, hobby and so on) in terms of which they may from time to time recognize themselves."17 The idea of social justice, Oakeshott and other British conservative theorists argue, also undermines the state's authority, locating the political obligation of citizens elsewhere with respect to the state. The state gains public compliance only if it acts according to these principles and

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must earn the right to govern. Social justice replaces high with low politics as the goals of equality, social welfare, and income redistribution become dominant. "There is, of course, no place in civil association for so-called 'distributive* justice; that is, the distribution of desirable substantive goods," states Oakeshott. "Such a 'distribution' of substantive benefits or advantages requires a rule of distribution and a distributor in possession of what is to be distributed, but lex cannot be a rule of distribution of this sort, and civil rules have nothing to distribute."18 By pursuing substantive policies, the state shuns uniform rules and becomes an instrument for particularistic goals, fostering a politics based on power rather than encouraging respect for uniform laws and rules. Oakeshott counters: What this mode [civil] of association requires for determining the jus of a law is not a set of abstract criteria b u t . . . a form of moral discourse, not concerned generally with right and wrong in human conduct, but focused narrowly upon the kind of conditional obligations a law may impose, undistracted by prudential and consequential considerations, and insulated from the spurious claims of conscientious objection, of minorities for exceptional treatment and, so far as may be, from current moral idiocies.19 The authority of the state can be assured, Oakeshott and British conservative theory hold, only if the central state remains above pressures exerted from all other sources. Because there are no extrinsic sources of authority outside the state, it must be the ultimate rule-making body of society. Although there are domains in which the state refrains from instituting procedural rules, it reserves the right to do so. Except for foreign policy, these rules must be designed so as not to pursue a substantive goal. "Government has a vital role in preserving, or repairing, the framework of practices and replenishing the fund of values on which individualism depends for its successful reproduction," summarizes John Gray.20 As the state creates norms of social interaction through a system of rules, it also generates political authority through sustaining the procedures that make those rules. "There must be steady rules defining offices, duties and procedures," notes Letwin. "If decisions are not made according to such rules, no one can know who is authorized to do what, and there can be no respect for authority."21 Just as the rule of law establishes a rule-governed social morality, it also establishes political patterns and a rule-governing political morality. "The acknowledgement

• Establishing Morality and Authority • 85 •

of respublica as a system of moral (not instrumental) rules, specifying its own jurisdiction, and recognized solely as rules," observes Oakeshott, "... cannot be acquired in a once-and-for-all endowment but only in the continuous acknowledgement of cives who are familiar with the distinction between recognizing" rules that establish procedures that allow the private pursuit of substantive goals and commands that pursue substantive goals themselves.22 Upon the establishment of such a rulegoverned political morality, "political action['s]... imagined and wished-for outcome is a rule which prescribes conditions to be subscribed to by all alike in unspecifiable future performances."23 In short, as the state avoids setting programmatic goals and operates according to its rules, it creates public belief that it is "In Authority" —thereby building a uniform procedural framework that sustains social and political interaction. Oakeshott summarizes: Here, then is a mode of relationship, distinct from all others Association, not in terms of doing and the enjoyment of the fruits of doing, but of procedural conditions imposed upon doing: laws. Relationship, not in terms of efficacious arrangements for promoting or procuring wished-for substantive satisfactions (individual or communal), but obligations to subscribe to non-instrumental rules: a moral relationship. Rule, not in terms of the alleged worth, "rationality" or "justice" of the conditions these rules prescribe, but in respect of the recognition of their authenticity.24 The central tension in Michael Oakeshott's and contemporary British conservatives' political theory is the relation between the citizen's obligation to respect the authority of the state and the state's responsibility to enact laws that create procedures which maintain social interaction and the private pursuit of goals. Oakeshott has focused a great deal of his attention on the proper relation between authority and liberty. On the one hand, Oakeshott aims to avoid the value neutrality of the legal positivists—Hobbes, Hans Kelsen, John Austin—who believed that while all laws were a product of the will they were just if they followed the proper legal procedures established by the sovereign; hence they required the obligation of citizens. "The jus of lex cannot be identified simply with its faithfulness to the formal character of law," counters Oakeshott. "To deliberate the jus of lex is to invoke a particular kind of moral consideration": the character of both the civility and the procedure that a new law is establishing.25 At the same time, Oakeshott also

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avoids either a Lockean natural law or deontological rights doctrine that upholds a norm of justice or liberty outside or above the sovereign. Because it is not possible to preserve substantive political unity around such norms or rights, these doctrines eventually lead to the complete dissolution of authority and to anarchy. "And so far from being a model of 'justice' to be followed by lex, it is precisely the unconditional state of affairs which lex is expressly designed to bring to an end," states Oakeshott.26 In the final analysis Oakeshott opts for legal positivism when authority and liberty conflict. A citizen may feel that a law is unjust and violates a rule-governed morality by pursuing a telic goal, yet he or she is obligated to obey it for no other reason than that the sovereign state is the ultimate authority for all of the rules and civil practices in society. In Oakeshott's words, And should it be asked how a manifold of rules, many of unknown origin, subject to deliberate innovation, continuously amplified in judicial conclusions about their meanings in contingent situations, not infrequently neglected without penalty, often inconvenient, neither demanding nor capable of evoking the approval of all whom they concern, and never more than a very imperfect reflection of what are currently believed to be "just" conditions of conduct may be acknowledged to be authoritative, the answer is that authority is the only conceivable attribute it could be indisputably acknowledged to have. In short, the only understanding of respublica capable of evoking the acceptance of cives without exception, and thus eligible to be recognized as the terms of civil association, is respublica understood in respect of its authority.27 Situating Oakeshott's views on authority and rule-governed morality with those of David Hume helps clarify Oakeshott's positions. Like Hume, Oakeshott does not require the state either to base its authority on an original contract or to establish its laws on consent. "The jus or injus of what is enacted cannot be inferred from such a constitution or procedure," notes Oakeshott.28 The present form of political decision making will preserve political authority if it develops both stable political procedures and laws of civil association. In contrast to Hume, Oakeshott rejects any ideas of an extended republic with divided sovereignty. He insists that the legislative office of the central state must be the sole sovereign in the lawmaking process, "where there is no other independent office authorized to declare a law inauthentic on account of what

• Establishing Morality and Authority • 87 •

it prescribes."29 Finally, Hume put forward social rules, derived ultimately from self-interest, as the foundation for public standards of morality. "To the imposition then, and observance of these rules, both in general, and in every particular, they are at first mov'd only by a regard to interest," wrote Hume. "The general rule reaches beyond those instances, from which it arose; while at the same time we naturally sympathize with others in the sentiments they entertain of us. Thus self-interest is the original motive to the establishment of justice: but a sympathy with public interest is the source of the moral approbation, which attends that virtue."30 Reinforcing these moral sentiments arising from social rules, explained Hume, were the sentiments forwarded by politicians, education, families, and laws.31 Oakeshott's earlier writings, while shunning the utilitarian current found in Hume's thought, also highlighted civil practices as the primary source of the maxims of good and bad behavior. However, Oakeshott no longer believes civil practices are able to preserve the stable boundaries that are required for norms of good and bad to be created. "Where there is nothing but rules their unavoidable indeterminacy calls for a procedure of casuistry in which they are related to circumstantial occasions; and (apart from the alleged destruction of 'the moral consciousness' entailed in a moral casuistry) is there not something lacking where there is no authoritative provision for it and every man must do his own casuistry for himself or accept the conclusions of some self-appointed moralist?" Moreover, he continues, is there not something missing in an association based on social rules "where there are no penalties annexed to the inadequate observance of their conditions save the condemnation of the aggrieved, the disapproval of the bystander or the arbitrary outlawry of social ostracism?"32 Oakeshott now emphasizes that it is laws that establish procedures which both protect the private pursuit of substantive wants and provide the foundation for right and wrong behavior. "The idea of a moral practice," Oakeshott summarizes, "constitut[es] a deliberately alterable system of law, and specifies] the considerabilities of a distinguishable relationship of civility, which are ... conditions to be taken account of and subscribed to in choosing performances."33 Concurring with Oakeshott's criticism of social justice as a goal of the state, Hayek focuses on removing it as an aim of the economy. Social justice, according to Hayek, is the antithesis of a market-based economy that continually reallocates resources, shifts the distribution of wealth, and creates new winners and losers. The demand for social justice pre-

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supposes that the allocation of resources and distribution of wealth is the product of will. Groups and organizations whose favorable positions in markets are eroded demand that government artificially maintain their favorable positions. Thus politics replaces productivity. "Every exhortation to us to be 'social,'" states Hayek, "is an appeal for a further step toward the 'social justice' of socialism 'Social' should be called 34 'anti-social.' " Social justice, Hayek continues, is a myth by which political parties justify their discrimination among different groups and organizations in order to attract political support; such behavior weakens governments, which become hostage to the politics of interest groups. The cumulative result is an immoral political process in which the economy stagnates and the majority, including many members of intermediate organizations, suffers. "Our whole system of morals is a system of rules," Hayek notes.35 Yet, he continues, the demand for social justice in democracies where legislatures have unlimited statutory powers destroys public compliance with uniform rules. "While the realization of socialism would make the scope of private moral conduct dwindle," Hayek warns, "the political necessity of gratifying all demands of large groups must lead to the degeneration and destruction of all morals."36 For Hayek, the outcomes of the market are intrinsically neither just nor unjust. While granting that success in the market is often due to foresight, calculated risk, and hard work, he notes that luck too is often important and that many prudent, hardworking risk-takers fail, while some who are merely lucky succeed. Hayek admits that there are many positive features to what he calls the Alger myth being promoted by the idea of the "producer ethos" as articulated by American conservative writers.37 Such myths can promote qualities necessary to the functioning of a dynamic market-based economy. However, he fears that if a meritocracy for risk-takers and hard workers is established by making this ethic the standard that justifies unequal outcomes, many with these qualities will become disillusioned if they fail in the market. "It leads," Hayek warns, "to an exaggerated confidence in the truth of this generalization which to those who regard themselves (and perhaps are) equally able but have failed must appear as a bitter irony and severe provocation."38 This disillusionment can, in turn, lead to demands for compensation from a state that promised rewards to those who work hard and invest frugally. Government may continually "adjust" the market and thus distort the process which, over the long run, optimizes the

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Establishing Morality and Authority m 89 m

general good. Justice, Hayek concludes, is not just deserts, but rather uniform rules. From this perspective, the consequences of participating in the market "can be neither just nor unjust" because the results are not intended or foreseen, and depend on a multitude of circumstances not known in their totality to anybody.39 AMERICAN CONSERVATISM'S MORALITIES OF ASPIRATIONS In America, the idea of social justice rarely has been identified with the right of citizens to social welfare. The mid-twentieth-century expansion of social policy by Progressive-Liberalism was explained primarily as an extension of liberty to more citizens, not, as in Britain, as a new norm of social justice.40 Citizenship generally has been associated with the right to take advantage of America's "natural" social justice—social mobility, religious freedoms, the franchise, limited class antagonisms, infrequent wars—not with substantive state actions. "The right to vote and the right to paid labor have characterized citizenship in America," summarizes Judith Shklar. Most American conflicts with regard to citizenship have revolved around whether different groups—AfricanAmericans, women, Asians, among others—have the qualities necessary to be included as citizens. "From the nation's beginning as an independent republic, Americans were torn by glaring inconsistencies between their professed principles of citizenship and their deep-seated desire to exclude certain groups permanently from the privileges of membership," Shklar continues. "These tensions constitute the real history of its citizens."41 Leo Strauss never articulated a set of norms or principles intrinsic to social justice. Distinguishing philosophic virtue from political, or vulgar, virtue, Strauss asserted that only the philosopher, who transcended prevailing norms and laws while contemplating the moralities and rules people create, lived the just life. Hence, there was a distinction between a just life and a moral life. Justice and morality, claimed Strauss, "have two entirely different roots, [and one may ask] whether what Aristotle calls moral virtue is not in fact, merely political or vulgar virtue. The latter question can also be expressed by asking whether, by transforming opinion about morality into knowledge of morality, one does not transcend the dimension of morality in the politically relevant sense of the term."42 Strauss did contend, however, that an idea of justice was necessary to bind a political society. The public must internalize authority;

m 90 m Establishing Morality and Authority •

otherwise, political society would be based exclusively on power and coercion. Indeed, justice was a type of coercion, but it mitigated, rather than exacerbated, conflict. "Justice and coercion are not mutually exclusive," wrote Strauss. "In fact, it is not altogether wrong to describe justice as a kind of benevolent coercion."43 One task for political philosophy and the statesman was to bind political societies through the establishment of public belief that certain norms were essentially just, inviolable, and expressive of an idea of common good. "The common good," stated Strauss, "consists normally in what is required by commutative and distributive justice or by other moral principles of this kind or what is compatible with these requirements."44 Another task for political philosophy and the statesman was to develop and protect another version of the common good as expressed by "the mere existence, the mere survival, the mere independence, of the political community in question."45 Although political philosophy and the statesman must present the former interpretation of the common good as justice, they must remain cognizant that these norms and rules are conventions that must be transcended in order to be defended: "Every dangerous external or internal enemy is inventive to the extent that he is capable of transforming what, on the basis of previous experience, could reasonably be regarded as a normal situation into an extreme situation. Natural right must be mutable in order to cope with the inventiveness of wickedness."46 New American conservative theory claims that a great fault of twentieth-century American conservatism has been its failure to create new norms of social justice as the polity has stopped generating these ideals. It has been satisfied with preserving a political order that merely creates economic wealth. They charge that as Progressive-Liberalism limited the role of religion in local politics, as the economy shifted from industrialism to postindustrialism, and as national security required a less ideological foreign policy, the polity's legitimacy came to be based solely on its efficiency in satisfying the public demand for prosperity—this outcome weakened the political discipline of the American public. Allan Bloom worries about the potential dangers deriving from the erosion of the threat of communism. "We took our orientation from the evil we faced, and it brought out the best in us," he argues. Projecting Nietzschean themes, he suggests that the negative pole of communism gave meaning to the lives of Americans, defining a basis for both public discipline and political hierarchy. Now, however, "God is dead, and we

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need new gods." Otherwise, "the last man" will decree the meaning of life; a herd mentality whereby the average and mediocre create the standards of the politically and morally good and bad. "It appears that the world has been made safe for reason as understood by the market," Bloom contends. "There will be movements agitating for the completion of the project of equality in all possible and impossible ways."17 American conservative theory does not accept the British conservatives' view that, because morality is an artifice, citizens should not be. moored by substantive moral precepts; it argues that the view expressed by Oakeshott (among many others) that individuals are "histories of selfexpression" contributes to contemporary politics being based on power rather than on political principles. "In effect," says Mansfield, "the self must be what it has been if the will is weak, or the self will be what it can become if one's will is strong. The strength of one's expression or assertion begins to replace the language of rights ... since the distinction between right and exercise has been overcome."48 Contrary to their British counterparts, American conservatives concentrate on principles of social justice and public policies in order to foster institutions that will realize these norms. American conservative theory also rejects the British conservatives' view that the establishment of ethical imperatives will lead to arbitrary command of society by the state. Gertrude Himmelfarb claims that Oakeshott's belief that the state must do without social justice because it undermines authority is an anachronism. It was a sufficient condition for the state's maintaining authority when the world was ruled by habit and tradition. There are now fundamental divisions over the nature of good and bad. If the public does not internalize new standards of social justice, nihilism will reign and the polity will fragment. Himmelfarb maintains that the inadequacy of Oakeshott's views was made apparent by the upheavals of the 1960s, when "something like a moral revolution was taking place, [and] moral deviancy was being popularized and democratized." Rejecting Oakeshott, she expresses a willingness to recognize a variety of moral identities. "So long as he [Oakeshott] provides us with no means for distinguishing between good and bad," notes Himmelfarb, "let alone for cultivating a disposition to do good rather than bad, we are obliged to look elsewhere for guidance—to invoke mind, principle, belief, religion, or whatever else may be required to sustain civilization."49 Kristol reproaches Hayek's critique of the idea of social justice with

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regard to a free economy and argues that it has strengthened the criticism that conservatism is too interlocked with business.50 He claims that Hayek reduces one very important impulse—that of acting upon immediate selfinterest—into the only one. He asserts that those from whom Hayek receives intellectual inspiration—Hume, Adam Ferguson, Smith—praised this largely economic impulse at a time when religious and civic traditions mitigated the pernicious effects of the pursuit of economic ends. These have vanished, and the task of intellectuals who desire to maintain freedom is to further new codes of civility to augment the quest for economic advance and security. Yet, claims Kristol, Hayek wants to keep human nature reduced to what capitalism has only recently reduced it to—an economic person. No society, Kristol claims, can survive with self-interest as its sole ethos. The state must be established as "An Authority"; its claim to govern must be based on substantive principles. "People feel free," Kristol argues, "when they subscribe to a prevailing social philosophy; they feel unfree when the prevailing social philosophy is unpersuasive; the existence of constitutions or laws or judiciaries have [sic] precious little to do with these basic feelings."51 Thus, continues Kristol, Hayek's argument against social justice disarms those who wish to defend a free economy and individual liberty. Refusal to address this issue out of fear that the debate leads to interference with the market can lead only to a state in which the enemies of economic liberty dominate the debate on social justice. The proof of this is the advances made during the 1970s by the "new politics," which took advantage of the spiritual vacuum of capitalism to raise issues under the banner of social justice that upset the market and extended state regulation of the economy. "The trouble is," Kristol concludes, "that capitalism outgrew its bourgeois origins and became a system for the impersonal liberation and satisfaction of appetites.... Such a system, governed by purely materialistic conceptions ... is defenseless before the critique of the intellectuals.52 American conservative theory's problem, however, is to articulate principles of social justice that contribute to the formation of a substantive morality that both augments individual liberty and avoids infringing upon the political autonomy of the national executive. To reiterate a point made in chapter 2, American conservative theory does not advocate the establishment of virtues that, as ends of the state, threaten the individual's pursuit of liberty and private property. Nor does conservative theory call for national political goals, preferring a devolutionary

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approach to public policy in order to increase the national executive's political autonomy. Consequently, new conservative theory focuses on civil and local, public institutions as the proper agents for establishing social justice and substantive unity around moral and religious norms, not around political virtues. It abstains from a morality of political virtues, which Montesquieu described as entailing "a love of the homeland, a love of frugality and a love of equality that points to the general good ... not a moral virtue or a Christian virtue ... [but] political virtue."53 Indeed Mansfield, in an interpretation of Montesquieu, comments that because it does not embrace God as the final justification for political activities, the classical goal of republican virtue is both an ineffective restraint on the will and ultimately tyrannous. "Virtue becomes a restraint on the will that without a higher justification, cannot help but appear contrary to the will of the people," writes Mansfield. Initially the public may obey laws encouraging republican virtue, but in time the public will view these laws and norms as their own creation; virtue will no longer be seen as objective standards of good and bad behavior. "Then the people, abandoning the restraint of virtue, will take the government into their own hands or give it to a tyrant."54 Rather than republican virtue, American conservative theory projects a prosaic, social morality of piety, industriousness, sobriety, thrift, charity, humility, and discipline. The keys to reaching these goals are local communities with shared understandings and an economy infused with a producer ethos. American conservative theory's foci on moral and religious mores, rather than political virtue, can be identified by contrasting conservatives' views on morality with Alasdair Maclntyre of the "communitarian" current in the academy. Recent interpretations of liberalism by Maclntyre, Michael Sandel, Robert Bellah, Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer, and others also have noted the absence of an ideal of public good in American politics. They argue that liberal society is unable to encourage shared values among its members; citizens do not participate in the polity; it is no longer possible to speak for the public good. The modern liberal state only creates an arena in which competition goes forward. Maclntyre and others suggest that by promoting active participation in communities, political and moral standards of good and bad would become fixed, and individuals could overcome the anomie and sense of meaninglessness engendered by liberalism.55 Although not opposing the social bonds spawned by families and neighborhoods, Maclntyre maintains that the particularism of these institutions must be

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transcended in order to arrive at a general idea of public good. "The fact that the self has to find its moral identity in and through its membership in communities such as those of the family, the neighborhood, the city and the tribe does not entail that the self has to accept the moral limitations of the particularity of those forms of community," notes Maclntyre. "[I]t is in moving forward from such particularity that the search for the good, for the universal, consists."56 In contrast to Maclntyre and most communitarians, conservative theory argues that the social ideal is embodied—to a greater or lesser extent—in the concrete present. Shared understandings with regard to social morality and public policies express the accumulations of many generations' experiences. Contemporary local communities contain "practical wisdom." From this perspective, social justice is inseparably tied to social custom, to locality, and to particularity. "It is local option in morality, as we have local option in drink," states Glazer. "I think local options by states and local communities, on such matters as abortion, Bible reading in schools... public assistance to private schools, and a number of other matters would do wonders... and reflect the reality that we are a diverse country."57 Novak criticizes communitarians in the academy for ignoring the conservative program for community developed by himself, Robert Nisbet, Martin Diamond, Irving Kristol, William Schambra, Peter Berger, Richard Neuhaus, and Gertrude Himmelfarb: a program that revolves around delegating issues of social morality and social policy to states and local communities. Bellah, Sandel, and other communitarians, he charges, fail to appreciate family, work, and neighborhood as the vital sources of a substantive morality; henceforth, they are incapable of addressing the American public's needs and concerns. "As members of extended families with roots overseas, sharing daily a sense of neighborhood and local community, finding friendliness on the job, Americans are not, in fact, best addressed as isolated individuals," Novak states.58 The goal of a program that delegates authority to local communities, Pangle adds, is not republican political virtue. He counters, "Classical prudence warns us to proceed in a manner that does not threaten the fabric and foundation of the regime into which we are attempting to introduce modest reform."59 The establishment of, rather than the theorizing about, both community and social justice requires lowering the traditional aims of each so as to include the particularisms of America's many parochial groups. "The challenge is to cast aside [the]

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adversary posture toward particularism," state Berger and Neuhaus. "This requires a new degree of modesty ... about our definitions of need and justice. Every world within this society ... is in fact a subculture."60 Finally, conservatives criticize communitarians for formulating ideas of a good society so at odds with America's present character and experience. "Our intellectuals may feel 'alienated' from the orthodoxy represented by the 'American way of life,'" states Kristol. "The American people, in their overwhelming majority, do not feel so alienated, homeless, or hopeless. It is the self-imposed assignment of neoconservatism to explain to the American people why they are right, and to the intellectuals why they are wrong."61 Conservative theory does not oppose only those adherents to a communitarian ethos who advocate transcending the is of American life. It also opposes the current in Progressive-Liberal thought that has sought reforms to encourage both individual liberty and national community. As expressed by Herbert Croly and Woodrow Wilson among Progressives, Richard Niebuhr and Rex Tugwell among New Deal thinkers, and James MacGregor Burns and Samuel Beer among contemporary liberals, this current of thought has focused on how patterns of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration create economic inequalities and social disharmony. Influencing the reform programs of the Progressives, the New Deal, and the Great Society, it has called for the national state to remedy social dislocations and foster an inclusive ideal of national community. "Only by faith in an efficient national organization and by an exclusive and aggressive devotion to the national welfare, can the American democratic ideal be made good," wrote Herbert Croly. "If the American local commonwealths had not been wrought by the Federalists into the form of a nation, they would never have continued to be democracies; and the people collectively have become more of a democracy in proportion as they become more of a nation. Their democracy is to be realized by means of an intensification of their national life, just as the ultimate moral purpose of an individual is to be realized by the affirmation and intensification of its own better individuality."62 The conservatives reject this notion that the national state should foster community and social justice. They claim that the burst of national government activism in the mid-twentieth century was primarily produced by a conjunction of national crises—the depression and World War II. The national state managed these crises, but it did not create a national network of communitarian bonds. Consequently, as the na-

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tional emergencies receded most local communities turned away from the federal government. At the same time, liberals extended the national state's agenda by attempting to create equality within civil institutions and local communities through such policies as school busing, affirmative action, and incorporation of the Bill of Rights. These national policies, conservatives emphasize, threatened the key source of community and social justice in America. "The cultivation of citizen virtue must take place at the local level," notes Ceaser, "for only here do the offices and duties exist in sufficient number to allow for widespread participation."63 Novak claims that American liberalism's "greatest mistake" has been its failure to appreciate local communitarian bonds. These communities, adds Schambra, must regain control over social and religious morality if an idea of community is to be retained in America: They could neither pray in the local school nor ban forms of expression considered offensive and pornographic ... nor enforce standards of sexual conduct considered appropriate, nor define the conditions under which abortion might be proper. Their police forces seemed to have been robbed of the power to maintain the social order of the community, crime flourished in the streets. Finally, the liberal goal of a racially integrated national community often seemed to call for measures that eroded even further the authority of the community: Housing restrictions that had sustained ethnic homogeneity fell, seniority lists of union locals were disputed, and, above all, children were bused from the hallowed neighborhood school to distant destinations.64 Only by reestablishing local communities as the sources of authority around social morality, conservative theory insists, will the American polity be able to overcome the political problematics associated with the atomized, thin individual. As Novak concludes, "The American way of overcoming individualism is not through an all-consuming attachment to the state or any other collective, but through the building up of many diverse associations and communities."65 American conservative theory also proposes an idea of distributive justice that will sustain free economic development and not interfere with private property. As noted in chapter 2, conservatives regret the loss of an idea of distributive justice. The agrarian economy and frontier expansionism had been associated with a yeoman ethos, the industrial revolution featured Horatio Alger. Both provided the public with a stan-

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dard to judge the relation between an individual's moral character and the distribution of wealth; neither interfered with private property. Postindustrialism, they complain, does not generate a standard of distributive justice; therefore, they propose a twofold task to both protect private property and establish norms that limit public misunderstanding of uneven distributions of wealth. "Tax and fiscal policy, and the economic practice and rhetoric of our political and business leaders, could more clearly keep our commitment to economic growth and opportunity," states Pangle, "limited by a respect for moderation, a distrust for luxury, a sense of stewardship, and cultivation of habits of liberality or charity."66 Kristol attempts to resolve this tension between protecting private property and establishing a principle of distributive justice by concentrating on the private corporation. Economic liberty by definition, he notes, requires a degree of moral indifference to the manner in which corporations and individuals pursue economic gain. Nevertheless, he insists, the American government can effect incentives and disincentives that encourage corporations to generate social justice while not infringing on economic liberty. For example, fiscal policies should encourage entrepreneurial investment in production and discourage financial speculation and the sinking of money into tax shelters. In the resulting producer ethos, inequalities in income distribution would be associated with risks and innovation that create new wealth. The value-creating entrepreneurial corporation, in short, deserves a larger share of the national income, while the wealthy financial speculating corporation is an unfortunate by-product of a system that encourages free enterprise. Kristol is aware that he has expressed a minimal theory of distributive justice; he blames a nihilist current within contemporary liberalism: This is the problem of publicly establishing an acceptable set of rules of distributive justice. The problem does not arise so long as the bourgeois ethos is closely linked to what we call the Puritan or Protestant ethos, which prescribes a connection between personal merit—as represented by such virtues as honesty, sobriety, diligence, and thrift—and worldly success But from the very beginnings of modern capitalism there has been a different and equally influential definition of distributive justice.... It says that, under capitalism, whatever is, is just—that all the inequalities of liberal bourgeois society must be necessary, or else the free market

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would not have created them, and therefore they may be justified. The point of view makes no distinction between the speculator and the bourgeois-entrepreneur: both are selfish creatures who, in the exercises of their private vices (greed, selfishness, avarice), end up creating public benefits.67 Additionally, Kristol and others claim, fiscal policies that encourage the formation of an entrepreneurial, risk-taking, innovative class focused on investment in production are critical to America's remaining a great and prosperous nation that leads the worldwide transformation to postindustrialism.68 British conservative theory has not been persuaded that American conservatives offer an efficacious program of social justice. It rejects the idea that delegating authority to local, public institutions expresses social justice. In Britain, devolution is a sign of weakness rather than strength. Scruton notes, "Now Britain has never been like that, and the advocate of 'devolution' cannot really consider that he is returning to the people something which they once surrendered. Local government cannot be conceived as a natural or prior right of the citizen.... In England ... the extent of local government indicates not a strength, but a weakness in the political organism."69 Elie Kedourie warns contemporary American conservative theory that it is unwise to base the state's legitimacy on an economic program. "Suppose then that supply-side economics ... seems to fail," he asks. "Can neo-conservatism offer reasons and arguments able to withstand ... the vicissitudes which any body politic from time to time inevitably undergoes?"70 Similarly, Hayek fears the outcome of an economic program based upon the ideation of a producer ethos as virtuous and just. Fiscal policies that encourage risk-taking entrepreneurial investment in new production do not guarantee a profitable return to the investors. This is determined by the market's reception of the product. Because a free economy cannot guarantee that certain types of investment will succeed, many of American conservatism's virtuous and just will fail, thereby generating political resentment.71 Hayek, who has been deeply influenced by the Austrian School's theory of value as a product of marginal utility, also claims that all theories that distinguish between just, productive, entrepreneurs and unjust financial speculators misunderstand how value is created. It is not created by the production of physical objects. Rather, the market sends signals

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about products rather than producing them, "and the crucial function played by the conveying of information escapes the notice of persons guided by mechanistic or scientific habits who take for granted factual information about physical objects." Hayek warns that the distinction between just investments in production and unjust investments in other sectors will ultimately delegitimize Western liberal democracies as their postindustrial economies develop a higher percentage of investment in these so-called unproductive service sectors.72 British conservatives worry that American conservative theory hinges the legitimacy of its political system to the efficacy of public policies, but the Americans do not share this concern. Harvey Mansfield's interpretation of Montesquieu's proposal to devolve the judicial task of government through the jury system helps explain American conservative theory's rationale. Like Machiavelli, Montesquieu, according to Mansfield, was aware of the importance of a political society enforcing punitive justice in order to overcome the natural will of a people to violate norms and break laws. However, Mansfield continues, unlike Machiavelli, Montesquieu feared that governments and, most importantly, political executives become alienated from their publics through the odious task of punitive justice. Hence Montesquieu proposed a jury system that encourages the public to punish itself, freeing the political executive from this task and enabling it to concentrate on the central issues of war, peace, and the general public good. The key task of the legislator of a free people is to understand how to place the power of judging. "Placing it well means placing it where it does not attract odium, precisely with the people to whom it would otherwise become odious."73 While the public's decisions in the judicial process are not based on the highest norms of justice, the public feels secure as its opinion, not the views of an alien political executive, is judging and punishing public behavior. "[Montesquieu] makes it independent precisely so that the people will not have the terrible sense of being judged," states Mansfield. "The general opinion of security must be partly a delusion, but Montesquieu protects it by not confronting citizens with judges, or at least minimizing the confrontation."74 As Mansfield interprets Montesquieu's proposal to devolve the judicial process to the public as a vehicle to both free the political executive and enable the public to feel secure, contemporary American conservative theory believes that the political process their program encourages— devolving political and economic issues to the level of local, public and

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civil institutions—helps to prevent ineffective public policies from creating political crises. While some policies may fail, others will not; henceforth, more local communitarian bonds will be forged and more civil and local, public institutions will become entrenched. The national state and, most important, the national executive, will be less involved in the loathsome obligation of constructing and reconstructing standards of right and wrong. Rather than encouraging conflict at the regime level, disputes over public policies will have the character of "those small and petty matters which are the stuff of local government."75 While the morality that is reconstructed will not be based on the highest norms of justice or even political virtue, the public will feel secure as the norms that are internalized will be the product of their own making. CHURCH AND STATE

During the Second Awakening in America a debate erupted between English Anglican and American Protestant leaders on the proper relation of religion and politics. The English suggested that the Americans' identification of religious doctrine with public policies was vulgar and inflammatory. The Americans countered that Anglican reluctance to encourage political debate fostered elitism and public docility.76 These differences exist today. Both conservatisms claim that contemporary Christianity is more preoccupied with political issues, especially distributive justice and social equality, than with spiritual ones oriented toward the ultimate issue of salvation. Both believe this has contributed to a decline in religious belief, morality, and political authority. However, within this general agreement, each offers a different view on the proper relation of religion and politics. British conservatives do not envision a political role for Anglicanism or Christianity in general. Most shun religion as a substantive political issue, while a few British conservative theorists are concerned with reducing the Church's political role as an opponent of the state. In contrast, American conservatives fear the relegation of religion to the margins of political and social life. They contend with different denominations' interpretations of politics, believing the American polity must intertwine religious and political beliefs. Britain and America, having developed very different relations between religion and state, present different constraints and opportunities to each conservative theory as it attempts to articulate new premises for

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their respective political orders. Since the turn of the twentieth century, the Church of England has had marginal political and social influence, with the result that British conservative theory expresses little concern for the Church and for issues of religion and state. America has retained links between its religious and political practices, conducing American conservative theory to adopt a political outlook that incorporates religious themes. Each conservatism's approach to religion also expresses its respective general political goals. The British minimize the political role of religion as part of their aim to establish both the legislative office of the central state's undivided authority and a uniform procedural framework. The Americans aim to imbue civil and local public institutions with a religious outlook, a Judeo-Christian tradition, to foster a substantive moral authority at the local level. The Church of England formed after breaking with the universal Catholic church. In a series of statutes, the Reformation Parliament of 1529 recognized that England was and always had been an empire, independent of all external jurisdiction, and the monarch supreme over all his subjects, clerical and lay. Over the next 150 years, the state and Church struggled over this new relationship. The monarch and Parliament, seeking an Erastian solution, were concerned to gain unchallenged political sovereignty. A Christian state, in their view, had the right to settle and interpret Scripture and thus authoritatively determine the Law of God and Nature. Without this authority, they believed, it would be impossible to govern.77 As the Church of England became the subordinate partner of the state, it refrained from participating directly in politics and constructing a political morality, maintaining that temporal, human-made problems were questions of state. Anglicanism, as the established religion, sought to embody the spiritual truth as revealed by Jesus Christ, expressing his belief that humanity is marked by moral frailty and an inability to attain goodness and spiritual fulfillment on earth. This stress on doctrine of immaterial spirit required an emphasis on a visible Church. As Paul Tillich explains, Anglicanism developed along a pattern similar to that of European Catholicism: as a "sacramental church." The Church of England served as a mediator between the Divine and an imperfect world. It attributed holiness to the Church; faith in its message was the key to salvation beyond earth.78 Through the middle of the nineteenth century, conservative theory encouraged the development of the Church of England as a crucial link

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between state and society, an integral part of the Tory outlook of maintaining a thick society of class hierarchies, conformity, and tradition. Conservative practice relied on the Church "not merely to preach true religion, but also to foster harmony among classes, to inspire philanthropic giving, to take care for the material well-being of the parishioners, of widows, orphans, the sick, the aged, and the destitute, and to serve as England's educator from the elementary level to the universities." As Macauley suggested, the Church was the "Tory party at prayer."79 However, a division opened between Church and state during the nineteenth century; and late Victorian conservative theory was unable to define a role for the Church as its views shifted toward preserving high politics. For example, the Church lost its preeminent role as educator during the nineteenth century. Oxford and Cambridge were relieved of Church control to enable them to compete with the universities of Germany. From the 1850s through the 1900s the Church's responsibility for primary education was questioned and ultimately displaced: many believed the Church was incapable of teaching the skills required to survive in the industrial economy; others maintained the extension of the franchise required a public with a more well-rounded primary education; reformers, whether Benthamite utilitarians or Green's idealists, argued that the Church's education policies stifled rather than enhanced liberty; dissenters and nonconformists claimed that the Church's predominance in primary education was discriminatory (the census of 1851 reported that 30 percent of the English did not follow the Anglican Church).80 As the Church lost its role as educator and source of other social policies, late Victorian conservative theory was unable to define a new social role for it. For example, most theorists of a conservative outlook— Henry Maine, James Bryce, William Mallock, A. V. Dicey, W. E. H. Lecky, among others—ultimately acquiesced to the demand for free, compulsory primary education. Their criticisms centered on the reform movement's demand for local, elected education boards. "There are already enough elections in England," stated the commission on secondary education headed by Lord Bryce.81 Conservative writers insisted that all state secondary schools be brought directly under central state regulation. The regulations would revolve around restricting, rather than mobilizing, new local education authorities. The Ministry of Education would determine what local education authorities could not do.

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In the twentieth century the Church of England has played a marginal role in society, and Britain has become one of the more secular countries of the West. Most British hold very general religious values: belief in God; conviction that God is just and benevolent although remote from everyday life; confident that good people will be taken care of in the life to come. However, only 5 percent of the British attend a church service every month (compared to 45 percent of Americans). As Maclntyre has noted, 'The creed of the English is that there is no God and that it is wise to pray to him from time to time." Church announcements are accorded public respect, but few associate the Church with political leadership.82 Most contemporary British conservative theorists do not identify the Church of England's decline with the inability of conservatism to define a role for it in society. They blame a state policy of religious pluralism. Anglicanism, they claim, is the established religion de jure of England, but has de facto been disestablished. The basis of disestablishment was the opening of England's fundamental political and civil institutions— Parliament, Oxford, Cambridge, among others—to participants of all religious beliefs. Maurice Cowling claims that the preconditions for British decline were the extension of the franchise and "the repeal of the Test Act and the removal of Roman Catholic disabilities [which] announced a future in which the Church of England would be competing on equal terms with Catholicism, Dissent, Judaism, and Infidelity."83 Contemporary British conservative theory claims that the Tractarians' fears proved to be correct: the toleration of plural interpretations of Christianity led to the loss of the universality of the Church of England's message; the Church was no longer the worldly expression of revealed truth; Christian beliefs became a matter of private, personal choice; Anglicanism became now one religion among many others within a diluted Christianity. In this liberal environment, religious doctrine became a mere reflection of intellectual and political fashion. As postwar political thinking emphasized pluralism, Anglican doctrine followed. E. R. Norman, the Anglican priest and former dean of Peterhouse College, Cambridge, a center of contemporary conservative thinking, writes, Though once the natural opponents of moral diversity because of their guardianship of Revealed truth, the Churches' acceptance of such diversity has now passed beyond mere recognition to positive endorsement. For example, "no one group can claim monopoly of

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the truth," according to a 1979 Report of the Board for Mission and Unity of the General Synod of the Church of England, "it is felt that all systems of belief and canons of behavior must be seen in relation to others, and have therefore only relative, not absolute authority."84 The twentieth-century Church, conservatives continue, has ceased to direct the British public to consider their inward condition in the context of such eternal Christian concerns as moral frailty and sin. It has become the slave of political and intellectual fashion. Moreover, conservatives believe that recent modifications in Church-state relations—synodical government, more autonomy for the Church in leadership selection, female clergy—along with a social democratic outlook among some of the Church hierarchy have contributed to a further diminishing of the Church's proper role in society. Although almost all British conservative theorists lament the loss of the Church's traditional role, few strive to reform it. Conservatives recognize that the Church has few institutional capabilities and have not developed a program for reestablishing a role for it in society. "It is wholly anachronistic to expect that Christianity, and particularly the Church of England, will ever have the political significance in England that it possessed throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries," states John Gray.85 Analysis of the pluralism eroding the authority of Anglicanism primarily serves as a critique of liberalism: it undermines authoritative political and civil relations. A few conservative theorists argue that conservative governments must counter the Church's doctrine and policies. However, they do not have an institutional program, declaring that if they could create Britain de novo, they would prescribe membership in an established Church as a requisite for participation in elite institutions.86 British conservative theory's views on God and human experience also preclude it from embracing the idea of a Christian politics. On the one hand, conservatives argue, if the idea of God is the same as all other ideas—a human construct—humanity is incapable of ascribing an extrinsic authority as the basis for policy preferences. To Oakeshott, religion offers little more than solace to life's ultimate meaninglessness. Religion's "central concern is the hollowness, the futility of that [human] condition, its character of being no more than 'un voyage au bout de la nuit.' What is sought in religious belief is not merely consolation for woe or deliverance from the burden of sin, but a reconciliation to noth-

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ingness."87 On the other hand, conservatives continue, if God is an extrinsic authority, humanity is still incapable of ascribing to it policy preferences, as this God is outside or above human understanding. "In short," states Shirley Letwin, "once we refuse to understand man as an embodiment of the Reason or Divinity of the universe, we must admit that it is a delusion to suppose that man can survey everything from a non-human standpoint beyond history."88 Therefore, those conservative theorists who do profess a belief in God prefer a Christianity that expresses eternal beliefs that are deeply pessimistic about human nature and this world. The task of Christianity is to bring to the temporal world the eternal message of truth and faith, not to rearrange society and alter human nature. "Traditional Christianity, though committed to the world, has sought to convert material conflicts into spiritual opportunities," Norman summarizes. "It has tried not to change the world (as the Marxists set out to do), but to redeem it. Salvation is more important than life; ultimate values are what really count."89 British conservative theory has expressed little interest in voicing a Christian interpretation of social morality with regard to abortion, embryo research, biogenetics, under-sixteen contraception, AIDS. Those issues of social morality that have been raised by conservative writers— local education authorities' advocating homosexuality, sex and violence on the BBC—have been parts of broader criticisms of the autonomy of these intermediary institutions. As Martin Durham notes in discussing the relation between conservative intellectuals and issues of Christian morality, "Images of the home invaded by 'sex and violence' and the family being undermined by the homosexual proselytizing of its children have become part o f . . . a projection of a government protecting the ordinary person against subversive teachers and the irresponsible elites of broadcasting and the municipal left."90 Although a few British conservative theorists debate whether a reform of the Church of England is either possible or necessary, all agree that it is a defensive battle in which few victories are foreseen. The prevailing view within British conservative theory prefers that the government ignore the Church, not wishing it to become involved in a fruitless political squabble over an institution with little influence on political and social life. The conservatives' focus is on how the idea of social justice, not contemporary religious trends, threatens the state's authority and a free economy. "It would seem," summarizes Scruton, "that the conservative vision of society can survive in the absence of clear religious belief, de-

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spite the fact that it will always benefit from its presence."91 Those concerned primarily protest Church liberalization policies, for example, the recruiting of women as clergy, or public opposition to government policies. In sum, the Church of England and Christianity in general are marginal concerns of new British conservative theory. The state is the key instrument for reconstituting authority, morality, and stable civil practices. AMERICA'S RELIGIONS

Before the founding, numerous American colonies and settlements had established churches. Some, for example, the Puritan communities in early New England, differed from the Anglican Church in emphasizing individual and social morality, not churchly institutions, as the worldly expressions of Christianity. As Tillich explains, these religions were theocratic in a special sense of the word: unlike the Church of England and other sacramental churches, they believed in the direct realization of God's will rather than in the mediation between the Divine and an imperfect world. To American religions, the Holy was to be sought in individual decisions and actions. Even Anglican bodies in the southern colonies, although not as theocratic as the dissenting communities in the north, held the idea that America provided a special opportunity for individuals to pursue God's will.92 After the founding, a largely deistic political elite sought to avoid the religious quarrels of the Old World through a policy of national disestablishment. Most state governments adopted a similar policy. In the early nineteenth century only Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire retained established churches. Disunity among sects and pressure from deist activists forced an abandonment of these state policies in the 1820s and 1830s. As the disestablishment of churches in America was completed, however, political and religious leaders throughout the country began to rethink the idea of America as a Christian commonwealth: they were alarmed by reports of secularization and political conflict from continental Europe; many were appalled by the incivility of settlers on the new frontiers; some were frightened by philistinism and social disorganization in the industrializing cities; others feared papism among the new immigrants; most believed America would fragment politically unless new institutions embodying a Christian ethos were built. Carl Kaestle recently has summarized their view:

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Its core—... human beings are born malleable and potentially good but need much careful guidance; all men are equal in some formal ways, but some groups are more able, wise and refined than others; and therefore it is important that in education, economics and politics, institutions be shaped to maintain the values and leadership of cultivated, native Protestant Americans. Running through their ideas about institutions and social relations, from the family to the state was a twofold prescription: self-discipline for those who already adhered to the belief system, and assimilation for those outside the consensus.93 The Second Awakening of the mid-nineteenth century did not seek a return to established churches. It developed voluntary associations that united the various religious sects in order to establish local, public institutions that found a middle ground between sectarianism and secularism. These institutions espoused general Christian values while not favoring one particular denomination over another. Their goal was to bring about a free, literate, industrious, honest, law-abiding, religious population. Though the rhetoric might vary among denominations, there was agreement on the need to create an effective educational system, a sound legal order, and a widespread network of religious institutions. By these means, they believed, Christian standards of personal and public morality would be maintained. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, religious themes have been invoked in America in debates and conflicts over public policies. Throughout much of this period, the relation between religion and state primarily had been delegated to state governments and local communities. As American politics became more national in scope during the twentieth century, many religious denominations followed and continued to play a critical role in influencing policies. Some denominations, the Baptists and the Lutherans, for example, avoided national politics. But most, especially Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Quakers, and Jews, have espoused general religious themes while backing such national causes as prohibition of the sale of liquor, defense of the gold standard, women's suffrage, the cold war, civil rights for blacks, and withdrawal from the Vietnam War. Since the formation of the National Catholic Welfare Council in 1920, the American Catholic church also has played an active role in American national politics. As discussed below, Progressive-Liberalism, America's dominant politi-

