The assumption progressives are always in danger of falling into is that progress is inevitable, and that once it has taken place it is irreversible.

Now, in the US, fifty years and more of progress is beginning to be reversed.

The model that we need is not one of a steady climb away from primitive reason and emotion, but of an arms race between competing strategies. Primitive reason and emotion are effective strategies, not for dealing with reality but for competing with alternative modes of reason and emotion. They are effective because they are socially cohesive. They enable the formation of very strong social power blocs, coalitions that can transcend the most fractured and disfigured material realities. The fact that they are economically and ecologically disintegrative, that they inflict the very wounds they purport to heal, is a pivotal irony, essential to their functioning.

The modes of reason and emotion favoured by progressives are not so directly cohesive. They emphasise tolerance of other ways of life, and the creation of a social environment in which diverse approaches to living are possible. They are conformist insofar as they regard the upkeep of this social environment as a collective responsibility, rather than because they directly insist on conformity of attitudes and behavior. It is possible for someone to be a good conservative, performing the necessary public observances and keeping within the bounds of a narrow moral code, and remain an essentially private person whose life is his own affair. Conversely, progressives will tolerate behaviour that conservatives would consider an outrage against morals and public decency, but at the price of a more fundamental subordination of the individual, a claim made on the root of his status as a person. Progressives do not need to recruit: in their eyes, you already owe your life to their cause.

There is an exception – actually, a whole class of exceptions – in the former case. The claim that the type of moral conformity imposed by conservatism does not encroach on the private person is true only for persons who are able to just go along with conservative moral rules, regardless of whether or not they wholly endorse them. This is not possible if you are for instance gay, or a woman seeking an abortion or a divorce. The conservative strictures against divorce, abortion and homosexuality do indeed infringe upon the essentially private personhood of – in fact – a large number of persons.

What I hope for in America is that those Americans who believe they are enjoying an essential and uninfringeable private liberty, under a regime of public conformity and private self-ownership, come to recognise that either they themselves or people they care about actually belong to that large class of exceptions whose private selfhood is stifled and violated by conservative moralism; and that those Americans who believe in a diverse and tolerant society learn to arouse the desire of their fellow Americans for such a society, without demanding their unconditional consent and co-operation in creating it.

The story I would like to see unfold over the next four years is one of disenchantment and seduction, a society changed by force of persuasion and not by executive decree. That’s the only way it’s going to happen, and the so-called liberal elite must first learn to recognise the unlovely aspect of themselves that is captured by that description before they can begin to make it happen.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 4th, 2004 at 5:20 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.