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cal ideology in the twentieth century, also elaborated a religious strand during the middle of the century. Finally, contemporary American political leaders, local and national, continue to invoke religious themes in advocating policies and seeking public office. Consequently, in spite of such modern secularizing influences as industrialization, urbanization, higher education, and science, among many others, religious values continue to inform America's general political outlook. To most Americans, the ideas of liberty, democracy, and America itself are associated with the pursuit of God's will.94 American conservatives argue, however, that as ProgressiveLiberalism embraced philosophic pragmatism and cultural relativism, it redirected the national state's concern with religious matters. Like the British, they argue that the national state's primary concern in religious matters has become pluralism: the protection of religious diversity and privacy. They differ from the British conservatives, who think pluralism creates a diluted and passive Christianity. Rather, as America does not have an established church, but many religions, an exclusive policy of religious pluralism requires the state to adopt a neutral posture toward all religions; it is a policy to promote secularism. Conservatives claim that liberals misinterpret the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment. They point to the opinion written for the Supreme Court by Hugo Black in Everson v. Board of Education: "The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: neither a state nor a Federal government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another."95 The establishment clause, conservatives insist, precludes the national state from promoting any religious denomination but does not prohibit state governments and local communities from developing policies that encourage general religious beliefs that do not favor a particular sect and are consistent with the secular government's goals. There is a middle ground, conservatives insist, between establishment and secularism. They argue that the free exercise clause, properly understood, allows individuals to appeal for exemptions from the law—education policies, health codes, among others—for religious reasons; and the government's decision is based on the public good. However, Progressive-Liberals have interpreted this right of religious appeal as a general right of religious exemption. In short, conservatives claim that liberalism has things backwards. It

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opposes all attempts by state governments and local communities to encourage general religious and moral values that are consistent with the secular government and supports individuals who oppose the secular government's policies based on religious beliefs. "The Court," writes Michael Malbin, "has permitted religious opinion to stand as the judge of the civil realm, while preventing the civil realm from helping religion on civil society's terms."96 They claim that as liberalism extends the national state into civil society it denies American religions their traditional calling: instilling moral conduct. It also expunges a key source of America's substantive political unity, the idea that American government and policies are based on transcendental values that are morally good and superior. "The truth, which we are in danger of forgetting," Kristol says, is that a "civil religion" both engenders and requires a moral endorsement of a regime, not simply a utilitarian one.... For such an endorsement to prevail, the 'civil religion' must be at least minimally nourished by its religious roots."97 Whereas British conservative theory believes it is possible for the state to function without reform of the Church of England or support from Christianity in general, American conservative theory believes that religious themes must be reintroduced in civil and public life. Conservatives suggest that many Americans with deeply held religious convictions face a dilemma similar to that which Straussian political philosophers believe they confront. They can either remain isolated in an esoteric world of pure thought or they can amend their views so as to promote policies that set standards of good and bad behavior. If a Christian prefers "the ethics of responsibility" over the "ethics of perfection," he or she will risk participating in a compromised political order. "With respect to their deepest beliefs and the community that shares those beliefs," states Neuhaus, "devout Christians are not prepared to compromise. That is, within the community of faith the ethic of self-sacrificing love and service is to be given full rein. But they are 'realistic' about the world outside that community. They are ready to mix it up with 'the Gentiles,' fully aware that in the games of power politics they may end up with 'dirty hands.' "98 Indeed, Straussians have had to resolve a contradiction between their private and public beliefs with regard to religion. Strauss claimed that in the esoteric world of high thought, where one analyzes the fundamental questions of nature, law, and morality, there was an irreconcilable conflict between philosophy's ceaseless questioning of all

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assumptions and religions' acceptance of articles of faith. The pursuit of reason precluded the latter: The fundamental question... is whether men can acquire that knowledge of the good ... by the unaided efforts of their natural powers, or whether they are dependent for that knowledge on Divine Revelation. No alternative is more fundamental than this: human guidance or divine guidance. The first possibility is characteristic of philosophy or science in the original sense of the term, the second is presented in the Bible. The dilemma cannot be evaded by any harmonization or synthesis. For both philosophy and the Bible proclaim something as the one thing needful, as the only thing that ultimately counts, and the one thing needful proclaimed by the Bible is the opposite of that proclaimed by philosophy: a life of obedient love versus a life of free insight." At the same time, Strauss warned philosophers not to take an exoteric position that undermines a regime's claim to represent a "higher dignity" or "the sacred," as public belief in these truths was a necessary condition for public morality and compliance with the law. Indeed, the fundamental reason for the crisis of postmodernism has been the unitary aim of the great Enlightenment thinkers to destroy religious certitude. Although there were important differences among Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and others, "they were united by the fact that they all fought one and the same power—the kingdom of darkness as Hobbes called it; that fight was more important than any merely political issue."100 As Frederick Wilhelmsen has noted, Strauss and his followers "walk as did Cicero, internally denying the gods but professing them publicly. Straussians are very pious men externally and they are serious about this external piety. An esoteric and exoteric contradiction dominates their thinking."101 Indeed, the American founders, writes Walter Berns, also were careful to distinguish between their esoteric and exoteric views with regard to religion. George Washington, Berns argues, viewed religion from a political vantage point "and from this perspective saw reason to doubt that a civil society founded on the rights of man could sustain itself in the absence of the extraneous support provided by religious belief. Even more significant, considering his reputation, Jefferson too was persuaded of the necessity of some sort of religious conviction—not for himself or Washington and others with 'minds of peculiar structure' and 'refinded education,' but for the great body of Americans."102

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American conservative theory's position on religion is a crucial part of its aim to create a division of labor between the national state and civil and local, public institutions. It maintains that the key to revitalizing religious values in American public and civil life is local, social communitarianism: standards of social morality and education as established by communities and individual states. Conservative theorists recognize that in many areas of the United States, Americans associate frugality, work, and individual independence with pursuing God's will. They note that many Americans also approach social policies toward abortion, school prayer, and educational standards from religious perspectives. Consequently, local autonomy in social mores and education would help foster communities with religious values—enhancing the moral development of the citizenry and legitimizing the polity in religious terms. From this perspective, religious pluralism is identified with the diversity of communities, not individuals. Local polarization is avoided as the public policies avert either establishment or sectarianism; and local autonomy also includes the right of some electorates to do without any religious norms. "If San Francisco wants to create its own version of Sodom and Gomorrah I don't think the national government should intervene," claims Kristol. At the same time, the individual must abide by the general religious norms deemed by the community to be consistent with its political goals. Consequently, Kristol continues, "since this is a free country, people will move from one state to another depending upon their beliefs about abortion among other things."103 REDEFINING THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN TRADITION

In addition to restructuring the political process that establishes a relation between religion and state, American conservative theorists believe that a clearly defined religious outlook is necessary for the American polity to prosper. Their redevelopment of the Judeo-Christian tradition expresses their aim to instill civil and local, public institutions with a substantive religious ethos. The idea of a Judeo-Christian tradition has a heterogeneous history. During the twentieth century, for example, it gained prominence during the interwar years as European and American liberal-left intellectuals opposed fascists, who had assumed Christian as a political label. George Orwell, Carl Friedrich, Jacques Maritain, and other writers primarily

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identified a Judeo-Christian ethos with pluralism, claiming that toleration between Christians and Jews had been a necessary condition for the survival of Western democracy and liberty. Although the idea of a JudeoChristian tradition remained a subject of deep debate throughout World War II, postwar awareness of the Holocaust helped solidify support for a Judeo-Christian outlook.104 The pluralist interpretation, however, troubled some American Progressive-Liberal theorists who believed that America needed a more substantive religious and political unity. Mere respect for religious differences would not prevent political and cultural fragmentation. Influential American theologians—Reinhold Niebuhr, Will Herberg, A. Roy Eckhardt, Abraham Herschel, Robert Gordis, and others—asserted that there was a deeper theological dimension shared by Judaism and Christianity. Niebuhr, America's most influential postwar theologian, formulated the most comprehensive analysis. Influenced by Karl Earth, he claimed that Christians must place antiutopianism at the forefront of their outlook. Although humanity must progress, its greatest weakness was idolizing the ideas and institutions it created. The only absolute was God, who transcended all conditionalities. Christianity alone was a false absolute. It had Hebraic components; that is, the Old Testament—a personal God, a covenant community, a memory of historical revelations. These views helped people live with the mysteries and limitations of human existence while undermining utopianism. Christians also could learn from the Jewish praise of the prophets' refusal to capitulate to human weaknesses and their opposition to kingly abuses.105 Niebuhr, Herberg, and others did not limit their analysis to theology. They provided a religious reinforcement to the Progressive-Liberalism that dominated mid-century American political thought. Incremental national reforms, they argued, expressed both a recognition of human fallibility and a desire to overcome some of the weaknesses endemic to human-made society; they enabled Americans to foster a proper balance between individualism and national community. "We have equilibrated power," stated Niebuhr. "We have attained a certain equilibrium in economic society itself by setting organized power against organized power. When that did not suffice we used the more broadly based political power to redress disproportions and disbalances in economic society."106 Equally important, America's worldwide anticommunism expressed a national commitment to oppose the contemporary world's main expression of utopianism. "We do face once more the distinction between rel-

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ative justice and tyranny," stated Niebuhr in identifying similarities between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. While many Soviet communists initially had better motives than the Nazis in seeking to build a new social order, "the actual tyranny which has emerged and the fanatic fury which has been generated by these illusions are, unfortunately, not distinguishable from the practices derived from the purer paganism and cynicism." Because Niebuhr recognized that some may criticize him for proposing the seemingly contradictory policies of domestic social reform and virulent worldwide anticommunism, he believed that his general anti-utopian outlook provided a unifying thread for both policies. "All this may appear to be a rather hard boiled analysis from one who is a Christian theologian and a liberal in political conviction," Niebuhr noted. "But it has been the unfortunate weakness of both liberalism and liberal Christianity that they have easily degenerated into sentimentality by refusing to contemplate the tragic aspects of human existence honestly."107 Because this interpretation of the Judeo-Christian tradition was intertwined with Progressive-Liberalism, it suffered as the latter fell into disrepute. During the 1960s many liberal-left theologians charged that the Judeo-Christian tradition was an apology for America's domestic cultural conformism, limited social reforms, and hostility to countries with different values and interests. Their critiques contributed to the general delegitimization that Progressive-Liberalism suffered during this period. Consequently, during most of the 1970s there was little discussion of the Judeo-Christian tradition.108 Since the late 1970s American conservative theory has redefined the Judeo-Christian tradition. The new interpretation has some continuity with the view developed by Niebuhr and others: it claims that Christianity and Judaism both oppose utopianism and that the Judeo-Christian outlook requires anticommunism. Unlike Niebuhr, Herberg, and other Progressive-Liberals, however, American conservative theory is unclear about which religious denominations are the expressions of the JudeoChristian tradition. Whereas Niebuhr and others put forward Judaism and the main Protestant denominations, Novak projects the crucial role of Catholicism and Neuhaus puts forward the importance of a coalition between Catholicism and evangelicalism; Kristol does not believe Catholicism can play a central role.109 Contemporary conservatives also have a different interpretation of both the moral values and the domestic policy implications of the Judeo-

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Christian tradition. Conservative theory rejects ideas that it revolves around balancing the needs of individualism and national community and that it is politically expressed by incremental national social reforms. Rather, a Judeo-Christian ethos both promotes and restrains individualism, balancing the quest for economic self-improvement with humility and social conformism. The Judeo-Christian outlook is aware that humanity has limited capabilities yet continually falters by seeking to transcend these limitations; hence, the Judeo-Christian outlook encourages one to improve his or her position in the world, while restraining impulses to pursue unlimited freedoms. "It is not too much to say that the Judeo-Christian tradition, in its Protestantized form, is the Old Testament for liberal capitalism," observes Kristol. "Precisely because a capitalist economy is one which does emphasize self-interest, it especially needs a very strong religious element in its culture in order to modify, complement and curb that self-interest." And as Novak suggests, "In both Judaism and Christianity, God turns human thoughts away from lofty schemes suited perhaps to angels, and toward the more humble and modest ways suited to human conditions."110 Niebuhr and Herberg identified the Social Security Act and the National Labor Relations Board as political expressions of the JudeoChristian tradition; American conservative theory identifies different public policies with the Judeo-Christian outlook: policies that restrict abortion express the Judeo-Christian tradition by encouraging both sexual restraint and individual responsibility for sexual activity; policies that encourage free capital and free labor express the Judeo-Christian tradition by encouraging individual gain through industriousness, labor, and thrift; educational policies that stress an understanding of basic subjects and civics foster the Judeo-Christian ethics of discipline and citizenship; volunteerism and philanthropy express the Judeo-Christian tradition of charity and pity. In short, a variety of civil institutions, social mores, and public policies are assessed as embodying more or less JudeoChristian virtues. As William Bennett summarizes, "Self-discipline, perseverance, industry, respect for family, for learning and for country flourish in the context of the Judeo-Christian ethic from which they take their original shape and their continued vitality."111 While American conservative theory's interpretation of the JudeoChristian tradition breaks significantly from the postwar explanation, the values it ascribes to it—industry, discipline, loyalty, humility, conformity, thrift, pity, charity—are similar to the norms Nietzsche identi-

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fied with the "slave moralities" that he believed Judaism and Christianity expressed: "Here pity, the complaisant and obliging hand, the warm heart, patience, industry, humility and friendliness are honored—for here these are the most useful qualities and almost the only means for enduring the pressure of existence."112 Nietzsche, of course, bitterly attacked the Judeo-Christian tradition as a morality that molded political orders in the image of the weak, placing fetters on innovation and the greatness of Europe. However, Nietzsche did not reject the possibility that Christianity and religion could be used by an innovative political leadership to effect norms that internalized coercion, encouraged upward mobility, and provided contentment: For the strong and independent... religion is one more means ... for the ability to rule—as a bond that unites rulers and subjects and betrays and delivers the consciences of the latter, that which is most concealed and intimate and would like to elude obedience, to the former. Religion also gives to some of the ruled the instruction and opportunity to prepare themselves for future ruling and obeying: those slowly ascending classes—in which, thanks to fortunate martial customs, the strength and joy of the will, the will to self-control is ever growing—receive enough nudges and temptations from religion to walk the paths of higher spirituality. To ordinary human beings ... religion gives an inestimable contentment with their situation and type, manifold peace of heart, an ennobling of obedience, one further happiness and sorrow with their peers and something transfiguring and beautifying, something of a justification for the whole everyday character, the whole lowliness, the whole half-brutish poverty of their souls.113 The dilemma for those who utilize Christianity and religion to help rule society, Nietzsche continued, is that religions seek sovereignty and establish their ends as the ultimate good for all members of society. Hence, while Christianity had helped contribute to public discipline and contentment, "how much more did they have to do besides, in order to work with a good conscience and on principle, to preserve all that was sick and that suffered—which means, in fact and in truth, to worsen the European race."114 Mansfield views Christianity from a perspective similar to Nietzsche's: Christianity is an ineffectual source of political guidance but a vital gen-

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erator of public discipline. On the one hand, Mansfield agrees with Montesquieu's statements in the Spirit of the Laws that both philosophy and Christianity are incompetent sources of political guidance, as both look for realization outside of human experience. However, Mansfield makes a further criticism of Christianity: it is Nietzsche's "Platonism for the people." Like philosophy, Christianity looks beyond human experiences. But as it seeks fulfillment in another world, Christianity also violates nature. Hence, only the philosophers can protest Montesquieu's denigration of philosophy and Christianity: The philosophers in particular may claim that their proposed repression of our base passions is in the service of our higher nature, so that their virtue is "according to nature." But in its Christian "correction," classical virtue is popularized and simplified. In this version, our higher nature is understood as pure and speculative, hence detached from the body, hence at home only in the next world. The effectual truth of virtue "according to nature," then, is virtue "contrary to nature."115 At the same time, Mansfield puts forward the position that religious beliefs provide a most effective means for instilling public norms of discipline. "The answer that religion gives to the question 'Why be responsible?' " states Mansfield, "will always be more convincing to more people than any fancy calculation of self-interest." Consequently, the heart of modern constitutionalism is mediating the task of protecting individual freedom while supporting the religious norms that prevent liberty from leading to social degeneration. Mansfield charges that Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke underestimated the public's need for religion. "The measures these philosophers adopted to contain religion by diminishing the soul seem also to endanger freedom."116 Like Walter Berns, Mansfield projects as proper Jefferson's approach to the relations among religion, politics, and philosophy: "Religion has a status something like the status of the constitution: as the government needs a constitution above the ordinary laws to check its own ambition, the people need a superhuman source for their natural rights to force them to extend those rights to others when it is against their interest to do so. Jefferson apparently entertained doubts about the truth even of natural religion, but he was willing to use the strength of religion for political purposes."117 Other important conservative theorists, most notably Michael Novak, Peter Berger, and John Neuhaus, base their views of the Judeo-Christian

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tradition on different philosophical and political premises. Neuhaus, for example, invokes tradition and democracy, suggesting that the public's outlook has changed little since the Second Awakening. "The question must at least be raised whether our time is in fact so distant or so different from that of, say, the mid-nineteenth century in America," writes Neuhaus. "Despite [the] much-discussed pluralism ... over ninety percent of the American people say they believe in God and think the JudeoChristian tradition is somehow morally normative for personal and public life. Not as much has changed as those who have a vested interest in proclaiming changes would suggest." A program that delegated issues of social morality to local communities, Neuhaus adds, would allow the Judeo-Christian tradition to flourish.118 Although American conservative theory disagrees over the philosophical suppositions and denominational expressions of the Judeo-Christian tradition, it unites over the substance of this tradition and the task of creating it through devolving public policies and issues of social morality to state governments and local communities. Just as the mid-nineteenthcentury Second Awakening developed an interpretation of Protestantism that united different Protestant denominations around the task of constructing local institutions with a specific civil ethos, so American conservative theory hopes to contribute an interpretation of the Judeo-Christian tradition that will unite members of different religions around the establishment of civil and local, public institutions with new aims. Equally important, American conservative theory heeds Nietzsche's warning in regard to the relations between religion and state. As the Judeo-Christian tradition is to be based on a program of devolving issues of social policy and social morality to state and local communities, it will encourage public discipline, upward mobility, and contentment, and it also will avoid infringing upon the sovereignty of the national political leadership. DIFFERENT SOURCES OF AUTHORITY AND MORALITY

The establishment of a relation between religion and state generally is considered a premise of conservatism. The quest for social justice usually is identified with the liberal-left. Yet, British and American conservatism have adopted distinct approaches to these political concerns. This divergence, partly a product of each nation's different paths of political and social development, is also an expression of their contrast-

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ing views on authority and morality. British conservatism believes humanity is incapable of either generating or sustaining an authoritative, substantive unity; American conservatism asserts that a polity will fragment unless a substantive political unity is created and established. Eschewing an agenda of political morality, British conservatives maintain that sockty will dissolve if the central state is not endowed with the authority to maintain public interaction and coordinated activity. Public compliance with uniform laws will create a morality whereby respect for rules becomes the reference point for good and bad behavior. From this perspective, the Church and Christianity in general are ignored by British conservatives, as they can neither enhance nor inhibit the state's authority. The idea of social justice is criticized because it places the citizens' political obligation outside the state and disrupts the establishment of uniform rules. In contrast, American conservative theory, asserting the necessity of an ought, aims to bring about a substantive unity that does not interfere with the individual pursuit of liberty and property. Turning aside from the goal of uniform rules, it advocates a network of civil and local, public institutions as the generators of a substantive moral authority. From this perspective, religion and politics should interpenetrate at the level of state governments and local communities and should espouse a Judeo-Christian tradition to encourage economic liberty and social conformity. Unlike the British, the Americans put forward social justice as a necessary aim of the polity. However, it is not to be instituted as a national political principle. Social justice is to foster not political virtue but moral and religious virtue, as attained by a local communitarianism and a producer ethos in the private sector. Whereas British conservatism advocates a rule-governed morality whereby the central state establishes public obligation to respect rules that apply to all members of the nation, American conservatism advocates a substantive morality that is generated by civil and local, public institutions and that aspires to protect individual liberty.

FOUR

Restructuring Liberty and Economics

C

CONSERVATIVE theory in Britain and America denounces state-led economic development, which leads many analysts to assume that both are guided by the principles of laissez-faire liberalism or libertarianism. From this perspective, both conservative theories center on negative liberty—the idea that an individual is "said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interfere with his activity."1 This analysis is not appropriate for defining British or American conservative theory. Neither is concerned solely to enlarge the individual's private domain. Redefining liberty, each conservative theory attempts to address the problematics it identifies with the absence of civil traditions as well as with state collectivism. Here I identify and contrast the political framework each conservative theory believes is required to structure liberty and link their different emphases with distinct approaches to rational choice theory and economic policy. REDEFINING LIBERTY

British conservative theory advocates not negative liberty, but the authoritative procedures established either by custom (society) or law (the state). Associating the negative interpretation of liberty with the erosion of authority of state and society, it claims that the identification of liberty with uncoerced behavior, or libertarianism, ultimately legitimizes all ac-

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• 120 • Restructuring Liberty and Economics • tions against restraints, including those laws and practices requisite for freedom. As Shirley Letwin argues, "Where individualism reigns there can be no durable peace. For his unruled desires drive the individualist to strive endlessly to gratify them Life is a ceaseless struggle for 2 power." John Gray adds that in England "individualist culture is immemorial, it is not primordial, [and] depends on a background of beliefs, values'and institutions which both form and constrain individuality."3 Throughout his work, Oakeshott has emphasized the importance of both civil practices and the state's establishment of the authoritative procedures that enable people to utilize the freedom of choice. His outlook is similar to that he attributes to Hobbes. "A language which is understood by only a single person and a way of behavior which is pursued by one man independently of all other men are, for Hobbes, examples of the same kind of anarchy," Oakeshott wrote in 1934. "And as authority alone can put an end to anarchy in the one case, authority alone can put an end to it in another."4 Oakeshott identifies human conduct as an expression of "reflective consciousness." This interpretation enables him to distinguish human activity from such nonintelligent processes or mechanical identities as a "rock formation, a wave breaking on the shore, metal fatigue, a thunderstorm, a butterfly on the wing, the facial resemblances between parent and child, a chameleon changing colour, melting ice, etc."5 These phenomena may be made intelligible, but they are not themselves products of intelligence. The identification of human conduct with reflective consciousness also expresses Oakeshott's rejection of the views of deontological liberals, who claim that the individual exists prior to and independently of social institutions. An individual's will, according to Oakeshott, whether it is expressed while engaging in a scientific experiment, a historical study, gardening, or shopping, acts in the context of the beliefs and activities that make up that individual's mind: Mind as we know it is the offspring of knowledge and activity; it is composed entirely of thoughts. You do not first have a mind, which acquires a filling of ideas and then makes distinctions between true and false, right and wrong, reasonable and unreasonable, and then, as a third step, causes activity. Properly speaking the mind has no existence apart from, or in advance of, these and other distinctions. These and other distinctions are not acquisitions; they are constitutive of the mind. Extinguish in a man's mind

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these and other distinctions, and what is extinguished is not merely a man's "knowledge" (or part of it), but the mind itself.6 The necessary condition for an individual's free use of reflective consciousness is practices—customs, maxims, rules, laws, among others— that lay down a framework of conduct and are general in nature. As discussed in chapter 3, these practices integrate the individual into society by establishing standards of good and bad behavior. These practices also specify the conditions or considerations that an individual must take into account when reflecting and making a substantive decision; they do not entail substantive decisions. "They postulate performances and specify procedural conditions to be taken into account when choosing and acting," Oakeshott summarizes.7 In the essays compiled in Rationalism in Politics, Oakeshott stressed that civil society establishes these authoritative procedures. A conservative, Oakeshott suggested, respected society's creation of this "solid world of things, each with its fixed shape, each with its own point of balance, each with its price."8 In his most recent works, Oakeshott focuses on the laws of civil association as providing these procedures. Here citizens have the right to expect that general obligations of conduct be equally enforced by the state. Citizens can act freely in all situations in which the law does not prescribe obligatory conditions and have the right to be made aware of all legal obligation. "Civil associates may, at choice," Oakeshott summarizes, "enter into relationships of affection, of discourse, of gainful enterprise, or of playful engagement, but in respect of being civilly associated they cannot be either required or forbidden to do so; they are required only to subscribe to the conditions specified in respublica."9 During the 1970s and early 1980s, theorists self-described as liberal, John Gray, for example, contributed to British conservative political theory. Like Oakeshott, Shirley Letwin, and other British conservative theorists, Gray spurned the idea of negative liberty. However, at this time, Gray was attempting to reconcile social traditionalism and liberalism, rather than a Hobbesian idea of authority and liberalism. Gray claimed that genuine liberalism embraced individualism, an idea of progress, universal application of the law, and, embracing themes of Hayek and Buchanan, a juridical form of limited government.10 A political program based on these principles, Gray continued, would allow civil society to generate social customs. These social practices were a requisite for in-

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dividual freedom because people needed stable norms developed over generations in order to exercise freedom of choice. In contrast, when governments arbitrarily changed laws and policies, they generated unstable social practices, creating insecurity and increased support for demagogues or further state interventionism. Gray praised Hayek for developing this reconciliation of conservative traditionalism and liberalism. "One of the greater achievements of Hayek's social theory," Gray stated, "is ... its successful synthesis of insights of conservative philosophy which are fatal to the visions of Mill and Popper with the classical liberal concerns which animated Kant and Hume."11 Since the late 1980s, however, Gray has rejected the possibility of reconciling social traditionalism and liberalism and instead moved toward an Oakeshottian view of authority and liberty. The idea that society will generate stable civil practices, Gray now states, "represses awareness of the possibility that unencumbered dialogue may destroy existing consensus without producing any new convergence on common values."12 He identifies logical inconsistencies in liberalism: even if agreement can be attained on a definition of freedom of expression, liberalism does not indicate whether pornography should or should not be protected; the tension between freedom of information and freedom of privacy cannot be reconciled on the basis of individual rights. Gray argues that liberalism is incapable of resolving these contradictions because there is no coherent liberal theory. Liberalism is a label grafted onto a variety of contradictory political ideas and practices. He now embraces the new conservatives' historiography, which asserts both that history "can neither be found nor dug up, nor retrieved, nor collected, but only inferred" and that the interpretation of England as expressing teleological, liberal progress is a history constructed by historians with leftliberal political aims.13 Gray argues that "this image of ourselves as heirs to a long and cohesive intellectual tradition is an illusion. [There are] ... discontinuities, accidents, variety, and historical concreteness of thinkers indifferently lumped together under the label of liberalism."14 While there is no liberal theory, Gray continues, the West is left with the inheritance of an independent civil society, including England's legacy of "authoritarian individualism," whereby "the potentially selfdestructive effects of the anonymity and moral laxity that were latent in individualist life ... were inhibited ... by the strength in England of a common moral culture and, more particularly, by the authority of the Anglican church."15 The problem is that civil society has stopped regen-

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crating itself. "Our circumstance," Gray states, "is the paradoxical one of postmoderns, whose self-understanding is shaped by the liberal form of life, but without its legitimizing myths, which philosophic inquiry has dispelled."16 Gray, having rejected the reconciliation of traditionalism and liberalism, now suggests that a mediation between Hobbesian authority and Humean conventions is preferable: Lacking universal principles with which to secure peaceful coexistence among us, we resort to compromise, bargaining and, in extremity, to the judicious use of force to preserve the peace I suggest a Hobbesian view of political life, freed of the crudities of Hobbes' anthropology and psychology... and incorporating Humean insights into the role of conventions in doing what coercion alone cannot do to maintain peace, is likely to emerge as a powerful idiom in post-liberal theorizing.17 Hayek always placed greater emphasis than Oakeshott on the intrinsic progress generated by social practices in civil society. For example, even when Gray was generally supporting Hayek and the garantiste constitutionalist current in British conservative theory, he criticized Hayek for assuming that civil practices progressed and suggested that Oakeshott's view of civil practices "as a series of distinct adventures in civilization" was preferable.18 And, indeed, although Hayek worries that civil society presently is not generating the stable civil practices requisite to individual liberty, he maintains the position that civil society is capable of regenerating itself under a garantiste constitutionalism.19 Nevertheless, Hayek's reevaluation of liberty during the 1970s and 1980s expresses his concern that civil society is no longer generating conditions sufficient for individual liberty. Having long championed negative liberty, Hayek now posits that the meaning of liberty is captured by neither the negative nor positive interpretations. The fundamental tension is between liberty and liberation. Liberty is the freedom of individual decision made possible by customs and laws that designate domains within which each person can dispose of his or her means in his or her ends. Liberation is the demand to comply only with rules that one can rationally understand. Accordingly, Hayek reevaluates John Stuart Mill. In The Constitution of Liberty, in which Hayek was primarily concerned with protecting the individual's private domain from power or positive liberty, he praised Mill's defense of individual liberty. Mill, Hayek argued, defended individual liberty based on his ignorance, rather

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than certainty, of the good life. "Those who plead for liberty," Hayek wrote, "differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest." This limited view of reason, according to Hayek, precluded Mill from advocating laws that determined an individual's ends or goals.20 In The Fatal Conceit, in which Hayek deals with problems posed both by positive liberty and by the absence of civil restraints on social behavior, he criticizes Mill for believing that ignorance is a reason for not accepting moral and legal rules. Ignorance is a reason to eschew rules that pursue substantive ends, but it is not a rationale for doing without rules: Everywhere, in the name of liberation, people disavow practices that enabled mankind to reach its present size and degree of cooperation because they do not rationally see, according to their lights, how certain limitations on individual freedom through legal and moral rules make possible a greater—and freer!—order. Such demands stem chiefly from the tradition of rationalistic liberalism. ... Unfortunately, i t . . . pervades ... the work o f . . . John Stuart Mill.21 Indeed, Hayek's distinction between liberty and liberation and his new emphasis on rules and traditions as the prerequisites for liberty have led Britain's archetypal libertarian thinker, Samuel Brittan, to break from new conservative theory. Throughout the 1970s Brittan had become very influential in both academic and political circles as a critic of corporatism, proponent of the market, and advocate for the expansion of freedom to as many spheres of society as possible. Well known for his nonpartisanship, Brittan admits that he flirted with becoming an advocate of conservatism during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Among the reasons he broke from new conservative political thinking was the emphasis its leading theorists were placing on the establishment of authoritative rules as the requisite for liberty. "To those of us brought up on Hayek's definition of freedom as the absence of coercion, his condemnation of permissiveness came as a shock," states Brittan. "What he really dislikes ... is the notion that rules which cannot be rationally explained do not have to be observed; or that people of any age should 'reason why' before accepting rules—conventional as well as legal."22 British conservative theory does not identify liberty with political rights. To Oakeshott, the shape of the legislative branch is a prudential question based on investing the state with maximum authority. "The

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only relevant reason for a notable extension of the franchise in a parliamentary democracy," Oakeshott suggests, "is the belief that the office of government thus constituted will enjoy an enhanced authority."23 In the twentieth century, to his regret, it is prudent to include the public in some political decision making. However, this does not make the public more or less free: "Those who have the authority to make or amend the provisions of a res publica are neither more or less 'free' than those who do not."24 Hayek, the most articulate spokesperson for the garantiste constitutionalism current within British conservative theory, advocates a form of juridical democracy. If placed in the proper political context (under the rule of law), democracy, he believes, can inhibit despotism. However, he maintains that democracy is only a method of government, a form of political decision making, not an aim of government. Democracy does not mean that the government seeks to create equality in the economy, in the workplace, or in institutions. When it does, he argues, it becomes despotic and infringes upon the individual liberties of the citizenry. A juridical democracy limits the space for the decisions of the electorate.25 Like their British counterparts, American conservative theorists have reevaluated the meaning of liberty. However, whereas the British focus on reconciling liberty with uniform, authoritative laws and civil practices, American conservatives advocate mediating liberty through civil and local, public institutions that generate substantive standards and beliefs. American conservative theory distinguishes two types of American liberalisms, Lockean and nihilistic. The first is not the American Lockean liberalism defined by Louis Hartz and Samuel Huntington—a universalistic and uniform belief in the autonomy of the individual.26 Straussians, as discussed in chapter 2, have been moving toward the position that the theories of Locke and the American founders, recognizing that individual responsibility must accompany individual rights, established a communitarian basis to individualism. "The Lockean community is self-consciously a community of individuals pursuing their diverse individual goals in legal and rational harmony," writes Pangle. "Yet the commitment to that harmony, and the principles upon which it depends, cannot help but affect the substantive goals and tastes of the members."27 Throughout most of American history, Straussians believe, these standards had created a relation between the public's rights and duties. They were not classical republican responsibilities; they were standards of personal morality and self-control: temperance, work, mo-

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nogamy, local community, parenthood, private religion, private property, and family. "The keystone of the social virtues is what Locke calls civility" notes Pangle. "[I]t does not refer to political leadership, statecraft or even citizenship: it is social rather than a civic or political virtue, embodying an egalitarian sense of humanity."28 Preserving a sufficient degree of substantive unity among the public, these social virtues also provided a basis on which the political executive could intensify public dedication to defending the American government during crises. Equally important, as Lockean liberalism animated the public, philosophers were free to pursue the classical virtue of contemplation. "Our regime is founded on arguments, not commands," writes Bloom. "Obedience to its fundamental law is not against reason, and it can claim to have resolved what was thought to be the unresolvable tension between good citizenship and philosophy."29 Of course, Pangle continues, philosophers must fight to transcend the conventions and norms generated by such a society, but through piercing, uncompromising thought and iron self-discipline some men can liberate themselves from the sway of opinion and learn to content themselves with the pursuit of the pleasures that are intrinsically sweet. Since man does, by nature, need the assistance of society, the truly free man will continue to dwell among and profit from his deluded neighbors; but spiritually he will live a life apart.30 This transcendence of norms and conventions by the philosopher, however, points to the problems being created by contemporary liberalism; it is concerned solely with rights, not duties. Influenced by an alien, nihilistic philosophy that Lockean liberalism is ill equipped to resist, American liberalism now is characterized by philosophic pragmatism and cultural relativism. It does not establish standards of right and wrong and forms of community; it views standards as constraints on the individual's right of self-expression. In short, this view of liberty displays the same orientation toward the norms and laws of the polity as the philosophers, but because it applies to the public's general rights, rather than to the philosopher's noble end of contemplation, it leads to a polity in which all public responsibilities and duties are ignored. Strauss stated that Aristotle condemned confusion between philosophical liberty and public liberty: "In asserting that man transcends the city, Aristotle agrees with the liberalism of the modern age. Yet he differs from that liberalism

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by limiting his transcendence only to the highest in man. Man transcends the city only by pursuing true happiness, not by pursuing happiness however understood."31 Mansfield argues that many of America's problems are based on such a conflation of philosophical and public liberty whereby all citizens attempt to transcend the city. Liberty now has "no necessary relationship to civil society, the Constitution, or the common good," comments Mansfield. "Your right is not qualified by any requirement to contribute to society by improving, maintaining, or defending it. You do not have to obey its laws; so it has now become more correct to speak of prisoners' rights than of citizens' rights."32 Just as philosophers persistently transcend limits in the quest for truth, the public refuses to accept limits on its variegated needs. Liberty becomes "unembarrassed, unrelenting claims on the public treasury, private compassion, nature, and God to be made whole according to an increasingly costly, if not lofty, definition of what it means to be a whole human being."33 Among all of the intellectual currents analyzed in this study, the neoconservatives' view of liberalism has changed the most. During the 1960s James Q. Wilson barely discussed political ideas; yet in the 1980s his critique of contemporary liberalism is indistinguishable from that of contemporary Straussianism. In 1962 Wilson's The Amateur Democrat defined liberalism as a set of goals that included civil rights, social welfare policies, and an emphasis on promoting mutual understanding in international relations.34 Liberalism was not the focal point of the study. Invoking a theme that has been a constant throughout his work, Wilson was dismayed at political reformers' strict attention to intraparty democracy, fearing it would undermine a communitarianism based on party allegiances, sectoral loyalties, ethnic ties, and personal patronage.35 Wilson primarily criticized the means, rather than the ends, of liberalism. Intraparty democracy, he warned, could preclude the attainment of liberal goals by reducing the efficiency of the nation's primary political organizations.36 In 1975 Wilson's Thinking about Crime gave more attention to liberal political beliefs. He identified liberalism as a set of ideas originating in the nineteenth-century movement to oppose despotic governments through the rule of law, representative government, and civil liberties. During the twentieth century, liberalism added the premise that the government was responsible for the social welfare of the citizenry. Liberalism's failure to define a proper relation between the government's responsibilities for both providing social welfare and upholding the rule

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of law had led to a rise in crime. In other words, liberalism became confused when it was the public, rather than despotic governments, that was breaking the law. Wilson was restrained in analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of liberalism, calling for a reevaluation of most urban social policies. "We may feel ourselves under pressure to pretend we know things," Wilson concluded, "but we are also under a positive obligation to admit what we don't know and avoid cant and sloganizing."37 During the 1980s, Wilson's analysis of crime revolves around the study of political ideas. His explanation for America's high crime rate synthesizes the Straussian interpretation of the deterioration of liberalism and the neoconservative analysis of postindustrialism.38 Throughout most of American history, he argues, the predominant idea of liberty in America included being industrious, temperate, religious, literate, honest, and law abiding. During the 1920s a nihilistic liberalism, which viewed all restraints on self-expression as coercive, challenged America's prevailing interpretation of liberty. Based among a section of American intellectuals, nihilistic liberalism marked the beginning of "the repudiation of moral uplift as it had been practiced for the preceding century."39 This new liberalism, according to Wilson, remained insulated among intellectuals as the nation met the challenges of the depression and World War II. During the 1960s, however, the idea of liberty as selfexpression found a large base of support among the new, affluent college-educated, who, in turn, gained influence in America's new national telecommunications media. At the same time, the wealth generated by postindustrialism enabled the middle class to abandon the cities; "thus the removal from those places of the persons most likely to sustain a social infrastructure—churches, neighborhood, groups, social networks, and small businesses—with a stake in impulse control."40 The public view of liberty has now changed. Wilson writes, "The contemporary public philosophy emphasizes rights not duties. A commitment to rights implies a preference for spontaneity over loyalty, conscience over honor, tolerance over conformity, self-expression over self-restraint."41 Echoing the Straussian view on the relation between liberty for the philosophers and for the public, Wilson writes that placing such a premium on self-expression may lead to creativity among middleclass intellectuals, but the absence of self-restraints among the lower classes leads to self-destructive behavior, including crime. Wilson adds

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that the prevailing idea of liberty as self-expression also explains the futility of contemporary policies in controlling crime. Ignoring the task of constructing a social morality, policies revolve around manipulating incentives so individuals might find means of self-expression other than crime. "The chief difference of opinion ... is whether it is better to manipulate the costs of committing crime (by stressing the deterrent or incapacitative effects of criminal sanctions) or the benefits of non-crime (by stressing the need for better employment and income-maintenance opportunities)."42 To both control crime and preserve liberty, Wilson counters, it is necessary to reestablish the old American interpretation of liberty. This requires transcending Hobbes and Rousseau and reconciling Aristotle with modern liberalism. According to Wilson, Hobbes established that the state existed to confer a net advantage on its subjects; Rousseau established that humanity is naturally good and corruption is a product of society. Both theories neglect the task of controlling humanity's base passions. In contrast, Aristotle recognized that humanity consisted of reason and passion and that associations must foster reason to check passion. Mediating Aristotle and modern liberalism requires encouraging civil and local, public institutions to develop as generators of moral standards that control the human passion to seek release from all restraints but simultaneously leave sufficient space for individual liberty. "A society made up of persons who are purely hedonic calculators is no society at all," Wilson and Richard Herrnstein conclude in their comprehensive study of the relation between crime and human nature. "We want our collective institutions to uphold standards of right conduct, even when wrong conduct seems to do no physical harm, but without those institutions becoming busybodies."43 Kristol, Novak, Berger, and other writers identified with the neoconservative intellectual movement of the 1970s have elaborated interpretations of liberty similar to those of Straussianism and Wilson; they center on the task of civil and local, public institutions generating moralities to prevent the deterioration of liberalism. For example, Berger distinguishes individualism and hyperindividualism. Individualism balances individual rights and responsibilities. For hyperindividualism, "the ideal is an individual free from all 'repressions.'" Individualism inevitably degenerates into hyperindividualism, Berger warns, if civil and local, public institutions are not created to "mediate between the private

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world of Gemeinschaft and a public world dominated by 'cold' contractual relationships. That is why these balancing institutions may also be called 'mediating structures.' "44 British conservative theory's quest to reconcile Hobbesian authority and Humean conventions leads to proposals that the legislative office of the central state establish rules as authoritative procedures; American conservative theory's quest to elaborate a moral underpinning to individualism leads to proposals that a network of civil and local, public institutions structure public interaction. As discussed in chapter 5, fiscal incentives are proposed for community-based institutions—churches, schools, families, local associations—to provide social services heretofore provided by the state. American conservatives also propose an expanded role for local democracies. Novak summarizes: In a free society every citizen depends upon the virtues of every other. The market that allows each to pursue his or her own private dreams is a social institution. Hence, the dreams most consonant with it entail building up thriving and virtuous communities [W]hen institutions are designed to inspire creativity, to multiply acts of practical intelligence, and to check the evils that the human heart is prey to, the resulting common good increases the private goods of individuals far beyond what they could have hoped for under earlier regimes.45 American conservative theorists have a more ambitious definition of the aims of democracy than their British counterparts. To the British, democracy is not only a method of resolving political differences peacefully, but also, in the present political setting, the most prudential method of enhancing the authority of the legislative office of the central state. To the Americans, the right to self-government is a form of liberty and a condition for the development of identity in the political association. It helps establish the moral ethos that preserves a public commitment to the polity. "The right of consent is a matter of justice, because it is just to count each person as one," states Mansfield. "But it is also a matter of pride, for to count as one, each person must count for something, must be worth something."46 Accordingly, American conservative theory does not pose a problematic relation between liberty and democracy. It does not fear that majoritarianism poses a serious threat of political polarization. The key, of course, is that the majoritarianism is based mainly on local, rather than

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national, majorities. This will devolve political debate and protect the autonomy of the national state. "One of the secrets of stability in our constitutional order," Kirkpatrick comments, "was that many of the deepest moral controversies were removed from national politics and left to be settled in the communities of shared values."47 Neither does it fear that local majoritarianism will foster a tyranny of conformity. "Indeed," Werner Dannhauser notes, "many Americans think too much about the dangers of conformity and not enough about its merit. We all know people... whose idea of liberty is to defy the manners enshrined by tradition. They loathe conformity so much it no longer matters to them what it is to which one conforms."48 British conservative theory advocates public compliance with uniform rules, whereas American conservative theory encourages public conformity with local, substantive moral standards. ECONOMIC POLICY PREFERENCES

The economic goals of new British and American conservative theory reinforce their general political outlooks. Both theories advocate expanding the market, but they differ as to which institutions should structure economic relations. The market, both theories maintain, inhibits state collectivism by diffusing economic power among millions of producers and consumers. It combines liberty and order by establishing a structure of spontaneous discipline, the price system, whereby people quickly learn whether their resources meet other people's needs. The market also is a necessary condition for economic progress as it presupposes competition and in so doing produces an inducement for innovation. However, whereas British conservative theory advocates empowering the central state to create a monetary framework to structure market relations, American conservative theory features a fiscal program that empowers civil institutions, banks and corporations, to structure market relations. Given these different emphases in economic policy, each conservatism embraces (and in some cases transforms) different aspects of theories identified with the Chicago School: monetarism, public choice theory, law and economics. British conservative theory incorporates components of monetarism and public choice theory, while American conservative theory adopts features of law and economics. In addition to analyzing each conservatism vis-a-vis the Chicago School theories, I want to iden-

* 132 * Restructuring Liberty and Economics • tify how key internal debates within each conservative theory are produced by tensions between their economic and political goals. Many British conservatives resist both strict monetarist rules and a unified European currency, refusing to accept the validity of arguments based primarily on economic criteria. They fear that either policy will undermine their political aim of establishing the undivided sovereignty of the legislative office of the central state. In turn, American conservative theory divides over fiscal policies that create a huge fiscal deficit. Although many American conservative intellectuals worry that the deficit endangers the economy, they do not mind the limitations that the deficit places on the national state's capacity to make new public policies. The deficit, in short, furthers their political aim of both limiting the national state in domestic politics and developing civil and local, public institutions as the generators of authoritative political and civil relations. THE CHICAGO SCHOOL AND ITS OFFSPRING

Members of the Chicago School of monetary theory, public choice theorists, and law and economics school members often declare their political neutrality, asserting that their policy analyses are based on scientific premises. Others, because they are engaged in expanding the individual's private domain, describe themselves as liberal. "Partly because of my reluctance to surrender the term to proponents of measures that would destroy liberty," states Milton Friedman, "partly because I cannot find a better alternative, I shall resolve these difficulties by using the word liberalism in the original sense—as the doctrine pertaining to a free man."49 British and American conservative theory, however, adopts policies from all three schools of thought: British conservative theory employs elements of monetarism and public choice theory to advocate policies that restrict the influence of intermediate organizations; American conservative theory embraces law and economics to encourage deregulation and corporation-led economic development and to legitimize limiting social policies. In addition to drawing specific policy recommendations from all three schools, each conservative theory utilizes them on the political premise that it is futile to change social conditions through public policies. Indeed, monetarism, public choice theory, and law and economics provide both conservative theories with themes that Albert

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Hirschman believes are necessary to a successful conservative political outlook: According to the perversity thesis, any purposive action to improve some feature of the political, social and economic order only serves to exacerbate the condition one wishes to remedy. The futility thesis holds that attempts at social transformation will be unavailing, that they will simply fail to "make a dent." Finally, the jeopardy thesis argues that the cost of proposed change or reform is too high as it endangers some previous, precious accomplishment [T]he arguments are most typical of conservative attacks on existing or proposed progressive policies.50 Monetarism warns of the futility of attempting to establish full employment through fiscal policies. Public choice theory advises that the formation of public policies in a democracy endangers the economic well-being of all. Law and economics predicts that both state regulation of commerce and social policies directed at minorities exacerbate the problems they address. The Chicago School of monetary theory grew out of opposition to the economic experiments launched by governments during the Great Depression. Since the 1930s, Henry Simons, George Stigler, Milton Friedman, and others have claimed that maximum use of the market is essential to freedom and economic well-being. State social programs are inefficient. Most important, monetarism rejects the Keynesian emphasis on fiscal policies, taxation, and spending as conducive to economic growth. Monetarists challenge the Phillips curve, the theory that fiscal deficits increase prices, output, and employment while balanced budgets decrease them; hence there is an inherent tradeoff in the economy between inflation and unemployment. Monetarism counters that once people anticipate that prices will rise, they respond rationally and demand higher wages for their labor and higher prices for their products. The initial increase in employment produced by higher prices and the fiscal deficit vanishes, yet the inflation remains. Attempts to fight unemployment by creating a larger fiscal deficit will fail as soon as people anticipate a new rise in prices. Monetarists argue that a stable monetary framework linked to national productivity and not subject to the arbitrary pressures of political interests is necessary to avoid volatile changes in prices and incomes and to create conditions amenable to economic growth.

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Monetarists focus on developing macroeconomic formulas that establish stable monetary frameworks. During the 1950s and early 1960s monetarism was a school of thought on the margins of the economics academy, although some monetarists, most notably Friedman, served as advisers to officials of the American government. The end of the gold standard in 1971, along with the inability of Keynesians to explain higher levels of both unemployment and inflation during the 1970s, helped monetarism gain credibility in economics.51 During the 1970s and 1980s, some members of the Chicago School and their students and followers shifted from monetary theory. As Stigler notes, while some Chicago theorists maintain their focus on monetary theory, a "second direction of development has been the widening of the working range to encompass phenomena previously treated as exogenous in economics."52 These analysts utilize economic criteria to understand political phenomena. Many helped develop public choice theory, an attempt to explain the state's increased role in the economy by applying cost-benefit analysis from economics to the dynamics of political institutions; others initiated the law and economics school, which concentrated on how specific laws and regulations affect economic efficiency. Rational choice is the central premise of the public choice and law and economics writers: the view that all human behavior is motivated to maximize self-interest. Whether legislating, falling in love, or buying a house, one acts according to a rational assessment of costs and benefits.53 Rational choice theory has both analytical and normative currents. The analytical current studies the relation between institutional settings and self-interested behavior. The normative strand proposes institutional reforms to expand the space available for individuals to choose.54 As utilitarianism found, the basis for calculating costs and benefits differs according to the individual, which creates problems for those attempting to construct a general theory of rational behavior. Public choice theory attempts to avoid the uncertainties of utilitarianism's happiness principle by claiming that market relations establish the optimal process in which individuals and institutions choose reasonably. In the marketplace, people generally assume full responsibility for their decisions. If they make an unwise choice, they lose assets, which creates a strong incentive to choose reasonably.55 Law and economics attempts to overcome the indeterminate character of the utilitarians' happiness principle by identifying rational behavior as wealth maximization. The util-

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itarians' aim of happiness, not wealth creation, claims Richard Posner, "would have to give capacity of enjoyment, self-indulgence, and other hedonistic values at least equal emphasis with diligence and honesty."56 Both public choice theory and law and economics generally advocate bringing market relations to bear on as many spheres of society as possible. Public choice theory predicts inefficient state interventionism when laws are subjected to democratic competition. Elected legislators act rationally by aiming to gain the favor of local constituents through public programs. Because such programs are financed by the general public, legislators have a weak incentive to make sure that government programs are cost efficient. Interest groups act rationally by seeking public programs based on taxes collected from the general public. Both legislators and pressure groups have inducements to work hard at establishing public programs, but less interest in controlling government spending, and this endangers general market relations in society.57 Intensifying the problem of public spending in a democracy are the differing incentives of the legislators and the directors of agencies of public policies. William Niskanen maintains that these incentives affect bargaining between legislative sponsors of public programs and bureau chiefs of agencies that produce the desired services. A bureau chief acts rationally by attempting to obtain as large a budget as possible in order to secure the most private gain or to produce the most services possible. The legislative sponsors do not know (or have time to learn) the bureau's production costs. Public programs become neither cost efficient nor responsive to the needs of the sponsors' constituents.58 Public choice theory has a number of subdisciplines. Many are analytical and do not offer specific policy prescriptions. Most political proposals by public choice theorists recommend constitutional mechanisms to restrain democratic legislatures from wasting public money. James Buchanan aims to preserve limited government by the "social decision procedure," which proposes that public programs be approved unanimously. Transferring the Pareto-optimality principle from economics to politics, Buchanan suggests that no political program is acceptable unless all agree that they will not be harmed. This would place proponents of limited government in an advantageous position, as they would easily be able to block public policy initiatives.59 Among other restraints on democratic legislatures proposed by public choice theorists are different types of constitutional rules—amendments

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for a balanced budget and to limit the budget to a specified percentage of the gross national product, among others. Public choice theory also proposes restructuring the incentives of bureaucracies by creating competition among them. An education system that required each school to compete for students, for example, would encourage more efficiency while promoting more options for the individual. Whereas many of public choice theory's proposals center on constitutional reforms, law and economics analyzes how specific economic and social policies—marginal tax rates, regulations, tariffs, subsidies, welfare payments—aid individuals, groups, and institutions in maximizing their economic efficiency.60 Law and economics emphasizes the unintended effects of public policies that interfere with market relations, usually identifying how the result is the opposite of the intention. Law and economies' contribution to the recent debate on child safety in airplanes is an example. In both a Peruvian Airline crash on Long Island in 1990 and a United Airlines crash in Texas in 1989, babies who might have lived had they been buckled into seat belts died. Law and economics argues that it would endanger babies to require that they be buckled into protective seats during flights because the costs of requiring safety seats would force families to drive, a far more dangerous means of transportation than airplanes. Law and economics notes that if babies were required to ride in safety seats, they would need tickets. The extra tickets would cost $210 million a year. Consequently, law and economics calculates that a safety seat requirement would cause a 21 percent reduction in airplane trips by families with babies, meaning that seven hundred thousand such families would decide not to travel by air; many would presumably switch to cars.61 The primary focus of law and economics is the effect of government regulations on commerce. Although these policies aim to regulate competition, Richard Posner, Frank Easterbrook, William Baxter, and other law and economics theorists argue that they produce the opposite effect: they favor the major producer interests and retard wealth creation. The restriction on such occasional business practices as pricing below cost or setting of minimum prices for retailers prevents pro-consumer activities, constrains competitive behavior, and creates stagnant oligopolies. The critical question is not the number or size of competitors in an industry, but whether there is potential for competition within an industry; and global rather than domestic competition must be the reference point for whether a competitive environment exists within an

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industry. Law and economics advocates that the judiciary, which is removed from immediate political and social pressures, shift the center of gravity of antitrust policy to the deregulation of competition and mergers. Similar arguments are made in its call for loosening of the regulations on capital markets, corporate takeovers, and savings and loan institutions.62 Law and economics also aims to redeem the reputation of the private corporation. It claims that since the study by Gardner and Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property, the understanding of the corporations' separation of ownership and control has fostered a bias against corporations. They are considered unresponsive to shareholders, to consumers, and to the market, providing a rationale for state regulation of corporations and the economy. Law and economics has launched a counteroffensive. It claims that corporations are the most efficient mechanisms for achieving economic growth because corporations run by managers and funded by shares have unique capabilities for winning global competition for markets: the selling of shares by corporations provides broad sources for the capital required to compete in a global market; the centralization of management by corporations, removed from the pressure of responding to outside influences, provides the flexibility to allocate resources quickly to respond to new economic challenges. The capital markets further produce disciplined and efficient corporations because, as the value of corporations' shares affect their ability to compete, they provide shareholders with a method for maintaining efficiency.63 Another major topic of law and economics is the effect of state policies on ethnic and racial minorities, most notably African-Americans. Law and economics asserts that most public policies specifically aimed at relieving poverty among minorities hurt, rather than help, minority groups develop wealth-creating habits. The key to upward mobility for minorities is avoiding the allure of politics and learning labor markets— a protracted, intergenerational task. "The most dramatic rises from poverty to affluence in the United States have been among groups who did not attempt to use the political route to economic advancement," states Thomas Sowell. "Nevertheless, it is taken as axiomatic in many quarters, that political action is the key to economic advance."64 Law and economics argues that most social policies developed on behalf of minorities since the Great Society have encouraged them to avoid joining the lower working class and learning the labor market. A

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family of four in New York City receiving $12,000 from a variety of state programs, they maintain, has more income than a working family making a taxed income of $14,500, and only marginally less than a working family making a taxed income of $16,000 (but without the cost of difficult labor). Law and economics declares that the state is providing poor, minority families with incentives to not work and learn the wealthcreating skills necessary for upward mobility. Instead, minority families have become dependent on the state.65 BRITISH CONSERVATIVE ECONOMIC OUTLOOK

Law and economics has no influence on British conservative theory. Its emphasis on an independent, active judiciary precludes British conservative theory from embracing it because that stipulation contradicts the British conservative premise of undivided sovereignty. Law and economies' focus on microeconomic policies to empower the corporation also conflicts with British conservative theory's preference, as discussed below, for macroeconomic policies that empower the central state to structure market relations. Finally, Britain has few social programs aimed at racial minorities, which means there is little basis to the claim that such policies are preventing minority groups from entering and learning labor markets.66 Although law and economics has no influence on British conservative theory, the central theme of public choice theory contributed to the constitutional debate in British conservative theory during 1972-83, and a modified form of it remains an essential part of contemporary British conservative political thought. During the early 1970s James Buchanan had directly criticized Hayek in a paper written for a meeting of the Mt. Perelin Society. Buchanan argued that Hayek's view that social progress emanates from civil society kept him from recognizing that sectoral interests now threatened the political process in most Western democracies. Although society spontaneously developed efficient social customs, Buchanan continued, if this logic is extended to the structure of institutions (including law) that have emerged in some historical evolutionary process, the implications seem clear that that set which we observe necessarily embodies institutional or structural "efficiency." From this it follows, as before, that a policy of non-intervention in the process of

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emergence is dictated. There is no room left for the political economist, or for anyone else, who seeks to reform social structures, to change laws and rules, with an aim of security instead of efficiency Any "constructively rational" interferences with the "rational" processes of history are, therefore, to be avoided.67 As noted in chapter 1, Hayek's thinking shifted during the 1970s. He embraced features of public choice theory.68 The main threat to liberty, he now claimed, was the domination of the state and economy by small interest groups. Hayek, Lord Hailsham, Leslie Scarman, Gray, Nevil and Paul Johnson, among many others, invoked themes of public choice theory as they claimed that unlimited democracy—political authority centralized in the House of Commons, the unlimited scope of statutory legislation—was the main cause of British decline. The logic of political competition in British democracy, they continued, produced small groups that sought to exact special privileges from the state. Putting forward the prisoner's dilemma, often discussed by public choice theory, they claimed that individuals and groups had become faced with the necessity of gaining favorable public policies from the state in order to protect their interest from others under the same constraint. "The more organizations of interest are used for this purpose," stated Hayek, "the more necessary does it become for each group to organize for pressure on government, since those who fail to do so will be left out in the cold."69 Hayek, Hailsham, and others proposed constitutional reforms: two elected assemblies of government; proportional representation; written bill of rights; independent judiciary with lawmaking powers—all meant to place restraints on the central government's legislative process. These specific proposals eventually were rejected by British conservative theory which was coalescing around an outlook of enhancing, not restricting, the authority of the central state. However, Hayek and others helped construct a consensus in British conservative theory that intermediate organizations had become too powerful and must be checked. Equally important, instead of rejecting public choice theory, British conservative theory has transformed it into an instrument for enhancing the authority of the central state. Specific proposals by public choice theorists, for example, limiting the growth of state expenditures to the rate of growth of the GNP, insisting that proposed government programs have precise revenue sources, establishing rules mandating bal-

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anced budgets, and placing an equal tax burden on all voters to pay for social policies, have been adopted by conservative theory to limit local, not national, government. At the same time, conservative theorists and writers propose that competition be created among local government bureaucracies, most notably the schools and local education authorities, in order to enhance market relations, bypass the influence of intermediate institutions, and establish the national state's authority in key social policy domains. In short, public choice theory has furnished British conservative theory with policies and themes that enhance, rather than limit, the authority of the central state.70 Among the theories engendered by the Chicago School, monetarism (or the Chicago School itself) has had the most influence on the British conservative theory's new economic outlook and program. Monetarism addresses Britain's traditional economic concentration on monetary stability.71 It is attractive to most British conservatives because it places responsibility on the central state for reintroducing the market and overseeing economic development. The state's tight monetary policy establishes the discipline of the price mechanism as the determinant of labor's wages. British conservatives believe that labor in Britain has been overvalued, hence tight money places pressure on industry to increase productivity and weaken the trade unions. If British companies fail, monetarism shifts resources from unprofitable sectors of British industry, raises unemployment, and creates a test of strength between the state and the trade unions. The state establishes authority by retaining a stable monetary framework and abdicates authority by adopting a loose monetary policy to mollify public discontent. In 1978, as monetarism was embraced by the Conservative party in opposition, T. E. Utley warned that the state must prepare for a series of showdowns with the trade unions: The government, in obedience to a policy of free collective bargaining within the framework of a sound monetary policy,... would have to intervene. The resulting confrontation, which might develop into something approaching a general strike but which would be critical even if it did not, would be political in character. It would be a trial of strength between the State and an organized interest within the State. It might involve the assumption of exceptional powers by the Government and it would certainly involve a

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retreat from the principle that free collective bargaining is an inviolable institution. Its outcome would depend on the strength of the State, on the extent to which law is still habitual among most people, and on the cohesion of society, i.e. the extent to which the nation still has an instinct of self-preservation and is capable of reacting spontaneously to a challenge to its existence.72 During the 1970s, influential British conservative economists, building on the monetary theories of the Chicago School, developed a comprehensive strategy for establishing monetary policy as high politics, that is, a state policy above political pressure or sectoral interests.73 Proposing the adoption of a monetary rule, they suggested that the quantity of money should expand at a fairly steady rate of growth between 5 and 9 percent a year, so that there would be liquidity sufficient to allow growth without price reductions, but not sufficient to lead to runaway inflation. The state, through the Bank of England, would influence this degree of liquidity through its purchase and sale of securities. The crucial component of this program lay in defining the measurement of the supply of money in terms of the broad money aggregate, Sterling M3 (notes, coins, and all bank deposits). A broad money aggregate is easier to identify than a narrow one (as Friedman calls for) and leaves little room for political discretion and shifts in policy. It would facilitate conservative governments in relating control of the money supply to the other key aspects of an economic program, exchange rate management and fiscal policy. According to this monetarist program, the exchange rate and fiscal policy would remain subordinate to the state's monetary rule. The pound would be free to float against other currencies, meaning that the Bank of England would not alter its money supply targets by buying or selling securities to maintain a certain exchange rate. The subordination of fiscal policy to the monetary rule required that tax and spending policies be limited by money supply targets, an expression of the conservatives' commitment to resist political pressures and preserve the state's autonomy. As Tim Congdon suggests, the essential shift in conservative monetary theory during the "late 1970s was that decisions came to be based on rules This deliberate cramping of the economic policy reduced the Government's scope for both managing and for mismanaging the economy."74 "The M3 aggregate," Alan Walters con-

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ceded, "had the singular advantage of being closely related to the fiscal variables.... Treasury and Bank officials could readily translate a constraint on M3 ... into limits on public spending."75 Immediately some influential British conservative economists and theorists argued that a monetary rule restricted the authority of the state. Just as they opposed placing the legislative center of the central state under a system of constitutional rules, they disliked the state subordinating all goals to a monetary rule. Alan Walters, Britain's most influential conservative economist in the 1980s, argued that although monetary stability must be the long-term objective of the government, monetary targets are a political judgment based on a variety of considerations. "Economic policy does not depend entirely or primarily on principles and economic evidence," Walters stated. "Political, social and psychological factors must play a considerable part in any successful policy."76 The state should control the money supply by manipulating interest rates according to an assessment of all these factors, continued Walters, rather than follow a fixed monetary target. In 1981 this tension in British conservative theory divided the Thatcher government. The government turned to and accepted the recommendations of a report drawn up by a group of conservative economists led by Professor Jurg Niehans (it had been commissioned by the Centre for Policy Studies, a conservative think tank). The Niehans Report stated that the M3 aggregate and rule should not be the criteria for monetary policy and identified a variety of additional indicators for discerning the money supply. It called for state manipulation of interest rates, rather than a monetary rule, to create stable "monetary conditions." Strict monetarists continue to object to this position, claiming that conservative political thinking provides the state with too much discretionary power over economic policy. "Whereas the direction of policy change in the late 1970s had been away from forecasts and toward rules," Congdon complains, "in the early and mid 1980s there was a shift back toward forecasts and away from rules."77 As British conservative theory debated the role of rules in monetary policy, another division developed. Those concerned with integrating Britain into the European Community (EC) argued that monetary policy must be based on the exchange rate within the European Monetary System and that Britain must be prepared to take further steps toward aligning its currency with those of the EC. In the short run, they feared that

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a rise in sterling would weaken competitiveness in foreign markets. In this case, they believed, the Bank of England should intervene to check the currency's appreciation. In the long run, they feared that Britain was losing an important opportunity to become part of a unifying European economy on favorable terms. Other conservative economists, most notably Walters, countered that although these operations would boost Britain's reserve of foreign exchange, they also would increase the money supply and possibly set off an inflationary spiral. (In order to sell pounds on the foreign exchanges, the government would have to borrow from the banks, increasing bank deposits, the main component of the money supply.) Equally important, many conservative theorists and writers feared that a long-range program of aligned European currencies or a single European currency would contribute to the British state's becoming subordinate to the monetary policies of European governments, particularly the Federal Republic of Germany. While supporting an integrated European market, they belittled proposals for an integrated European currency as a surrender of sovereignty. Just as the legislative office of the central state should not be subordinated to either constitutional limitations or a monetary rule, it should not be subordinated to the economic policies of foreign governments.78 This struggle continues (see chapter 5). Although contemporary British conservative economic policies revolve around the establishment of a stable monetary framework, conservative theory has not determined a clear criterion for this task. Many analysts identify this failure and criticize British conservative theory for its lack of economic principles.79 However, British conservatism's economics is consistent with its political theory. As long as conservative theory's primary aim is to establish the state's undivided authority, it will not subordinate its economic policies to either monetary rules or international institutions. As British conservative constitutionalism subordinates intermediary institutions to the rules of civil association but leaves the legislative office of the central state unfettered by these rules, British conservative economics and monetary policy limits the power of trade unions, local governments, and other intermediate institutions but leaves the legislative office of the central state free from these restrictions. Like their constitutionalism, British conservative economics aims to establish the sovereignty of the central state.

144 m Restructuring Liberty and Economics AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE ECONOMIC OUTLOOK

In contrast to British conservatism's accent on monetary policy, American conservative theory's policy focus in economics is on offering incentives to encourage private capital formation and a risk-taking entrepreneurial character among key civil institutions, especially corporations and banks. Their emphasis is on the "supply side," the civil institutions and groups that provide capital investment. As George Gilder argues, "The so-called means of production are impotent to generate wealth and progress without the creative men of production, the entrepreneurs They are the heroes of economic life."80 The principal fetters to productive domestic investment are high capital gains and personal taxes, which induce potentially productive investors to sink money into financial speculation, tax shelters, artifacts, and the underground economy. America's corporate elite is in danger of becoming a corrupt, acquisitive class rather than an innovative, productive class.81 American conservatives' mechanisms for transforming the character of banks and corporations are fiscal policies that reward capital gains and reduce tax exemptions. "There is certainly a difference in perspective here," Kristol notes in contrasting new American conservative economics to such macroeconomics as monetarism. "[Conservatives] look at the economy from the ground level, as it were—i.e., from the point of view of the entrepreneurs and investors who are identified as the prime movers."82 In turn, American conservative theory believes that by encouraging private investors the state promotes commercial republican principles. "Income tax cuts," states Mansfield, "reward earners and producers, and productivity, as George Gilder noted in his Wealth and Poverty, has its aspect of virtue."83 As Novak summarizes, "At one end of the market, a certain heroic boldness is required; at the other end, moderation is taught and realism is the necessary rule. A commercial republic captures plenty of romantics, but is not easy on romanticism. Most of the railroad men who built East-West, in the dream of spanning the continent, lost their shirts; most of those who built locally flourished."84 American conservative theory and law and economics share overlapping themes. Law and economics, while adding expertise and academic prestige in economics to conservative political thought, provides micropolicies for deregulation and fewer restrictions on capital formation, which contributes to conservatism a comprehensive program for indue-

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ing more investment from banks and corporations. Law and economies' defense of the role of the private corporation also answers a complaint Kristol voiced in 1976. "The trouble with the large corporation today," Kristol said, "is that it does not possess a clear theoretical—that is, ideological—legitimacy within the framework of liberal capitalism itself."85 Law and economics, in short, though having no common foci with a British conservative theory which advocates that the central state structure market relations, reinforces American conservative theory's argument that corporations and banks should structure the market. At the same time, law and economies' analysis of the ineffectiveness of social programs directed at minorities strengthens American conservative theory's contention that the national government should withdraw from many areas of social reform. During the 1960s, many conservative writers began to move toward conservatism on the basis of their opposition to specific programs for African-Americans. Invoking themes later found in law and economics, they raised concern that these policies would upset the process whereby American ethnic groups adapt to urban, industrial life. "Most of the Irish slums were far filthier than they need have been," wrote Kristol in 1966. "[They] were not less filthy than the worst Negro slum today—because the inhabitants were unfamiliar with, and indifferent to that individual and communal selfdiscipline which is indispensable to the preservation of civilized amenities in an urban setting." Over time, Kristol suggested, if blacks were left on their own, they would follow the pattern of the Irish—assimilating American culture and pursuing the American ought of individual prosperity.86 Today, most conservative theorists and writers believe that AfricanAmericans have failed to undergo this American rite of passage; they assert that most blacks neither pursue economic prosperity nor foster community associations. They charge that liberal social policies have encouraged blacks to become dependent on the state. Borrowing a theme found in law and economics, Mansfield argues that affirmative action induces blacks to be irresponsible by leading them to blame others for their problems; blacks mistakenly look to political reforms for advancement, rather than to self-reformation. "It is of course not always incorrect to blame others for your troubles, but it is almost always counterproductive to do so. You cannot easily reform those whom you blame, but you can do something about yourself," counsels Mansfield.87 Preserving these social programs, conservatives continue, will perpetuate

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blacks' dependence on politics and the state, further eroding their capacity to learn labor markets and leading to the formation of de facto "Indian reservations" within most of America's major cities. "We will have arrived in the brave new world of custodial democracy," states Charles Murray, "in which a substantial portion of our population, neither convicted as criminal nor adjudged to be insane, will in effect be treated as wards of the state."88 Conservatives suggest that one only can wait for a cultural and spiritual revolution among blacks. Kristol now writes that blacks are "a large population whose economic sensibilities have been so deadened, and whose sense of responsibility to other people has been so stunted, that many will not respond rationally to the normal incentives of an economic or social program."89 The law and economics school concentrates on deregulating commerce and limiting social policies, and therefore its stress on judicial activism and wealth maximization does not create many tensions with American conservative theorists and writers, who generally oppose judicial activism and also encourage a local communitarianism. Jeremy Rabkin notes, in discussing the law and economics theorist Richard Posner, "Just as Posner is too respectful of democracy to insist on economic efficiency or legal rectitude at all costs, he is too conscious of the institutional realities of the judiciary to make too much of abstract doctrine.... He attacks ... judicial self-indulgence."90 Indeed, law and economics declares that its emphasis on microeconomic policies precludes its judicial activism from intruding into such policy domains as the moralities founded by local majorities. "What is at issue is the institutional source of morality," states Sowell.91 "Judicial activists like Ronald Dworkin and Lawrence Tribe," he continues, "recognize limits on what judges can and should do when interpreting the Constitution. They simply set those limits much wider than ... Posner It is the nature of the differential that is at issue."92 Moreoyer, even though law and economics claims to be concerned only with policies that maximize wealth, they also believe that their program produces a better or more virtuous American public, which reinforces new conservative theory's commercial republicanism. "To summarize," Posner writes, "the wealth maximization principle encourages and rewards the traditional Calvinist or Protestant virtues and capacities associated with economic progress."93 American conservative theory and law and economics have similar concerns, but American conservative theory and public choice theory primarily share a negative consensus: opposition to public policies gen-

• Restructuring Liberty and Economics • 147 •

crated by Congress. Public choice theory's criticisms of public policies as benefiting particularistic interests are raised by conservative theorists in criticizing the Democratic party, Congress, and many national public policies. Mansfield describes the Democrats and Congress as follows: Consider ... the Democrats, the party of order entrenched in Congress. There it lives by the devices of constituency service, nonpartisan in themselves, yet instrumental to the getting of not favors or rights, but 'entitlements'... [I]ts legislative initiatives in domestic policy consist of generally successful attempts to expand this legislation marginally and to make it more costly. Congress cannot pass a budget under its own Budget Reform Act (1974), and it appropriates money under emergency procedures now become routine, while allowing the deficit to grow Incumbency for the sake of entitlements: that is the Democratic party today.94 Prominent American conservative theorists, however, consistently criticize public choice theory's constitutionalism: it focuses too narrowly on limiting government; it ignores the task of shaping the character of the citizenry. "They surely believe in limited government, but it is doubtful that they believe in government," states Mansfield. "They believe in the sovereignty of the self but not in the self-government of the self; so they are liberal on the social issues or on the general question of permissiveness, while conservative on economic issues."95 Most important, public choice theory fails to posit a constitutional setting that allows the political executive the autonomy to seek fame and glory through the pursuit of the public good. It understands constitutionalism only as a negative check on government and politics. Mansfield counters, "That there might actually be a type of human being called 'politician' who likes politics and that the few of this type might be both useful and dangerous to the many who care less for politics are problems that do not appear or are not themes in theories of public choice."96 Unlike British conservative theory, American conservative theory does not endorse limiting the statutory powers of local government. On the contrary, it calls for delegating many issues of domestic politics to civil and local, public institutions. Hence, there has not been an attempt by American conservative theory to transform public choice theory's proposals for limiting the national government into a program for restricting local governments. British conservative theory embraces many premises of monetarism

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and the goal of monetary stability, whereas American conservative theory is ambivalent about this school of thinking and policy focus. For example, their divergence with regard to Keynes and Keynesianism reflects their different emphases on the task of stabilizing the money supply and their distinct views on which institutions should structure market relations. Like their British equals, American conservative theorists and writers blame Keynesianism for the economic downturns of the 1970s. American criticism, however, is based on different premises. Most British conservatives attack Keynes's entire theory because it shifted the economic paradigm from monetary to fiscal concerns. "What we are experiencing," Hayek noted in discussing economic difficulties during the 1970s, "are simply the economic consequences of Lord Keynes."97 American conservative theory prefers to criticize the so-called neoKeynesians. Many American conservative theorists and writers respect Keynes's view that fiscal policies encourage either private investors or rentiers. "Keynes thus restored to a position of appropriate centrality in economic thought the vital role and activity of the individual capitalist," notes George Gilder.98 American conservatives recognize that Keynes advocated tax and spending policies to increase public demand, but he also prescribed tax cuts to promote entrepreneurial investment. Martin Anderson proudly quotes a passage of Keynes: Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance, than an increase, of balancing the Budget. For to take the opposite view today is to resemble a manufacturer who, running at a loss, decides to raise his price, and when his declining sales increase the loss, wrapping himself in the rectitude of plain arithmetic, decides that prudence requires him to raise the price still more;—and who, when at last his account is balanced with nought on both sides, is still found righteously declaring that it would have been the act of a gambler to reduce the price when you are making a loss.99 American conservative theory's primary quarrel with Keynes is over his belief in the priority of economic equilibrium. This provided an opening for neo-Keynesians to give primacy to redistribution over growth. A dynamic, expanding economy led by investing corporations, American conservatives counter, presupposes that some of the nation's resources are being used in a new manner. Disequilibrium is a necessary condition

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of growth. (Here we see the influence of Joseph Schumpeter's theory of development.)100 An economy led by corporate investment ultimately entails painstaking adjustments by some corporations, but it also will generate, though unevenly and over time, the conditions for national and individual prosperity. The neo-Keynesian emphasis on economic harmony requires that redistribution policies increase as the pace of reallocation quickens. Taxes are raised, slowing investment and promoting inflation exactly at a time when the private sector is expressing a will to risk investment, while increased public expenditures tighten labor markets when labor mobility is most important. Economic dynamism and innovation give way to stagflation as American corporations and banks take on the character of rentiers rather than entrepreneurs. Monetarism's call for a stable money supply, many American conservative theorists and writers believe, does not fundamentally break with neo-Keynesianism's emphasis on equilibrium; such continuity puts it in a political position that most American conservative theorists reject. Conceding that monetarists initially provided a healthy backlash against the excesses of fiscal fine tuning, conservatives charge that the monetarist accent on developing macroeconomic formulas for the money supply is the same as the Keynesian emphasis on macroeconomic formulas for taxation and spending programs. Both economic outlooks proceed from the viewpoint of the state, rather than from that of the private investor. "The Keynesians and the monetarists are, at heart, as close to each other as they are distant from the classical and the Marxian schools," states Jude Wanniski.101 Whereas British conservative theory's tax and spending proposals revolve around a monetary program, American conservative theory's proposals for monetary policy flow from a tax and spending program.102 During the late 1970s and 1980s American conservative theory proposed tax and spending policies both to promote the leadership of private corporations in economic development and to establish a military capability sufficient for an active, global foreign policy. This mix of tax cuts and military expenditures (along with the recognition by most of these analysts of the Republican party's inability to gain control of Congress) contributed to many conservative economists' acceptance of a fiscal deficit.103 Influential economists with long-standing links to conservatism, most notably, Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan, generally supported this program of cutting taxes and expanding military expenditures. How-

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ever, they feared the potential problematics of the fiscal deficit that this mix of policies would create. A fiscal deficit, both believe, requires the state to sell bonds at an attractive rate of interest. If this rate of interest is higher than some potential private sector borrowers can afford, then they will be crowded out of the capital markets, which will contribute to an economic downturn. If the state is incapable of attracting a sufficient number of bond buyers, it has to finance the rest of the budget deficit by borrowing from the central bank or the banking system. This expansion of the money supply sets off an inflationary wave throughout the economy. Despite these misgivings, Friedman and others supported the new fiscal program. Why? "Because I believe that we are not getting our money's worth from the fraction of our income being spent for us by government," noted Friedman. "Moreover, I have concluded that the only way to restrain government spending is by limiting government's explicit tax revenue—just as a limited income is the only effective restraint on any individual's or family's spending."104 Greenspan, Friedman, and other advocates of the importance of monetary theory supported the new conservative fiscal program as long as conservatives did without the option of expanding the money supply to finance the deficit. "If spending is financed by creating money to meet deficits," Friedman stated, "the link between spending and inflation is direct."105 These economists advocated a tight monetary policy that stressed the sale of government bonds to pay for the deficit; a policy, they admitted, that risked driving up interest rates and inducing a recession. In turn, the fiscal reformers found virtue in the concerns of Friedman, Greenspan, and others. "Supply-siders understood that inflation could cancel the tax-rate reductions by pushing people into higher tax brackets, thereby wiping out the supply-side effects that they counted on to raise the real growth rate," states Roberts. "So they supported a policy of moderate and predictable growth in the money supply."106 Consequently, an alliance of conservative fiscal reformers and monetarists was forged around a fiscal program that cut taxes, expanded military expenditures, and placed the national government's revenue well below its expenses and a monetary program that revolved around selling government bonds to pay for this deficit. While British conservative theorists and economists have divided over monetary policies, the problematics surrounding the fiscal deficit have become the most divisive economic issue within American conservative theory. Herbert Stein and Martin Feldstein, among many others, lost

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political influence within conservative political and economic thought for advocating policies, including higher taxes, to reduce the fiscal deficit.107 In turn, some conservative fiscal reformers—Robert Mundell, Paul Craig Roberts, Robert Bartley, and the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal—have argued that the deficit is not primarily a product of the new fiscal policies. "The deficits will not go away," states Mundell, "as long as U.S. currency, bank deposits or bonds represent the safest financial investments in the world, crowding out the paper of countries with weaker currencies."108 Yet, most contributors to the conservative fiscal and monetary program admit that the growth of the fiscal deficit creates a long-term economic problem. "Any deficit," states Friedman, "is borne by the public in the form of hidden taxes—either inflation or the even more effectively hidden tax corresponding to borrowing from the public."109 Nevertheless, most conservative theorists and writers believed that their fiscal program and the deficit augmented conservatism's general political goals: the tax cuts encouraged corporation-led economic development; the military expenditures buttressed a more active foreign policy; and the fiscal debt limited the national state's ability to launch new public policy initiatives. The fiscal deficit continues to serve conservatism by further encouraging the development of a polity that empowers civil and local, public institutions in domestic politics. Mansfield states that the deficit, created by Ronald Reagan's decision to cut taxes while increasing military spending, has placed the Democrats on the defensive "by forcing them tp choose between cutting their own programs or raising taxes to pay for them. Progress as Progressives have defined it is out of the question; it has been replaced by opportunity, which does not call for new expenses and promises a better life with less government."110 "Ronald Reagan," Kristol explained as the deficit became an issue of debate, "appreciates the full ideological significance of his economic policy, as distinct from its narrow practical implications." "Mr. Reagan," Kristol continued, "with his massive tax cuts, has put the welfare state in a moderately tight straitjacket for the rest of this decade at least. And he has done this by being bold enough to create a conservative deficit (one resulting from tax cuts) as a counterweight to liberal deficits (resulting from increased government expenditures)."111 Milton Friedman agrees with Mansfield and Kristol. "The political appeal of balancing the budget," Friedman notes approvingly, now is "harnessed to reducing government expenditures rather than to raising taxes."112

u 152 * Restructuring Liberty and Economics • DIFFERENT REQUISITES FOR LIBERTY

To summarize this chapter, neither British nor American conservative theory advocates negative liberty or a political order based on libertarianism or laissez-faire liberalism. Redefining liberty, each conservative theory addresses problematics that they identify with the absence of civil traditions as well as state collectivism. British conservative theory mediates a Hobbesian idea of authority with Humean conventions in advocating authoritative procedures, established by custom or law, as the requisites for liberty. American conservative theory prescribes the structuring role of civil and local, public institutions in creating a political environment that encourages, yet delimits, individual liberty. British and American conservative theory's different emphases in redefining liberty are expressed by their different preferences for structuring market relations. Although both conservative theories advocate extending market relations, British conservative theory advances a monetary program that empowers the central state to structure market relations, and American conservative theory features a fiscal program that empowers civil institutions, banks, and corporations to organize the market. Accordingly, British conservative theory incorporates and modifies components of monetarism and public choice theory as instruments to enhance the authority of the central state, weaken intermediate organizations, and increase the role of the market. American conservative theory unites with law and economics around a program of deregulating commerce and limiting national social policies, thereby limiting the authority of the national state, increasing the authority of civil and local, public institutions, while also extending the market into more spheres in society. Finally, although both conservative theories are unwilling to subordinate their political aims to goals based on economic criteria, their respective political goals differ. British conservative theory refuses to subordinate the undivided authority of the legislative office of the central state to monetary rules or to a European Monetary System, whereas American conservative theory overlooks the fiscal deficit in favor of fiscal policies that limit the national state in domestic politics, leaving political and social development to the intermediate organizations in society.

FIVE

The Institutional Aims of New Conseravative Theory

D

URING the past decade many social scientists have analyzed institution building. Most of these studies emphasize how historical paths of institutional development either facilitate or constrain human agents who are seeking to introduce new substantive public and foreign policies.1 Here I want to focus on a different aspect of the relation between human agency and structure: how British and American conservative theories have created substantive proposals in social and foreign policy domains in order to modify their respective nation's institutional paths of development. Each conservative theory envisions different institutional configurations. British conservative theory advocates restricting, reconstituting, or eliminating many intermediary institutions of social policy, for example, local governments, local education authorities, and trade unions, in order to establish the undivided authority of the legislative office of the central state. In contrast, American conservative theory proposes local associations—churches, schools, local governments—as the key institutions of social policy in order to establish them as the generators of authoritative political and civil relations in society. In international relations, the respective conservative theories' preferences and aims are expressed in a different manner. British conservatism fears encroachment on the legislative center of the central state's sovereignty from an exogenous source—the European Commission—and has constructed a po153

m 154 m The Institutional Aims of Conservative Theory • sition on European integration consistent with its domestic outlook: expanding market relations and preserving the state's undivided authority. American conservative theory fears limitations on the presidential sovereignty in foreign policy from endogenous sources—Congress, the press, the national bureaucracies—and propounds a constitutionalism and foreign and defense policies to foster presidential autonomy in foreign policy. By identifying each conservative theory's general approach to modifying the structures responsible for social and foreign policies, I contrast their overall institutional goals: British conservative theory prescribes the undivided authority of the legislative office of the central state in both domestic and foreign policy; American conservative theory recommends a dual polity—civil and local, public institutions predominant in domestic politics, an autonomous, undivided executive in foreign policy. RESTRICTING ALTERNATIVE AUTHORITIES

James March and Johan Olsen identify three general approaches to changing the character of institutions. First, there is considerable mundane adaptiveness in institutions that can be influenced. Although the course of change cannot be arbitrarily dictated, it is possible to influence the gradual transformation by stimulating or inhibiting predictable adaptive processes. Second, although the rules and routines of institutional life are relatively stable, they are incomplete. It is possible to influence the resolution of ambiguity surrounding the rules. Third, it is possible to produce comprehensive shocks in institutions that transform them relatively abruptly. As in the case of the more mundane changes, the transformation cannot be controlled with any great precision; but change can be produced intentionally.2 British conservative theory's proposals in social policies envelop all three approaches to changing intermediate institutions: creating new environments; developing new rules; applying abrupt, comprehensive "shocks." In contrast, American conservative theory refrains from advancing proposals to comprehensively change intermediate institutions providing social policies, preferring a program that incrementally reduces the national state's role in social policy, while setting fiscal incentives for civil and local, public institutions to provide social services. British conservative theory is responding to the shift in economic and

• The Institutional Aims of Conservative Theory • 155 •

social policies initiated by both Conservative and Labour governments during the 1960s and 1970s. At that time Conservative and Labour governments came under pressure to stem Britain's economic decline relative to other West European countries. Influential critiques by Andrew Shonfield, William Robson, J. P. Mackintosh, and others focused on the inability of the British state to micromanage economic and social development.3 Parliament was criticized for not having functional links with employers' associations, trade unions, local governments, and other intermediate organizations. In response, from 1963 through 1977 Conservative and Labour governments intermittently attempted to integrate decision making between the national government and intermediary organizations. National Economic Development Councils, Industrial Reconstruction Boards, Regional and Sectoral Investment Agencies, National Referendums, and Consultive Councils on Local Government Finance were only a few of the attempts by both parties in government to devolve decision making in order to improve microeconomic policies, public initiative, and collaboration among producer groups. Christopher Hood's study of British bureaucracies from 1962 to 1974 found that "British government 'growth' in the recent past has not been reflected in a growing civil service. Bureaucratic expansion has largely taken place in local authorities and in non-Departmental bodies." In short, British politics in the 1960s and 1970s broke from its traditional pattern of maintaining a strict division of labor between the issues addressed by the central state and by other organizations in society.4 To new British conservative theory, these policies of the 1960s and 1970s created the worst of both worlds: they empowered civil and local, public organizations and drew the national state into political conflicts that formerly had been relegated to local and private domains. Consequently, they have developed a series of proposals to limit the power or autonomy of many of the intermediate institutions that either gained autonomy or were integrated into the national government's policy process during this period. "If one single theme permeates this period, it is the search by central government for more effective instruments of control," notes R. A. W. Rhodes in discussing the new conservative ideology toward intermediate organizations during the 1980s.5 Although reconstituting the role of intermediary organizations, new conservative theory does not prescribe national state mobilization along a continental European pattern. The British conservative focus is on restricting, not mobilizing, intermediate organizations. Michael Oakeshott has elaborated British conservative theory's most

• 156 • The Institutional Aims of Conservative Theory •

comprehensive view of intermediate organizations. As discussed in chapter 1, Oakeshott believes there has been a failure to distinguish between two kinds of rules that govern distinct types of organizations. To reiterate, there are enterprise associations, in which members are united by the pursuit of substantive goals, and rules are prudential instruments for achieving these goals; and there are associations of practice, in which general rules allow members to pursue different substantive goals, and unity is expressed by subscription to these rules. Political problems arise when the state adopts the enterprise mode of association: the state becomes a purposive institution; laws become prudential instruments for pursuing substantive goals; the state compels society to reorganize according to the demands of the most politically powerful. In contrast, a civil association, in which the mode of association is practice, not enterprise, does not "enjoin, prohibit, or warrant substantive actions or utterances [It] presribe[s] norms of conduct; that is, abstract considerations proper to be subscribed to in choosing performances."6 Oakeshott insists he does not oppose enterprise associations themselves; he solely opposes their purposes and rules becoming the goals and laws of the state. Indeed, Oakeshott argues that only in a civil association can intermediate organizations of all types flourish: Just as such a state [enterprise or purposive] cannot tolerate performances eccentric or indifferent to the pursuit of the purpose which constitutes the association, so it cannot accommodate purposive associations whose purposes are eccentric or indifferent to its purpose. There can be an unregulated variety of self-chosen purposive associations only where a state is not itself a purposive association. What are called 'minority' associations can exist only where a state is recognized in terms of civil association; and there they require no authorization.7 The state may advance toward establishing a civil association by pursuing three general tasks with regard to enterprise associations: identifying and eliminating laws that express the enterprise mode of association; reconstituting intermediary institutions and practices that no longer function according to the norms of civil association; establishing the authority to enforce these laws. The British Conservative party's general approach to local government was arrived at in the face of a crisis during the late Victorian period. Ideas on local self-government, home rule, federalism—even na-

• The Institutional Aims of Conservative Theory • 157 • tional self-determination itself—were widespread. The municipal reform movement led by Joseph Chamberlain sought to establish urban governments as centers of political authority. After a brief period of confusion, the Conservative Salisbury government responded decisively with a new law. The Local Government Act of 1888 stipulated 61 county and borough governments. The statute also established ultra vires—the law that a local government could adopt only such a structure and perform only such functions as are conferred on it by Parliament. Conservatives did not utilize ultra vires to create functional policy networks between central and local governments. Rather, the Local Government Board Ministry restricted local governments, allowing them to develop as administrative centers for services yet forbidding them to become centers of political autonomy or innovation. "Hence," Jim Bulpitt notes, "local government, local parties and Dublin Castle were permitted to pursue their own interests as long as these did not threaten parliamentary supremacy and through that the Centre's own autonomy."8 During most of the twentieth century, this political outlook toward central-local government relations was sustained by Labour. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Harold Laski, Clement Attlee, and others, inheriting the older elitism, reinforced it with "efficiency socialism," believing opposition to devolution of political decision making facilitated expertise in managing the economy. As the Webbs wrote in the Labour party's constitution, "It is difficult to see how a mere devolution of legislation to subordinate Parliaments ... will amount to much.... T]he splitting up of administration of a country so nearly homogeneous and so closely integrated as Great Britain has become appears to be open to grave objections [I]t could not be divided without the most serious practical inconvenience and loss of efficiency."9 A shift in central-local government relations finally was introduced by the Local Government Reform Acts of 1963 (Conservative), 1972 (Conservative), and 1974 (Labour), which created 53 metropolitan or shire county councils and 339 county districts. The two levels of local government were responsible for such services as traffic policy, highways, and refuse disposal and for housing, environment, and health. More important, the reforms gave both local bodies more access to the central government for consultations with regard to funding and more autonomy over policies through block grants, charges for some services offered, additional assigned revenues (car registration, gas taxes), and

• 158 • The Institutional Aims of Conservative Theory •

more discretion over local tax rates.10 British Conservatism's traditional parliamentary practices of both preserving the national government's separation from local governments and restricting the autonomy of local governments had been broken.11 New British conservative theorists and writers charge that these reforms enabled local governments (the conservatives now call them local authorities) to become vehicles for narrow, sectoral interests that challenged the authority of Parliament. These problems were exacerbated, they continue, by the influence of a new left in Labour, which advocated using extraparliamentary organizations to create political and social change. They believe that the process engendered by consultations between central and local government officials gave the latter a platform for drawing the national state into conflicts around local issues. "The citizen's attention and interest," Roger Scruton complained, "are always diverted towards the source of power—towards the national government and the parties which compete for its operation. Hence the 'local' representative need never regard himself as answerable to those who elected him."12 In response, conservative theory has developed a series of proposals for limiting the statutory powers and autonomy of local governments. It called for the abolishment of the metropolitan governments. "To transfer functions is to preserve them," stated Scruton; "what is required, however, is that the apparatus which created those functions be destroyed"13 (by 1986 the Thatcher government had done precisely that). A two-pronged program has been put forward for the remaining county district governments. On the one hand, Parliament is to impose a new set of restraints on local governments. Initially, conservatives proposed a statute that limited increases in local taxes to the rate of inflation. Because this would be accompanied by decreased grants from the national government, it would restrict county government's policy initiatives. This was followed by many other plans to limit local government resources, among them insistence that proposed programs have precise revenues and establishment of rules mandating balanced budgets. Finally, the conservatives developed the proposal for restricting county governments to a flat rate or "community charge." As this placed an equal tax burden on all, conservatives hoped it would lead to middleclass resistance to local government programs. As Oakeshott stated, Where in a state there was a strong disposition to be an association in terms of the rule of law, some care was taken not to compromise

• The Institutional Aims of Conservative Theory • 159 • this character when statutory local authorities were set up to supply some common substantive services paid for by a subvention on local resources called a Rate. A "rate" is a sum of money devoted to the provision of a number of exactly specified substantive benefits, and before our present confusion overtook us everybody knew the difference between a "rate" and a "tax." The same confusion is reflected in the bastard expression "local government": when "government" is identified with the provision of substantive satisfactions the rule of law is compromised.14 At the same time, conservative theorists and writers continue to insist that county governments be targets of privatization campaigns. Water, electricity, and other services provided by county governments are to be sold to the private sector. County governments are no longer to receive block grants without stipulations; grants are to be based on local governments' encouraging market competition when providing social services.15 During the 1980s, as the Thatcher governments continued to introduce laws and policies to restrict and reconstitute local governments, some analysts suggested that British Conservatism was moving toward a Napoleonic Code, whereby the central state develops functional links with local governments and each complements the other around unified goals.16 Conservative political theory does not offer evidence to support this interpretation. Throughout the 1980s, it remained intent on shaping policies that limited, rather than mobilized or directed, local governments. Despite the repeal of the community charge in 1991, British conservative theory continues to focus on and debate measures to restrict local governments. It eschews a positive program on center-local government relations.17 British conservative theory concentrates on limiting the authority not only of local governments, but also of Local Education Authorities (LEAs). Conservatives aim to limit the LEAs' control over district primary and secondary education budgets and curriculums, while forming a direct relation between the Ministry of Education and individual schools. "In their case for reform, the Conservatives have been wrong to dwell merely on the extravagance of certain LEA's, on unnecessarily high costs, or on the excesses of the Left," Sheila Lawlor argues. "These alone are not the enemies of quality, standards, choice. Rather the LEA system itself poses the greatest threat to reform. If the Government is

• 160 • The Institutional Aims of Conservative Theory •

serious about reform it is to that system that it must now turn." LEAs, conservatives submit, should function only as agents that transfer funds to schools and as a type of service broker, recommending to schools those companies that will best meet their building, catering, transport, and consultancy terms.18 British conservative theory advocates an education program that places the entire state school system under a combination of central state guidelines and the market. It argues for ending the LEAs' power to set a single, comprehensive education curriculum for each district. The LEAs' authority with regard to curriculums, conservatives contend, contributes to a pluralism that encourages fragmentation and incoherence. "The pluralism of the system means that changes in content and methods of teaching are seldom uniform across the country," writes Alan Beattie. "The damaging effects are usually most evident in large urban areas. ... [T]hey are the unintended by-product of the interaction of various developments within an essentially undirected system."19 The fragmentation created by this form of pluralism, conservatives continue, has been augmented by the new left's use of LEAs' statutory powers to develop education policies that serve its political agenda. Conservatives claim there has been "an increasing polarization of the curriculum, so that children, instead of learning history, geography or mathematics, are indoctrinated in the fashionable causes of the radical left: 'anti-racism,' 'anti-sexism,' 'peace education'... and even 'anti-heterosexism.' "20 Many British conservative theorists and writers support a national curriculum. This national program for primary and secondary schools does not establish a comprehensive plan for the entire state school system along the lines of the continental European systems. It requires all state primary and secondary schools to provide a minimal "grounding" in English, mathematics, and history. "Beyond a grounding," Oliver Letwin states, "there is no specific skill which needs to be acquired by every pupil: schools which fail to teach their pupils how to conduct physical experiments or how to speak French ... may nevertheless be adequate or even very good schools."21 At the same time, individual schools are to institute tracking systems with programs based on different degrees of intelligence and skills. "Children have different abilities, talents, and interests," Caroline Cox et al. argue; "therefore ... schools should be encouraged to return to a system of differentiated education, with separate classes, and if necessary separate institutions."22 From the pluralist perspective, British conservative

• The Institutional Aims of Conservative Theory m 161 *

theory advocates shifting from an education program of local government management of district diversity to central state and individual school management of individual variation. The conservatives' method of funding the state school system offers an excellent example of how British conservative theory utilizes themes of public choice theory to strengthen, rather than limit, the authority of the central state. Invoking public choice theory's idea that competition among state bureaucracies limits waste and encourages individual choice, conservatives recommend that the LEAs' control over individual school budgets be ended and that the Ministry of Education create competition among schools by awarding grants on the basis of the number of students each attracts. The incentives for schools will change, conservatives argue, if their finances are allocated on a per capita basis from Parliament rather than by the plans of the LEAs. Competition also will be created among teachers because specific spending policies, including the percentage of funds devoted to teachers' salaries, are to be left to the discretion of the individual school. "Heads should be free to offer inducements to those who would not otherwise be willing to teach in schools, so attracting experts from industry and higher education," states Cox. "There should be more scope for part-time specialists The contract of employment should be drawn up between the head and the individual teacher."23 Parents may choose to take a school out of the state system and start a public school (what Americans call a private school). Finally, the Ministry of Education will be responsible for ensuring that individual schools maintain minimal standards and remain within the rule of law. The cumulative results of this program, conservatives hold, will be more choices for the public, weaker local governments and LEAs, and a more authoritative national state. Cox writes, Schools must be released from the control of local government and financed by direct grants from central funds. This change will greatly facilitate the reform of local government finance. The state grant to schools will be provided on a per capita basis.... LEAs should be deprived not only of the power to provide education, but also of the power to enforce it. All legal responsibilities must be returned to Parliament, which is their rightful guardian, until it is possible once again to bestow them on institutions which will be genuinely answerable for their exercise, and genuinely concerned to enforce them.24

• 162 • The Institutional Aims of Conservative Theory •

British conservative theory's goals for restricting the power of trade unions are as ambitious as their aims to confine local governments and LEAs. Indeed, conservatives claim that the recognition of trade union rights over the price of labor in industries and crafts, as originally granted by the Trade Unions Act (1906), is a social policy that undermines both national economic well-being and political authority. "The political and constitutional aspect of the 1906 Act was no less significant than its economic aspect," states Charles Hanson. "When Parliament put trade unions above the law, it put them on a par with itself."25 Many contemporary conservative historians claim that the Conservative party was preparing to repeal the Trade Unions Act after World War I. At that time, Maurice Cowling states, most conservatives feared the extraparliamentary potential of the labor movement. To their relief, they found Labour party leaders committed to placing the labor movement under the leadership of their parliamentary party; hence, the Tories acquiesced in the statute's facilitation of trade union organization and rights. The Baldwin government's repression of the general strike of 1926 and the Trade Disputes Act (1927) banning sympathy strikes showed Labour and others the price to be paid for seeking broad political and social change by extraparliamentary avenues.26 During the 1970s, however, British conservative theorists and writers charge, Labour became either unwilling or incapable of continuing to incorporate the trade union movement. As in their proposals for local governments and LEAs, conservatives favor legislation that would strip the trade unions of their capacity to establish themselves as an alternative authority in society. Conservative theory intends to weaken the trade unions through the creation of a new economic environment and the establishment of new laws with regard to industrial relations. The government's tight monetary policies and abandonment of the postwar public commitment to full employment produce the new economic environment. The new rules aim to erode trade unions' rights over the price of labor in industries and crafts as originally granted by the Trade Unions Act. A tight monetary framework forces the trade unions to adopt less assertive policies. Unions representing overvalued labor are forced to either reduce their wage demands or lose membership through unemployment. Tight monetary policies also create an environment in which unions are more likely to accede to the new occupational structures being created by the more dynamic market-based economy: moving of

• The Institutional Aims of Conservative Theory • 163 • industrial plants to suburbs or rural locales, blurring of skill classifications through the introduction of new information technologies, rapid growth of subcontracted, part-time, self-employed, and other peripheral workers. In turn, these new occupational structures divide the labor force, further weakening trade unions' abilities to create a cohesive, corporate interest. "Because the division of labor is among millions of people," states Hayek, "the aims of the efforts of all can no longer be the satisfaction of known demands. The aim must therefore become solely the yield from the sale of their products on the market."27 While these new economic conditions place trade unions on the defensive, British conservatives propose a series of statutes to weaken the trade unions' capacity to resist the market's allocation of resources: restrictions on closed shops; liabilities for business damages resulting from picketing; limits on secondary boycotts and picketing; compulsory secret ballots on strike actions; ballots on the use of unions' political funds every ten years. "There are certainly many useful tasks unions can perform with respect to the internal organisations of enterprises," Hayek concedes, but they cease to operate beneficially when they are conceded the power of keeping non-members out of a job, or refuse to work with others who prefer different contracts from those which they obtain for their members For a country depending for its livelihood on international trade the endeavour to shelter relative wages against the forces of the international market can have no other effect than growing unemployment at falling real wages. Britain has been led into a position in which it has become impossible to know how its labour force can be deployed most productively.28 "There can be no salvation for Britain," Hayek concludes, "until the special privileges granted to the trade unions three-quarters of a century ago are revoked."29 While limiting the trade unions' capabilities to organize a cohesive interest, conservative theorists and writers also advocate programs that encourage property ownership among sections of the working class by allowing them to purchase homes from publicly-owned housing blocs and buy shares from privatized industries. These policies, they believe, will further inhibit the trade unions' potential for creating a cohesive organization and fomenting class conflict. "Like anyone who owns his own house, he would be disposed to look after his property, and would

m 164 * The Institutional Aims of Conservative Theory •

be outraged by any attempt to deface or destroy it," state William and Shirley Letwin. "As an employee-capitalist, he would be less inclined to regard his boss as an antagonist, less liable to shirk, cheat or do malicious damage. In short, his ownership of shares, and the visible stakes that they gave him in a capitalist enterprise, would counteract, most simply and effectively, the divisive and destructive attitudes which have over the years been encouraged by the enemies of capitalism."30 Conservatives believe that a change in the balance of power between the trade unions and the state enabled the Thatcher governments to isolate and confront unions' attempts to resist the markets' allocation of resources in mining, printing, and other industries. Many have argued that a final confrontation will be necessary, but that this conflict should be avoided until the Tory political leaders are sure of victory. "It is ... obvious that the possibility of avoiding it [a final confrontation] depends largely on the State being manifestly capable of winning the battle," states Utley. "What the Tory party, then, should concern itself with, far more closely than with the choices it must make in relation to economic policy, is the strength of the nation."31 Like its proposals regarding local governments and LEAs, British conservative theory's substantive policy proposals toward trade unions are based on the goal of establishing a new configuration of institutions in the British polity. AMERICA'S MEDIATING STRUCTURES

British conservative theory prescribes limiting the delegation of social policies to institutions outside the central state. American conservative theory has a different attitude toward intermediary organizations as institutions of social policy, identifying them as mediating structures. They are private and public local associations: families, ethnic groups, neighborhoods, churches, schools, local governments. American conservative theorists and writers, quoting Burke, claim that these associations are critical to building a "thick society" capable of fostering community and order. "The effect of such changes in social policy is to strengthen 'mediating structures,' or what Burke called the 'small platoons' in society," observes Glazer. "The local community or neighborhood may find itself running services, building houses, managing planning, overseeing a local health center, or doing more of these than it used to."32 The thick society discussed by Burke was based on a landed and gentry class that dominated local politics, but the thick society envisioned by American con-

• The Institutional Aims of Conservative Theory • 165 •

servatives relies on parochial, ethnic, and racial bonds to enforce local order and conformity. Maintaining that local associations are America's central source of community, American conservative theory believes that they have been weakened by national social policies for health, welfare, housing, social security, and, most important, racial integration. For example, social security has replaced the family as the source of aid for the old and infirm. Churches are restricted by the costs of national building and health regulations from providing hospitals or housing for their members in need. Moreover, if churches accept government aid to comply with these regulations, they are prohibited from employing religious criteria in supplying social services, and a vital source of community is thus lost. Similarly, a policy of integrating poor with wealthy Americans robs the poor of community. "The great wrong in proposals to overcome poverty by dispersing the poor," state Neuhaus and Berger, "is that they would deprive the poor, whether black or white, of their own communities."33 In contrast to the British, American conservative theory claims that reestablishing the authority and autonomy of local associations is the most important function of public policy. America must make more efforts, Pangle complains, "to compel centralized bureaucracies to bend before—and perhaps even to elicit or stimulate—diverse, and relatively autonomous, local civic initiative."34 The communitarianism engendere. by a program devolving social policies to local communities will not "expect or seek the full and direct political participation that was once possible in smaller republican communities."35 Rather, as Neuhaus and Berger argue in outlining the goals of the American Enterprise Institute's Project on Mediating Structures, a particularistic identity will be fostered: Within one's group—whether it be racial, national, political, religious, or all of these—one discovers an answer to the elementary question, "Who am I," and is supported in living out that answer. ... Liberation is not an escape from particularity but discovery of the particularity that fits. Elected particularities may include life style, ideology, friendships, place of residence, and so forth. Inherited particularities may include race, economic circumstance, region, religion, and in most cases, politics. Pluralism means the lively interaction among inherited particularities and, through election, the evolution of new particularities. The goal of public policy

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in pluralistic society is to sustain as many particularities as possible.36 Pluralism so understood remains, conservatives believe, the critical source of community in America; a position in direct contrast with the British conservative view that community-based pluralism is a source of political conflict. Most American conservative theorists and writers agree that social policies based on a universal characteristic such as age—old age pensions, child allowances—can be handled effectively by a centralized bureaucracy. However, America is too large and heterogeneous, they add, to sustain many national social policies. Mass education and prosperity created by an advanced economic order now enable most Americans to choose from a variety of social service institutions rather than be dependent on the national state. "Growing personal affluence," notes Glazer, "leads many to believe they could manage the education of their children, or their own health, more effectively and with greater satisfaction—by allocating their own funds to a range of competing organizations, public and private, rather than by paying taxes."37 National public policies are not required to meet the diverse needs of a small percentage of the American public. Most important, national social policies require cumbersome bureaucracies and instill a uniformity that represses America's many subcultures. "National systems, treating everyone alike, based on insurance and dignity, do not work in the United States as they do in Europe," states Glazer, "because America has large differences, related to race and ethnicity, in how people behave. Differential behavior leads to greatly disproportionate claims on the system; it is then seem as a system for 'them' not 'us.' "38 In contrast, Glazer continues, public policies based on local associations foster homogeneity and community rather than division and fragmentation. American conservative theory's emphasis on social policy as a means of developing particularistic identities precludes it from stressing racial integration as a major political goal. Liberals, conservatives charge, underestimate the communitarianism forged by ethnicity. Liberals expect that the characteristics which distinguish one group from another will lose their importance in modern societies; they believe that national social policies will lead to an exclusive concentration in society on achievement rather than ascription. American conservatives argue that that is neither possible nor desirable. "Almost everyone in America belongs to

• The Institutional Aims of Conservative Theory m 167 *

some group," state Neuhaus and Berger. If one is truly concerned about social policies reaching individuals not associated with a group, they continue, "it is worth noting the most anomic individuals in society, the denizens of skid row for example, are cared for almost exclusively by voluntary associations, usually religious in character."39 Conservative theory distinguishes between de jure segregation, which entails a formal decision to divide races by law, and de facto segregation, which divides races on the basis of social and demographic trends. The conservative policy on race relations opposes de jure segregation, but does not support programs that aim to overcome de facto segregation, for example, affirmative action, racial allocation of public housing, and school busing. Predicating an explanation that combines a liberal concern for freedom, a republican concern for good citizens, and a nativist bias against groups it deems incapable of developing the qualities required for citizenship, conservatives charge that policies which aim to overcome de facto segregation violate the individual liberty of whites, encourage a dependent black citizenry, and undermine communitarian institutions and norms. "The differences between the groups are real, and they extend to dress, talk, gesture, walk, public behavior," Glazer notes. "The simple characteristics of a different subculture may be taken by white ethnics as a symbol of what they fear—threats to safety, morality, neighborhood, stability, and legitimate order and authority."40 Consequently, Glazer continues, social policies must not undermine the white ethnic communities, which are "scenes of a marked social order: stable neighborhoods, with children succeeding parents in the same area, strong organizations centered around the church, formal ethnic associations or patterns of informal ethnic association, the local political organization, the trade union, the local small businesses of members of the group, which serve as much for socialization as for ordering business."41 Most conservative arguments that praise ethnic particularism are directed at the current within liberalism that encourages integration within civil institutions and communities through such policies as affirmative action and school busing. American conservative theorists and writers also distinguish their interpretation of particularism from that of liberals, who emphasize that American society has held back minorities in their efforts to realize their distinct identities. From this perspective, liberalism advocates policies that limit the particularism of dominant majoritarian norms while encouraging minority groups to develop a sense of selfidentity.42

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Indeed, conservatives admit, some minority groups, most notably blacks, have faced systematic discrimination in America. Nevertheless, they urge a cautious approach to identifying how the particularism of some groups impedes the development of others. Discrimination by one group against another is an inevitable outgrowth of the freedom of consent. "We must respect that right even in those who are prejudiced (and of course in those we merely disagree with)," states Mansfield. "To do this is not merely a practical necessity—as if we were merely recognizing the gap between reality and ideals—but a moral imperative derived from our central ideal, the right of consent."43 Because the particularisms established by consent enable most Americans to define themselves, extinguishing particularism among whites eliminates norms that provide authority and community. Expansive antidiscrimination policies also fail to differentiate between genuine and false prejudicious practices. Neuhaus and Berger explain: Public policy should be discriminating about discriminations. Discrimination is the essence of particularism and particularism is the essence of pluralism. The careless expansion of antidiscrimination rulings in order to appease every aggrieved minority or individual will have two certain consequences: first it will further erode local communal authority and, second, it will trivialize the historic grievances and claims to justice of America's racial minorities.44 Whereas British conservative theory's proposals for social policies revolve around establishing the authority of central state guidelines and limiting intermediate associations, American conservative theory calls for a program that enables local and private associations to serve as agents of social service.45 Novak, Berger, Neuhaus, Pangle, and others suggest that a focal point should be "incentivism," whereby the national government offers fiscal incentives for local associations to provide social services: families are to be rewarded fiscally for caring for the young, old, and infirm; churches and parishes for providing low-income housing and hospitals; neighborhood organizations for providing social welfare services; and local schools for teaching basic subjects successfully and fostering citizenship. "The twenty-first century," writes Pangle, "is likely to be an age of experimentation with various forms of federalism... and the American legal and political system, rooted as it is in a great federalist tradition, ought to be prepared to profit from and contribute to these experiments."46 Through this program, the national state en-

• The Institutional Aims of Conservative Theory • 169 • courages local and private associations to develop both a safety net for people in need and "the advancement of the multitude of particular interests that in fact constitute the common weal." From this perspective, Neuhaus and Berger continue, "the national purpose does not destroy but aims at strengthening particularity, including the particularity of the neighborhood."47 Neuhaus adds that "a thousand points of light is not bad as a rhetorical device" for explaining this program.48 American conservative theorists and writers favor tax exemptions as the key fiscal incentive for encouraging civil and local, public institutions to become generators of social policy. In turn, as citizens are offered social policies by different public and private institutions, those opting for private agencies also will be allowed tax exemptions. Both of these tax exemptions contribute to the conservatives' second reason for promoting civil and local, public institutions as agencies for social policies: limiting the resources available to the national state. An increase in tax exemptions, along with resistance to general increases in federal taxes, further limits the ability of liberalism to utilize the national state for social policy. Kristol calls this use of fiscal policy "shaping the budget." He argues that ever since the New Deal, Democrats have employed fiscal policies to expand national social policies. Now Republicans must use fiscal policies to limit national social policies. "If the Republican Party were capable of thinking politically, i.e. thinking in terms of shaping the future—it would realize that its first priority is to shape the budget, not to balance it," states Kristol. "Then it could go to the electorate with the proper political questions: How do you want the budget balanced? By more taxes for more government services? Or by lower taxes, lower governmental expenditures, and incentives for the citizen to provide for his own welfare?"49 The goal of fashioning a new configuration of institutions in American politics also helps explain why American conservative theorists and writers have supported divergent social policies elaborated by states and local communities in the course of the 1980s and early 1990s. During the mid-1980s, some state and local governments initiated new social policies based on budget surpluses generated by a buoyant national economy. Glazer welcomed the diversity that was becoming evident at the state level. "The state role," Glazer noted, "is accepted not only out of pious respect for a 200-year old Constitution, but because the states do reflect the inevitable diversity of a very large country, and do have the institutional and political capacity to deal with a variety of social

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problems."50 During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Glazer and other conservatives recognized that many city governments, weakened by reductions in federal aid and by the recession, found they had to slash basic services for libraries, schools, sanitation, and police and raise taxes. The service reductions and tax increases drove out more middle-class residents, leaving behind people with a greater share of social problems and burdens; this added further to the cities' needs. Glazer regrets that cities with large minority and black populations have few resources for social policies and admits that the outlook of devolving social policy contributes to an American exceptionalism. Like America, Glazer notes, Japan and Switzerland have not created national social policies that penetrate deep into society. However, Japan and Switzerland have "no massive slums, no underclass undermining the life and property of ordinary citizens. What makes America exceptional is the degree to which social disorder coexists with an advanced economic order."51 Nevertheless, he concludes, key features of the American polity—federalism, ethnic and religious diversity, individualism, among others—preclude him from proposing the development of national public policies to quell social disorder in the cities. Indeed, conservatives are confident that future federal budgets will feature their program of encouraging private and local institutions to provide social policies and limiting the fiscal resources available for national public policies. "The present mood of the United States does not favor a national social policy," Glazer concludes. "[T]hat mood seems to be based on more than economic exigency. It reflects rather a considered judgement by many Americans that despite the cost in social disorder that prevails in their society, they prefer it that way."53 BRITISH CONSERVATIVE FOREIGN POLICY

Foreign policy played a marginal role in the development of new British conservative theory. Michael Oakeshott, for example, rarely discusses foreign policy other than to identify it as the only policy domain in which civil association pursues a particularistic goal, national security. Hayek also ignores foreign policy. Indeed, foreign policy did not become a major political interest among conservative theorists and writers until the signing of the Single European Act in 1985; and although it is now a major focus of debate, it remains an issue that is not theoretically explored. American conservative theorists write books such as Harvey

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Mansfield, Jr.'s The Taming of the Prince that analyze the relations between constitutionalism and foreign policy; British conservative theorists' views on these questions are confined to articles in such periodicals as Salisbury Review, Encounter, and The Spectator. Nevertheless, the substantive policy on European unity that predominates in new conservative theory is consistent with its approach to social policy: it revolves around the retention of undivided authority by the legislative center of the central state while it expands market relations throughout European societies. The character of new American conservative thinking has been much shaped by its foreign policy. "Neo-nationalism," Norman Podhoretz writes, "can be used interchangeably with neo-conservatism."54 Also in contrast to the British, the institutional aims of American conservative theory's foreign policy do not parallel its goals for social policy. Advocating the delegation of social policy to civil and local, public institutions, American conservative theory prescribes a presidential high politics free of the effective scrutiny of Congress and the media in order to implement an active foreign policy. As discussed in chapter 1, ever since the electoral reforms of 1867 and 1883-85 extended the right to vote to two-thirds of British males, substantive decision making in British foreign policy has been conducted in the cabinet rather than in Parliament. The main protest against this change began in response to events leading up to World War I, and in particular to the British entente with tsarist Russia. The Labour party, eliciting the example of the American national government, called for the cabinet to share decision making in foreign policy with the House of Commons. After the war, the first Labour government of 1924 declared a Wilsonian doctrine of "open covenants openly arrived at." However, Labour was unable to maintain a government for more than a few months, and the successor Conservative government renounced the idea of more than one foreign policy center in the state. Labour responded to this Tory announcement with a resolution that sparked widespread debate: they declared that the House of Commons should be informed before any treaties, major diplomatic arrangements, or mutual understandings with other countries were concluded; and that military cooperation with other countries was not to be allowed without the consent of the Commons. In response, the governing Conservative party declared that foreign policy was a cabinet matter and that the Commons supported cabinets rather than specific policies. The Labour motion was defeated. As Beloff notes in discussing twentieth-century

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attempts to define a role for the Commons in foreign policy, "The vote of 133 against 255 which the Labour motion received in the 1925 debate represents ... the high water mark of the democratic protest where Britain is concerned." Unlike America, Britain has one center in the national state for substantive debate and foreign policy decision making.55 Throughout most of this century, British foreign policy revolved around maintaining the Empire, preserving the balance of power on the Continent, and—since World War II—nurturing the Anglo-American "special relationship." After the Suez crisis Britain's interest in foreign policy waned. In recent decades it has focused on integration into the European community.56 During the 1970s and early 1980s, only a few writers—Max Beloff, Peter Bauer, D. Cameron Watt, Elie Kedourie, George Urban, among others—suggested any new directions for a conservative foreign policy.57 Their themes were consistent with the new British conservative theory toward domestic politics. For example, Beloff, Kedourie, and others vociferously called for a military response by Britain to Argentina during the Falklands/Malvinas crisis, arguing that the national state must assert authority over a dominion just as it does over local governments. The issue was authority, not the right of the people of the disputed islands to be independent. As Kedourie claimed, Suppose then that the Falklanders were to change their minds, or that the inhabitants of Birmingham or Cardiff, or Ulster, were to aspire to independence. What would be sufficient reason for the Queen's Government to abdicate its authority without further ado? Simply to ask the question is to realise its absurdity. A Government's title to rule cannot simply stand on a plebiscite. At a given moment, they may go one way, but plebiscites are shifting sands and the stability and good order of society cannot be erected upon them.58 Other themes articulated by these writers also reinforced the outlook that new conservative theory had adopted toward domestic politics. Western aid, these analysts argued, should be directed at strengthening the rule of law and expanding market relations, while shunning encouragement of self-determination. British support for European integration derived more from a desire to integrate the British economy into European markets than from a belief in the need for a unified European political entity. Finally, as discussed in chapter 2, British conservative theorists and writers in the early 1980s further consolidated in the early

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1980s around the position of placing nuclear weapons at the forefront of their defense policy. To reiterate, conservative theory claimed that these weapons not only helped the state establish a civil association by preserving security, but also did not require the state to mobilize the amount of resources from society—taxes and conscripts—that a meaningful conventional defense policy would necessitate. All these positions required little new thinking. They primarily required resisting political currents in the liberal-left that might upset the status quo. For example, many conservative writers responded quickly to the Labour program of the 1980s that proposed to cancel the purchase of Trident II from America, "denuclearize" Britain, and focus on a conventional arms buildup. Conservatives charged that the Labour program was disingenuous. Labour would be unwilling, they claimed, to have the state make the claims on the energies and resources of society—more taxes, more defense spending, conscription, and other policies—required for an effective conventional defense program.59 British conservative theorists and writers continue to debate the main issues that arose in the second half of the 1980s: European integration and a new balance of power on the Continent. The predominant response of new conservative theory to European integration is consistent with its domestic political outlook of increasing both central state authority and market relations. British conservative theory puts forward an interpretation of European union that refers to the project of establishing, by 1992, a single internal market of 320 million consumers; it opposes a European union that refers to projects of creating a common currency or central bank, as both would usurp authority from the state. "It is not an argument about economics," The Spectator wrote; "the argument is about national sovereignty."60 Most British conservative theorists and writers oppose all interpretations of the act's so-called social dimension, fearing it will bring back the idea of social justice that they have recommended be expunged from British politics.61 To protect the autonomy and authority of the legislative center, British conservatives, when projecting a program for European integration, advance Gaullist themes that predominated when European unity was in an intergovernmentalist stage during the 1960s and 1970s: the nationstate is to remain the predominate form of political organization; the Council of European Ministers, not the European Commission, should be the principal locus of decision making for community issues; and although a qualified majority voting procedure is necessary to overcome

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protectionism and to construct a single internal market, the Luxembourg Veto, whereby a nation may refuse to comply with an EC law deemed to be against its national interest, should be retained. This program, they believe, would allow a geometric variable strategy toward European integration—that new areas of EC activity may be opened up without all member states taking part. An example was Britain's nonparticipation in the exchange rate mechanism of the European Monetary System and in proposals that there be two currencies—European and national—rather than a common currency and a central European bank. The primary criterion for EC membership, conservatives believe, should be the opening of the nation's market to the entire community. From this perspective, the EC is a practical means by which Europe can increase its overall prosperity, while each nation preserves its traditions, national pride, and, most important, forms of political organization. "As such," Urban notes, "it would be an example to other groups of nations which wish to collaborate in economics and other matters without giving up their statehood."62 The central issue dividing contemporary British conservative theorists and writers is how much integration is required to assure Britain's economic prosperity. Some maintain that Britain must cooperate more actively as Europe takes steps toward integrating its economies further. Because the Christian Democratic Union presently governs the Federal Republic of Germany, they continue, the British Conservative party is in a position to affect new EC institutions so that they respond favorably to conservative aims. Britain's obsession with national and parliamentary sovereignty, they fear, will effectively inhibit the forceful representation of British conservative views in the EC. Most theorists and writers associated with the new British conservatism of the 1980s and 1990s, however, denounce this position, attacking it, once again, as an abdication of the central state's sovereignty. Believing that the conflicts which have animated British politics when it has divided authority will animate European politics when it divides authority, the new conservatives state that just as the central state cannot share authority in domestic politics, it cannot share power with exogenous institutions. Indeed, Paul Johnson argues that Europe will face more difficulties than early America did as it tries to find the proper relation between the center and periphery. In America, "the late 1790s were dominated by the debate on the rights of states to nullify federal law, a debate resumed in the 1830s, and left unresolved on both occasions. Likewise, the Missouri Compromise of

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1820 and the further Compromise of 1851 did not settle the claims of states to protect their own institutions from collective change, or to secede if they were threatened. Those claims were put to the test of the Civil War, which cost the lives of at least 620,000 combatants Nor did even this bloodletting end the debate."62 Europe, Johnson continues, will face more difficulties finding political unity because it lacks America's common language, law, literature, and culture. While the main foreign policy debate within British conservatism during the early 1990s centers on the EC's monetary institutions, new conservative theory's other great concern is limiting the community's external identity, which will decouple Europe and America. This is a conflict, states Alan Sked, "that the anti-federalists must win, for it is now clear that the defense of liberty cannot be entrusted to a European federal state dominated b y . . . Germany."63 Since 1985 new conservative theorists and writers have advocated that Britain preempt an independent European foreign policy by placing renewed emphasis on the Anglo-American relation. By forging close relations between the two countries, they advise, Britain can reinforce the American commitment to maintaining security on the Continent and preclude possible attempts by the European Commission to develop independent foreign and defense policies. Only America, they believe, can counter either a Russian or German threat to the balance of power on the Continent. In short, while British conservative theory backs Gaullist themes to promote an intergovernmentalist approach to European integration, it puts forth the position feared by de Gaulle when he vetoed British entrance into the European Economic Community—a pro-American voice within the European community—in order to preserve an American commitment to a balance of power on the Continent. As Urban argued (when the Soviet Union still existed), "It would be imprudent for either Great Britain or Western Europe to have a foreign policy towards the Soviet Union independent of the U.S. Policy depends on power and that is what the Soviet Union respects Gaullism, if repeated, either by ourselves or by our partners or Western Europe as a whole, would help the Soviet Union to achieve its long-term aim of 'decoupling' Western Europe from the U.S."64 British new conservative theorists and writers argue that the decline of the Soviet Union increases the importance of strengthening the AngloAmerican relation. To their regret, they believe that Americans envision Europe entering an era of peace and stability. Beloff argues that Amer-

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icans see the collapse of Soviet power and the disunity within the Soviet Empire in terms of a victory of free market economics and liberal democracy over collectivist economics and single-party rule. British conservatives, he counters, find the national rivalries both within the Soviet Union itself and along its western periphery as the dominant factors in the situation. "In this respect," Beloff continues, "Americans risk renewing the disillusion that followed from accepting Woodrow Wilson's belief that Europeans could be taught to live in pleasant harmony. Wisdom consists in facing reality."65 As indicated, British conservative theory is far more underdeveloped around foreign policy than it is with regard to constitutionalism, morality, authority, economics, and many other topics addressed in this study. Indeed, one can explain new British conservative foreign policy merely as an interpretation of principles of realpolitik. From this perspective, British conservatism advances principles of parliamentary sovereignty in order to hold back European integration, while straining to preserve America's commitment to a balance of power on the Continent. At the same time, British conservative foreign policy does display the general features of British conservative political thought. Like new British conservatism's constitutionalism, economics, and social policies, its foreign policy stresses the refusal of the legislative center of the central state to share power with other institutions. AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE FOREIGN POLICY

American conservative political theory consistently has placed issues of foreign policy at the forefront of its agenda. During the 1970s and 1980s, the basic theme of its foreign policy was comprehensive containment of the Soviet Union. This has been a mainstream policy since 1947. It also was characterized by the demobilization of the American public. This broke with the American political pattern of mobilizing the public to support taxes, conscription, and wars, which was required for a comprehensive containment program. The key to this new program was establishing presidential autonomy, free of the effective scrutiny of Congress and the media, in foreign and defense policies. While British conservative theory's focus on institutional constraints with regard to foreign policy has been on external institutions, American conservative theory primarily centers on removing the presidency from constraints created by domestic institutions.

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After World War II, Greek-Turkish aid, the Truman Doctrine, the Berlin Airlift, and the Korean War marked the beginning of America's new role as a central actor in world politics. The American central state expanded a number of old foreign policy agencies and started new ones—the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the Atomic Energy Commission, among many others. American constitutional theory and practice provided a heterogeneous legacy with regard to executive-legislative relations in foreign policy. Accordingly, America's postwar national state developed center? for foreign and defense policies in both the executive and congressional branches. As Huntington noted in 1956 in analyzing the construction of defense policy, "The development of a consensus for a strategic program involves elaborate processes of bargaining, as complex as those required for either domestic or foreign policy."66 Such fragmentation of central elites precluded presidential high politics in foreign policy. Unlike Britain, the United States constituted an executive that was required to mobilize the public ideologically during international crises to ensure coordination among policy centers. Theodore Lowi asserts that "instead of an elite consensus guiding the nation, there developed an institutionally fragmented elite seeking a national consensus to be guided by." He summarizes how this national security structure affected the substance of American foreign policy: This pattern... left the president and his foreign policy elite a hopeless task of making a ministry out of what can at best be a coalition. Despite the frequency with which this system was praised, and despite the valiant efforts since 1946 to make do with it, the behavior of the president and his elite reflected the real problems and the pathologies. Their behavior since World War II can be summarized as oversell: They have been forced to oversell every remedy for world ailments and to oversell each problem for which the remedy might be appropriate.67 During the period of America's new, sustained involvement in international politics, Leo Strauss wrote Thoughts on Machiavelli. Here Strauss explained and commented on Machiavelli's views about the political problematics that an active foreign policy creates for a republic. First, the rulers need to mobilize the citizenry; henceforth, "an imperial republic must give its plebs a greater share in the political power than a non-imperial republic."68 Second, a more equitable distribution of

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wealth is required. Indeed, Strauss's Machiavelli states that a republic's traditional concern for limiting the citizens' wealth must be revised. "The maxim that the public [state] should be rich and the citizens should be poor will have to give way to the maxim that the public should be rich and the common people not become spoiled and effeminate by becoming too wealthy" (261). Finally, Strauss's Machiavelli notes the intractable difficulties an imperial republic confronts: the increase in private wealth leads to political and social decay; imperial overextension contributes to the corruption of the military; preservation of foreign dominions requires a general increase in oppression. "These facts force one to reconsider the assumption that imperialism in the Roman style is the wisest policy or even simply necessary," wrote Strauss (261). Strauss's Machiavelli indicates that joining a confederation is an alternative foreign policy for a republic. Alliances entail less cost, which means fewer demands will be placed on the citizens by the republic. Therefore, these republics can implement a more austere policy toward the distribution of wealth, thereby preventing domestic corruption; they "are not under the same necessity as the Roman republic to give their common people a share in political power" (262). Nevertheless, this foreign policy also poses problems. Alliances are unstable because they are useful primarily in defensive conflicts. Indeed, alliances generally preclude "engaging in a policy of large-scale aggrandizement" (261). The common problem of both foreign policies is the absence of autonomy of the statesmen and rulers, who are fettered by either the mobilized public or alliances. Hence, Machiavelli, according to Strauss, prefers a carefully calibrated foreign policy that limits alliances and, more important, defines distinct functions and outlooks between the noble rulers and the citizens. The rulers are characterized by the political virtues of patriotism and prudence. Carefully calculating foreign policy, they distribute the spoils of victory sparingly and avoid public displays of power and wealth. The statesmen and rulers are aware that foreign policy is animated by power and ambition, but they hide this knowledge from the citizens. Indeed, when they must mobilize the citizenry during foreign policy emergencies, the statesmen's and rulers' appeal is based on principles, not power. In short, the rulers' political virtue "consists not in the extirpation of ambition but in ambition guided by prudence" (264). In contrast to the statesmen's and rulers' political virtues, "the characteristic virtues of the plebs were goodness, contempt for the seemingly

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vile and religion" (263). Goodness is the mores and habits that people need if they are going to live with one another in society and enjoy the pursuit of life, liberty, and property. It is not difficult for the rulers to preserve goodness among citizens because, "being more or less downtrodden, they are satisfied with little, each of them is frequently in need of the help of others, and what each of them desires can generally speaking be reconciled easily with what every other one of them desires" (264). As long as the statesmen and rulers address the prosaic needs of the public and preserve goodness, they will be able to mobilize them for political support when confronted by a foreign policy crisis. "Goodness is then at home with the people. This is the reason that public deliberations, deliberations in popular assemblies, are unlikely to favor proposals which seem to be cowardly or which suggest open breaches of faith" (263). Summarizing, Strauss wrote: Machiavelli has set forth his view of the innocence of the perfect plebs and the lack of innocence of the perfect patricians in a manner in which it is impossible to improve What Machiavelli means to say is that the natural home of the goodness is the people because the people lack responsibility for the common good and can therefore afford to be good or to abide by those rules of conduct with which citizens must comply if there is to be society. (263) From 1947 to 1970, American foreign policy centered on what Huntington and John Lewis Gaddis describe as a symmetrical or comprehensive containment program against the Soviet Union. Or, to invoke Strauss's Machiavelli, the American republic mobilized the citizenry's resources through taxes and conscription and made available to policymakers multiple levels of response to the Soviet Union. Huntington and Gaddis describe comprehensive or symmetrical containment as a costly, low-risk strategy: the high cost of mobilizing domestic resources reduces the risk of America being incapable of responding to Soviet activities throughout the world. By 1970, according to Huntington and Gaddis, America was no longer capable of maintaining the costs of symmetrical or comprehensive containment. The increased expenditures required to maintain military parity with the Soviet Union now were based on an economy competing with Japan and Europe for markets, while the war in Vietnam had broken the political consensus among both elites and the public around comprehensive containment. As Huntington notes, American foreign

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policy expounded a new approach to the "Lippman Gap—bringing into balance ... the nation's commitments and the nation's power."69 During the 1970s a limited or asymmetrical containment program dominated American foreign policy. Or, to refer to Strauss's Machiavelli again, the American republic's foreign policy was animated by a policy of confederationism. Limited containment placed a greater emphasis on alliance building and burden sharing; it concentrated attention on vital geographical areas; it sought to limit tensions through arms control and trade agreements; it mobilized fewer domestic resources. As Gaddis suggests, limited containment retained "the initiative, but at the price of yielding positions not easily defended, or of expanding the confrontation to exploit positions that [could] be." As Strauss's Machiavelli stated, the confederation policy afforded an adequate defense but not the opportunity for offense.70 New American conservative theory opposed a foreign policy of limited aims such as the asymmetrical or limited containment program of the 1970s. However, it did not advocate returning to a program whereby the president mobilized the American public for taxes, conscripts, and wars in order to achieve more ambitious foreign policy goals. Instead, American conservative theory focused on bringing maximum pressure on America's primary adversary , the Soviet Union, while also establishing presidential autonomy in foreign policy. In terms of Strauss's Machiavelli, American conservative theory supported a persistent, active American foreign policy based not on a mobilized public or an alliance but on an autonomous political executive.71 During the late 1970s and 1980s, the American conservative program for international politics had three features. One was a constitutional doctrine that enhanced the authority and autonomy of the presidency within the central state. As discussed in chapter 2, American conservative theory distinguishes the separation of powers and mixed government doctrines according to policy domains. The separation of powers legitimizes executive predominance in foreign policy and national security; mixed government recognizes joint executive-legislature responsibility in domestic politics. These complementary constitutional doctrines, conservatives believe, give America a unitary force in the Hobbesian world of international politics, while encouraging a limited national state in domestic politics. "The American system provides for the establishment of executive power—in its primary or essential sense—while reducing to a minimum the threat of despotism," observes James Ceaser.72

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From this perspective, conservative theorists and writers argue that congressional interpretations of treaties are violations of the separation of powers, while congressional oversight of intelligence activities is intrusive and debilitating. During the 1980s, they advocated laws to limit Congress in foreign policy, revising the War Powers Act and the Arms Export Act, setting penalties for congresspersons who leak classified material, consolidating a single congressional intelligence committee, imposing the same security requirements on members of Congress who sit on foreign policy committees as on members of the executive branch, and limiting the role of Congress in its handling of defense budgets to broad categories and not the minutiae of defense spending. "The assumption of many in Congress... is that Congress performs its proper duty in a separation of powers system only when it ties the executive's hands," states Ceaser. "This view, reflective of modern Whig scholarship, is based on a narrow and legalistic understanding of the Constitution and on a failure to recognize the real purpose for which the founders adopted the theory of the separation of powers."73 Conservative theory also proposed restricting the media's access to foreign and defense matters. Carnes Lord notes, " 'Decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch'—such were the terms chosen by Alexander Hamilton to illustrate the characteristics of executive 'energy'. The bureaucracy and the Congress create problems in all these areas, but secrecy is surely most threatened from the quarter of the media."74 Lord would increase the autonomy and authority of the presidency within the executive branch; he suggests not only that the National Security Council's central function be strategic planning, but that it have clear authority to manage the interagency policy process. It should not be responsible to Congress. Lord continues, The NSC can only function properly if it acts as an immediate extension of the president. Particularly in the current climate, any assertion of congressional prerogative concerning... the NSC ... can only serve to weaken still further the president's already tenuous grip on the national security bureaucracy. Congress... would ... deprive the organization of much of its utility.... Strengthening the presidency as an institution may benefit the Republicans in the short run; but Democrats may draw comfort from the fact that a strong presidency is vital for maintaining control of

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bureaucracies—the military and intelligence community—whose autonomy is a traditional cause of concern on the left.75 The second focus of American conservative theory's international program was a foreign policy that mobilized maximum pressure on the Soviet Union while facilitating the political end of presidential autonomy. During the late 1970s and 1980s conservatives pursued both of these ends by devising a foreign policy with complementary themes. On the one hand, conservatives repudiated limited containment and constructed a foreign policy that heightened pressure on the Soviet Union. On the other hand, this policy placed few demands on the American public, thereby averting congressional and public scrutiny of presidential foreign policy.76 The new foreign policy's central tenets distinguished between totalitarian and authoritarian regimes and concentrated on the Soviet Union's abuse of human rights and role in regional conflicts. The distinction between totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, conservatives insisted, combined both principle and realistic politics. The issue of principle was the regimes' respective relations to liberal democratic change. Although a few totalitarian regimes had reduced their degree of state coercion, not one had become a liberal democracy. "What is unique about communist regimes, is, first, the thoroughness of their control over all the institutions of society," stated Glazer. "Added to this thoroughness of control is the permanence of control. There are no examples of successful anticommunist revolutions or coups." Conversely, authoritarian regimes in Spain, Greece, Portugal, and many Latin American countries, including Brazil, were making transitions to liberal democracy. Such change was possible because in authoritarian regimes, continued Glazer, "independent powers still exist: a Catholic Church, industrialists and small businessmen, intellectuals and universities, a press not completely muzzled."77 Therefore, an American foreign policy that encouraged both resistance to totalitarianism and defense of authoritarian regimes was consistent with upholding principles of liberty. Because most totalitarian regimes were aligned with the Soviet Union and most authoritarian regimes with the United States, the focus on resisting totalitarianism also was consistent with America's primary security concern. Podhoretz stated the principle: "Indeed we are for freedom, which is why we should prefer authoritarian regimes of the Right to the totalitarian states of the communist world."78 Kirkpatrick combined principle and realism when

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she asserted that authoritarian governments were preferable to totalitarian governments, "first, because they are normally, though not invariably, less repressive internally Second, because they are more susceptible to democratic change. And third, because they a r e . . . less likely to be hostile to the interests of the U.S.A. and other Western democracies."79 The foreign policy proposals of conservative theorists and writers advocated variegated mechanisms for containing the Soviet Union. For example, pretotalitarian regimes, in which Communists aligned with the Soviet Union had gained state power but had not completed transforming social relations (for example, collectivization of agriculture, state control of media), were to be the targets of maximum pressure—American-backed insurgents. Once these new social arrangements were consolidated, conservatives insisted, they were extremely difficult to overthrow. Since these Soviet-backed regimes were spread throughout the world, the promotion of insurgency movements in Afghanistan, Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua would spread liberty and exacerbate the Soviet Union's imperial overextension. "The elements are simple," stated Charles Krauthammer, "anti-communist revolution as a tactic. Containment as the strategy. Freedom as the rationale."80 Conservatives distinguished this approach to containment of the Soviet Union from previous containment programs by the few demands it placed on the American citizenry. Now the American government was seeking out and providing financial and military assistance for others to fight the spread of communism. The Reagan Doctrine expressed a new type of American foreign policy. "It should be emphasized that the sympathy, solidarity and assistance offered by Reagan does not include U.S. participation in combat," Kirkpatrick noted. "The Reagan Doctrine is sharply distinguished from the 'containment' or 'rollback' approaches. In Korea, Vietnam and in the Dominican Republic, U.S. troops were committed to repel aggression or subversion. Under Ronald Reagan, the U.S. is prepared to help others protect or restore their freedom and independence but not to assume responsibility for this task."81 U.S.-Soviet relations, conservatives insisted, should not center on arms control and bilateral relations. Arms talks contributed to the public's belief that weapons, not Soviet expansionism, were the source of war. They also encouraged divisions within America and the Western alliance. "Arms control negotiations have only benefitted the Soviet Union," stated Kristol. "We always end up negotiating with ourselves or with

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our allies, not with the Soviet Union."82 Most conservative theorists and writers called for the Reagan administration to refuse to hold a summit during the first term, allowing arms negotiations to remain dormant.83 The foci of U.S.-Soviet relations, conservatives countered, should be public diplomacy and rhetoric drawing attention to the Soviet Union's human rights violations and its role in regional conflicts. To some conservatives, progress by the Soviet Union on these fronts would be offered as the basis to any arms negotiations and improvement in bilateral relations. To others, these foci would serve mainly to heighten political and economic tensions within the Soviet Union. All conservatives agreed that the Soviet Union would make little progress on either of these fronts. "We should be constantly exposing the Soviet Union to ridicule for refusing to permit its citizens to emigrate," stated Kristol. "[I]t is an issue that the Soviet Union would find extremely difficult to cope with."84 The public exposure of these failures of the Soviet Union would help sustain the resolve of the American public to do without arms control agreements and also provide a basis for national mobilizations during crises. Finally, the concentration on the Soviet Union's abuse of human rights and its role in regional conflicts would lay the groundwork for the third part of the conservatives' program for establishing presidential autonomy in international politics, legitimizing an American defense buildup based on high technology: optical devices, infrared or heatseeking sensors, acoustic sensors, new signal processors, lasers and faster computers, and others. America's breaking away from the constraints imposed by arms control would exploit the Soviet Union's technological backwardness. More important, such a defense buildup would provide the president with a mix of offensive and defensive weapon systems that could deter a nuclear attack, overcoming what Lord described as America's "disinclination to prepare adequately for war, or to foster the institutions and types of men capable of waging it."85 Finally, the high-technology defense buildup would allow American presidents the freedom to introduce military force quickly at different degrees of escalation and thus overcome potential problems of public diffidence or timidity. In 1988, a commission appointed by President Reagan reported that a new class of high-technology weapons gave America's command and control the capability to introduce force quickly at different degrees of intensity in all areas of the world:

• The Institutional Aims of Conservative Theory • 185 •

Current technology makes it possible to attack fixed targets at any range with accuracies within one to three meters [It] gives us a high probability of destroying a wide variety of point and area targets with one or a few shots without using nuclear warheads. They make practical attacks on heavily defended military targets deep in enemy territory. Airfields ... could be put out of commission with warheads designed to attack infrastructure (fuel and maintenance facilities, say) and command-and-control facilities. Bridges, surface-to-air missile sites, intelligence facilities, rail lines, electric generating plants, petroleum refineries—all are suddenly more vulnerable in the emerging age of smart munitions.86 The new weapon systems, American conservatives believe, make presidential high politics in foreign policy possible. Public and congressional debate now will follow, not precede or accompany, most military action. "I cannot help laughing," writes Kristol, "when I hear solemn discussion of the War Powers Act, which gives the president ninety days to send American troops abroad. Ninety days is quite enough."87 In reviewing the essential features of these foreign policy proposals, one should identify what the American conservative containment program did not prescribe: it refused to fund the arms buildup with new taxes; it avoided conscription; it did not limit economic trade with the Soviet Union. "I don't think it would make sense to engage in boycotts of the Soviet Union," stated Kristol. "We should trade with them if it is to our advantage. It makes no sense not to sell the Soviets farm products if we can benefit."88 And it did not sanction public debate to form a consensus around foreign policy. As Podhoretz stated, "No one old enough to remember what a real consensus looked like could, unless seized by a temporary fit of amnesia, find anything resembling it in the political culture of today."89 The thread running through all of these policies—avoiding taxes, conscription, trade embargoes, and debate—is that each refrained from placing demands on the American public that would invite scrutiny of presidential foreign policy. Indeed, in advocating an active foreign policy, Kristol expresses little concern that the American public generally ignores international politics. Most Americans, he notes, prefer to concentrate on individual, domestic matters and regard issues of foreign policy as unwelcome intrusions. There is no scandal here, he continues, only a natural condition. Only

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if there is a major crisis, Kristol advises, should the public be rallied by the president to engage in foreign policy matters. During crisis, if the president goes to the American people and wraps himself in the American flag and lets Congress wrap itself in the white flag of surrender, the president will win.... The American people had never heard of Grenada. There was no reason why they should have. The reason we gave for the intervention—the risk to American medical students there—was phony but the reaction of the American people was absolutely and overwhelmingly favorable. They had no idea what was going on, but they backed the president. They always will.90 Just as Strauss's Machiavelli believes that a public which is good and focused on the prosaic needs of property and security will rally around the statesman during foreign policy crises, Kristol believes that a public that is focused on individual, domestic concerns will rally around a president's call for support during foreign policy emergencies. POST-COLD WAR DEBATES

The decline of the Soviet Union has initiated a new, difficult debate in conservative theory on the aims of American foreign policy. On the margins of this discussion is a current of thought, most notably expressed by Patrick Buchanan, that urges America to avoid foreign engagements as much as possible and return to isolationism.91 The debate, however, centers on the new goals of an engaged American foreign policy. Some conservative publicists and policy intellectuals—Charles Krauthammer, Richard Pele, Norman Podhoretz, among others—argue that American foreign policy should remain focused on the Soviet Union. Krauthammer states that America's primary foreign policy task "for say—the next decade, is to win the Cold War," Attainment of this goal requires ensuring the independence of Eastern Europe, encouraging the liberation of minorities within the former Soviet Union, and inducing liberalization within Russia itself.92 Many other conservatives, most notably Pangle, Kristol, and Kirkpatrick, disagree that the Soviet Union should be the centerpiece of American foreign policy. "The end of communism," Kristol states, "means the end of anti-communism." These conservatives hold that America must take advantage of its position as the only country with

• The Institutional Aims of Conservative Theory • 187 •

the capability of exerting combinations of military, political, and economic pressure on a global scale. "As the sole remaining superpower," Kristol comments, "there is no balance for us to worry about." The aim of American foreign policy should be to preserve this favorable international situation. "Our relations with the rest of the world," states Kristol, "will be decided candidly on a case by case basis." With the decline of the Soviet Union, Kristol continues, "we are free to engage in the quiet diplomacy of persuasion, the open diplomacy of intimidation, a foreign policy that may or may not involve military interventions— always depending on circumstance."93 Pangle claims that the end of communism affords American politics both danger and opportunity. On the one hand, if America decouples from Europe and embraces isolationism, it will intensify political problems being generated by a dominant liberal, relativist ethos that refuses to establish political standards and mores for the American public. Pangle notes that Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra identified the consequence of this outlook: "Dwarfed homunculi living lives without dedication, without reverence, without shame, without rank, without the sense of tragedy and nobility bred only in suffering."94 On the other hand, Pangle suggests that America may remain politically engaged in a European politics that he predicts will be contentious and, more important, led by an intelligentsia (in Eastern Europe) that expresses new ideas of the good society and thereby generates the "challenge of elaborating an invigorating spiritual competition within the common European home among individuals representing mutually critical national and religious traditions."95 This competition, Pangle hopes, will engender new truths, leading to a renewal of political discipline and hierarchy: The stupefying pall of relativism must be shredded in the name of a common dialectical struggle for the truth about virtue, God, and existence. The highest task of good Europeans would then be not only to define the foundations of human nature, but to try [sic] make out something of its peaks and heights; not only to guarantee the dignity that is common to every human being, but to seek also to clarify and honor those qualities that distinguish and make truly admirable the few who can and should be beacons for the rest; not only to secure human rights, but on the basis of those rights, to explore competing human virtues.96

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In the mid-1990s conservative theory has the very difficult task of constructing and consolidating around a new foreign policy. It is united, however, on the idea that America should maintain an engaged, active foreign policy. All conservative theorists and writers supported the war with Iraq. All continue to argue that the separation of powers doctrine and defense policies based on high-technology weapons provide the basis for presidential high politics in foreign policy. Finally, all desire the presidency to pursue an active foreign policy while delegating domestic political issues to civil and local, public institutions. William Bennett, commenting on the debate on America's new role in the world, states, "It is that large middle ground, known as selective engagement, that we should occupy." At the same time, Bennett counsels, although the national government must be active on the world stage, national public policies must be eschewed: "There is no Patriot missile for the social and domestic problems of welfare, education, poverty, unwed mothers, and child abuse—with the possible exception of a massive infusion of sound moral values.... We need to relearn that these problems require not a program launched in Washington ... but family, church, neighborhood and school."97 In short, American conservatism's advocacy of predominant civil and local, public institutions in domestic politics and of an autonomous presidency in an engaged foreign policy will outlive the Cold War. DIFFERING INSTITUTIONAL AIMS

To summarize, American conservatives aim to delegate social policy to civil and local, public institutions while establishing an autonomous presidency in foreign policy. They do not attempt to establish presidential high politics in foreign affairs by evoking Tory or Hobbesian ideas of authority. Advocating public rhetoric and open diplomacy to develop a wellspring of support in case of crisis, American conservatives aim to establish presidential autonomy in international politics by creating an engaged foreign policy that makes few demands on the public, by developing a defense policy to enhance the presidency's ability to introduce force quickly at different degrees of escalation, and by sanctioning a separation of powers doctrine that limits congressional and media intrusions in foreign policy. In short, American conservatism advocates a strict division of labor between the presidency and civil and local, public institutions.

• The Institutional Aims of Conservative Theory • 189 •

British conservatism also aims to end the integration of the central state with intermediate organizations in social policy. However, it does not advocate delegating social policies to civil and local, public institutions. In contrast to American conservatism, it recommends that the central state restrict, reconstitute, and eliminate other institutions of social policy. New British conservatism's foreign policy parallels its domestic program: the central state must resist encroachments on its authority from the process of European integration. In short, British and American conservatism prescribe different institutional configurations. British conservatism advocates the undivided authority of the central state in both domestic and foreign policies, whereas American conservatism prefers a division of labor: civil and local, public institutions predominant in domestic politics, the presidency in foreign policy.

SIX

Undivided

and Dual Sovereignty

P

OLITICAL theories labeled conservative, liberal, and socialist periodically develop new features and goals. Conservative theory at the close of the twentieth century is embarking on a task similar to those of Anglo-American liberal theory at its start. T. H. Green, L. T. Hobhouse, Herbert Croly, and others posited that civil society did not generate conditions that enabled all to exercise individual freedom. Redefining liberalism, they redirected its attention from laws and policies that restricted the state's authority to those that provided persons with social and economic power requisite for liberty.1 Contemporary conservative theory believes that civil society is unable to sustain authoritative civil and political relations. Redefining conservatism, it objects to state-led economic development and proposes laws and policies that enhance the political authority of the state and other institutions. This concluding chapter reviews the key features of each theory and situates them among the predominant political theories of their respective nations. On the one hand, British and American conservative theories, as most incisively articulated by Michael Oakeshott and Leo Strauss, respectively, agree that the central contemporary political predicament is based on the conflation of philosophy and society. Philosophy stands apart from the truth to criticize and understand it; philosophy cannot create the truth. As philosophy and society interpenetrate, the civil practices and moralities that provide liberty and order for the public are under190

• Undivided and Dual Sovereignty * 191 •

mined. "The practical dangers of an erroneous theory" that conflates philosophy and different modes of experience, writes Oakeshott, "is not that it may persuade people to act in an unenviable manner, but that it may confuse activity by putting it on a false scent."2 Strauss counsels against public expressions of philosophical truth "because they would do harm to many people who, having been hurt, would naturally be inclined to hurt in turn him, who pronounces the unpleasant truths."3 On the other hand, Oakeshott and Strauss and their respective followers disagree on how politics should cope with the manifold dangers of the conflation of philosophy and society. Oakeshott and many of his students and followers, believing that "God is Dead," have adapted to the breakdown of the patterns of activity that provided the liberty and order, or resources and constraints, to human conduct by a turn to Hobbesian authority as a complement to the weakened Humean conventions and Hegelian Sittlichkeit. They believe that once disagreements develop over a civil practice, proponents invoke God, natural rights, freedom, and countless other norms to reinforce their claims; members of society are incapable of understanding either the genuine civil practices or their rightness. Hence, the central state must establish rules that provide social routes to telic behavior, but refrain from setting purposive goals themselves. Strauss and his followers believe that if the public is not made to internalize authority, political society will be based exclusively on power and coercion. This requires a substantive unity through a morality that is to be based ultimately on revelation rather than philosophic or political virtue. Indeed, Strauss believed that revelation had the upper hand in the contest between philosophy and religion. Since philosophy is incapable of determining the final truth, it must grant the possibility that faith is closer to the truth than philosophy. Both philosophy and religion are products of the will, but "the mere fact that philosophy and revelation cannot refute each other would constitute the refutation of philosophy by revelation."4 God is not dead or, at the very least, can be brought back from the dead, and political philosophy must take the side of religion and faith in attempting to reconstitute public certitude and extricate society from postmodernism. American conservative theorists, however, recognize that the task of constituting and reconstituting a public belief in truth is an odious one. Hence, they propose delegating the reconstruction of political and social morality to civil and local, public institutions. The national state and, most important, the political ex-

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ecutive will be removed from this loathsome obligation and will be free to pursue the poetic idea of greatness in the strategic issues of foreign policy, national security, and crises management. The public in turn will feel secure because the norms that are internalized are of their own making. The distinctions between British and American conservative theory in part originate from Oakeshott's and Strauss's differing interpretations of Thomas Hobbes. Oakeshott and Strauss agree that Hobbes marks a fundamental break from ancient and medieval political philosophy by posing the individual will, not natural law, as the basis for politics. While Oakeshott believes that Hobbes's theory of volition was insufficiently developed, preferring Hegel's and Bosanquet's historicist interpretations, he finds that Hobbes's view that all human activity was animated by the will set limits on the goals of philosophy. "From beginning to end there is no suggestion in Hobbes that philosophy is anything other than conditional knowledge, knowledge of hypothetical generations and conclusions about the name of things, not about the nature of things. With these philosophy must be satisfied, though they are but fictions."5 As philosophy itself was a product of the will, it could not create or envision the best regime, and it did not endorse attempts to remold society. "His skepticism about the power of reasoning," wrote Oakeshott, "which applied no less to the 'artificial reason' of the Sovereign than to the reasoning of the natural man, together with the rest of his individualism, separates him from the rationalist dictators of his or any age. Indeed, Hobbes without being himself a liberal, had in him more of the philosophy of liberalism than most of its professed defenders."6 At the same time, Oakeshott argues that Hobbes identified how the will's desire for both freedom and security created the basis for the proper relation between liberty and authority in a political society.7 Strauss agrees with Oakeshott that Hobbes, based on his understanding that all human activity was animated by the will, lowered the goals of philosophy; however, he counters that this diminished view of philosophy contributed to his extending philosophy into the service of society. Hobbes'divorced from philosophy the concepts of ultimate causes, eternal questions, and the idea of the universe as a whole. These topics centered on the natural world and were unintelligible. However, wrote Strauss, Hobbes believed that the social and political world was completely knowable because we were its cause; hence, humanity had the opportunity to be sovereign. Strauss counters that rather than placing

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limits on our ability to understand the truth or the best regime, Hobbes encouraged humanity to break through all restraints: "Since the universe is unintelligible and since the control of nature does not require understanding of nature, there are no limits to his conquest of nature. He has nothing to lose but his chains, and, for all he knows, he may have everything to gain."8 As explained in chapter 2, Strauss interprets Hobbes's placement of the will at the foundation of political societies as the first stage of modern liberalism, which would progressively deteriorate until philosophy and society were joined. While the idea that the will animates all human activity is not philosophically wrong, political societies based solely on the will cannot survive; the political good and bad become totally based on power, commitment, and action; political societies need substantive beliefs.9 It is the different views of the efficacy of creating and recreating substantive beliefs that mark a vital distinction between British and American conservative theories. British conservatism believes that a substantive political unity presupposes universal norms of morality created by an extrinsic authority—God, society, history, nature, among others. As all ideas of such authorities are human constructs, attempts to utilize them as a basis for substantive political norms will degenerate eventually into either tyranny or discord. Humanity is incapable of either generating or sustaining a substantive political unity, and society will dissolve if the central state is not endowed with the authority to establish uniform rules to maintain public interaction and coordinated activity. Therefore, the state constructs a law- or rule-governing morality by allowing people to interact in peace while pursuing their private goals. Constructing this form of morality requires the state to establish public obligation to respect rules that set procedures that allow the private pursuit of substantive goals while eschewing the pursuit of substantive goals themselves. This necessitates that the state restrict all other organizations that attempt to impose alternative rules for the polity, including states and institutions beyond the national borders. If a state's laws do not conform to a rule-governing morality, the citizen nevertheless is obligated to obey because the sovereign state is the ultimate authority for all the rules and civil practices in society. As discussed, American conservative theory fears an American polity that does not believe in substantive truths. A lack of belief in truth is not theoretically wrong, but it creates dangerous political conditions as political societies are bound by transcendental beliefs. At the same time,

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American conservatives believe that international politics are based primarily on power and organization and that foreign policy must be based on realism rather than abstract truths. Hence, American conservative theory advocates instilling a belief in truth in politics while recognizing that truth and politics are ultimately incompatible. Public certitude is to be established around moral and religious virtue, not political virtue, by encouraging the pursuit of private property as an pught and local majorities as the generators of public truths, while establishing an executive branch capable of pursuing national security with realism. In sum, whereas the political goal of British conservative theory is the undivided authority of the legislative office of the central state, the political aim of American conservative theory is a dual polity: an autonomous presidency predominates in international politics; civil and local, public institutions predominate in domestic politics. The different political objectives of British and American conservative thought are expressed through distinct interpretations of constitutionalism, justice, community, democracy, and religion. Both conservative constitutionalisms, aiming to broaden the authority and autonomy of the central state, invoke the theme of undivided sovereignty. However, British conservatives claim this constitutional principle is for both domestic and foreign policy, whereas American conservatives claim it is mainly for foreign policy. The British conservatives' separation of powers doctrine replaces a territorial politics that divided tasks between the central states and intermediary organizations, asserting the legislative office of the central state as the sole lawmaking center in the polity American conservatism's separation of powers doctrine complements a territorial politics, establishing presidential high politics in foreign policy while a constitutional doctrine of mixed government facilitates a limited national state and the predominance of civil and local, public institutions in domestic politics. British conservative theory criticizes the idea of social justice because it locates the citizens' obligation outside the state, it precludes the establishment of uniform rules, and it upsets the spontaneous freedom generated by the market. In contrast, social justice is put forward by American conservative theory as a necessary aim of the polity. However, it is not to be deemed a national state principle. Social justice is to be attained by encouraging a local communitarianism and a producer ethos in the private sector. At the same time, American conservatives have a more ambitious definition of the aims of democracy than their British

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counterparts. To the British, democracy is a method of resolving political differences that, in the present political setting, is the most prudential means to enhance the authority of the state. To the Americans, the right to self-government is a kind of liberty, a condition for the development of particularistic identities in the political association. The crucial factor here, of course, is that these identities are based primarily at the local, rather than the national, level. British conservative theory minimizes the political role of religion, the more so because much of the established Church has become socially "progressive." The state is the essential instrument for reconstituting authority, morality, and civil society. American conservative theory redefines a Judeo-Christian tradition around the themes of economic self-improvement and social conformism, aiming to foster a religiously based moral unity at the local community level. Each conservative theory propounds its own substantive policy preferences to attain its political aims. British conservatism, unwilling to share authority with other institutions in society, advocates social policies that restrict, reconstitute, or eliminate intermediary organizations that developed as agencies contributing to social policies—for example, local governments, local education authorities, and trade unions. American conservative theory, preferring to devolve social policies to local associations to reinforce parochial, ethnic, and racial bonds, proposes a program to reduce incrementally the national state's role in social policy. Similarly, both conservative theories call for expanding the market's role in society, but each prefers that different institutions structure market relations. British conservative economic policies empower the central state to create a monetary framework that weakens intermediate organizations while expanding market relations. American conservative economics feature a fiscal program and deregulations that promote private corporations to lead economic development and structure market relations. Only in foreign policy do both conservatisms evoke similar themes: undivided authority, ministerial or executive branch policy management, the Commons or Congress as arenas solely for general political debate. To achieve these aims, each conservatism casts policies to resist different constraints. British conservative theory fears encroachment on the central state's authority from an exogenous source—the European Commission—and has constructed a position on European integration consistent with its domestic outlook—preserving the central state's undivided authority and expanding market relations. American conserva-

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tive theory fears limitations on the president's autonomy in foreign policy from endogenous sources—Congress, the press, bureaucracies, among others. It has developed a constitutionalism and foreign and defense policies that aim to assure presidential autonomy in foreign policy. AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

American conservative theory's emphasis on communities, social groups, and civil institutions in domestic politics is typical of American political theories; so is its emphasis on instituting a substantive political morality. Both express America's ill-defined class cleavages, diverse religious and ethnic makeup, and scattered centers of economic and political dynamism. These structures require American political ideologies to devise interpretations of pluralism that address social groups, communities, and institutions in civil society and also create a substantive morality that forges a political unity.10 Some analysts suggest that certain features of American civil society— for example, its ill-defined class cleavages, absence of high culture, and diverse ethnic and religious groups—preclude America from developing significant illiberal currents of political thought. Focusing on the persistent liberal theme in American politics, they claim an American exceptionalism where there is neither conservatism nor socialism, only liberalism. Comparative studies, often seeking to explain the absence of socialism in America, have elaborated this idea. Louis Hartz claimed that because America had never experienced feudalism, it never developed a socialist opposition; therefore, the controversies of American history were all among different varieties of liberalism; America was ideologically dull and stable. "Burke," Hartz suggested, "equaled Locke in America."11 Huntington revises Hartz's thesis in the process of attempting to explain conflict in American politics. He suggests that "just as there is an instability that follows from an excess of cleavage, so also there is an instability from an excess of consensus." America's unchallenged liberalism is assumed to be a natural state of affairs. American institutions are then judged against the standards of this liberalism, which periodically produces reform movements that seek to reduce the gap between the ideal and the real. Huntington writes, Cleavage in the United States ... does not take the form of idea versus idea, as in Europe, but rather of idea versus fact. The con-

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flict is between two groups who believe in the same political principles: those who find it is in their interest to change existing institutions immediately so as to make them comply with those principles, and those who accept the validity of the principles, but who perceive existing institutions as being in accord with the principles insofar as this is possible.12 American conservatism, Huntington argues, is liberal realism. These interpretations of American political development overlook historical studies which have found that forms of republicanism also contribute to American political thinking, emphasizing the influence of education, religion, private property, statesmanship, and patriotism in shaping citizenship. They also ignore historical scholarship that has found nativist theories, which brands as un-American political, religious, or cultural beliefs and manners that do not conform with the majority's views.13 These republican and nativist currents of thought are not simply exclusionary, but also help shape the character of America's central political practices and beliefs. For example, the common school movement projected the republican theme of fostering good citizenship, the liberal aim of enhancing individual ability, and the nativist goal of preventing the spread of an alien, "papist" culture. The "100% Americanism" campaign stressed the disintegrative effect of alien ideologies and cultures as represented by socialism and southern and eastern European immigrants. Their exclusion would permit good government that would preserve liberty. Both movements had liberal components but projected other themes as well.14 Indeed, although liberal values have predominated in American political thought, they rarely have existed in isolation from republican and nativist beliefs. American political thought often produces overlapping themes, and republicanism and nativism have provided a communitarianism in which American individualism has been embedded. From the founding through the beginning of the twentieth century the local community was the primary locus of substantive political decision making and unity in America. Throughout this period, the Antifederalists and subsequent dual federalists limited the founders' goal (as most notably expressed in the Federalist Papers) of establishing a direct relation between the national government and the citizenry;15 dual federalism asserted that to preserve liberty and community a configuration of issues, including, among many others, public education, race rela-

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tions, and links between religion and state, should be delegated to state governments and local communities. "The powers of government were divided ... geographically," stated John Calhoun. "One General Government was formed for the whole, to which were delegated all the powers supposed to be necessary to regulate the interests common to all the States, leaving others subject to the separate control of the States, being, from their local and peculiar character, such that they could not be subject to the will of the majority of the whole Union, without the certain hazard of injustice and oppression."16 Dual federalism reached its height of political influence during the 1840s and 1850s when states' rights Democrats occupied the White House. It remained a powerful strand of political thought after the Civil War. As Edward Corwin notes, an alchemy of states' rights theory, racial social Darwinism, and laissezfaire liberalism, all united around the aim of limiting the national government, was the dominant American political outlook from the antebellum period to the early twentieth century.17 Progressive-Liberalism, America's most influential political theory of the twentieth century, also addressed groups and fostered a substantive political unity. Groups and communities provided the context and basis for individual liberty and equality. "Liberty is that secure release and fulfillment of personal potentialities which take place only in rich and manifold association with others: the power to be an individualized self making a distinctive contribution and enjoying in its own way the fruits of association," wrote John Dewey. "Equality denotes the unhampered share which each individual member of the community has in the consequences of associated action."18 The dominant pluralist strand within Progressive-Liberalism viewed the state as a balancer of diverse economic, ethnic, and political entities. Embracing particularism, it intensified parochial allegiances based on ethnic ties and sectoral loyalties, encouraging interested groups to exercise influence over various features of public policy. In America, Dahl and other pluralists stated, "minorities rule." "When I say that a group is heard 'effectively,' " stated Dahl, "I mean that one or more officials ... expect to suffer in some significant way if they do not placate the group, its leaders, or its most vociferous members. To satisfy the group may require one or more of a great variety of actions by the responsive leader: pressure for substantive policies, appointments, graft, respect, expression of the appropriate emotions, or the right combination of reciprocal noises."19 Pluralism influenced the character of American public policies during

• Undivided and Dual Sovereignty m 199 m

the middle decades of the twentieth century. Some Progressive-Liberal reforms focused on the bureaucracies, regulatory powers, and social policies at the state and local government level, strengthening civil and local, public institutions. Equally important, the pluralist outlook dominated the strand of Progressive-Liberalism that treated the national state as an instrument of social reform. This emphasis on the importance of particularistic interests and groups, along with resistance to national public policies by Republicans in Congress and fissures within Progressive-Liberalism's electoral coalitions, obstructed those reformers in Progressive-Liberalism who sought to develop public policies that produced a direct relation between the national state and the citizenry. Instead, Progressive-Liberalism aided in the construction of a complex constellation of policy networks among the national government, state and local governments, and a variety of privately controlled and voluntarily organized groups.20 It was in foreign policy that Progressive-Liberalism made the greatest break from previous American political theories and outlooks, contributing to the expansion of the direct relation between the national state and the citizenry by highlighting the need for the president to create an ideologically mobilized public that would be willing to support the taxes, conscripts, and wars required for an actively engaged foreign policy. During the mid-twentieth century America's substantive political unity became based on the group and national level.21 Unlike Progressive-Liberalism, new American conservative theory does not view the state as a balancer of different particularistic groups and entities. While encouraging the national state to withdraw from domestic politics, it calls on state governments and local communities to effect norms and social policies that express the dominant particularist identity of that locale. Like Progressive-Liberalism, new conservative theory advocates an active foreign policy. However, new conservative theory's foreign and defense policies and separation of powers doctrine demobilize rather than mobilize the public. In short, new American conservative theory shifts the locus of substantive political unity. Progressive-Liberalism championed substantive unity at the group and national level, whereas new conservative theory desires to locate it exclusively at the local level. The local basis of substantive political unity furthers the conservatives' foreign policy aims. A presidency facing obstacles in Congress, bureaucracies, and the media would be unable to establish high politics in foreign policy if there was a nationally mobilized public. New

• 200 • Undivided and Dual Sovereignty •

conservatism's emphasis on an autonomous presidency in foreign policy also distinguishes it from dual federalist theory, as the latter had generally sought to limit presidential autonomy and prerogative in order to reduce the claims that the national state could make on states and local communities.22 American conservative theory has been able to wait until the late twentieth century to begin to advocate high politics in foreign policy because of the military and geopolitical setting in which American democracy emerged. National security was not a major concern; of no other Western nation, including the democracies, could that be said. America had what C. Vann Woodward called "free security."23 It was separated by three bodies of water—the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic oceans—from great powers, and the costly navy that defended and policed maritime passageways was provided by the British. Hence, twentieth-century American democracy has had to learn how to conduct itself now that it is a world power for the first time and its security is threatened both by possible nuclear attack and by an erosion of its interests around the globe. Twentieth-century American foreign policy, primarily led by Progressive-Liberalism, based an active foreign policy on a nationally mobilized public. As public opinion has divided over foreign policy, American conservative theory advocates removing it from effective public debate. Ironically, Straussians, moving toward the position that America is based on a unique type of political philosophy that requires a distinctive conservatism, and neoconservatives, who have rejected European conservatism as outmoded, have both embraced the main principle of European conservatism since the age of Metternich and Castlereagh—the establishment of an autonomous state free to pursue foreign policy.24 A distinctive feature of American conservative theory is its unwillingness to propose establishing this principle publicly. It would disengage the public from foreign policy while mobilizing it around local, domestic issues. THE UNDIVIDED SOVEREIGN

Britain's isolation from continental Europe likewise allowed the national state to limit national mobilizations. However, it did not have "free security." Contributing to a balance of power on the Continent was necessary to ensure Britain's insulation from continental conflicts, while

• Undivided and Dual Sovereignty • 201 •

colonial questions also required an active foreign policy. For example, safeguarding the route to India involved it in the Middle East for a century before the issue of oil arose and in various wars with Russia in western and central Asia. Similarly, British political thought and practice have not centered on the aims of groups. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the landed aristocracy functioned as both political decision makers in the countryside and as members of the national elite in Parliament. The tension between Court and Country that helped define England's politics during this period revolved mainly around the control of institutions that embodied the nation—Parliament, the military, the Church, and the Bank of England.25 Although theorists and comparativists such as Kenneth Dyson and J. P. Nettl correctly distinguish Anglo-American and continental political thinking on the basis of the former's hesitancy to call for a mobilizing national state, they overlook an important distinction between British and American political theory. British political theory consistently locates sovereignty in the national state; American political theory consistently divides political sovereignty.26 For example, as conflicting visions over the locus of political sovereignty animated American political debate during the founding, the British were debating the form, rather than the principle, of parliamentary sovereignty. Indeed, as Americans in the 1770s were initiating debates that located portions of sovereignty outside the national state, Blackstone was reconfirming the principle of parliamentary sovereignty in the United Kingdom: It [Parliament] hath sovereign and uncontrollable authority in making, confirming, enlarging, restraining, abrogating, repealing, and expounding of laws, concerning matters of all possible denominations, ecclesiastical, or temporal, civil, military, maritime, or criminal: this being the place where that absolute despotic power, which must in all governments reside somewhere, is entrusted. ... It can, in short, do everything that is not naturally impossible True it is, that what the parliament doth, no authority on earth can do.27 Late Victorian conservative theory was a response to the decline of the landed aristocracy as both a local and national elite. This ebbing of influence, with the electoral reforms of 1867 and 1882-85, the municipal reform movement, and the beginning of mass political parties, spurred conservative theorists to move to the forefront of their agenda

m 202 * Undivided and Dual Sovereignty •

the establishment of an autonomous elite within the central state. Indeed, as Walter Bagehot noted in the Introduction to the second edition of The English Constitution, the character of Parliament changed during this period: "Our statesmen have the greatest opportunity they have had for many years, and likewise the greatest duty. They have to guide the new voters in the exercise of the franchise: to guide them quietly, and without saying what they are doing, but still to guide them."28 High politics had moved from the Parliament to the cabinet. Ministers largely resolved issues of political substance on their own. The Conservative party founded constituency organizations but retained the parliamentary party's autonomy. At the same time, conservative theory attempted to adapt to intermediary organizations—local education authorities and local governments, among others. However, conservative theory recommended that these organizations be granted a limited autonomy. From the conservatives' perspective, these institutions had the freedom to pursue low politics—administration of social services—while remaining within the restrictions set by Parliament. This overarching political structure for Britain was supported by most social democratic intellectuals and Labour leaders as well. While supporting the trade union movement, they advocated its incorporation into the Labour party. The Webbs, Laski, Attlee, and others insisted on the parliamentary party of Labour preserving its autonomy in order to facilitate expertise in managing the economy. As Grossman's diary reveals, the idea of public participation was an alien concept to the leaders of the Labour party: I'm afraid very few members of the Cabinet believe in participation. ... They believe in getting power, making decisions and getting people to agree with the decisions after they've been made. They have the routine politician's attitude to public opinion that the politician must take decisions and then get the public to acquiesce. The notion of getting the extra burden of a live and articulate public opinion able to criticize actively and make its own choices is something which most socialist politicians keenly resent.29 Although an R. H. Tawney and a G. D. H. Cole wanted to encourage a new consciousness among citizens or to devolve power to industrial enterprises, they were unable to establish a significant alternative school of thought within British social democracy. As Harold Laski wrote, "I,

• Undivided and Dual Sovereignty • 203 •

at least, would rather have been governed by Lord Shaftesbury than by Mr. Cobden, by the gentlemen of England than by the Gradgrinds and Bounderbys of Cokestown."30 The devolutionary policies of the 1960s and 1970s promulgated by Conservative and Labour governments broke the traditional pattern in British politics of segregating the issues between the national state and other institutions and organizations in society. Recent studies have suggested why neither state nor society was amenable to this shift in strategy: among others, decentralized unions and industries; autonomy of financial institutions; weak policy networks between public and private institutions.31 As the program to integrate decision making faltered, Conservative and Labour governments attempted to restore the state's authority by making U-turns in policies, which often initiated labor unrest and public discontent. After each general election, the new party government would undergo a similar dynamic—new policies, U-turns, public unrest.32 It was in this context that influential British conservative intellectuals began to redevelop their constitutional and economic inheritance. The central state institutions, many argued, must regain the necessary autonomy to act independently, reestablish the power of ultimate authority, and gain acceptance again as the rightful center of political action. Others evoked themes of garantiste constitutionalism. The market, all agreed, must be reintroduced as the central organizing mechanism of the economy. This would enhance both liberty and order by reestablishing spontaneous discipline through the price system. Most important, both tendencies believed that owing to the devolutionary policies of the previous decades, as well as to a new emphasis on extraparliamentary activity by sections of the Labour party, it would be necessary to restrict, reconstitute, or eliminate many intermediary institutions. Conservative theory stopped promoting a devolutionary strategy, but it did not return to a division of labor between the central state and other organizations in society. Aiming to reestablish the central state's undivided authority, conservative theory produced a new mixture of Tory ideas of authority and economic liberalism. As American conservative theory's emphasis on establishing the authority of state and local governments elicits themes of older outlooks in American political thought, British conservative theory's idea of authority has a long tradition in British political theory. It is based on the belief that a society will disintegrate if the state is not granted the au-

• 204 • Undivided and Dual Sovereignty •

thority to maintain interaction and coordinated activity. It was comprehensively expressed by Thomas Hobbes and reinforced by Blackstone, Austin, and Dicey. British conservatism has adopted this approach to political authority in different forms. Burke, Coleridge, and Disraeli accentuated the role of the landed aristocracy and the established Church in implanting authoritative political and civil relations in the countryside and in serving as links between Parliament and society. Late Victorian conservatives established ministerial resolution of substantive issues combined with a focus on provincial affairs for local authorities and organizations. The distinctive feature of the contemporary conservative idea of authority is the emphasis on the separate power of the legislative office of the central state and the concomitant deemphasis on the authority of intermediary institutions in society. Hence, although reaffirming the traditional British idea of political authority, new British conservatism breaks with previous conservatisms. It now stands opposed to many of the intermediate institutions in society. Unlike earlier conservatisms, it cannot claim that conservatism grows organically out of the specific genius of British traditions, properly understood. It has required breaking the British political pattern of maintaining a division of labor between the central state and other institutions in society. Finally, British conservative theory's spurning of a territorial division of authority marks the fundamental distinction between it and American conservative political thought. As American conservative theory has generated a dual polity framework that devolves political authority across territories while establishing presidential autonomy in foreign policy, British conservatives seek the undivided authority of the legislative office of the central state.

Notes

Chapter One. The Redefinition of British Conservatism 1. Klaus Epstein, "Three Types of Conservatism," in Essays in Theory and History, ed. Melvin Richter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 112. 2. Throughout this study conservative with a small c refers to thinkers and writers; conservative with a capital C refers to the party. Among the helpful scholarly interpretations of British conservative political theory are W. H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, vol. 2, The Ideological Heritag. (New York: Methuen, 1983), 189-348; Noel O'Sullivan, Conservatism (London: Dent, 1976), 82-118; Robert Eccleshall, "English Conservatism as Ideology," Political Studies 25, no. 1 (March 1977): 62-83; Philip Norton and Arthur Aughey, Conservatives and Conservatism (London: Temple Smith, 1981). 3. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: Penguin, 1981), 182. 4. Michael Oakeshott, On History and Other Essays (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 33, 106. New conservative historians have contributed to recent revisionist studies that criticize the idea of English history as expressing a progressive, teleological pattern of expanding liberties. Rather, these historians narrate the short-term factors—the role of chance and accident, shortterm decision making, and day-to-day maneuvering—that contribute to the changes of the past. Representative examples are J. C. D. Clark, English Society, 1688-1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), and Revolution and Rebellion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); 205

• 206 • Notes to Pages 2-5 •

5. 6. 7.

8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

Michael Bentley and John Stevenson, eds., High and Low Politics in Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). For assessments of this new history, see Lawrence Stone, "The Revival of Narrative: Reflections on a New Old History," Past and Present, no. 85 (November 1979): 3-22; Derek Hirst, "Revisionism Revised: The Place of Principle," Past and Present, no. 92 (August 1981): 79-99. Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil (London: Longmans, 1844), 340. Samuel T. Coleridge, The Constitution of Church and State (Hurst: Chance, 1853), 195. Derek Urwin, "Territorial Structures and Political Development in the United Kingdom," in The Politics of Territorial Identity, ed. Stein Rokkan and Derek Urwin (London: Sage, 1982), 62. For an interesting interpretation of the Conservative party's use of a political strategy revolving around the thick society, see Jim Bulpitt, Territory and Power in the United Kingdom (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983). Henry Maine, Popular Government (Indianapolis: Liberty, 1990), 123. Ibid., 126. Also see W. H. Mallock, "Conservatism," National Review 11 (May 1888). Walter Bagehot provides an excellent discussion of the changes in the functioning of Parliament after the electoral reform of 1867 in Bagehot, "Introduction to the Second Edition," in The English Constitution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966), 267-310. Also see A. H. Birch, Representative and Responsible Government (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1964). Wolfgang Streek and Philippe Schmitter, "Community, Market, State—and Associations? The Prospective Contribution of Interest Governance to Social Order," in Private Interest Government, ed. Streek and Schmitter (New York: Sage, 1985), 17. A. V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, 10th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1959), 94. Ibid., 171-72. For interesting analyses on how the Conservative party adapted to new intermediate organizations, see Peter Marsh, The Discipline of Popular Government (Sussex: Harvester, 1978); Mary Langan and Bill Schwarz, eds., Crises in the British State (London: Hutchinson, 1985); Bulpitt, Territory and Power in the United Kingdom; Neal Blewett, "The Franchise in the United Kingdom, 1885-1918," Past and Present, no. 32 (December 1965): 27-65. Arthur Aughey et al., The Conservative Political Tradition in Britain and the United States (London: Pinter, 1992), 76. Also see Benjamin Barber, "Conserving Politics: Michael Oakeshott and Political Theory," Government and Opposition 11, no. 2 (Spring 1976): 446-63. For Oakeshott's statement of support for this new thinking among British conservative theorists, see Michael Oakeshott, "Conservatism: Foundation and Fallacies,"

• Notes to Pages 5-10 • 207 • Daily Telegraph (June 29, 1978), 18. While Oakeshott continually sought to enter into dialogue with Hobbes, Hegel, and the most prestigious political philosophers, the subject of British politics remained a keen interest throughout his life. To what extent Hayek's work has been influenced by and directed toward British politics is a subject of discussion among analysts of British political thought. Hayek taught at the London School of Economics from 1931 to 1950, but before that he taught in Vienna, and afterwards in Chicago and Freiburg. In Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), vi, he addressed the influence of Britain on his thinking. "Perhaps the reader should also know that, though I am writing in the United States and have been a resident of this country for nearly ten years, I cannot claim to write as an American. My mind has been shaped by a youth spent in my native Austria and by two decades of middle life spent in Great Britain, of which country I have become and remain a citizen." For a discussion of Oakeshott's and Hayek's specific contributions to British political thought, see Rodney Barker, Political Ideas in Modern Britain (London: Methuen, 1978), 134-41,190-203; Trevor Smith, The Politics of the Corporate Economy (London: Robertson, 1979), 53-90; Greenleaf, British Political Tradition, 2:309-46. 14. Harold Macmillan, The Middle Way (London: Macmillan, 1938); Robert Boothby, The New Economy (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1943); R. A. Butler, The New Conservatism (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1946). The best analysis of British conservatism's approach to the middle way and to the general political characteristics of this period is Samuel Beer, British Politics in the Collectivist Age, 2d ed. (New York: Knopf, 1969). 15. See Samuel Brittan, The Treasury under the Tories (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1964), for an excellent comprehensive analysis of conservative theory and practice with regard to Keynesianism from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. 16. Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), 2.

17. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, 237. Also see Hayek, The Counter Revolution in Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1952). 18. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 401.

19. F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studies, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1959), 193. 20. Michael Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933), 328. 21. Ibid., 347. 22. Most of these essays can be found in Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics (London: Methuen, 1960).

23. Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 105.

• 208 m Notes to Pages 10-14 m 24. Ibid., 99-100. Also see Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson, 1949), chap. 2; Michael Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958). 25. Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 23. 26. Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 71-72. 27. Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 189. 28. Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 43. 29. Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 107-08. 30. Oakeshott, "The Political Economy of Freedom," in Rationalism in Politics. 31. Michael Oakeshott, "On Political Education," in Rationalism in Politics, 132. 32. Representative examples are J. W. N. Watkins, "Political Tradition and Political Theory," The Philosophical Quaterly 2, no. 9 (October 1952): 333-37; J. C. Rees, "Professor Oakeshott on Political Education," Mind 62, no. 245 (January 1953): 68-74; Bernard Crick, "The World of Michael Oakeshott," Encounter 20, no. 6 (May 1963): 65-74. For a defense of Oakeshott against these and other criticisms during this period, see Paul Franco, The Political Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 134-40. 33. See Smith, The Politics of the Corporate Economy, 95-194. 34. The figures are from Social Policy and Public Expenditure 1976: Inflation and Priorities (London: Centre for Studies in Social Policy, 1976). 35. Samuel Brittan, The Economic Contradictions of Democracy (London: Temple Smith, 1978), 10. Also see Anthony King, "Overload: Problems of Governing in the 1970s," Political Studies 23, nos. 2-3 (June-September 1975): 284-96; Richard Rose and Guy Peters, Can Government Go Bankrupt? (New York: Basic, 1978); Peter Jay, Employment, Inflation and Politics (London: Institute for Economic Affairs, 1978); Colin Crouch, The Politics of Industrial Relations (London: Fontana, 1979); William Gwynn and Richard Rose, eds., Britain: Progress and Decline (London: Macmillan 1980). 36. Robert Blake, "A Changed Climate," in The Conservative Opportunity, ed. Robert Blake and Christopher Patten (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 2. 37. Among Oakeshott's works from the 1970s and 1980s are On Human Conduct (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975); On History and Other Essays (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983); "A Place of Learning," The Colorado College Studies, no. 12 (January 1975); "The Vocabulary of a Modern European State," pts. 1 and 2, Political Studies 23, nos. 2-3 (June-September 1975): 197-219, and no. 4 (December 1975): 409-14; "On Misunderstanding Human Conduct," Political Theory 4, no. 3 (August 1976): 353-66. For a collection of Oakeshott's essays on education spanning from

• Notes to Pages 14-17 m 209 •

38.

39.

40. 41. 42. 43.

the 1940s to the 1970s, see Timothy Fuller, ed., On Liberal Learning (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). For the most comprehensive exposition and analysis of Oakeshott's political philosophy, see Franco, The Political Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott. For other interesting interpretations of Oakeshott, see "A Symposium on Michael Oakeshott," Political Theory 4, no. 3 (August 1976): 259-366; Kenneth Minogue, "Oakeshott and the Idea of Freedom," Quadrant 19, no. 7 (Fall 1975): 77-83; Bhikhu Parekh, "The Political Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott," British Journal of Political Science 9, no. 4 (Winter 1979): 481-506; Charles Covell, The Redefinition of Conservatism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), chap. 4. Among Hayek's recent works are The Fatal Conceit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); the three-volume study Law, Legislation and Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973,1975,1977); New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). Hayek's thinking has been the object of more comprehensive studies than Oakeshott's. Representative examples are Norman Barry, Hayek's Social and Economic Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1979); Eamonn Butler, Hayek (New York: Universe, 1983); John Gra. Hayek On Liberty (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984). Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 11. In a conversation with Bhikhu Parekh, Oakeshott stated that he now considered the outcomes of his investigations "theory," rather than "philosophy." See Parekh, "The Political Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott," 488. Also see Tariq Modood, "Oakeshott's Conceptions of Philosophy," History of Political Thought 1, no. 2 (Summer 1980): 315-22. Hanna Pitkin argues that Oakeshott has still not resolved the tension in his thinking between his philosophy of "recognizing, identifying, and classifying what we see" and his desire to put forward a substantive political doctrine. See Hanna Pitkin, "Inhuman Conduct and Unpolitical Theory," Political Theory 4, no. 3 (August 1976): 301-20. Oakeshott, "The Tower of Babel," On History and Other Essays, 176. Oakeshott's interpretation of "The Tower of Babel" in On History can be read as an outcome of the problematic that he posed in "The Tower of Babel" in Rationalism in Politics—the oncoming breakdown of the patterns or traditions of civil practices and the development of moral incoherence. Oakeshott, "The Rule of Law," in On History and Other Essays, 135. Ibid., 138. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, chap. 2. Oakeshott, "On Misunderstanding Human Conduct," 366. From this perspective of seeing both continuities and difference between earlier and olde Oakeshott I find myself between the interpretations of Charles Covell and Paul Franco. Covell argues that Oakeshott's On Human Conduct marks a fundamental break from a Hegelian emphasis on history and Sittlichkeit as

• 210 • Notes to Pages 17-19 m

44.

45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50.

51. 52.

the basis to order and liberty to a Hobbesian liberalism that places sole emphasis on the rule-making of the state. Franco argues that Oakeshott's On Human Conduct sucessfully reconciles Hegel and Hobbes and that Oakeshott's new emphasis on the character of the state's rules required for authority and liberty complement his previous writings on the morality and patterns established by independent civil practices. I believe that Franco expresses Oakeshott's aim, but that this goal is based on Oakeshott now being far more reticent about the ability of society to generate selfsustaining, coherent patterns or norms that are both the basis to right and wrong behavior and the pursuit of private, substantive goals; hence, the far greater emphasis in Oakeshott's last works on the state providing what society is no longer capable of producing. See Charles Covell, The Redefinition of Conservatism, 93-143; Paul Franco, The Political Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott, 179-99. Steven Lukes, "Political Ritual and Social Integration," in Essays in Social Theory, ed. Lukes (London: Macmillan, 1977), 52-73; also see Ron Bocock, Ritual in Industrial Society (London: Methuen, 1974). Edward Shils, Tradition (New York: Faber, 1981). Burke, Reflections on the Revolution, 106. For Burke's position on preserving while reforming, see Reflections on the Revolution, 105-06. For analyses that continue to identify Oakeshott as a follower of Burke, see Hanna Pitkin, "Inhuman Conduct and Unpolitical Theory," and David Spitz, "A Rationalist malgre /MI," Political Theory 4, no. 3 (August 1976): 301-20, 335-52. For critiques of the Burkean analysis of Oakeshott, see Jeremy Rayner, "The Legend of Oakeshott's Conservatism: Skeptical Philosophy and Limited Politics," Canadian Journal of Political Science 18, no. 2 (June 1985): 313-38; Franco, The Political Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott, 139-40. Oakeshott also has sought to distinguish himself from Burke by substituting the word "practice" for "tradition" in On Human Conduct and asking his readers to read this idea of practice back into what he had written earlier. See Oakeshott, "On Misunderstanding Human Conduct," 364. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 116. Ibid., 120-21. Ibid., 128. For criticisms of Oakeshott's view of the state's ability to craft laws that do not pursue substantive goals, see Judith Shklar, "Purposes and Procedures," Times Literary Supplement (September 12,1975), 1018; Rich ard Flathman, The Practice of Political Authority (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); John Liddington, "Oakeshott: Freedom in a Modern European State," Conceptions of Liberty in Political Philosophy, ed. Z. Pelczynski and John Gray (London: Altone, 1984), 289-320. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 158. Ibid., 316.

• Notes to Pages 19-21 • 211 • 53. Oakeshott, "The Vocabulary of a Modern European State," 332. The term "pure doctrine" of separation of powers is taken from M. J. C. Vile, Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), 9. For Oakeshott's earlier views on constitutionalism as the diffusion of power, see "The Political Economy of Freedom," in Rationalism in Politics, 37-58. For Oakeshott's new interpretation of separation of powers, see On Human Conduct, 124-47; "Vocabulary of a Modern European State," pt. 2, 198214; "Rule of Law," 136-48. 54. Oakeshott, "Rule of Law," 161. 55. For discussions on how the earliest views of the separation of powers doctrine focused on establishing the legislative office as a separate lawmaking power in society, see F. H. Hinsley, Sovereignty, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 120-44; Vile, Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers, 21-52; Harvey Mansfield, Jr., America's Constitutional Soul (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 116-18. 56. Oakeshott, "Rule of Law," 140,138. Dicey makes a similar argument about constitutionalism in Law of the Constitution, 23. 57. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 174. 58. Oakeshott, "The Rule of Law," 160. 59. For an excellent discussion of this point, see Richard Friedman, "Oakeshott on the Authority of Law," Ratio Juris 2, no. 1 (March 1989): 27-40. Oake shott's placement of the legislative office above the rule of law often is overlooked by analysts. For example, Noel Reynolds, while noting that Oakeshott identifies himself with writers not normally associated with the "classical" rule of law position—Bodin, Hobbes, Hegel—states that Oakeshott has made key contributions to the development of the theory of the rule of law. However, Reynolds argues that the idea of the rule of law centers on a premise that Oakeshott rejects: "The phrase 'the rule of law* has traditionally been used to refer specifically to societies where law... serves the same neutral functions as the laws of nature, informing individuals how they should conduct themselves in the pursuit of privately chosen objectives. In such societies, the laws rule even the officers of government. That seems to be the crucial test." See Noel Reynolds, "Grounding the Rule of Law," Ratio Juris 2, no. 1 (March 1989): 7. The tension in Oakeshott's theory between authority and liberty will be further explored in chapter 3. 60. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 154nl. 61. Oakeshott, "Rule of Law," 148-64. 62. Hayek, Fatal Conceit, 50. Compare Hayek's old interpretation of rationalism in "Intellectuals and Socialism," University of Chicago Law Review (Spring 1949): 417-33, and The Counter-Revolution of Science with the interpretation in "The Epilogue," in Law, Legislation and Liberty, 3:15376, and Fatal Conceit, 48-65.

m 212 m Notes to Pages 22-26 • 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

70.

71. 72.

73.

74. 75. 76. 77.

Hayek, Fatal Conceit, 18. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, 3:103. Ibid., 102. Ibid., 105-27. Ibid., 129. Hayek, Unemployment and the Unions (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1980). Paul Franco notes that there is some tension between the thinking of Oakeshott and Hayek around their interpretations of liberty. In identifying the many similarities between each theorist's idea of liberty, Franco notes that there are currents of utilitarianism and economism found in Hayek's views that cannot be found in Oakeshott's. Although I believe that Franco is making an important distinction between Oakeshott and Hayek, this difference between each theorist is small when compared to their major differences with regard to constitutional theory and legal positivism. See Franco, The Political Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott, 220-22. British constitutionalism has regenerated as an area of scholarly focus during the 1980s and early 1990s. For a survey of this development, see John Dearlove, "Bringing the Constitution Back In: Political Science and the State," Political Studies 37, no. 3 (September 1989): 521-39. Hinsley, Sovereignty, 157. Also see George Mosse, The Struggle for Sovereignty in England (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1950). Giovanni Sartori, "Constitutionalism: A Preliminary Discussion," American Political Science Review 56, no. 4 (December 1962), 855. For a discussion on the different views of English and continental constitutionalists on sovereignty after Montesquieu's interpretation of the English constitution, see Hinsley, Sovereignty, 152-57. Representative examples are Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol. 3; Lord Hailsham, The Dilemma of Democracy (London: Macmillan, 1978); Leslie Scarman, English Law—The New Dimension (London: Temple Smith, 1974); Paul Johnson, The Recovery of Freedom (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980); Nevil Johnson, In Search of the Constitution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978); William Waldegrave, The Binding of Leviathan (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978). It should be noted that Hayek did not include a Bill of Rights in his proposal. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, 3:123. Ibid., 102. Nevil Johnson, "Constitutional Reform: Some Dilemmas for a Conservative Philosophy," Conservative Party Politics, ed. C. Layton-Henry (London: Macmillan, 1980), 135. Hailsham, Preface to Campbell, ed., Do We Need a Bill of Rights? (London: Macmillan, 1980), 4.

• Notes to Pages 26-32 • 213 • 78. Johnson, "Constitutional Reform," 153. 79. Sir Keith Joseph, Freedom and the Law (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1975), no. 569. 80. Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism (London: Macmillan), 164. 81. Roger Scruton, Untimely Tracts (London: Macmillan, 1987), 104. 82. Oakeshott, "Rule of Law," 143-44. 83. Ferdinand Mount, "The Collapse of Authority," The Spectator (May 12, 1987). 84. Sartori, "Constitutionalism," 861; also see Karl Lowenstein, Political Power and the Governmental Process (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957). 85. J. P. Nettl, "The State as a Conceptual Variable," World Politics 20, no. 4 (July 1968): 559-92; Kenneth Dyson, The State Tradition in Modern Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980). 86. See Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Penguin, 1977), 91-141; Giovanni Sartori, The Theory of Democracy Revisited (Chatham: Chatham House, 1987), 1:185-90. 87. See Juan Linz, "Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes," in Handbook of Political Science, ed. Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson W. Polsby (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1975), 3:175-411. 88. For the debate on authoritarian populism, see Bob Jessop et al., Thatcherism (Cambridge: Polity, 1988). 89. David Marquand, The Unprincipled Society (London: Dent, 1988); also see the symposium "Is Britain Becoming Authoritarian?" Political Quarterly 60, no. 1 (October-December 1989), which is devoted to analyzing the "authoritarianism" of new conservatism's theory and practice. 90. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London: Collins, 1962). 91. Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Hitler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); W. H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, vol.1, The Rise of Collectivism (London: Methuen, 1983), 47-77; Max Beloff, Wars and Welfare (London: Arnold, 1984); Correlli Barnett, The Audit of War: The Illusion and Reality of Britain as a Great Nation (London: Macmillan, 1986). 92. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 272-73. 93. See John Baylis, ed., Alternative Approaches to British Defense Policy (London: Macmillan, 1980). 94. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 273. The foreign policy views of British new conservative theory will be discussed in more depth in chapter 5. 95. Relevant works on this development within the Labour party are James Gyford, The Politics of Local Socialism (London: Allen and Unwin, 1985); Barry Jones and Michael Keating, Labour and the British State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).

m 214 m Notes to Pages 32-34 • 96. Ferdinand Mount, "The Last Sanctuaries for Diehards of the Left," Daily Telegraph (March 20, 1987). 97. Bernard Letwin and Shirley Letwin, Every Adult a Share-Owner (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1986); John Redwood, Equity for Everyman (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1986); Nicholas Goodison, Shares for All (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1986). For an analysis of the election of 1992 that regrets Labour's insufficient understanding of the political consequences of these changes in civil society, see Michael Ignatieff, "Suburbia's Revenge," The New Republic (May 4, 1993), 10-11. 98. Peregrine Worthstone, "Too Much Freedom," in Conservative Essays, ed. Maurice Cowling (London: Cassell, 1987), 154. Also see Andrew Jones and Michael Bentley, "Salisbury and Baldwin," and T. E. Utley, "The Significance of Mrs. Thatcher," in Conservative Essays, 25-40,41-51; Elie Kedourie, The Crossman Confessions and Other Essays in Politics, History and Religion (London: Mansell, 1984), 69-84. 99. For discussions on these features of the Thatcher governments, see S. E. Finer, "Thatcherism and British Political History," in Thatcherism, ed. Kenneth Minogue and Michael Biddis (London: Macmillan, 1988), 12740; Joel Krieger, Reagan, Thatcher and the Politics of Decline (Cambridge: Polity, 1986); Andrew Gamble, The Free Economy and the Strong State: The Politics of Thatcherism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1988); R. A. W. Rhodes, "Territorial Politics in the United Kingdom," in Tensions in the Territorial Politics of Western Europe, ed. R. A. W. Rhodes and Vincent Wright (London: Cass, 1987), 21-51; Desmond King, "Political Centralization and State Interests in Britain," Comparative Political Studies 21, no. 4 (January 1989): 467-94. 100. "Friedrich Hayek on the Crisis," Encounter 55, no. 5 (May 1983): 5457. 101. Scruton, Untimely Tracts, 156. 102. Lord Hailsham, "Democracies Divergent," The Times (June 25,1987), 18. After the second consecutive electoral victory by the Conservative party in 1983 the center of gravity of debate for constitutional reform shifted from the conservatives to intellectuals and practitioners associated with the (now-named) Liberal Democratic party and the moderate wing of the Labour party. For this and other developments with regard to constitutional debate in Britain, see Trevor Smith, "The British Constitution: Unwritten and Unravelled," in The Political Science of British Politics, ed. Jack Hayward and Philip Norton (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1986), 65-84. 103. John Gray, "The Road to Serfdom: Forty Years On," Hayek's 'Serfdom' Revisited, Hobart Paperback, no. 18 (London: Institute for Economic Affairs, 1984), 42. 104. John Gray, Liberalisms: Essays in Political Philosophy (New York: Rou-

• Notes to Pages 34-38 • 215 • tledge, 1989), 239-66. Gray's shift in thinking will be examined more closely in chapter 4. 105. T. E. Utley, "Coalition? Not This One," The Times (May 25, 1987), 12.

Chapter Two. The Redefinition of American Conservatism 1. For an analysis of America's postwar conservative intellectual landscape, see George Nash, Conservative Intellectual Movement in America (New York: Basic Books, 1976). For a discussion of whether America has had important illiberal political theories, see chapter 6. 2. The most notable exception is Novak, who was a socialist during the 1960s. Daniel Bell's role in both contributing to and breaking away from new conservatism will be noted in this chapter. It also should be noted that Irving Kristol has had intellectual links with Straussianism. 3. Among the most important works of Leo Strauss are Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1952); Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953); Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1958); The City and the Man (Chicago: McNally, 1964); On Tyranny (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983); What Is Political Philosophy? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). For interesting expositions and analyses of Strauss, see Victor Gourevitch, "Philosophy and Politics: I" and "Philosophy and Politics: II," Review of Metaphysics, no. 21 (May 1968): 59-80, and no. 22 (September 1968): 281-325; Stanley Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 107-38; Nathan Tarcov, "Philosophy amd History: Tradition and Interpretation in the Work of Leo Strauss," Polity 16, no. 1 (Fall 1983): 5-27; Shadia Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (London: Macmillan, 1988); Fred Dallmayr, "Politics against Philosophy—Strauss and Drury," Political Theory 15, no. 3 (August 1987): 326-37; Robert Pippin, "The Modern World of Leo Strauss," Political Theory 20, no. 3 (August 1992): 448-72. For a debate within Straussianism on Strauss's intellectual forebears and premises, see Harry Jaffa, "The Legacy of Leo Strauss," Claremont Review 3, no. 3 (Fall 1984): 14-21; Thomas Pangle, "The Platonism of Leo Strauss," Claremont Review 4, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 18-20. For discussions on the influence of Strauss on contemporary conservative theory, see Dinesh D'Souza, "The Legacy of Leo Strauss," Policy Review, no. 40 (Spring 1987): 36-43; M. F. Burnyeat, "Sphinx Without a Secret," New York Review of Books 32, no. 9 (May 30, 1985): 30-36. 4. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 124. 5. Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 155, 157; Natural Right and

m 216 m Notes to Pages 38-39 •

6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

History, 74-75. Strauss's statement on the relations between the philosopher and the cave is similar to the comment made by Nietzsche's hermit in Beyond Good and Evil: "Indeed, he [the hermit] will doubt whether a philosopher could possibly have 'ultimate and real' opinions, whether beyond every one of his caves there is not, must not be, another deeper cave—a more comprehensive, stranger, richer world beyond the surface, an abysmally deep ground behind every ground under every attempt to furnish 'grounds.' " See Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Vintage, 1989), sec. 289, p. 229. Strauss's idea of the philosopher's natural cave also is similar to the view of Nietzsche's Zarathustra in the "Prologue" of Thus Spoke Zarathustra in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin, 1989), 12122. Also see Pippin, "The Modern World of Leo Strauss," 454-58; Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics, 110-11. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 141-57. Ibid., 151. Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 266. Also see Strauss, The City and Man, 50-62, and Persecution and the Art of Writing, 7-21. Strauss's view on the distinction between esoteric and exoteric knowledge has been influenced by Alfarabi's teachings and interpretation of Plato. "The wise Plato," stated Alfarabi, "did not feel free to reveal and uncover the sciences for all men. Therefore he followed the practice of using symbols, riddles, obscurity, and difficulty, so that science would not fall into the hands of those who do not deserve it and be deformed, or into the hands of one who does not know its worth or who uses it improperly. In this he was right." See Alfarabi, Plato's Laws, trans. Mushin Mahdi, in Medieval Political Philosophy, ed. Mushin Mahdi and Ralph Lerner (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1963), 84-85. For Strauss's views on Alfarabi's interpretation of Plato, see Leo Strauss, "Farabi's Plato," in Essays in Medieval Jewish and Islamic Philosophy, ed. Arthur Hyman (New York: KTAV Publishing House, 1977). For another view of the distinction between esoteric and exoteric knowledge, see Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1989), sect. 30, pp. 42-43. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, sect. 39, p. 49. Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 85. Strauss, The City and Man, 54. Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy?, 32. Also see Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics, 137. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 141. Strauss, On Tyranny, 220. Also see Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy?, 93-94.

• Notes to Pages 40-42 m 217 m 15. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 153; also see Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 99. 16. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life, trans. Peter Preuss (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980), 14. 17. Ibid., 16. 18. See Leo Strauss, "Liberal Education and Responsibility," in Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modem, 9-25. Also see Rosen's discussion of Strauss as being "almost a Nietzschean," Hermeneutics as Politics, 126. For an assessment of Strauss's success at constructing an intellectual aristocracy, see Lewis Coser, Refugee Scholars in America: Their Impact and Their Experiences (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 202-07. 19. Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy?, 27. Stanley Rosen doubts that Strauss believed this statement and argues it was Strauss's attempt to create a salutary myth of natural right among superficial readers. Strauss also could be saying, however, that our understanding of the meanings we give to existence are filtered and hidden by past meanings given to existence. The ancients as founders may have been natural in that they were not thinking in the context of a truth that influenced their view of truth; they were not necessarily right. See Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics, 127-33. Also see Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquirre and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper, 1962), 46-49, 55-58. 20. Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 14. For other discussions of Strauss's use of his history of political philosophy as a vehicle for political commentary, see John Gunnell, "The Myth of the Tradition," American Political Science Review 72 (March 1978): 122-34 (hereafter APSR); Deborah Baumgold, "Political Commentary on the History of Political Theory," APSR 75 (December 1981): 928-40; Tarcov, "Philosophy and History: Tradition and Interpretation in the Work of Leo Strauss." 21. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 54, p. 67; Plato, The Republic, in The Republic and Other Works, trans, and ed. B. Jowett (New York: Doubleday, 1989), bk. 8; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men, in The Political Writings, trans. Donald Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), 77-81. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, in Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert Tucker (New York: Norton, 1978), 473-83; Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin, 1977), 41-90. Robert Pippin has recently constructed a similar history around the theme of autonomy, although Pippin, unlike the above-noted authors and Strauss, neither identifies an oncoming political problematic, which the other histories project, nor asserts that deterioration is endemic to the idea of autonomy. See Robert Pippin, Modernism as a Philosophical Problem: On the Dissatisfactions of European High Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991). 22. Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 295.

• 218 u Notes to Pages 42-44 • 23. For a discussion of the poetic idea of immortality, see Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 7-21. Strauss's analysis that ancient political philosophy reconciled philosophy and poetry differs from Arendt's view that the ancients' vita contemplativa ultimately undermined vita activa. In one of the more controversial aspects of his interpretation of Plato's and Xenophon's dialogues, Strauss puts forward that they address the problematics raised by Aristophanes in The Clouds and The Wasps: the dialogues recognize that philosophers must be politically prudent and avoid undermining the laws and moralities that are necessary for a political society; they express an appreciation for the "citizens" and the "gentlemen," men who dedicate themselves to the defense and prosperity of a political society. See Leo Strauss, On the City and the Man and "On Plato's Apology of Socrates and Crito" in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy. For other discussions on ancient political philosophy's relations with poetry, see Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1966); Hans-Georg Gadamer, Dialogue and Dialectic, trans. Christopher Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 39-72; F. M. Cornford, The Unwritten Philosophy and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 47-67; Stanley Rosen, The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry (New York: Routledge, 1988). For a discussion of Arendt's and Strauss's contrasting views, see Ronald Beiner, "Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss—The Uncommenced Dialogue," Political Theory 18, no. 2 (May 1990): 238-54. 24. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 106. 25. Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 258-59. 26. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 158. 27. Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 264-65. 28. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 153-63; Thoughts on Machiavelli, 25565. 29. Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 255. Note how on page 258 Strauss suggests that Plato agrees with Machiavelli and disagrees with Aristotle that the political virtues required of leaders of a regime are not moral virtues: "In order to bring to light the nature of justice, Plato wrote the Republic in which he demanded among other things that the guardians of the city be savage toward strangers. Aristotle, the classic exponent of moral virtue, i.e., of the highest kind of that virtue which is not knowledge, reproves Plato for having made that demand: one ought to be gentle toward everyone, one ought not to be savage toward anyone except toward those who act unjustly. Aristotle assumes that it is always possible and safe to distinguish between foreigners and unjust enemies Cruelty toward strangers cannot be avoided by the best of citizens as citizens. Justice, which is the habit of not taking away what belongs to others while

• Notes to Pages 44-50 • 219 •

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41.

42. 43.

44. 45. 46.

47.

48.

49.

defending what belongs to oneself, rests on the firm ground of the selfishness of society." Ibid., 255. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 133-34. Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 281. Ibid., 282. Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern, 85. Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, 293. Ibid., 10. Ibid., 296. Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy?, 48. Leo Strauss, "Three Waves of Modernity," in Political Philosophy: Six Essays by Leo Strauss, ed. Hilail Gilden (Indianapolis; Bobbs-Merrill, 1975), 82. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 35-80. Leo Strauss, "Political Philosophy and the Crisis of Our Time" in The PostBehavioral Era, ed. George Graham and George Carey (New York: McKay, 1972), 217-42. Also see John Gunnell, "Political Theory and Politics—The Case of Leo Strauss," Political Theory 13, no. 3 (August 1985): 339-61. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 153. Ibid., 2. As Nietzsche stated, "And France, having always possessed a masterly skill at converting even the most calamitous turn of its spirit into something attractive and seductive, now really shows its cultural superiority over Europe by being the school and display of all the charms of skepticism." Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 208, pp. 130-31. Leo Strauss, "Epilogue," in Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics, ed. Herbert Storing (New York: Holt, 1962), 316. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 6. This list includes students of Strauss, their students, and self-identified followers of Strauss. For an example of their contributions to Strauss's historical program, see Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy, 3d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). See Storing, ed., Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics; Graham and Carey, eds., The Post-Behavioral Era; Harvey Mansfield Jr., "Social Science and the Constitution," in Confronting the Constitution, ed. Allan Bloom (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1990), 411-36. Jeffrey Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 17; Joseph Cropsey, Political Philosophy and the Issues of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 7. Since the late 1970s analysis of the founding political philosophy has become a growth industry among Straussians. Representative examples are Bloom, ed., Confronting the Constitution; Thomas Pangle, The Spirit of

• 220 • Notes to Pages 50-54 •

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61. 62.

Modern Republicanism—The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), and "Civic Virtue: The Founders' Conception and the Traditional Conception," in Constitutionalism and Rights, ed. Gary Bryner and Noel Reynolds (Salt Lake: Brigham Young University Press, 1987), 105-40; Charles Kesler, ed., Saving the Revolution (New York: Free Press, 1987); Ralph Lerner, The Thinking Revolutionary: Principle and Practice in the New Republic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987); David Epstein, The Political Theory of the Federalist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); Robert Horowitz, ed., The Moral Foundations of the American Republic (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1979); George Graham and Scarlett Graham, eds., Founding Principles of American Government (Chatham: Chatham House Publishers, 1977). For an interesting critique of the general Straussian approach to the American founding, see Gordon Wood, "The Fundamentalists and the Constitution," New York Review of Books 35 (February 18, 1988): 33-40. In this article Wood notes that "more than any other group the Straussians are attempting to set the agenda for public debate over the Constitution. They have sought to define the terms, to organize the conferences, and to dominate the discussion" (33). Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 92. Epstein, Theory of the Federalist, 94. Harvey Mansfield, Jr., America's Constitutional Soul (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 13. Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 110. Epstein, Theory of the Federalist, 104. James Ceaser, "Presidential Selection," in The Presidency in the Constitutional Order, ed. Joseph Bessette and Jeffrey Tulis (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), 251. Mansfield, America's Constitutional Soul, 140. Epstein, Theory of the Federalist, 185. Harvey Mansfield, Jr., Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power (New York: Free Press, 1989), 270. See Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), and The Origins of American Politics (New York: Norton, 1967); Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (New York: Norton, 1969); J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 93. Mansfield, America's Constitutional Soul, 207. Thomas Pangle, The Ennobling of Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 145.

• Notes to Pages 54-59 m 221 m 63. Cropsey, Political Philosophy and the Issues of Politics, 6-7. 64. See Nash, Conservative Intellectual Movement, chap. 9. 65. See the issues of The Alternative published between the late 1960s and mid1970s. 66. Allan Bloom, Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 314. 67. Ibid., 27. 68. Thomas Pangle, "Nihilism and Modern Democracy in the Thought of Nietzsche," in The Crisis of Liberal Democracy—A Straussian Perspective, ed. Kenneth Deutsch and Walter Soffer (Albany: State University of New York, 1987), 181. 69. Ceaser, "Presidential Selection," in The Presidency in the Constitutional Order, 273-74. For Ceaser's comprehensive analysis of the presidential selection system, see James Ceaser, Presidential Selection: Theory and Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). 70. Tulis, Rhetorical Presidency, 146. 71. Mansfield, America's Constitutional Soul, 182, 184, 188-89. 72. Bloom, Closing of the American Mind, 382. 73. Ibid. 74. Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism; Thomas Pangle and Clifford Orwin, "Restoring the Human Rights Tradition," in Human Rights: Theory, History, Policy, ed. Marc Plattner (Los Angeles: Westview, 1987). 75. Harvey Mansfield, Jr., The Spirit of Liberalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978). 76. See Harvey Mansfield, Jr., "Democracy and the Great Books," and Richard Rorty, "That Old-Time Philosophy: Straussianism, Democracy and Allan Bloom," The New Republic (April 4,1988), 36,28-33, respectively. Among those who were influenced by Strauss who became actively engaged in politics over the past two decades were Carnes Lord, who left the University of Virginia to serve on the National Security Council in the first Reagan administration. During Reagan's second term he became director of international studies at the National Institute for Public Policy. He became the chief foreign policy adviser of Vice President Quayle during the Bush administration. Similarly, William Kristol, after receiving a doctorate in political science at Harvard University under the tutelage of Mansfield, joined William Bennett's staff at the Department of Education. He became the chief policy adviser of Vice President Quayle during the Bush administration. There are many other examples: Nathan Tarcov left the University of Chicago to join the State Department Policy Planning Staff; David Epstein left the New School for Social Research and became an analyst in the office of Net Assessment, a part of Caspar Weinberger's staff at the Department of Defense; Werner Dannhauser set aside the study of Nietzsche and took a

• 222 • Notes to Pages 59-61

77.

78.

79.

80. 81.

•

leave of absence from Cornell in order to co-edit Commentary, Gary Schmitt left the University of Dallas to head President Reagan's National Advisory Board for Foreign Intelligence; Abram Shulsky left the University of Chicago to become director of Strategic Arms Control Policy at the Department of Defense; Marc Planner left the National Humanities Center in North Carolina to become the editor of The Public Interest and later became the director of program at the National Endowment for Democracy; Joel Schwartz left the University of Toronto to become the managing editor of The Public Interest; Jeremy Rabkin left Cornell University to become an editor of publications for the American Enterprise Institute; Michael Malbin left the University of Maryland to become the associate director of the House Republican Conference. This list is not based upon my investigating Straussians hidden in government. It is based on reading the short biographies of contributors to books and journals. On social reforms, see James Q. Wilson, "The Bureaucracy Problem," The Public Interest, no. 6 (Winter 1967): 3-9; Nathan Glazer, "The Limits of Social Policy," Commentary, no. 52 (September 1971): 51-78. On campus unrest surrounding the Vietnam War, see Irving Kristol, "American Intellectuals and Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs 45, no. 4 (Summer 1967): 594-609. On new cultural orientations among youth, see Seymour Martin Lipset, ed., The Berkeley Student Revolt (Garden City: Doubleday, 1965). Irving Kristol, "The Adversary Culture of Intellectuals," in The Third Century—America as a Post-Industrial Society, ed. Seymour Martin Lipset (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 328-43. See Lipset, ed., The Third Century; Peter Berger, Facing Up to Modernity (Garden City: Doubleday, 1976); Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1976); Irving Kristol, Reflections of a Neoconservative (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 55-77, 202-26; idem, Two Cheers for Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1978), 239-53. For further discussion on the American conservatives' view on social and distributive justice, see chapter 3. I am primarily explaining the position on modernism developed by Daniel Bell. See Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York: Harper, 1976); idem, The Winding Passage (New York: Basic Books, 1980), 275-302. The literature on the political influence of modernism is extensive. For a helpful introduction, see George Mosse, The Culture of Western Europe: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: Murray, 1961). For analyses of modernism among American intellectuals, see Henry May, The End of American Innocence, pt. 3 (New York: Knopf, 1959); Morton White, Social Thought in America—The Revolt against Formalism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961).

• Notes to Pages 61-65 • 223 • 82. See Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism, 51-68,143-59,234-38; idem, Reflections of a Neoconservative, 27-42; Bell, Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, 33-119; Stanley Rothman, "The Mass Media in Post-Industrial Society," in The Third Century, ed. Lipset, 346-88; Hilton Kramer, The Revenge of the Philistines (New York: Basic Books, 1986); Norman Podhoretz, Breaking Ranks (New York: Harper, 1979). 83. Jeane Kirkpatrick, Dictatorship and Double Standards (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 187. Also see Seymour Martin Lipset and Richard B. Dobson, "The Intellectual as Critic and Rebel: With Special Reference to the Soviet Union," Daedalus, no. 101 (Summer 1972): 137-98; B. BruceBriggs, ed., The New Class (New York: Basic Books, 1981). 84. Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (New York: Basic Books, 1950). 85. Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics and Gnosticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). 86. Kirkpatrick, Dictatorship and Double Standards, 194-95. 87. Ibid., 10. 88. Bell, Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, 130. 89. Ibid., 145. During the 1970s, Bell's cultural conservatism, as expressed in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, and The Winding Passage, posed many of the problematics that the neoconservatives sought to address. In the 1980s, Bell broke with the new conservatism, resigning as co-editor of The Public Interest. He complains that new conservative political thinking sacrifices the task of establishing a tutelary culture, i.e., a public philosophy that establishes a sense of citizen rights and obligations, for political demagoguery and expediency. He also rejects Straussianism. See Daniel Bell, The Public Interest, no. 83 (Fall 1985): 42-63. 90. See Bruce-Briggs, ed., New Class. 91. James Q. Wilson, "American Politics Then and Now," Commentary (February 1979), 46. Also see Kirkpatrick, Dictatorship and Double Standards, 141-70, 186-204. 92. Ibid. Also see Rothman, "Mass Media in Post-Industrial Society." Of course, one can claim that the national Republican party learned to utilize the media in politics far better than the national Democratic party during much of the 1980s. 93. James Q. Wilson, "The Rediscovery of Character: Private Virtue and Public Policy," The Public Interest, no. 81 (Fall 1985): 14. 94. Walter Berns, "Pornography vs. Democracy: The Case for Censorship," and James Q. Wilson, "Violence, Pornography and Social Science," The Public Interest, no. 22 (Winter 1971): 3-24, 45-61. 95. See Alexander Bloom, Prodigal Sons—The New York Intellectuals and Their World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 313-65. 96. See the different views toward liberalism developed by James Wilson be-

• 224 • Notes to Pages 65-69 •

97. 98. 99.

100.

101. 102.

103. 104.

105. 106. 107. 108. 109.

tween the 1960s and 1980s in chapter 4. Also see Seymour Martin Lipset, "The End of Ideology," and Daniel Bell, "The End of Ideology in the West," in The End of Ideology Debate, ed. Chaim Waxman (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1968), 69-86, 87-106, respectively. Mansfield, America's Constitutional Soul, 80. James Q. Wilson, "Crime and American Culture," The Public Interest, no. 70 (Winter 1983): 36. Peter Berger and Richard Neuhaus, Empowering People: The Role of Mediating Structures in Public Policy (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1978), 26. Robert Bork, "Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems," Indiana Law Journal 47, no. 3 (Fall 1971): 10. Also see Bork, The Temptation of the Law (New York: Free Press, 1990); Lino Graglia, "Judicial Activism—Even on the Right, It's Wrong," The Public Interest, no. 95 (Spring 1989): 57-94; Raoul Berger, Federalism, The Founder's Design (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987). For a critical interpretation, see Stephen Macedo, The New Right v. the Constitution (Washington, D.C.: Cato, 1987). Mansfield, America's Constitutional Soul, 190. Irving Kristol, "On the Character of the American Political Order," in The Promise of American Politics, ed. Robert L. Utley (Lanham: University of Maryland Press, 1989), 8-9. Nathan Glazer, The Limits of Social Policy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 2, 108. Alasdair Maclntyre, Secularization and Moral Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 24. I will discuss in more depth the character of the morality proposed by American conservative theory in chapter 3. For a more comprehensive explanation, see chapter 4. Pangle, The Ennobling of Democracy, 142. Harvey Mansfield, Jr., "The Form and Formalities of Liberty," The Public Interest, no. 70 (Winter 1983): 131. William Schambra, "The Roots of American Public Philosophy," The Public Interest, no. 80 (Summer 1985): 47. For discussions on how the idea of political obligation has been intertwined with conscription, see Hugo Adam Bedau, "Military Service and Moral Obligation," in Philosophy and Political Action, ed. Virginia Held, Kai Nielson, and Charles Parsons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 129-60; Michael Walzer, Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and Citizenship (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977); Allan Silver, "Vicissitudes of Citizenship and High Military Politics in Liberal Democracies," paper presented at annual meeting of

• Notes to Pages 69-70 • 225 • American Political Science Association (August 30, 1990). For a recent conservative statement on the draft, see Richard John Neuhaus, "National Service: What Service?," in National Service, ed. Williamson Evers (Stanford: Hoover, 1990). For representative examples of the general conservative position on conscription, see the papers from conferences organized by the Hoover Institution and the American Enterprise Institute: Registration and the Draft, Proceedings of the Hoover-Rochester Conference on the All-Volunteer Force, ed. Martin Anderson (Stanford: Hoover, 1982); How Should the U.S. Meet Its Military Manpower Needs?, AEI Forum no. 38 (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1980). 110. Neuhaus, "National Service, What Service?," 124. 111. For the relevant statements by Locke, Montesquieu, and Publius, see John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (London: Dent, 1986), chaps. 1214; Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. Anne Cohler, Basia Miller, and Harold Stone (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pt. 2, chaps. 6, 17; Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: Penguin, 1961), nos. 67-77. For general background on the development of the theory of separation of powers, see M. J. C. Vile, Constitutionalism and the Separation of Powers (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967); William B. Gwyn, The Meaning of the Separation of Powers (New Orleans: Tulane University Press, 1967). 112. Gary Schmitt and Abram Shulsky, "The Theory and Practice of the Separation of Powers," in The Fettered Presidency—Legal Constraints on the Executive Branch, ed. L. Gordon Crovitz and Jeremy Rabkin (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1988), 61. For the most comprehensive theoretical statement, see Mansfield, Taming the Prince. Also see Mansfield, America's Constitutional Soul, 115-27. For important statements prescribing the separation of powers and mixed government doctrines for different policy domains, see Joseph Bessette and Jeffrey Tulis, "The Constitution, Politics, and the Presidency," Robert Scigliano, "The War Powers Resolution and the War Powers," Gary Schmitt, "Executive Privilege: Presidential Power to Withhold Information from Congress," in Presidency in the Constitutional Order, ed. Bessette and Tulis, 3-31, 115-53, 154-94; James Ceaser, "In Defense of the Separation of Powers," in Separation of Powers—does it still work?, ed. Robert Goldwin and Herbert Kaufman (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1987), 168-93; Gary Schmitt, "Separation of Powers: Introduction to the Study of Executive Agreements," American Journal of Jurisprudence, no. 27 (Spring 1982): 114-38; Carnes Lord, The Presidency and National Security (New York: Free Press, 1988), and "Executive Power and Our Security," The National Interest, no. 7 (Spring 1987): 3-13; Rich-

• 226 • Notes to Pages 70-75 •

113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118.

119. 120. 121. 122.

123. 124. 125.

126. 127.

ard Cox, "Executive Prerogative: A Problem for Adherents of Constitutional Government," in Constitutional Principles and the Institutions of Government, ed. Sarah Thurow (New York: New York Universit Press, 1988), 102-22. Jeane Kirkpatrick, "Commentaries and Exchanges on Foreign Policy," in Fettered Presidency, ed. Crovitz and Rabkin, 46. Michael Oakeshott, "Rule of Law," in Oakeshott, On History and Other Essays (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 161. Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 254. Mansfield, Taming the Prince, 238. Ibid., 291. Harvey Mansfield, Jr., "Representative Government and Executive Power," in Economy, Diplomacy, and Statecraft, ed. Tim Fuller (Colorado Springs: Colorado College Press, 1988), 25. Ibid., 36. Schmitt, "Executive Privilege: The Presidential Power to Withhold Information from Congress," 183. Michael Malbin, "Legalism versus Political Checks and Balances," in Fettered Presidency, ed. Crovitz and Rabkin, 288. James MacGregor Burns, The Deadlock of Democracy: Four-Party Politics in America (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1967), 339-40. Also see Woodrow Wilson, Constitutional Government in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1921); Samuel Beer, "Liberalism and the National Idea," in Left, Right and Center: Essays on Liberalism and Conservatism in the United States, ed. Robert Goldwin (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965), 142-69. Gary Schmitt, "Chicken George?," The National Interest, no. 18 (Winter 1988/89): 110. Tulis, Rhetorical Presidency, 202. Gary Schmitt, "Jefferson and Executive Power: Revisionism and the Revolution of 1800," and David Nichols, "The Promise of Progressivism: Herbert Croly and the Progressive Rejection of Individual Rights," in Publius, The Journal of Federalism, no. 17 (Spring 1987): 7-25, 2739. Michael Novak, Free Persons and the Common Good (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1989), 73. Nathan Tarcov, "A Non-Lockean Locke and the Character of Liberalism," in Liberalism Reconsidered, ed. Douglas Maclean and Claudia Mills (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allenheld), 131. Also see James Nichols, "Pragmatism and the American Constitution," in Confronting the Constitution, ed. Bloom. Conservatives also argue that Locke's separation of powers

• Notes to Pages 76-81 • 227 • doctrine leaves room for the poetic idea of greatness, providing space for the political executive to stand outside the laws and moralities of the society in order to ensure its political prosperity. See Mansfield, Taming of the Prince, 181-212. 128. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 248. 129. Strauss, "The Crisis of Our Time," 54. 130. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 134-38; idem, The Crisis of Our Time.

Chapter Three. Establishing Morality and Authority 1. Richard Flathman, Political Obligation (New York: Atheneum, 1972), 39. On the distinction between these two types of moralities, see Flathman, Political Obligation, 34-116; H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 151-207; Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, trans. R. Ashley Audra and Cloudesley Brereton (Garden City: Doubleday, 1935), 1-92. Throughout this chapter I will be treating morality as the standards in society that, irrespective of their ultimate derivation, provide the basis to our discriminations between right and wrong, better or worse. For a helpful discussion, see Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 3-52. 2. Richard B. Friedman, "On the Concept of Authority in Political Philosophy," in Concepts in Social and Political Philosophy, ed. Richard Flathman (New York: Macmillan, 1973), 121-56. 3. On how social justice has not been identified with conservative political thought, see Albert Hirschman, The Rhetoric of Reaction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 28-35,110-21. On how conservative political theory generally intertwines religious and political themes, see Klaus Epstein, "Three Types of Conservatism," in Essays in Theory and History, ed. Melvin Richter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 103-21. 4. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: Penguin, 1981), 120-21. 5. Benjamin Disraeli, The Vindication of the English Constitution, in idem, Whigs and Whiggism, ed. Michael Hutcheon (London: Kennikak, 1971), 145. 6. T. H. Marshall, Class, Citizenship and Social Development (Westport: Greenwood, 1964), 72. 7. For discussions of the debates and politics that revolved around social justice in twentieth-century Britain, see Marshall, Class, Citizenship and Social Development; W. G. Runciman, Relative Deprivation and Social Justice: A Study in Social Attitudes to Social Inequality in Twentieth Century England (London: Macmillan, 1966).

• 228 m Notes to Pages 81-83 • 8. F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 193-94. As Hegel noted in discussing how the moral norm of justice became expressed by the development of the desire for punishment rather than revenge against those who violated contracts, "Fundamentally, this implies the demand for a will which, though particular and subjective, yet wills the universal as such. But this concept of Morality is not simply something demanded; it has emerged in the course of this movement itself." See G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), par. 103, p. 73. For Hegel's most comprehensive statements on morality as an objective spirit, see The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), pars. 596-671, pp. 364409. For an interesting discussion of the Hegelian current in contemporary British conservative thought, see Jeremy Rayner, "Philosophy into Dogma: The Revival of Cultural Conservatism," British Journal of Political Science 16 (October 1986): 455-73. 9. Michael Oakeshott, "A Place of Liberal Learning," in On Liberal Education, ed. Tim Fuller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 21. 10. Michael Oakeshott, "Learning and Teaching," in The Concept of Education, ed. R. S. Peters (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), 158. 11. Shirley Letwin, "Nature, History and Morality," in Nature and Conduct, ed. R. S. Peters (London: St. Martin's, 1975), 247. 12. Shirley Letwin, "Morality and Law," Ratio Juris 2, no. 1 (March, 1989): 63. 13. Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 62. 14. Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics (London: Methuen, 1962), 105. 15. Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 189. 16. Michael Oakeshott, "The Rule of Law," in Oakeshott, On History and Other Essays (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 137-38. 17. Ibid., 137. Oakeshott's later emphasis on the state's establishment of uniform rules, rather than a historically derived spirit, as the basis to the practices that establish moral and immoral behavior is crucial to Covell's claim that Oakeshott abandons Hegel for Hobbes in On Human Conduct. See Charles Covell, The Redefinition of Conservatism (London: Macmillan, 1986), 121-43. Hanna Pitkin also analyzes On Human Conduct as Oakeshott's abandonment of Hegel in "Inhuman Conduct and Political Theory," Political Theory 4, no. 3 (August 1976): 301-20. Also see Paul Franco's argument that Oakeshott does not abandon Hegel in On Human Conduct. See Franco, The Political Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 157-99.

• Notes to Pages 84-86 • 229 • 18. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 153, n. 1, In one of his rare commentaries on contemporary theory, Oakeshott utilizes the same theme to criticize the theories of social justice developed by John Rawls and Bruce Ackerman. In note 13, page 153 of "The Rule of Law," Oakeshott states that both Rawl and Ackerman "identify jus as a consideration of 'fairness' as what rational competitors, in certain ideal circumstances, must agree is equitable distribution. Here, lex, if it exists at all, is composed of regulations understood in terms of the consequences of their operations and as guides to the achievement of a substantive state of affairs." 19. Ibid., 142. 20. John Gray, "Conservatism, Individualism and the Political Thought of the New Right," in Ideas and Politics in Modern Britain, ed. J. C. D. Clark (London: Macmillan, 1990), 97. 21. Shirley Letwin, "On Conservative Individualism," in Conservative Essays, ed. Maurice Cowling (London: Cassell, 1978), 63. 22. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 154. 23. Ibid., 163. 24. Ibid., 148. For a more extended analysis, see Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 147-58. 25. Oakeshott, "Rule of Law," 160. Oakeshott, of course, does not interpret Hobbes as solely a legal positivist, arguing that Hobbes's primary goal in advocating a state with absolute authority was to free people from the fear, inconveniences, and dishonor produced by the arbitrary character of authority that existed in the state of nature. "What distinguishes Hobbes from all earlier and most later writers," states Oakeshott, "is his premise that a man is a moving 'body,' that human conduct is inertial, not ideological movement and that his 'salvation' lies in 'continual success in obtaining those things which a man from time to time desires.' And certainly [Hobbes's] civil association has no power to bring this about. Nevertheless, what it offers is something of value relative to his salvation. It offers the removal of some of the circumstances that, if they are not removed, must frustrate the enjoyment of Felicity." Michael Oakeshott, Hobbes on Civil Association (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975), 74. For a contrast of Oakeshott's and Strauss's views of Hobbes, see chapter 6. 26. Oakeshott, "Rule of Law," 158. 27. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 154. For excellent discussions on Oakeshott's views of the relation between authority and liberty, see Richard Friedman, "Oakeshott on the Authority of the Law," and Shirley Letwin, "Morality and Law," in Ratio Juris 2, no. 1 (March 1989): 17-26, 55-65 28. Oakeshott, "Rule of Law," 140. Also see David Hume, "Of the First Principles of Government," "Of the Origin of Government," "Of the Original

• 230 • Notes to Pages 87-90 •

29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40.

41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

Contract," in Hume, Essays Moral, Political and Literary (Indianapolis: Liberty, 1985), 32-36, 37-41, 465-87. Oakeshott, "Rule of Law," 138. Hume reserves undivided sovereignty for the national senate only with regard to foreign policy: see Hume, "Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth," in Hume, Essays Moral, Political and Literary, 516-17. David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), bk. 3, pt. 2, sec. 2, pp. 500-01. Ibid., bk. 3, pt. 2, sec. 1-10, pp. 477-567. Oakeshott, "Rule of Law," 135. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 182. Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 118. Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975) 2:83. Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977) 3:44; idem, Law, Legislation and Liberty 2:31-100. Also see Hayek, fatal Conceit, 106-20; idem, "The Weasel Word 'Social,' " The Salisbury Review 1, no. 3 (Autumn 1983): 4-6. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty 2:70-74. Ibid., 74. Ibid., 83. See Samuel Beer, "In Search of a New Public Philosophy," in The New American Political System, ed. Anthony King (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1977), 5-44; Theodore Lowi, The End of Liberalism— The Second Republic of the United States, 2d ed. (New York: Norton, 1979), 22-66. Judith Shklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 13-14. For rewarding analyses of American conflicts revolving around citizenship, see Rogers Smith, "The 'American Creed' and American Identity: The Limits of Liberal Citizenship in the United States," Western Political Quarterly 41, no. 2 (June 1988): 225-50, and " 'One United People': Second-Class Female Citizenship and the American Quest for Community," Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 1, no. 2 (May 1989): 229-93; John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (New York: Atheneum, 1966). Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 151-52. Ibid., 133. Ibid., 160. Ibid. Ibid., 161.

• Notes to Pages 91-95 m 231 m 47. Allan Bloom, "Response to Francis Fukuyama—The End of History,' " Symposium in The National Interest, no. 16 (Summer 1989): 23. 48. Harvey Mansfield, Jr., America's Constitutional Soul (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 199. 49. Gertrude Himmelfarb, Marriage and Morals among the Victorians (New York: Knopf, 1986), 228. 50. Irving Kristol, On the Democratic Idea in America (New York: Basic Books, 1976), 90-106. 51. Ibid., 98. 52. Irving Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism (New York: Mentor, 1978), 82. 53. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. Anne Cohler, Basia Miller, Harold Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), xli. 54. Harvey Mansfield, Jr., Taming the Prince:The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power (New York: Free Press, 1989), 228-29. 55. See Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1981), and Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1987); Robert Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982); Charles Taylor, "Atomism," in Power, Possessions and Freedom, ed. Alkis Kontos (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 39-61. 56. Maclntyre, After Virtue, 221. 57. Nathan Glazer, "Toward a New Concordat," This World, no. 2 (Summer 1982): 117. 58. Michael Novak, Free Persons and the Common Good (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1989), 129. Also see Richard Neuhaus, "Habits of the (Academic) Mind," The Public Interest, no. 83 (Spring 1986): 99-104. 59. Thomas Pangle, The Ennobling of Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 155. 60. Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, To Empower People: The Role of Mediating Structures in Public Policy (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1977), 41, 43. 61. Irving Kristol, Reflections of a Neo-Conservative, xiv-xv. It is interesting to note that in the recent liberal-communitarian debate in the academy the liberals have raised the fear that the vague notions of public good being raised by communitarians will unwittingly contribute to a communitarian ethos linked to parochialism, locality, and particularity. "What is missing from all these diverse approaches to community, however, is a consideration of concrete issues," argues Hirsch. "Because they often do not look at such issues—at *hard cases'—these critics of liberalism or liberal institutions spare themselves the painful task of examining the way in which 'commu-

• 232 • Notes to Pages 95-101 •

62.

63.

64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

76. 77.

nity' may conflict with other values [T]he longing for community is a chimera—romantic, naive, and in the end, illiberal and dangerous." See H N. Hirsch, "The Threnody of Liberalism: Constitutional Liberty and the Renewal of Community," Political Theory 14, no. 3 (August 1986): 424. Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (New York: Macmillan, 1912), 270-71. This has not been the only or even the most influential current of thought within America's Progressive-Liberalism. A pluralist outlook that emphasizes the state's role of balancing interests and preserving the autonomy of economic, ethnic, and cultural groups also has been influential. This pluralist orientation has been expressed by John Dewey among Progressives, David Lilienthal and Raymond Moley among New Dealers, and Robert Dahl among contemporary liberals. For rewarding discussions of the role of both currents in America's Progressive-Liberalism, see Arthur Schlesinger, The Age of Roosevelt, vol. 2, The Coming of the New Deal (New York: Houghton, 1958); Andrew Schonfield, Modern Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 298-357. Byron Shafer, Quiet Revolution: The Struggle for the Democratic Party and the Shaping of Post-Reform Politics (New York: Sage, 1983). James Ceaser, "Presidential Selection," in The Presidency in the Constitutional Order, ed. Joseph Bessette and Jeffrey Tulis (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), 270. William Schambra, "Progressive Liberalism and American Community," The Public Interest, no. 80 (Summer 1985): 74. Michael Novak, Freedom with Justice (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), 199. Pangle, The Ennobling of Democracy, 156. Irving Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism, 122. See chapter 4. Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism, 2d ed. (London: Macmillan, 1984), 162-63. Elie Kedourie, The Grossman Confessions and Other Essays in Politics, History and Religion (London: Mansell, 1984), 71. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, 2:4. Hayek, Fatal Conceit, 92. Mansfield, Taming the Prince, 236. Ibid., 235. Irving Kristol, "The Character of American Politics," in The Promise of American Politics, ed. T. E. Utley (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1989), 23. See Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America (New York: Harcourt, 1965), 36-72. See John Figgis, "Non-Resistance and the Theory of Sovereignty," "Erastus

• Notes to Pages 101-104 • 233 •

78.

79.

80.

81. 82.

83. 84.

and Erastianism," in Figgis, The Divine Right of Kings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), 219-55,267-316, respectively; Martin Bowker, "The Supremacy and the Episcopate: The Struggle for Control, 15341540," Historical Journal 18, no. 2 (Spring 1975): 227-43; S. E. Lehmberg, The Reformation Parliament, 1529-1536 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). Paul Tillich, "The Social Function of the Churches in Europe and America," Social Research 3, no. 1 (February 1936): 90-104. For general background on religious practices in England, see David Edwards, Christian England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), vols. 1-3; Adrian Hastings, A History of English Christianity, 1920-1985 (London: Collins, 1985). Peter Marsh, "The Conservative Conscience," in The Conscience of the Victorian State, ed. Peter Marsh (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1979), 216. For the nineteenth-century struggles around the Church's preeminent role in education, see Mary Sturt, The Education of the People (London: R. Routledge and K. Paul, 1967); Brian Simon, The Two Nations and the Educational Structure (London: Lawrence and Wisehart, 1974); Carl Kaestle, "Between the Scylla of Brutal Ignorance and the Charybdis of a Literary Education: Elite Attitudes toward Mass Schooling in Early Industrial England and America," in Schooling and Society, ed. Lawrence Stone (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 177-91. For the Church's defense of its education policies, see R. A. Soloway, Prelates and People: Ecclesiastical Social Thought in England (London: R. Routledge and K. Paul, 1969). Report of the Royal Commission on Secondary Education, Bryce Commission (London: HMSO, 1895), 1:267. Alasdair Maclntyre, "God and the Theologians," in The Honest to God Debate, ed. David Edwards (Boston: Houghton, 1963), 228. Also see Jeffrey Cox, The English Churches in a Secular Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). The figure on church attendance among the British is from Social Trends (London: HMSO, 1987). The figure on church attendance among Americans is from "Religion in America," The Gallup Report, no. 201-02 (New York: Gallup Organization, 1982). Also see Alasdair Maclntyre, Secularization and Moral Change (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 58-76, for a comparison of the religious beliefs and practices of the British and American publics. Maurice Cowling, Religion and Public Doctrine in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 2:12. E. R. Norman, "Christians, Politics and the Modern State," in This World, no. 6 (Fall 1983): 90. For more comprehensive statements, see Norman, Church and Society in England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), and Keith Lee-

• 234 • Notes to Pages 104-108 •

85. 86. 87. 88. 89.

90.

91. 92.

93.

94.

tures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); Cowling, Religion and Public Doctrine in England, vols. 1, 2. Gray, "Conservatism, Individualism and the Political Thought of the New Right," 92. Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism, 175. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 83-84. Letwin, "Nature, History and Morality," 248. E. R. Norman, "Christian Morality and Nuclear Arms," in Ethics and Nuclear Arms, ed. Raymond English (Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1985), 112. Martin Durham, "Thatcher Government and the Moral Right," Parliamentary Affairs 42, no. 2 (January 1989): 64. Also see Durham, "Family, Morality and the New Right," Parliamentary Affairs 38, no. 2 (April 1985): 180-91. Scruton, Meaning of Conservatism, 171. See Tillich, "The Social Function of Churches in Europe and America." For analysis of American religions during the colonial period, see The Shaping of American Religion, ed. James Ward Smith and A. Leland Jamison, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961); Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966); Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (New York: Harper, 1956); Martin Marty, Religion, Awakening, and Revolution (Wilmington: Consortium, 1977). Carl Kaestle, The Pillars of the Republic (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 95. For other analyses of the quest by America's political and religious leaders to create a common moral and religious culture in mid-nineteenthcentury America, see Daniel W. Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); Rush Welter, The Mind of America, 1820-60 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970); John Bodo, The Protestant Clergy and Public Issues, 1812-48 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954); Clifford Griffin, Their Brothers' Keepers: Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800-1865 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1960), and "Religious Benevolence as Social Control, 1815-60," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 44 (June-March 1957-58): 423-44; Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America, from the Revolution to the Civil War (New York: Harcourt, 1965). See Edward McNall Burns, The American Idea of Mission: Concepts of National Purpose and Destiny (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1957); Ernest Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America's Millennial Role (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968); Conrad Cherry, God's New Israel (Englewood, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971); Russell Richey and Donald Jones, eds., American Civil Religion (New York: Harper,

• Notes to Pages 108-112 • 235 •

95. 96.

97. 98. 99. 100. 101.

102.

103. 104.

1974); Leland Baldwin, The American Quest for the City of God (Macon, Ga.: Mercer, 1981). For recent studies on the continuing interpenetration between America's political and religious themes, see A. James Reichley, Religion in American Public Life (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1985); Mark Silk, Spiritual Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988); Kenneth Wald, Religion and Politics in the United States (New York: St. Martin's, 1988); Robert Wirthin, The Restructuring of American Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). 330 U.S. 1, 67 S. Ct. 504, 91 L. ed. 711 (1947). Michael Malbin, Religion and State: The First Amendment's Original Intent (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1981), 40. Also see Walter Berns, Freedom and the First Amendment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); John Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1984). Irving Kristol, "The Spirit of '87," The Public Interest, no. 86 (Winter 1987): 8. Neuhaus, Naked Public Square, 125. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 74. Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 231. Frederick Wilhelmsen, Christianity and Political Philosophy (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1978), 218. For other discussions on Strauss's and Straussianism's approach to religion and God, see Shadia Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), 3760; Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason: Foundations of Christian Theology (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1982), 153-63; Dante Germino, "New-Fangled Aristoteleanism," New Oxford Review 2 (March 1979): 16-17. Walter Berns, "Religion and the Founding Principle," The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, 3d ed., ed. Robert Horowitz (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986), 213. Irving Kristol, "Symposium: God, Sex and Politics," Policy Review, no. 29 (Spring 1984), 24. For an informative background article on the Judeo-Christian tradition, see Mark Silk, "Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition in America," American Quarterly 24, no. 1 (January 1983): 65-85. For analyses of the Judeo-Christian tradition as pluralism, see Carl Friedrich, "Problems of Communication," in Science, Philosophy and Religion, vol. 4, Approaches to World Peace, ed. Lyman Bryson, Louis Finklestein, and Robert M. MacIver (New York: Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, 1944); Jacques Maritain, Chris-

• 236 • Notes to Pages 112-117 • tianity and Democracy (New York: Scribner, 1944); Beatrice Jenney, ed., Protestants Answer Anti-Semitism (New York: Protestant Digest, 1941). 105. See Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man (New York: Scribner's, 1949), and The Irony of American History (New York: Scribner's, 1952). For other works suggesting a substantive unity between Judaism and Christianity, see Will Herberg, Judaism and Modern Man (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1951); idem, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960); A. Roy Eckhardt, Christianity and the Children of Israel (New York: King's, 1948); Robert Gordis, Judaism for the Modern Age (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1955). 106. Niebuhr, Irony of American History, 89. 107. Niebuhr, "The Fight for Germany," Life 21 (October 21, 1946): 72. Also see Edward PurcelPs discussion of how Niebuhr reinforced ProgressiveLiberalism in The Crisis of Democratic Theory (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1973), 154-56, 243-47. 108. For the most comprehensive critique, see Arthur Cohen, The Myth of the ]udeo-Christian Tradition (New York: Harper, 1970). For discussions on the general decline of Progressive-Liberalism during the 1970s, see Beer, "In Search of a Public Philosophy," and Lowi, The End of Liberalism, 271-94. 109. Novak, Freedom with Justice, 3-60, 167-218; John Neuhaus, The Catholic Moment (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1988); Irving Kristol, Reflections of a Neo-Conservative, 315-26. 110. Kristol, "On the Character of the American Political Order," 13; Novak, Free Persons and the Common Good, 73. 111. William Bennett, Our Children and Our Country (New York: Touchstone, 1989), 179. 112. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1966), sec. 260, p. 207. 113. Ibid., sec. 61, pp. 72-73. 114. Ibid., sec. 62, p. 75. For an interesting analysis of this strand in Nietzsche's thinking, see Bruce Detwiler, The Politics of Aristocratic Radicalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 17-36. 115. Mansfield, Taming the Prince, 225. Also see Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 3. 116. Mansfield, America*s Constitutional Soul, 114. 117. Harvey Mansfield, Jr., "Thomas Jefferson," in American Political Thought: The Philosophic Dimension of American Statesmanship, ed. Morton Frisch and Richard Stevens (Itasca, 111.: Peacock, 1983), 38. 118. Neuhaus, Naked Public Square, 145.

• Notes to Pages 119-122 • 237 • Chapter Four. Restructuring Liberty and Economics 1. Isaiah Berlin, "Two Conceptions of Liberty," in Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), 25. For interpretations of new conservative political theory as laissez-faire liberalism or libertarianism, see Stephen Neuman, The Libertine Revolt against the State (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985); Norman Barry, The New Liberalism (London: Macmillan, 1988); Desmond King, The New Right: Politics, Markets and Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); David Green, The New Conservatism (London: Institute for Economic Affairs, 1988); David Graham and Peter Clarke, The New Enlightenment (London: Macmillan, 1986). 2. Shirley Letwin, "Conservative Individualism," in Conservative Essays, ed. Maurice Cowling (London: Cassell, 1978), 54. 3. John Gray, "Conservatism, Individualism and the Political Thought of the New Right," in Ideas and Politics in Modern Britain, ed. J. C. D. Clark (London: Macmillan, 1990), 96. 4. Michael Oakeshott, "Thomas Hobbes," Scrutiny, no. 4 (1935-36): 276. 5. Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 13. 6. Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics (London: Methuen, 1962), 8990. 7. Ibid., 56. For discussions of Oakeshott's idea of liberty, see Paul Franco, The Political Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 167-78, 230-36, and idem, "Michael Oakeshott as a Liberal Theorist," Political Theory 18, no. 3 (August 1990): 411-36; Wendall John Coats, "Michael Oakeshott as Liberal Theorist," Canadian Journal of Political Science, no. 18 (December 1985): 773-87; John Liddington, "Oakeshott: Freedom in the Modern European State," in Conceptions of Liberty in Political Philosophy, ed." Z. A. Pelczynski and John Gray (London: Althone, 1984), 289-320. 8. Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics, 196. 9. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 314. 10. John Gray, Liberalism (Milton Keynes, U.K.: Open University Press, 1986); idem, "On Negative and Positive Liberty," in Conceptions of Liberty in Political Philosophy, 321-47. 11. John Gray, Hayek on Liberty (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), 13. 12. John Gray, Liberalisms: Essays in Political Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1989), 248. 13. Michael Oakeshott, On History and Other Essays (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 33. Also see chapter 1, n. 4. 14. Gray, Liberalisms: Essays in Political Philosophy, 262.

• 238 m Notes to Pages 122-127 • 15. Gray, "Conservatism, Individualism and the Political Thought of the New Right," 92-93. 16. Gray, Liberalisms: Essays in Political Philosophy, 240. 17. Ibid., 235. 18. John Gray, "Hayek as a Conservative Thinker," The Salisbury Review 1, no. 2 (Summer 1983): 45. 19. For Hayek's clearest statement on society as a source of cultural evolution, see Friedrich Hayek, "Epilogue," in Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 3:153-76. Also see Ellen Frankel Paul, "Liberalism, Unintended Orders and Evolutionism," Political Studies 36, no. 2 (June 1988): 251-72; Gray, Hayek on Liberty, 41-56. 20. Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 30. 21. Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 65. Also contrast the emphasis in Hayek's discussion of liberty in Constitution of Liberty, 11-21, with that in Fatal Conceit, 62-65. 22. Samuel Brittan, The Role and Limits of Government: Essays in Political Economy (London: Temple Smith, 1984), 52. For Brittan's most comprehensive statement of libertarian philosophy, see idem, Capitalism and the Permissive Society: A Restatement of Economic Liberalism, 2d ed. (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988). 23. Michael Oakeshott, "The Vocabulary of a Modern European State," pt. 1, Political Studies 23, nos. 2-3 Qune-September 1975): 206. 24. Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 314. 25. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, 3:1-40. 26. Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1955), 5-20; Samuel Huntington, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), 13-30. 27. Thomas Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 188. 28. Thomas Pangle, The Ennobling of Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 169. 29. Allan Bloom, "Introduction," in Confronting the Constitution, ed. Bloom (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1990), p. 2. 30. Thomas Pangle, "Introduction," in Leo Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 12. 31. Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1962), 49. 32. Harvey Mansfield, Jr., America's Constitutional Soul (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 186. 33. Ibid.

• Notes to Pages 127-134 • 239 • 34. James Q. Wilson, The Amateur Democrat (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 127. 35. Ibid., 340-70. 36. Ibid., 347-55. 37. James Q. Wilson, Thinking about Crime (New York: Basic Books, 1975), 209. 38. See James Q. Wilson, Thinking about Crime, rev. ed. (New York: Random House, 1985), 223-66, and idem, "Crime and American Culture," The Public Interest, no. 70 (Winter 1983): 22-48. James Q. Wilson and William Herrnstein, Crime and Human Nature (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), 508-30. 39. Wilson, Thinking about Crime, rev. ed., 234. 40. Ibid., 240. 41. Ibid., 238. 42. Wilson, "Crime and American Culture," 45. 43. Wilson and Herrnstein, Crime and Human Nature, 528. 44. Peter Berger, The Capitalist Revolution: Fifty Propositions about Prosperity, Equality, and Liberty (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 112. Also see Irving Kristol, Reflections of a Neo-Conservative (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 139-76; Michael Novak, Free Persons and the Common Good (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1989), 145-73. 45. Michael Novak, Freedom with Justice (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), 36. 46. Mansfield, America's Constitutional Soul, 95. 47. Jeane Kirkpatrick, "Welfare State Conservatism," Policy Review, no. 44 (Spring 1988): 6. 48. Werner Dannhauser, "Some Thoughts on Liberty, Equality and Tocqueville's Democracy in America" in Liberty and Equality, ed. Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr., and Jeffrey Paul (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 145. 49. Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 6. 50. Albert O. Hirschman, The Rhetoric of Reaction (Cambridge: Belknap, 1991), 7. 51. Representative examples are Henry Simons, Economic Policy for a Free Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948); Milton Friedman, A Program for Monetary Stability (New York: Fordham University Press, 1959); George Stigler, Essays in the History of Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965). 52. George Stigler, "Preface," in Chicago Studies in Political Economy, ed. Stigler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), ix. 53. For a comprehensive statement, see Gary Becker, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976).

• 240 • Notes to Pages 134-137 m 54. For an exposition of rational choice theory as a method of analysis, see Ian Maclean, Public Choice Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). 55. See Jane Shaw, "Breaking New Ground: Public Choice Economists Explain Why Government Doesn't Work," Policy Review, no. 33 (Summer 1985): 77-80. 56. Richard Posner, The Economics of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), 68. 57. Among the major statements on public choice theory are James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, Democracy and Deficits (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977); William H. Riker, Liberalism against Populism (San Francisco: Freeman, 1982); Peter Ordeshook and Kenneth Shepsle, eds., Political Equilibrium (Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff, 1982). The Center of Public Choice at George Mason University publishes a quarterly journal, Public Choice, edited by Gordon Tullock. 58. William Niskanen, Bureaucracy and Representative Government (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1971). 59. James Buchanan, The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975). 60. For the most comprehensive statement of law and economics, see Posner, Economics of Justice. For Posner's assessment of law and economics literature, see Posner, "Some Uses and Abuses of Economics in Law," University of Chicago Law Review 46, no. 281 (1979). Also see the Journal of Law and Economics, published by the University of Chicago Press. It should be noted that Posner, in his most recent book, Sex and Reason (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), broadens his concentration, focusing on issues of sexuality. Indeed, some reviewers of this book have suggested that Posner is breaking, or at the very least modifying, his economic approach to analysis. See Martha Nussbaum, "Venus in Robes," New Republic (April 20, 1992): 36-41. 61. See John Cashman, "A Cost-Benefit Blend That's Hard to Swallow," New York Times (June 21, 1990), 18. 62. See Richard Posner, Anti-Trust Law: An Economic Perspective (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook, Anti-Trust Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); "Symposium on the Market for Corporate Control: The Scientific Evidence," Journal of Financial Economics 11, nos. 1-4 (1983). 63. The Journal of Law and Economics 26, no. 2 (June 1983), is devoted to criticizing the Gardner and Means thesis from a law and economics perspective. Also see Robert Hessen, In Defense of the Corporation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); Eugene Fama, foundations of Finance (New York: Basic Books, 1976).

• Notes to Pages 137-141 • 241 • 64. Thomas Sowell, Markets and Minorities (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), 10607. 65. Law and economics analyses of the effects of contemporary public policies on minorities revolve around the work of Thomas Sowell. In addition to his Markets and Minorities, see Sowell, Race and Economics (New York: McKay, 1975); idem, Ethnic America (New York: Basic Books, 1981); idem, Economics and Politics of Race (New York: Morrow, 1984); idem, Preferential Politics (New York: Morrow, 1990). 66. An indication of law and economies' lack of influence in Britain is the absence of any awareness of it among the British scholarly analyses of conservative theory in Britain and America that emphasize (an overemphasis in my opinion) the centrality of rational choice theory. See Barry, New Liberalism; Green, New Conservatism; King, New Right. 67. James Buchanan, "Cultural Evolution and Institutional Reform," as quoted in Gray, Hayek on Liberty, 70. Gray has an excellent discussion of the influence of public choice theory on Hayek's late thinking (118-25). For a more recent criticism of Hayek from a public choice perspective, see Ellen Frankel Paul, "Liberalism, Unintended Orders and Evolutionism." 68. Hayek acknowledges a debt to Buchanan in Law, Legislation and Liberty, 2:168. 69. Ibid., 141. 70. The contributions of a modified public choice theory to British conservative thought are discussed in more depth in chapter 5. A helpful discussion of public choice theory's contributions to British conservative theory also is provided by King, New Right, 91-109. 71. The literature on Britain's traditional economic focus on monetary stability is extensive. It includes the work of Britain's classical economists. See David Hume, Essays: Moral, Political and Literary (Indianapolis: Liberty, 1985), 281-94; Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (London: Everyman, 1981), bk. 2, chap. 2, pp. 302-50; David Ricardo, An Essay on the Theory of Money (London: Macmillan, 1978). For historical and institutional approaches, see Frank Fetter, Development of British Monetary Orthodoxy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965); Victor Morgan, The Theory and Practice of British Banking (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1943); Samuel Brittan, The Treasury under the Tories (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1964); Peter Hall, Governing the Economy: The Politics of State Intervention in Britain and France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 69-99. 72. T. E. Utley, "The Significance of Mrs. Thatcher," in Conservative Essays, ed. Maurice Cowling (London: Cassell, 1978), 49. 73. Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman provide the intellectual background to much of British conservative theory's economic premises. Among the

• 242 • Notes to Pages 141-144 m

74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

79.

80. 81.

most important works on contemporary economic policy by British conservatives are Alan Walters, Money in Boom and Slump (London: Institute for Economic Affairs, 1968); idem, Britain's Economic Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Tim Congdon, Monetarism: An Essay in Definition (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1978); idem, Monetarism Lost (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1989); idem, Reflections on Monetarism: Britain's Vain Search for a Successful Economic Strategy (London: Institute for Economic Affairs, 1992); Michael Artis and Marcus Miller, eds., Essays in Fiscal and Monetary Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); Walter Eltis and Peter Sinclair, eds., Keynes and Economic Policy (London: Macmillan, 1988). For a rewarding analysis of the debates in and around conservatism with regard to economic policy see Samuel Brittan, How to End the Monetarist Controversy (London: Institute for Economic Affairs, 1981). As I have found Congdon the most consistent monetarist, I utilize his analysis of the initial economic program developed by British conservatism. Congdon, Monetarism Lost, 13. Walters, Britain's Economic Renaissance, 106-07. Ibid., 155. Congdon, Monetarism Lost, 20. For the two positions with regard to the British economy, see Walters, Bntain's Economic Renaissance, 101-52, and Congdon, Monetarism Lost, 2148. The contrasting positions with regard to foreign policy are discussed in chapter 5. See Jock Bruce-Gardyne, ed., Whither Monetarism? (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1985); David Smith, The Rise and Fall of Monetarism (Harmondsworth: Penguin); Andrew Gamble, The Free Economy and the Strong State (Durham: Duke University Press, 1988); Congdon, Reflections on Monetarism. George Gilder, The Spirit of Enterprise (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 19. The analysis of American conservative theory's new economic program revolves around the writers funded by the American Enterprise Institute during the 1970s to develop a new conservative fiscal program: Irving Kristol, Michael Novak, Jude Wanniski, and George Gilder. See Sidney Blumenthal, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment (New York: Basic Books, 1984), 166-209; and members of Martin Anderson's list of other theorists and writers who contributed to new American conservatism's emphasis on fiscal policy to encourage private capital formation: Robert Mundell, Arthur Laffer, Paul Craig Roberts, Robert Bartley (as well as Anderson). See Martin Anderson, Revolution (New York: Harcourt, 1988), 151.

• Notes to Pages 144-149 m 243 m 82. Irving Kristol, "Ideology and Supply-Side Economics," Commentary 71, no. 4 (April 1981): 48. 83. Mansfield, America's Constitutional Soul, 45. 84. Novak, Free Persons and the Common Good, 105. 85. Irving Kristol, "On Corporate Capitalism in America," in The American Commonwealth—1976, ed. Irving Kristol and Nathan Glazer (New York: Basic Books, 1976), 137. 86. Irving Kristol, "The Negro Today Is Like the Immigrant Yesterday," in Cities in Trouble, ed. Nathan Glazer (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970), 146. 87. Mansfield, America's Constitutional Soul, 89-90. 88. Charles Murray, "The Coming of Custodial Democracy," Commentary 86, no. 3 (September 1986): 24. 89. Irving Kristol, "Skepticism, Meliorism and the Public Interest," The Public Interest, no. 81 (Fall 1985): 39. Also see Charles Murray, Losing GroundAmerican Social Policy 1950-1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984). 90. Jeremy Rabkin, "Judicial Activism on the Right," Policy Review, no. 37 (Summer 1986): 82. 91. Thomas Sowell, Judicial Activism Reconsidered (Stanford: Hoover, 1989), 17. 92. Ibid., 18-19. 93. Posner, The Economics of Justice, 68. 94. Mansfield, America's Constitutional Soul, 55. 95. Ibid., 77. 96. Harvey Mansfield, Jr., "Social Science and the Constitution," in Confronting the Constitution, ed. Bloom, 435. Also see William Bluhm, "Liberalism as the Aggregation of Individual Preferences: Problems of Coherence and Rationality in Social Choice," in The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: a Straussian Perspective, ed. Kenneth Deutsch and Walter Soffer (Albany: State University of New York, 1987), 269-90. 97. Friedrich Hayek, New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 192. 98. George Gilder, Wealth and Poverty (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 34. 99. John Maynard Keynes, The Means of Prosperity (New York: Harcourt, 1935), 5. As quoted in Anderson, Revolution, 142-43. 100. See Joseph Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949), 66. 101. Jude Wanniski, The Way the World Works (New York: Touchstone, 1978), 163. For articles by British conservative economists rebutting these charges by American conservatives, see Carl Crist and Alan Walters, "The Mythology of Tax Cuts," Policy Review, no. 16 (Spring 1981): 73-86; Tim Congdon, "What's Wrong with Supply-Side Economics," Policy Review, no. 21 (Summer 1982): 9-18.

• 244 • Notes to Pages 149-155 • 102. The debates among conservative economists during the late 1970s and 1980s on the proper relation between fiscal and monetary policies have been discussed from different perspectives by Anderson, Revolution, 10988; William Niskanen, Reaganomics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 71-114, 155-90; Paul Craig Roberts, Supply-Side Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 161-311. 103. Anderson, Revolution, 129. 104. Milton Friedman, Bright Promises, Dismal Performances (New York: Harcourt, 1983), 324. 105. Ibid., 221. 106. Roberts, The Supply-Side Revolution, 188. 107. Herbert Stein, Presidential Economics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 235-306; Martin Feldstein, "Supply-Side Economics: Old Truths and New Claims," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Economics Association (December 1985). 108. Robert Mundell, "Steps to Accelerate Recovery from the World Recession," in A Monetary Agenda for World Growth, ed. Jack Kemp and Robert Mundell (Boston: Quantum, 1983), 10. 109. Friedman, Bright Promises, Dismal Performances, 324. 110. Mansfield, America's Constitutional Soul, 50. 111. Kristol, Reflections of a Neo-Conservative, 255. Also see Anderson, Revolution, 140-63; Daniel Moynihan, Came the Revolution (New York: Harcourt, 1988), 151-60. 112. Friedman, Bright Promises, Dismal Performances, 221.

Chapter Five. The Institutional Aims of New Conservative Theory 1. See Theda Skocpol and Kenneth Finegold, "State Capacity and Economic Intervention in the Early New Deal," Political Science Quarterly 97, no. 2 (Summer 1982): 255-78; Alexander E. Wendt, "The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory," International Organization 41, no. 3 (Summer 1987): 335-70; Stephen Krasner, "Sovereignty: An Institutional Perspective," Comparative Political Studies 21, no. 1 (April 1988): 66-94. 2. James March and Johan Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New York: Free Press, 1989), 58. 3. Andrew Shonfield, British Economic Policy since the War (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958); idem, Modern Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 98-120, 151-75; William A. Robson, Local Government in Crisis (London: Allen & Unwin, 1968); J. P. Mackintosh, The Devolution of Power (London: Temple Smith, 1968). 4. Christopher Hood, "Government Bodies and Government Growth," in

• Notes to Pages 155-159 • 245 •

5.

6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Quangos in Britain, ed. Anthony Barker (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982), 70. Also see Douglas Hague, W. J. M. Mackenzie, and Anthony Barker, eds., Public Policy and Private Interests: The Institutions of Compromise (London: Macmillan, 1975); Brian Hogwood, "The Regional Dimension of Industrial Policy," and Jim Bulpitt, "Conservatism, Unionism and the Problem of Territorial Management," in The Territorial Dimension in United Kingdom Politics, ed. Peter Madgwick and Richard Rose (London: Macmillan, 1982), 34-66,139-76. There has been a major debate within British social science as to whether these policies of the 1960s and 1970s were either an attempt to improve cooperation between the central state and other organizations in society or an effort by the central state to gain control over other organizations. For a survey and evaluation of this debate with regard to national-local government relations, see R. A. W. Rhodes, Control and Power in Central-Local Government Relations (Farnborough, U.K.: Gower, 1981). R. A. W. Rhodes, "Territorial Politics in the United Kingdom," in Tensions in the Territorial Politics of Western Europe, ed. R. A. W. Rhodes and Vincent Wright (London: Adlard, 1988), 34. Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 126. Ibid., 316. Jim Bulpitt, Territory and Power in the United Kingdom (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983), 127. Also see E. P. Hennock, "Finance and Local Politics in Urban Local Government in England, 1835-1900," Historical Journal 6, no. 2 (Spring 1963): 212-25; J. P. D. Dunbabin, "The Politics of the Establishment of County Councils," Historical Journal 6, no. 2 (Spring 1963): 226-52, and idem, "Expectations of the County Councils, and Their Realization," Historical Journal 8, no. 3 (Fall 1965): 353-79; Douglas Ashford, "A Victorian Drama: The Fiscal Subordination of British Local Government," in Financing Urban Government, ed. Douglas Ashford (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980), 71-96. Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb, A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain (London: Longmans, 1920), 132. See Bryan Keith-Lucas and Peter G. Richards, A History of Local Government in the Twentieth Century (London: Allen & Unwin, 1978). Rhodes, "Territorial Politics in the United Kingdom," 29. Also see Bulpitt, Territory and Power in the United Kingdom, chap. 6. Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism, 2d ed. (London: Macmillan, 1984), 164. Roger Scruton, Untimely Tracts (London: Macmillan, 1987), 80. Michael Oakeshott, "The Rule of Law," in Oakeshott, On History and Other Essays (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 163. See Douglas Mason, Revising the Rating System (London: Adam Smith

• 246 • Notes to Pages 159-163 •

16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

Institute, 1985), and idem, "Slimming for Survival," paper presented at Institute for Economic Affairs (May 1988); William Waldegrave, "Finding the best financial regime for a healthy local democracy," Municipal Journal (June 28, 1985). For secondary interpretations that discuss conservative political theory in the context of Conservative party practice, see Mark Stallworthy, "Central Government and Local Government: The Uses and Abuses of Constitutional Hegemony," Political Quarterly 60, no. 1 (January 1989): 22-37; Rhodes, "Territorial Politics in the United Kingdom"; Desmond King, "Political Centralization and State Interests in Britain," Comparative Political Studies 21, no. 4 (January 1989): 467-94. Rhodes, "Territorial Politics in the United Kingdom," 49. For a discussion on conservative thinking about central-local government relations since the repeal of the poll tax, see John Willman, "Wanted: A User-Friendly System of City Regulation," Financial Times (July 13, 1991), 12. Sheila Lawlor, Away with LEAs (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1989), 4. New British conservative theory's approach to education is most fully expressed by Michael Oakeshott, On Liberal Learning, ed. Tim Fuller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), a collection of Oakeshott's essays on education since 1945. Among the proposals generated by new conservative writers for restructuring education are Caroline Cox et al., Whose Schools? A Radical Manifesto (London: Hillgate, 1986); John Marks and Caroline Cox, The Right to Learn: Purpose, Professionalism and Accountability in State Education (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1982); Oliver Letwin, Aims of Schooling: The Importance of Grounding (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1988); Sheila Lawlor, Opting Out: A Guide to Why and How (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1988). Alan Beattie, History in Peril (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1987), 20. Cox et al., Whose Schools? A Radical Manifesto, 4. Oliver Letwin, Aims of Schooling, 14-15. Also see Sheila Lawlor, Correct Core (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1988). Cox et al., Whose Schools? A Radical Manifesto, 11. Ibid. Ibid., 22. Charles Hanson, "Postscript," in Friedrich Hayek, 1980s Unemployment and the Unions, 2d ed. (London: Institute for Economic Affairs, 1984), 71. Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Labour 1920-24: The Beginning of Modern Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971). Hayek, 1980s Unemployment and the Unions, 31. Also see Richard Clutterbuck, Industrial Conflict and Democracy: The Last Chance (London: Macmillan, 1984).

• Notes to Pages 163-167 • 247 • 28. Hayek, 1950s Unemployment and the Unions, 61. 29. Ibid., 58. Hayek's Unemployment and the Unions is a comprehensive program for reforming industrial relations in Britain. Also see the industryby-industry analysis of tasks required to reform and weaken the trade unions in Clutterbuck, Industrial Conflict and Democracy. For discussions on the new conservative theory's view of the trade unions in the context of analyzing Conservative party practice, see David Marsh and Jeff King, The Trade Unions under Thatcher, Essex Papers in Politics and Government (Essex: University of Essex, 1985); Keith Middlemas, Industry, Unions and Government (London: Macmillan, 1983); Frank Longstreth, "From Corporatism to Dualism? Thatcherism and the Climacteric of British Trade Unions in the 1980s," Political Studies 36, no. 3 (September 1988): 413-32. 30. Shirley and William Letwin, Every Adult a Share-Owner (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1986), 9. Also see John Redwood, Equity for Everyman (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1986); Nicholas Goodison, Shares for All (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1986). 31. T. E. Utley, "The Significance of Mrs. Thatcher," in Conservative Essays, ed. Maurice Cowling (London: Cassell, 1978), 49. 32. Nathan Glazer, The Limits of Social Policy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 113-14. 33. Richard John Neuhaus and Peter Berger, To Empower People: The Role of Mediating Structures in Public Policy (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1978), 14. 34. Thomas Pangle, The Ennobling of Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 155. 35. Ibid. 36. Neuhaus and Berger, To Empower People, 18. Among the publications developed by this AEI project are Michael Novak, ed., Democracy and Mediating Structures (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1980); Lowell Levin and Ellen Idler, The Hidden Health Care System: Mediating Structures and Medicine (Cambridge: Ballinger, 1981); John Egan et al., Housing and Public Policy: A Role for Mediating Structures (Cambridge: Ballinger, 1982); Glazer, Limits of Social Policy, 36-85. 37. Glazer, Limits of Social Policy, 126. 38. Ibid., 187. 39. Neuhaus and Berger, To Empower People, 32. Also see Glazer, "Is Busing Necessary?," Commentary 53, no. 3 (March 1972): 39-52. 40. Nathan Glazer, Affirmative Discrimination (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), 189. 41. Ibid., 188-89.

• 248 m Notes to Pages 167-173 • 42. See Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989). 43. Harvey Mansfield, Jr., America's Constitutional Soul (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 96. 44. Neuhaus and Berger, To Empower People, 12. 45. Glazer, Limits of Social Policy, 8. 46. Pangle, The Ennobling of Democracy, 155. 47. Ibid., 13. 48. Richard John Neuhaus, "National Service, What Service," in National Service, ed. Williamson Evers (Stanford: Hoover, 1991), 132. 49. Irving Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism (New York: Mentor, 1978), 128. 50. Glazer, Limits of Social Policy, 183. 51. Ibid., 176. 52. Glazer, Limits of Social Policy, 192. 53. Norman Podhoretz, The Present Danger (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), 88. 54. Max Beloff, Foreign Policy and the Democratic Process (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955), 23. For comparisons of British and American state structures in foreign policy, see Beloff, Foreign Policy and the Democratic Process; Richard Neustadt, "White House and Whitehall," The Public Interest, no. 2 (Winter 1966): 55-69; Zara Steiner, "DecisionMaking in American and British Foreign Policy: An Open and Shut Case," Review of International Studies 13, no. 2 (Spring 1987): 1-18. 55. For surveys of postwar British foreign policy, see Michael Howard, The Continental Commitment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970); Roy E. Jones, The Changing Structure of British Foreign Policy (London: Longmans, 1973); Steve Smith, ed., International Relations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984). 56. Representative examples are George Urban, British Foreign Policy: A Case for Coherence (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1986); Elie Kedourie, The Crossman Confessions and Other Essays on Politics, History and Religion (London: Mansell, 1984); P. T. Bauer, Equality, the Third Worjd and Economic Delusion (London: Weidenfeld, 1981); Michael Crozier, Drew Middleton, and Jeremy Murray-Brown, This War Called Peace (London: Sherwood, 1984). 57. Kedourie, The Crossman Confessions, 82. 58. See John Baylis, ed., Alternative Approaches to British Defence Policy (London: Macmillan, 1983). 59. "Editorial," The Spectator (March 12, 1989). 60. See George Urban, British Foreign Policy, pt. 3; George Szamuely, "The Politics of 1992," Commentary 88, no. 4 (October 1989): 42-46; John Hoskyns, "1992 and the Brussels Machine," and Benjamin Roberts, "The

• Notes to Pages 173-180 • 249 •

61. 62. 63. 64.

65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70.

Social Dimension of European Labour Markets," in Whose Europe? Competing Visions for 1992, ed. Cento Veljanovski (London: Institute for Economic Affairs, 1989), 11-21, 39-49, respectively; Anthony Hartley, "After 1992: Multiple Choice," The National Interest, no. 15 (Winter 1989): 2939; Max Beloff, "Fault Lines and Steeples," The National Interest, no. 23 (Spring 1991): 76-82. Urban, British Foreign Policy, 29. Paul Johnson, "Europe: Miracle or Monster?" Commentary 94, no. 2 (August 1992), 32. Alan Sked, Germany and the Gulf Crisis (London: Bruges Group, 1991), 3. Urban, British Foreign Policy, 15. For de Gaulle's fears of Britain as an American voice within Europe, see John Newhouse, De Gaulle and the Anglo-Saxons (New York: Viking, 1970); Nora Beloff, The General Says 'No' (Baltimore: Penguin, 1973). Beloff, "Faults and Steeples," 76. Samuel Huntington, The Common Defense (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 147. Also see Samuel Huntington, "Strategic Planning and the Political Process," Foreign Affairs 38, no. 2 (January 1960): 285-99; Theodore Lowi, The End of Liberalism, 2d ed. (New York: Norton, 1979), 127-39; I. M. Destler, Presidents, Bureaucrats, and Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972). For America's heterogeneous legacy with regard to executive-legislative relations in foreign and defense policies, see Christopher Pyle and Richard Pious, ed., The President, Congress and the Constitution (New York: Free Press, 1984), 233-390. Lowi, The End of Liberalism, 139. Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 261 (hereafter cited by page number in text). Samuel Huntington, "Coping with the Lippman Gap," Foreign Affairs 66, no. 3 (Winter 1987-88): 453-77. John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 353. Also see idem, "Containment and the Logic of Strategy," The National Interest, no. 10 (Winter 1987/88): 27-38; idem, "Prologue," in Containment: Concept and Policy, ed. Terry L. Diebel and John Lewis Gaddis (Washington: National Defense University Press, 1986); Samuel Huntington, "The Defense Policy of the Reagan Administration: 19811882," in The Reagan Presidency: An Early Assessment, ed. Fred Greenstein (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); idem, "Coping with the Lippman Gap"; idem, "Defense Organization and Military Strategy," The Public Interest, no. 75 (Spring 1984): 20-46. Gaddis notes different emphases within America's generally distinct containment programs before and

• 250 • Notes to Pages 180-184 m

71.

72.

73. 74. 75. 76.

77. 78. 79.

80. 81.

82. 83.

after 1970, while Huntington distinguishes American containment programs solely by the distinct pre and post 1970 strategies. I am analyzing the foreign policy developed by conservative theorists and writers who were most active between the mid-1970s and 1989. As discussed below, conservatives are in the early stages of a debate on the tasks of American foreign policy given the dissolution of the Soviet Union. James Ceaser, "In Defense of the Separation of Powers," in Does the Separation of Powers Still Work?, ed. Robert Goldwin and Herbert Kaufman (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1987), 171. Ibid., 190. Carnes Lord, "Executive Power and Our Security," The National Interest, no. 7 (Spring 1987): 7. Ibid, 9. For an excellent summary of new American conservatism's approach to the Soviet Union, see Mary Tedeschi Eberstadt, "Obituary for an Agenda," The National Interest, no. 12 (Summer 1988): 25-33; also see Gaddis, "Containment and the Logic of Strategy"; Faree Zakira, "The Reagan Strategy of Containment," Political Science Quarterly 105, no. 3 (Fall 1990): 37393. Glazer, "American Values and American Foreign Policy," Commentary 62, no. 1 (July 1976): 24-25. Podhoretz, The Present Danger, 100. Jeane Kirkpatrick, "American Foreign Policy in a Cold Climate," interview with George Urban in Encounter (January 1984): 31. Also see Kirkpatrick, "Dictatorship and Double Standards," Commentary 68, no. 5 (November 1979): 34-45; idem, "Symposium: Human Rights and American Foreign Policy," Commentary 72, no. 5 (November 1981): 42-45. Charles Krauthammer, "In Defense of Interventionism," The New Republic (February 17, 1986), 16. Jeane Kirkpatrick, Legitimacy and Force: Political and Moral Dimensions (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1988) 1:428. Also see idem, "Reagan Doctrine II" and "Reagan Doctrine III," in Legitimacy and Force, 1:432-39, 440-46; Charles Krauthammer, "The Poverty of Realism," The New Republic (February 17, 1986): 14-22. Kristol, "Symposium: Beyond Containment," Policy Review (Summer 1985): 37-38. For statements on these points, see Eugene V. Rostow, "Why the Soviets Want an Arms Control Agreement and Why They Want it Now," Commentary 83, no. 2 (February 1987): 19-26; Donald Kagan, "World War I, World War II, World War III," Commentary 83, no. 3 (March 1983): 2140; Patrick Glynn, "The Sarajevo Fallacy," The National Interest, no. 9 (Fall 1987): 3-31. Conservatives also deplored the Reagan administration's

• Notes to Pages 184-186 m 251 •

84. 85. 86.

87.

88. 89. 90. 91.

92.

second-term focus on arms control: see Mary Eberstadt, "Obituary for an Agenda." Kristol, "Symposium: Beyond Containment," 37-38. Carnes Lord, "American Strategic Culture," Comparative Strategy 5, no. 3 (Fall 1985): 273. Fred Ikle and Albert Wohlstetter, Discriminate Deterrence: Report of the Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1988), 50. Also see Samuel Huntington, "U.S. Defense Strategy: The Strategic Innovation of the Reagan Years," in American Defense Annual: 1987-88, ed. Joseph Kruzel (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1988). Although generally ignored in the United States, Discriminate Deterrence immediately raised concern among some European foreign policy analysts that the American state would no longer be responsive to outside pressure when deciding to introduce force. See, for example, Michael Howard, Karl Kaiser, and Francois de Rose, "Deterrence Policy: A European Response," International Herald Tribune (February 4, 1988), and the response by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, Fred Ikle, and Albert Wohlstetter, "Discriminate Deterrence Would Not Leave Europe Dangling," International Herald Tribune (February 24, 1988). Irving Kristol, "Commentary and Exchanges on Politics and Public Debate," in The Fettered Presidency, ed. L. Gordon Crovitz and Jeremy Rabkin (Washington, D.C: American Enterprise Institute, 1989), 317. Kristol, "Symposium: Beyond Containment," 28. Norman Podhoretz, "Symposium: Are We Moving toward a New Foreign Policy Consensus?" The National Interest no. 4 (Summer 1986): 7. Kristol, "Commentary or Exchanges on Politics and Public Debate," 317. Patrick Buchanan, "America First—and Second, and Third," in America's Purpose, ed. Owen Harries (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1991), 23-34. I am suggesting that isolationism has little support among new conservative theorists and writers, not that isolationist politicians could not develop public support. I am not overlooking the fact that, in the wake of the end of the cold war, conservative theorists and writers are moving into a very difficult debate on what the focus of American foreign policy should be. At the very least, this debate will be characterized by a period of unclarity and uncertainty; the debate may ultimately become extremely divisive; however, it presently centers on the nature and focus of America's foreign policy engagements, rather than on whether America should remain actively engaged in the foreign policy arena. For a different view, see John Judis, "The Conservative Crackup," The American Prospect, no. 3 (Fall 1990): 30-42. Charles Krauthammer, "Universal Dominion: Toward a Unipolar World," America's Purpose, 5-15.

• 252 • Notes to Pages 187-197 • 93. Irving Kristol, "Defining Our National Interest," America's Purpose, 69, 70, 72. This one superpower plan created a debate after the New York Times reported that the Defense Department had developed plans for its implementation. See Patrick Tyler, "U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop," New York Times (March 8, 1992), 1; idem, "Lone Superpower Plan: Ammunition for Critics," New York Times (March 10, 1992), 12. 94. Pangle, The Ennobling of Democracy, 81. 95. Ibid., 86. 96. Ibid. 97. William Bennett, "Rebirth of a Nation," The National Review (March 18, 1991), 44.

Chapter Six. Undivided and Dual Sovereignty 1. See Giovanni Sartori, Theory of Democracy Revisited (Chatham: Chatham House Publishers, 1987), 2:367-98. 2. Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics (London: Methuen, 1962), 89. 3. Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 36. 4. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 75. 5. Michael Oakeshott, Hobbes on Civil Association (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975), 25. 6. Ibid., 63. 7. Ibid., 64-69. 8. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 175. 9. See Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Genesis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1936); idem, Natural Right and History, 166-202. Also see Michael Oakeshott, "Dr. Leo Strauss on Hobbes," in Hobbes on Civil Association, 132-49; Paul Franco, The Political Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 8487. 10. See Rogers Smith, "The 'American Creed' and American Identity: The Limits of Liberal Citizenship in the United States," Western Political Quarterly 41, no. 2 (June 1988): 225-50. 11. Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, 1955), 156. Also see Seymour Martin Lipset, The First New Nation (New York: Harcourt, 1955); John Laslett and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Failure of a Dream? Essays in the History of American Socialism (Garden City: Doubleday, 1974). 12. Samuel Huntington, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), 20.

• Notes to Pages 197-198 m 253 • 13. For analyses examining the relation of liberalism to other currents of thought in American politics, see Rogers Smith, "The 'American Creed' and American Identity," and idem, " 'One United People': Second-Class Female Citizenship and the American Quest for Community," Yale Journal of Law and Humanities 1, no. 2 (May 1989): 229-93; Judith Shklar, "Redeeming American Political Theory," American Political Science Review 85, no. 1 (March 1991): 3-15; John Higham, "Divergent Unities in American History," Journal of American History 61, no. 1 (January 1974): 5-28. Historians provide most of the analyses of republican and other currents in American political thought. See Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967); Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic (New York: Norton, 1967); J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). For studies emphasizing nativist currents in American political thought, see John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1955); Samuel Hays, "The Social Analysis of American Political History," Political Science Quarterly 80, no. 3 (September 1965): 373-94; Robert Wiebe, The Segmented Society: An Introduction to the Meaning of America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1975); Ronald Formisano, The Transformation of Political Culture (New York: Knopf, 1983). For a rewarding summary of recent studies on nativism in American politics, see James M. Bergquist, "The Concept of Nativism in Historical Study since Strangers in the Land" American Jewish History 7, no. 2 (December 1986): 125-41. 14. For the ideological outlook of the common school movement, see Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 75-135. For the ideological outlook of the "100% Americanism" campaign, see Higham, Strangers in the Land, 234-63. 15. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: Mentor, 1961), nos. 15-22, pp. 105-52. 16. John Calhoun, "Fort Hill Address," in The Political Thought of American Statesmen, ed. Morton Frisch and Richard Stevens (Itasca, 111.: Peacock, 1973), 148. For an analysis of the Anti-Federalists, see Herbert Storing, What the Anti-Federalists Were For (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). 17. Edward S. Corwin, The Commerce Power versus States' Rights (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1936), 115-209. For a concise summary of the role of dual federalism in American politics, see Daniel Elazar, The American Partnership (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 11-24. 18. John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (Chicago: Swallow, 1954), 150.

• 254 • Notes to Pages 198-201 • 19. Robert Dahl, Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 140. 20. For an examination of the tension between the pluralists and the national reformers (who are discussed briefly in chapter 3) in Progressive-Liberalism, see Arthur Schlesinger, The Age of Roosevelt, vol. 2, The Coming of the New Deal (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1958). Also see Arthur Shonfield, Modern Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 298-357. To see how an individual Progressive-Liberal shifted from the national reform current to the pluralist view, see Adolph Berle, New Directions in the New World (New York: Harper, 1940); idem, Power without Property (New York: Harper, 1960). For discussions on the complex networks upon which American social policy has been built, see Theodore Lowi, The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States, 2d ed. (New York: Nor ton, 1979), 67-92, 167-270; Margaret Weir and Theda Skocpol, "State Structures and the Possibilities for 'Keynesian' Responses to the Great Depression in Sweden, Britain, and the United States," in Bringing the State Back In9 ed. Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 105-63. 21. For analyses of Progressive-Liberalism's commitment to group particularism in domestic politics and a nationally mobilized public in foreign policy, see Theodore Lowi, The End of Liberalism; Robert Booth Fowler, Believing Skeptics: American Political Intellectuals, 1945-64 (Westport: Greenwood, 1978). 22. See James Burnham, Congress and the American Tradition (Chicago: Regnery, 1959). 23. C. Vann Woodward, "The Age of Reinterpretation," American Historical Review 66, no. 1 (October 1960): 1-19. 24. See Henry Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh, and the Problems of Peace (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956). 25. Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthmen (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959). 26. Kenneth Dyson, The State Tradition in Western Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 1-21; J. P. Nettl, "The State as a Conceptual Model," World Politics 20, no. 4 (July 1968): 559-92. For an interesting rebuttal of Dyson and Nettl, see Ira Katznelson, "Working-Class Formation and the State," in Bringing the State Back In, 257-85. 27. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 18th ed. (New York: Dean, 1832), bk. 1, chap. 2, pp. 116-17. For an excellent discussion of the different interpretations of political sovereignty developed by British and American theorists during the eighteenth century, see Charles H. McIlwain, "Whig and Real Sovereignty," in Mcllwain, Constitutionalism and

• Notes to Pages 202-203 • 255 •

28.

29. 30.

31.

32.

the Changing World (New York: Macmillan, 1939). Also see Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, 160-229. Walter Bagehot, "Introduction to the Second Edition," The English Constitution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966), 274. Also see A. H. Birch, Representative and Responsible Government (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1964). R. H. S. Grossman, Diaries of a Cabinet Minister (London: Jonathan Cape, 1966)2:49-50. Harold Laski, The Danger of Being a Gentleman and Other Essays (New York: Viking, 1940), 30. For an analysis of the limited role of pluralism, guild socialism, and syndicalism in British Marxist and social democratic theory, see W. H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, vol. 2, The Ideological Heritage (London: Methuen, 1983), 417-39, 487-519. David Marsh and Wyn Grant, "Tripartism: Reality or Myth?," Government and Opposition 12, no. 4 (Winter 1977): 194-211; David Marsh and Gareth Locksley, "Capital in Britain: Its Structural Power and Influence over Policy," West European Politics 6, no. 2 (Spring 1983): 36-60; Douglas Hague and GeoffreyWilkinson, The IRC: An Experiment in Industrial Intervention (London: Allen & Unwin, 1983); Stephen Blank, "Britain," in Between Power and Plenty, ed. Peter Katzenstein (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), 89-187. See Michael Stewart, The Jekyll and Hyde Years (London: Dent, 1977); S. E. Finer, The Changing British Party System (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1983); Andrew Gamble and S. A. Walkland, The British Party System and Economic Policy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983).

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Index

Alfarabi, 41; art of "kallum," 40; on Plato, 216*8 Alger, Horatio, 60, 96 American conservative theory, compared to British conservative theory, 67, 7071, 78-79, 91-92, 98-100, 117-18, 130-32, 152, 153-54, 165-66, 170-71, 188-89, 190-96, 201, 204 American exceptionalism: criticism of Hartz's thesis of, 197, 253«13; as "free security," 200; as lack of national social policies, 170; as the liberal society, 196-97 Ancient philosophers: Arendt's view of, 218«23; as founders of truth, 41, 217nl9; Strauss's comparison to Machiavelli, 41-47; Strauss's comparison to moderns, 40-41. See also Aristotle; Plato Anderson, Martin, 148, 242*81 Arendt, Hannah, 41, 218*23 Aristophanes, 218*23 Aristotle, 9, 41, 76, 126-27; on mixed regimes, 129; on natural right, 43; Strauss distinguishes from Plato and Machiavelli, 44, 218-19*29; and virtue, 89;

Wilson reconciles with modern liberalism, 129 Austin, John, 24, 85, 204 Austrian School, 98 Authority, 33, 201; in American conservative theory, 66-67, 70-74, 79, 91-92, 96, 117-18, 147, 165-66, 201; in British conservative theory, 4-5, 19-20, 26-30, 33-35, 79, 84-86, 122-23, 12425, 130-31, 139, 142-43, 153, 172, 174-75, 191, 193, 201, 203-04, 24445*4; Friedman's types of, 79; and garantiste constitutionalism, 24, 29; and liberty, 85-87, 120-22; of local governments in British conservative theory, 156-59; Oakeshott on, 19-20, 84-87, 120, 124-25, 191; and social justice, 84-85, 89-90, 91-92, 191-92; Strauss on, 89-90, 191-92. See also Legal positivism; Parliamentary sovereignty Averroes, 43 Bagehot, Walter, 202, 206*9 Bailyn, Bernard, 53, 253*13 Barth, Karl, 112 Bauer, Peter, 172

257

258 m Index • Baxter, William, 136 Beer, Samuel, 73, 95, 207*14, 230*40 Bell, Daniel, 59, 60, 222*81; break from new conservatism, 223*89; distinction between artistic and public liberty, 63 Bellah, Robert, 93, 94 Beloff, Max; on democracy and foreign policy in Britain, 171-72; on Europe's future, 175-76 Bennett, William, 114, 188 Berger, Peter, 36, 59, 116, 165, 166-67; on community, 94-95; on discrimination and particularism, 168-69; on liberty, 129-30; on parochialism, 66 Bergson, Henri-Louis, 83, 227nl Berns, Walter, 36, 50; on corruption, 6465; on religion, 110, 116 Bill of Rights, 25, 26, 57, 96, 212*73; Oakeshott's rejection of, 27-28 Black, Hugo, 108 Blackstone, William; on undivided political authority, 24, 201, 204 Blake, Lord Robert, 14 Bloom, Allan, 36, 49, 58, 126; on the American university, 55-56; on the end of communism, 90-91 Bodin, Jean, 20, 211*59; Oakeshott's interpretation of, 71 Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount, 53 Boothby, Robert, 6, 81 Bork, Robert, 66-67 Bosanquet, Bernard, 192 Bradley, F. H.: on morality, 81; on philosophy, 8 British conservative theory: compared to American conservative theory, 67, 7071, 78-79, 91-92, 98-100, 117-18, 130-32, 152, 153-54, 165-66, 170-71, 188-89, 190-96, 201, 204 Brittan, Samuel, 13, 207*15, 241-42*73; criticism of conservatism, 124 Bryce, James, 3, 102 Buchanan, Patrick, 186 Buchanan, James, 121; on the social decision procedure, 135; criticism of Hayek, 138-39

Bulpitt, Jim, 157, 206*7 Burke, Edmund, 1, 164, 196, 204; on authority, 30; comparison to Oakeshott, 17-18, 210*47; on history, 2, 80; and Strauss's critique of modern liberalism, 47; on tradition, 17-18 Burns, James MacGregor, 95; on the political executive, 73 Bush, George, ix Butler, R. A., 6 Calhoun, John, 198 Campbell-Bannerman government, 8 Ceaser, James: on liberalism, 56-57; on separation of powers, 180-81; on virtue, 52, 96 Chicago School. See Monetarism Cicero, 42, 53, 110 Civil association, 17-24, 70-71, 121, 156; and authority, 85; and foreign policy, 31-32; and morality, 83; and rule of law, 20-21, 22-24, 211*59. See also Oakeshott Cole, G. D. H., 202 Coleridge, Samuel T., 1, 3, 30, 204 Community, 65-69, 74, 75, 111; American conservative interpretation of, 9396, 164-65, 166-69; Maclntyre and communitarians9 view of, 93-95, 127; Progressive-Liberalism's view of, 95, 231-32*61 Comte, Auguste, 21 Congdon, Tim, 141, 142 Congress, 70, 146-47, 181-82, 199 Conservative party, 25, 30, 31, 32-33, 140, 156-57, 162, 174; and Keynesianism, 6 Constitutionalism: in American conservative theory, 54, 66-67, 70-74, 77, 18081; in British conservative theory, 2-3, 4-5, 23-28; British and continental, 24; garantiste constitutionalism, 24-29, 3335, 123, 125, 203; Hayek on, 22-23; Mansfield and public choice theory, 147; Oakeshott on, 10-11, 15-17, 1921, 211*59; Oakeshott and Mansfield

Index • 259 • on, 71; of public choice theory, 147; semantic constitutionalism, 29; Strauss and, 76 Corwin, Edward, 198 Covell, Charles: on Oakeshott's abandonment of Hegel for Hobbes, 209-10*43, 228*17 Cowling, Maurice, 103, 162 Cox, Caroline, 160, 161 Croly, Herbert, 74, 190; on national community, 95 Cropsey, Joseph, 49, 50; on crisis of modernity, 54 Grossman, R. H., 202 Dahl, Robert, 55; on groups and liberty, 198, 232*62 Dannhauser, Werner, 50; on liberty and conformity, 131 DeMaistre, compared to Oakeshott, 16 Democracy, 48-49; American conservative theory's view of, 66-67, 72, 77, 94-95, 111, 130-31, 168, 195; British conservative theory's view of, 24-26, 30, 3133, 130, 195; crisis of, 13-14; and foreign policy, 72, 177-79; Hayek on, 2123, 125; Mansfield on, 57-58, 168; Oakeshott on, 20, 125-25; and particularism, 168; public choice theory's view of, 134-36, 139; Strauss on, 48-49, 76, 177-79 Democratic party, 58, 59, 151; Mansfield's view of, 147 Devolution, 203, 204; American conservative advocacy of, 66-68, 92, 94-96, 98100, 111, 117-18, 164-70; British conservative opposition to, 26-27, 98, 154-

64 Dewey, John, 75; on groups and liberty, 198, 232*62 Diamond, Martin, 49, 94 Dicey, A. V., 3-4, 24, 102, 204, 211/t56 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 82 Disraeli, Benjamin, 1-3, 30, 81, 204; on political abstractions, 80 Distributive justice. See Social justice

Dostoyevski, Fyodor, 61 Dual federalism, 198-99 Dual polity: in contemporary American conservative theory, 70-71, 77, 99-100, 111, 117, 171, 188, 199-200; in late Victorian conservative theory, 3-5, 157, 201-03 Dworkin, Ronald, 146 Dyson, Kenneth, 201 Easterbrook, Frank, 136 Economic policies, 131-52; in American conservative theory, 131-32, 144-51, 152; in British conservative theory, 131-32, 138-43, 152; in law and economics, 136-38, 144-46; monetarism, 133-34, 140-43. See also Fiscal policies; Market; Monetarism Education, 102, 114, 159-61 Epicurean philosophy, 39 Epstein, David, 51, 52, 221-22*76 European Community (EC), 142-43, 174-

75 European integration, 153-54, 172-75 Executive: American conservative view of, ix, 51-53, 56-58, 69-74, 77, 99-100, 177, 180-86, 188, 189, 199-200; Mansfield on, 51-53, 71-72, 174; prerogative, 57, 71-72, 74; ProgressiveLiberal view of, 73, 199; Strauss's Machiavelli on, 177-80; Straussianism's American founders' view of, 51-53. See also Poetic idea of greatness; Statesman Feldstein, Martin, 150-51 Ferguson, Adam, 92 Fiscal policies: in American conservative theory, 144, 147-53, 169; in British conservative theory, 141-42, 148. See also Economic policies Flathman, Richard: on different types of moralities, 79, 227*1 Foreign policy: and American conservative constitutionalism, 70-74, 77, 180-82, 199-200; in American conservative theory, 182-89, 199-200; in British

260 • Index m Foreign policy (continued) conservative theory, 31-32, 170-76, 189; and Progressive-Liberalism, 11213, 199-200; Strauss's ancients and Machiavelli on, 42-44 Founding theory: civic republican historians on the American republic's, 53; poetic idea of greatness in, 42, 44; Strauss and founders of truth, 41, 217*19; Straussianism on the American republic's, 50-54 Franco, Paul, 212*69; on Oakeshott's relations with Hegel and Hobbes, 20910*43, 228*17 Freud, Sigmund, 21 Friedman, Milton, 132, 133, 141; and the deficit, 149-51 Friedman, Richard: on types of authority, 79 Friedrich, Carl, 111-12 Gaddis, John Lewis, 179-80, 249-50*70 Garantiste constitutionalism, 24-29, 3335, 123, 125, 203. See also Hayek Gilder, George, 144, 148, 242*81 Glazer, Nathan, 36, 59, 94, 164; on authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, 182; on devolution, 68, 166, 169-70; on particularism, 166-67 Gordis, Robert, 112 Graglia, Lino, 66 Granno, Joseph, 66 Gray, John, 25, 34, 139; on authority and liberty, 84, 120, 122-23; on Christianity, 104; and liberalism, 121-22 Green, T. H., 102, 190 Greenspan, Alan, 149-50 Hamilton, Alexander, 51, 52, 57, 181 Hanson, Charles, 162 Harrington, James, 53 Hart, H. L. A., 83, 227*1 Ham, Louis, 125, 196 Hayek, Friedrich, 12-13, 121-25, 148, 170, 206-07*13; on authority, 25; comparison to Oakeshott, 22-23, 123; on

conservatism, 7-8, 33; criticism of American conservatism, 88, 98; critique of middle way, 5-7; critique of social justice, 87-89; on democracy, 22-23, 25, 125; economic views of, 98-99, 148; on intermediate organizations, 2223, 87-88; on John Stuart Mill, 12324; KristoPs critique of, 91-92; on legal positivism, 7, 22; on liberty, 6, 7-8, 123-24; on morality, 87-88; and public choice theory, 138, 139; on rationalism in politics, 7, 21; shirts in thinking, 2123, 123-24; on trade unions, 163 Heath government, 14 Hegel, G. W. F., 191, 206-07*13, 211*59; on morality, 227*8; Oakeshott's interpretation of, 71, 81; and relation to Oakeshott, 209-10*43, 228*17 Heidegger, Martin, 47-48, 55; and founders of truth, 217*19 Herberg, Will, 112-14 Herrnstein, Richard, 129 Herschel, Abraham, 112 High politics: in American conservative theory, 69-74, 171, 180-82, 185-86, 199—200; in British conservative theory, 3-4, 6, 10, 25-26, 141-42, 201-02. See also Dual polity Himmelfarb, Gertrude, 94; criticisms of Oakeshott, 91 Hirsch, H. N., 231-32*61 Hirschman, Albert, 132-33 History: and morality, 80, 81-82; new British conservative historiography, 2, 122-23, 205-06*4; Nietzsche's view of, 2, 40; Oakeshott's interpretation, 2, 122; and Strauss's esoteric political commentaries, 41; Strauss's history of liberalism, 47-48; Strauss's history of political philosophy, 40-41; traditional British conservative view of, 2, 80 Hobbes, Thomas, 19-20, 30, 40-41, 54, 116, 204, 211*59; Gray's new appreciation for, 123; influence on Oakeshott, 19-21, 85-86, 120, 192-93, 209-

Index m 261 10*43, 228*17; Oakeshott's interpretation of, 71, 192, 229*25; reconciled with Hume, viii, 83, 123, 191; Strauss's interpretation of, 47, 110, 192-93; Strauss's and Oakeshott's views contrasted, 192-93 Hobhouse, L. T., 190 Hogg, Quentin. See Lord Hailsham Hume, David, 51, 83, 92; on authority, 86-87; compared to Oakeshott, 86-87; Gray compares to Hayek, 122; on morality, 83, 87; reconciled with Hobbes, vii, 83, 123, 191 Huntington, Samuel, 177; on American conservatism, 197; on American exceptionalism, 196-97; on containment, 179-80; on liberalism, 125, 196-97 Intellectuals, 95; in the 1960s, 55; Hayek's critique of, 7, 21, 123-24; New York Intellectuals, 65; neoconservatives' critique of, 60-64; Oakeshott's critique of, 9-10; Straussianism's critique of, 55-56; Trilling and Voegelin on, 62 Intermediary institutions (organizations): in American conservative theory, 67-68, 93-96, 99-100, 125-26, 144, 151, 164-70; in British conservative theory, 26-29, 32, 33, 139-41, 154-64; Glazer on, 67-68, 164, 165-66, 169-70; Hayek on, 22-23, 87-88; Labour left on, 157, 202-03; late Victorian conservative theory and, 4-5, 28, 201-02; Neuhaus and Berger on, 94, 165-66, 168-69; Oakeshott on, 10, 18-19, 23, 155-56, 158-59; Progressive-Liberalism and, 198-99, 232*62. See also Devolution; Dual polity Jaffa, Harry, 49, 55, 215*3 James, William, 75 Jefferson, Thomas, 110, 116 Johnson, Nevil, 25-26, 139 Johnson, Paul, 25, 139, 174-75 Joseph, Keith, 26 Judeo-Christian tradition, 111-18; differ-

ences within American conservatism, 113-14, 116-17; new American conservative view of, 113-17; Nietzsche, 114-15, 117; pluralist view of, 111-12; Progressive-Liberal view of, 112-14 Judicial activism, 67, 138, 146 Kaestle, Carl, 106-07 Kant, Immanuel, 41, 122 Kedourie, Elie, 98, 172 Kelsen, Hans, 85 Kendall, Wilmoore, 49 Keynes, John Maynard, 148 Keynesianism, 6, 134; American and British conservatisms' critiques of, 148-49 Kirkpatrick, Jeane, 36, 59, 131, 186; on authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, 182-83; on the new class, 62-64; on rationalism, 62-63 Krauthammer, Charles, 183, 186 Kristol, Irving, 36, 59, 65, 67, 94, 129; on community, 94-95; criticism of Hayek, 91-92; and the deficit, 151; on distributive justice, 97-98; on the executive, 185-86; on fiscal policy, 144-45, 169; Hayek's criticism of, 88-89; on intellectuals, 59, 95; on post-Cold War foreign policy, 186-87; on religion and politics, 109, 111, 113-14; on U.S.-Soviet relations, 183-84 Labour party, 6, 7, 32, 34, 162, 171-72, 173; and constitutional reform, 214*102; and elitism, 157, 202-03 Laski, Harold, 157, 202-03 Law and economics, 131-33, 134-38, 241*66; compared to public choice theory, 135; contributions to American conservative theory, 144-46 Lecky, W. E. K, 3-4, 102 Legal positivism: British conservative theory and, 85-86; Hayek's rejection of, 7, 22-23; and Hobbes, Austin, and Kelsen, 85; and liberty, 85-86; Oakeshott and, 21, 23, 85-86; Oakeshott on Hobbes,

• 262 • Index Legal positivism (continued) 229n25. See also Authority; Parliamentary sovereignty Lerner, Ralph, 50 Letwin, Oliver, 160 Letwin, Shirley, 121; on authority, 84; on individualism, 120; on morality, 82; on privatization, 163-64; on religion, 105 Letwin, William, on privatization, 163-64 Liberal party, 7 Liberal Democratic party; and constitutional reform, 214*102 Liberalism, 190; American conservatism's distinction between Lockean and pragmatic, 75-76, 125-26; Berger on, 12930; British conservative critique of, 119-25; Brittan's libertarianism, 124; communitarians' critique of, 93-94; Gray's criticism, 121-23; Hirsch's defense of, 232*62; Hobbesian, 21, 120, 209-10*43; Maclntyre's critique of, 9394; Oakeshott's critique of deontological, 120-21; and the postmodern crisis, 48-49, 55-58; and relativism, 48-49; Strauss's three waves of, 47-48; Straussianism's embracement of Lockean, 75-76, 125-26; Wilson's different views of, 127-29. See also Liberty Liberty: American conservatism's criticism of negative liberty, 125-30; Bell's distinction between artistic and public, 63; Berger's interpretation of, 129-30; British conservatism on authority and, 8587, 119-123; British conservatism's criticism of negative liberty, 119-24; Gray's reevaluation of, 121-23; Hayek's criticism of Mill's view of, 123-24; Hayek's reevaluation of, 123-24; and Hobbesian authority, 119, 120-23; Mansfield's distinction between philosophic and public, 127; negative liberty, 7-8, 119, 123-24; Nietzsche and, 41; Oakeshott on authority and, 85-87; Oakeshott's interpretation of, 120-21; Pangle's distinction between philosophic

and public, 68, 126; positive liberty, 8, 124, 190; social traditionalism and, 122-23; Strauss's distinction between philosophic and public, 48-49, 126-27; Wilson's changed views of, 127-29. See also Democracy; Liberalism Locke, John, 47, 68, 86, 110, 116, 196; American conservatives' new interpretation of, 75-76, 125-27, 226-27*127; differences between Strauss and American conservatives, 75-76; on separation of powers, 69, 226-27*127 Lord, Games, 36, 50, 181-82, 221-22*76 Lord Hailsham, 6, 25, 34, 139 Low politics, 26; and American conservative theory, 67, 71, 74-75; and late Victorian conservative theory, 8, 202; and Oakeshott's early constitutionalism, 10; and Oakeshott's late constitutionalism, 15-16. See also Dual polity Lowi, Theodore, 177 Lucretius, 39 Lukes, Steven, 17 Machiavelli, 186; linked to American founding theory, 51, 53, 54; Mansfield's comparison to Montesquieu, 99; and religion, 46, 110; Strauss's interpretation of, 41-47, 110, 177-79 Maclntyre, Alasdair, 103; communitarianism, 93-94; and virtue, 68, 93-94 Macmillan, Harold, 6, 81 Maine, Henry, 1, 2, 3-4, 70, 102 Major, John, ix Malbin, Michael, 73, 109, 221-22*76 Mallok, William, 3-4, 102 Mansfield, Harvey, Jr., 36, 50, 58-59, 91, 144, 170-71; and American founding theory, 51-53; compared to Oakeshott, 71; constitutionalism, 54, 71; on the deficit, 151; on democracy, 30, 67, 168; on discrimination, 145, 168; on the executive, 51-53, 71-72, 147; on liberty, 54, 57-58, 127; on Montesquieu, 71, 93, 99, 116; on neoconservatives, 65; on the poetic idea of greatness, 51-53;

Index • 263 • on private property, 68; on public choice theory, 147; on religion, 115-16; on virtue, 93 March, James, 154 Maritain, Jacques, 111-12 Market: and American and British conservative theory, 131-32; Hayek on, 6-7, 87-89, 98-99; labor markets, 137-38, 140-41, 162-63; and liberty, 131-32; and rational choice theory, 134-35; as structured by corporations, 144-51, 152; as structured by the state, 138-43, 152; and social justice, 88-89, 91-92, 96-99. See also Economic policies; Fiscal policies; Monetarism Marshall, T. H., 80 Marsilius of Padua: and authority, 19; and natural right, 43 Marx, Karl, 21, 41 Middle way, 5-6; Hayek's criticism of, 68; Oakeshott's criticism of, 8-12 Mill, John Stuart, 122; Hayek's reevaluation of, 123-24 Mixed government, 23, 70-74, 180 Modernism, 59-62, 76 Monetarism (Chicago School), 132-34; and American conservative theory, 14752; and British conservative theory, 140-43, 147-48; and relations with law and economics and public choice theory, 132-38 Montesquieu, ix, 24; Mansfield on, 71, 93, 99, 116; on philosophy and Christianity, 116; and the separation of powers, 27, 69, 71; on virtue, 51,93 Morality, 39, 109, 111, 196, 227*1, 228*8; in American conservative theory, 89-100, 111, 113-18, 191-92, 193-94; of aspirations, 78-79; and authority, 81-87, 89-96, 104-05, 109, 115-18, 191-92; Bradley on, 81; in British conservative theory, 78-89, 91, 105, 117-18, 191, 193; and community, 9397; Flathman's different types of, 79; Hayek on, 87-89; Hegel and, 228*8;

Himmelfarb on, 91; Hume and, 83, 8687; Kristol on, 91-92, 109; Maclntyre, 68, 93-94; Mansfield, 91, 93, 144; Montesquieu, 51, 93; Oakeshott, 1012, 81-87; rule-governed, 78-79, 83, 84-86, 88, 193; and social justice, 8183, 88-89, 91-92; Strauss on, 48-49, 89-90, 191-92; Strauss's ancients and Machiavelli on, 42-46; Straussianism's American founders, 53-54 Mount, Ferdinand, 28-29, 32 Mundell, Robert, 151 Murray, Charles, 146 Nativism, 167, 197, , 253*13 Natural right, 47, 57, 68-69; Aristotle and, 43; Averroes and, 43; Bloom and, 56; Heidegger and, 217*19; Marsilius and, 43; Oakeshott and, 16, 86; Rosen and, 217*19; Strauss and, 37, 41, 4344, 48^49, 90, 217*19 Neoconservatives, 59-65; Bell's break from, 223*89; compared to Straussians, 59-60, 65; convergence with Straussians, 64-65; endism, 64; on gnosticism, 62-63; new class, 62-64; Mansfield on, 65; on modernism, 60-61; on postindustrialism, 60-64; reinterpretation of liberalism, 127-30. See also Berger; Glazer; Kristol; Neuhaus; Novak Nettl, J. P., 201 Neuhaus, Richard John, 36, 69, 166-67; on community, 66, 94-95, 165-66; on discrimination and particularism, 66, 168-69; on the Judeo-Christian tradition, 109,113,116-17 Nichols, David, 74 Niebuhr, Reinhold: on liberalism and anticommunism, 112-13; on the JudeoChristian tradition, 112-14 Niebuhr, Richard, 95 Niehans, Jurg, 142 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 90-91, 187; on history, 2, 40-41; on liberty, 41; on philosophy, 38-39, 47-48, 215-16*5; on truth, 38-39, 215-16*5; on the Judeo-

264 • Index Nietzsche, Friedrich (continued) Christian tradition and religion, 11416, 117; on the victory of skepticism, 48, 219«43 Nisbet, Robert, 94 Niskanen, William, 135 Norman, E. R., 103-05 Novak, Michael, 36, 59, 75, 144, 168, 215«2; on community, 94, 96, 129-30; on Judeo-Christian tradition, 113-14, 116-17 Nussbaum, Martha, on Posner, 240*60 Oakeshott, vii, 1, 170; associations of practice, 18, 156; on authority, 10-11, 16, 19-21, 120-22, 124-25; on authority and liberty, 20-21, 85-87, 20910*43; on Bodin, 71; breakdown of civil practices, 11-12, 15-16, 17-18, 87, 209*39; civil association, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21, 84, 121, 156; compared to Burke, 16, 17-18; compared to DeMaistre, 16; compared to Hayek, 22-23, 123; compared to Mansfield, 71; compared to Hume, 86-87; compared to Strauss, 190-93; constitutionalism of, 11-13, 15-21, 24, 27-28, 71, 156, 211*59; critique of middle way, 5-6, 812; on democracy, 20, 124-25; on enterprise associations and state, 18-19, 32, 156; on history, 2, 122; on Hobbes, 120, 192-93, 228*25; on intermediary institutions, 15, 18-19, 20-21, 155-56; interpretation of Hegel, 71, 81, 229*25; on liberty, 120-21; on local governments, 158-59; on morality, 10-12, 8187, 228*17; on patterns of civil practices (customs, rules, traditions, maxims, beliefs), 9-10, 11-12, 15-16, 17-18, 120-22, 210*47; philosophy of, 8-9, 14-15, 190-91, 209*38; relation to Hobbes and Hegel, 209-10*43, 228*17; and religion, 104-05, 191; on rule of law, 20-21, 85-86, 211*59; separation of powers doctrine, 19-20, 211*53; on social justice, 81-87, 91,

229*18; on the state, 16, 18, 21, 71, 209-10*43, 228*17 Olsen, Johan, 154 Original intent, 66-67 Orwell, George, 111-12 Pangle, Thomas, 36, 50; on American founding theory, 50-51, 53; on community, 125-26, 165; on crisis of modernity, 54, 56; on devolution, 165-68; on foreign policy, 186-87; on philosophic and public liberty, 56, 125-26; on private property, 68, 97; on virtue, 51, 94, 125-26, 187 Parliamentary sovereignty, 23-31, 34-35, 142-43, 154-64, 173-76, 201-04. See also Authority; Legal positivism Particularism: Berger and Neuhaus on, 66, 167; and community, 94-95, 166-68, 231-32*61; and discrimination, 16768; as pluralism, 66, 165-67 Party government, 25 Philosophy: Alfarabi on Plato, 216*8; Arendt on ancient, 218*23; Aristotelian, 9; Bradley on, 8; as a construct, 37-38, 47-48, 191-93; Epicurean, 39; as esoteric knowledge, 38-39, 46, 216*8; Lucretius and, 39; Mansfield on religion and, 115-16; Nietzsche on, 38-39, 215-16*5; Oakeshott's, 8-10, 14-15, 190-92, 209*38; Oakeshott and Strauss on Hobbes's, 192-93; and poetry, 4248, 218*23; Plato and, 37, 39, 216*8; and rational choice theory, 134-35; and religion, 39-40, 109-10, 115-17, 19192; and society, 8-10, 38-40, 41, 4449, 56, 126-27, 190-93; Strauss's, 3740, 109-10, 190-93; Strauss's ancients, 46, 218*23; Strauss's history of political philosophy, 40-48; utilitarianism, 13435 Pippin, Robert, 217*21 Pitkin, Hanna, 210*47; on Oakeshott as a confused philosopher, 209*38; on Oakeshott's abandonment of Hegel for Hobbes, 228*17

• Index • 265 Plato, 39, 42, 44; Alfarabi's interpretation of, 216*8; as founder of truth, 41, 217*19; and liberty, 41; Strauss's alternative cave parable, 37-38, 215-16*5; Strauss's comparison with Machiavelli, 41-47, 218*23; Strauss distinguishes from Aristotle, 44, 218-19*29; Strauss's interpretation of, 41-46, 218*23 Pluralism, 75; comparison of British and American conservative interpretations of, 166; comparison of ProgressiveLiberalism and American conservatism's views on, 199; and Judeo-Christian tradition, 111-12; and new British conservatism, 160; as particularism, 66, 16567; and Progressive-Liberalism, 198-99, 232*62; religious, 103-04, 108, 111 Pocock, J. G. A., 53 Podhoretz, Norman, 59, 65, 171, 185; on authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, 182 Poetic idea of greatness: in American conservative theory, 69-74, 77, 191-92; Arendt's interpretation, 218*23; Mansfield on, 51-53, 71, 147; in Strauss's interpretation of the ancients and Machiavelli, 42-47, 218*23; in Straussianism's interpretation of the American founders, 51-54. See also Executive; Statesman Polanyi, Karl, 10 Popper, Karl, 122 Posner, Richard: as advocate for judicial activism, 146; law and economics, 13436, 146, 240*60; on utilitarianism's "happiness" principle, 134-35; on virtue, 135, 146 Postindustrialism, 60-64, 67-68, 128 Prerogative, 57, 71-74; Mansfield on, 72 Progressive-Liberalism, 59, 107-08; and foreign policy, 112-13, 199-200; and Judeo-Christian tradition, 111-17; national reform current in, 73, 95, 11214, 232*62, 254*20; pluralist current in, 198-99, 232*62, 254*20 Public choice theory, 131-33, 134-36,

152, 241*67; and American conservative theory, 146-47; and British conservative theory, 138-40, 161, 241*70; compared to law and economics, 13435; constitutionalism of, 135-36, 139; Mansfield's criticism of, 147; and rationalism, 134 Publius, 69 Rabkin, Jeremy, 146, 221-22*76 Racial minorities, 138; American conservatives' changed views of AfricanAmericans, 145-46; Glazer on, 166-68, 170; de jure and de facto segregation, 167; Kristol on, 145-46; law and economics and, 137-38, 145, 241*65; Mansfield on, 145, 168; particularism and, 166-68; Sowell on, 137, 241*65. See also Particularism Raleigh, Sir Walter, 19 Rational choice theory, 134. See also Public choice theory; Law and economics Rationalism, 10, 21; as scientism, 7; as utopianism, 61-63; as self-interest, 134 Reagan, Ronald, ix, 69, 73, 151, 184 Religion, 60, 93, 165; and American conservative theory, 100, 106-18; in British conservative theory, 100-06, 117-18; Catholicism, 101, 113; Christianity, 100-01, 103, 104-07, 111-12, 115-16; Church of England, 101-06; Enlightenment and, 110; Judaism, 111-14; Judeo-Christian tradition and, 111-18; Mansfield's views on, 115-16; Nietzsche's views on, 114-15, 117; Oakeshott's views on, 104-05; Progressive-Liberalism and, 111-14; Second Great Awakening, 107, 117; Strauss and, 39-40, 45, 109-10; Strauss's Machiavelli and, 46; Tractarians, 103 Republicanism: in American political thought, 197, 253*13; and commerce, 68-69, 96-98, 144; civic republican historians, 53, 253*13; Mansfield's rejection of classical, 93; modern, 53-

266 • Index m Republicanism (continued} 54; Montesquieu and, 51, 93; as poetic idea of greatness, 51-53; American conservatism's prosaic, 65-69, 92-100. See also Democracy; Morality; Virtue Reynolds, Noel; on Oakeshott's constitutionalism, 21 1*59 Rhodes, R. A. W., 155 Roberts, Paul Craig, 150, 242*81 Rorty, Richard, 58-59 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 21, 41; and Strauss's critique of modern liberalism, 47; and Wilson's critique of contemporary liberalism, 129 Rule of law. See Constitutionalism Ryle, Gilbert, knowing how, 10 Saint-Simon, Comte de, 21 Sandel, Michael, 93, 94 Sartori, Giovanni, 24, 29 Scargill, Arthur, 32 Scarman, Leslie, 25, 139 Schambra, William, 69, 94, 96 Schmitt, Gary, 221-22*76; and constitutionalism, 70, 72, 74 Schumpeter, Joseph, 60, 149 Scruton, Roger, 33; on devolution, 98, 158; on religion, 105-06; on separation of powers, 27 Separation of powers, 5, 23, 27; and American conservative theory, 52-53, 69-71, 74, 77, 180-81, 188; Oakeshott's interpretation of, 19-20, 211*53 Shils, Edward, 17 Shklar, Judith, on American citizenship, 89 Shonfield, Andrew, 155 Shulsky, Abram, 70, 221-22*76 Simons, Henry, 132 Smith, Adam, 92 Smith, Rogers: and American citizenship, 230*41; on liberalism in American political thought, 253*13 Social justice, 79-89, 105-06, 117-18, 173, 194-95; in American conservative

theory, 79-80, 89-100; British conservative theory's criticism of, 81-89; British conservative theory's traditional position, 80; Hayek on, 87-89; Himmelfarb's criticism of Oakeshott, 91; Kristol's criticism of Hayek, 91-92; Kristol on distributive justice, 96-98; "Modern Conservatism's" views on, 81; Oakeshott on, 81-87; Strauss on, 89-90 Social policies, 135-38, 145, 154-61; in American conservative theory, 164-70; and British conservative theory, 138, 156-61; and law and economics, 13638. See also Intermediary institutions Socrates, 41, 43 Sovereignty. See Authority Soviet Union, 182-84 So well, Thomas: on Posner and judicial activism, 146; on minorities and labor markets, 137, 241*65 Spinoza, Baruch, 116 Statesman: Strauss and, 89-90; Strauss's ancients and Machiavelli's, 42-47, 17779; Straussianism's American founders', 51-53. See also Executive; Poetic idea of greatness Stein, Herbert, 150-51 Stephens, J. F., 3 Stigler, George, 133, 134 Storing, Herbert, Jr., 36, 49 Strauss, Leo, vii, 57; and Alfarabi, 39-40, 216*8; on ancients and moderns, 4142; on ancients and Machiavelli, 41-47; compared to American conservative theory, 74-77; compared with Oakeshott, 190-93; compared with Straussianism, 50-51, 53, 55, 57; constitutionalism of, 76; on crisis of modernity, 47-49; esoteric and exoteric knowledge, 38-39, 41, 216*8; on founders of truth, 41, 217*19; on hierarchy of ambitions, 4445; on history, 40-41; on Hobbes, 19293; on liberalism, 41, 47-^*9, 75-76, 126-27; on Locke, 47, 75-76, 100; on Machiavelli, 41-47, 177-79; on moral-

Index m 267 ity and immorality, 39, 42-46, 89-90; natural right, 37, 43, 48-49, 89-90, 217*19; on philosophy 37-41, 46-47, 48-49; on Plato, 41, 42, 44, 46, 216*8, 218-19*29; poetic idea of greatness, 42-47, 191-92; on religion, 39-40, 45, 46, 109-10; and social justice, 89-90; on the statesman, 44-47, 89-90, 17879; on truth, 37-40, 41, 46-47, 190-93 Straussianism, 109-10, 200; American founding theory, 50-53, 219-20*49; compared to neoconservatives, 59-60, 64-65; compared to Strauss, 50-51, 53, 55, 57; on the crisis of modernity, 54; on deterioration of American liberalism, 55-59, 127-28; on the executive, 5153, 56-58; hierarchy of ambitions, 5053; on Locke, 125-26; modifications of Strauss's history, 49-50; on morality, 53-54, 64; on philosophic and public liberty, 56, 125-26; poetic idea of greatness, 51-53; in politics, 22122*76; on republicanism, 53-54; on virtue, 51-54. See also Bloom; Mansfield; Pangle; Strauss Tarcov, Nathan, 50, 75, 221-22*76 Tawney, R. H., 202 Taylor, Charles, 93 Territorial politics: and American conservatism, 64-65, 67-68, 70-71, 164-70; Anti-Federalists, Dual Federalists, and, 197-98; and British conservatism, 2-5, 9-12, 154-165; defined, viii; the Federalists and, 197; ProgressiveLiberalism and, 198-99; Labour-Left and, 157, 202-03. See also Intermediary organizations Thatcher, Margaret, ix, 33, 142, 158, 159, 164 Thick society, 2-3, 30, 101-02, 164-65 Thucydides, 41 Tillich, Paul, 101, 106 Tractarians, 103 Trade unions, 140, 143, 155, 162-64; and Labour party, 162

Tradition, 83; British and American conservative theory's contrasting positions, 78; Oakeshott compared to Burke, Lukes, and Shils, 17-18; social traditionalism and liberty, 121-22, 124 Tribe, Lawrence, 146 Trilling, Lionel, 62 Truth: Alfarabi and, 216*8; as artificial, 37-40, 46-48, 190-93; and esoteric and exoteric knowledge, 38, 41, 216*8; the founders of, 41, 217*19; Heidegger and, 47-48, 217*19; as liberation or pain, 38-39, 190-91; Nietzsche and, 38, 47-48, 215-16*5; Oakeshott and, 8-10, 120-21, 190-91; Oakeshott and Strauss on Hobbes's view of, 192-93; Strauss and, 37-40, 89-90, 190-93; understanding or creating, 8-10, 46-48, 191-92, 218*23; and the will, 38, 4649, 190-93. See also Philosophy Tugwell, Rex, 95 Tulis, Jeffrey, 50, 57, 73-74 Urban, George, 172, 174, 175 Urwin, Derek, 3 Utilitarianism, 102, 212*69; compared to rational choice theory, 134-35 Utley, T. E., 34, 140-41, 164 Utopianism, 62-63, 112 Van Buren, Martin, 56 Virtue: and civic republican historians, 53; and commerce, 68-69, 96-98, 134-35, 144; as contemplation, 46, 77, 126-77, 218*23; Maclntyre and, 68, 93-94; Mansfield's rejection of republican, 93; Montesquieu and, 51, 93; and poetic idea of greatness, 42-47, 51-53; Posner on, 134-35, 146; religious, 107, 111, 112-17; social, 65-69, 92-100; Wilson on, 65-66, 144 Voegelin, Eric, 62 Waldegrave, William, 25 Walters, Alan, 141-42

268 m Index Walzer, Michael, 93 Wanniski, Jude, 149, 242«81 Washington, George, 110 Watt, D. Cameron, 172 Webb, Beatrice, 157, 202 Webb, Sidney, 157, 202 Weber, Max, 48 Wilhelmsen, Frederick, 110 Wilson, James Q., 36, 59, 64; on liberal-

ism, 127-29; on morality, 65-66, 12829; on mediating Aristotle and modern liberalism, 129 Wilson, Woodrow, 57, 75, 95, 176 Wood, Gordon, 53, 219-20«49 Woodward, C. Vann, 200 Worthstone, Peregrine, 33 Xenophon, 40-41