Classical Values :: "Saddam Hussein Hayek" finally sees the light

February 22, 2007

"Saddam Hussein Hayek" finally sees the light

There's nothing more challenging than agreeing with a central thesis that is mostly right, but which suddenly veers off on an irritating, seemingly minor tangent which ends up contradicting the central thesis. What's worse is when the thesis involves complex unresolved philosophical questions that have plagued the West's greatest thinkers for centuries, but are simplified and squeezed to fit into a column for public consumption.

For me to imagine that a problem like that could be resolved in a blog post would be the height of arrogance.

So why even write about it? Because it stared me in the face when I made the mistake of opening the newspaper, and the more I thought about it, the more it occurred to me that this oversimplified pablum might not just be meant for public consumption or as entertainment for the little guy in the street. That the author might actually be trying to influence public policy. I like to think that those charged with setting public policy are at least informed. Asking them to be enlightened is a bit much, but the people who founded this country were enlightened, and I don't think it's asking too much that those who stand in their shoes at least be informed.

David Brooks paints a view of America as roughly divided into two camps -- that of Rousseau and that of Hobbes. I've read both, and I think both are flawed. But it doesn't matter what I think; the founders of this country were well aware of the dark side of human nature, and while they took into account the Hobbesian philosophy, they rejected it. Brooks, on the other hand, breathes new life into Hobbesian thinking by setting up what I think is a classically false dichotomy:

....As Steven Pinker has put it, Hobbes was more right than Rousseau.

Moreover, human beings are not as pliable as the social engineers imagined. Human beings operate according to preset epigenetic rules, which dispose people to act in certain ways. We strive for dominance and undermine radical egalitarian dreams. We're tribal and divide the world into in-groups and out-groups.

This darker, if more realistic, view of human nature has led to a rediscovery of different moral codes and different political assumptions. Most people today share what Thomas Sowell calls the Constrained Vision, what Pinker calls the Tragic Vision, and what E.O. Wilson calls Existential Conservatism. This is based on the idea that there is a universal human nature; that it has nasty, competitive elements; that we don't understand much about it; and that the conventions and institutions that have evolved to keep us from slitting one another's throats are valuable and are altered at great peril.

Today, parents don't seek to liberate their children; they supervise, coach, and instruct every element of their lives. Today, there really is no antinomian counterculture - even the artists and rock stars are bourgeois strivers. Today, communes and utopian schemes are out of favor. People are mostly skeptical of social-engineering efforts and jaundiced about revolutionaries who promise to herald a new dawn. Iraq has revealed what human beings do without a strong, order-imposing state.

Stop right there. Until that moment in his piece, Brooks had been talking about American culture, making an excellent case against Rousseau, and demonstrating why that silly philosophy is on the decline in the United States. No argument there. I have never imagined man to be good, and I have never been a pacifist, nor have I glorified the "noble savage" or any of that philosophical garbage, so I agree with Brooks.

But Hobbes? Getting from Rousseau to Hobbes requires a quantum leap, and it also requires discounting centuries of what this country has always stood for: the dignity of the individual, and his right to freedom.

American adults are not children. At least they're not supposed to be. The unfortunate reality is that some are. What galls me more than just about anything is to see a growing consensus between left and right that because some adults are children, that the rest of us (that awful "we") need a big strong government to micromanage our lives.

Iraq has revealed what human beings do without a strong, order-imposing state.

Read that carefully. There are no qualifiers. Unless I am reading Brooks wrong, the clear implication is that we Americans are all like Iraqis. Iraq showed that Hobbes was right, and therefore we (the clear implication of "human beings") need a "strong, order-imposing state."

If I didn't know Brooks was a good man who cannot mean what he appears to be implying, I'd be inclined to characterize this as an attack on the idea of the American founding.

I'd like to think that it wouldn't be necessary to point out to David Brooks that the United States Constitution was not intended to create a "strong, order-imposing state." Precisely the opposite. Or has Iraq "revealed" that the founders of this country was wrong, and Hobbes was right?

Brooks continues, with the apparent assertion that James Madison and Friedrich Hayek would now agree on the need for a "strong, order-imposing state." Oh, and in conclusion (by the way) conservatives dislike evolution:

This is a big pivot in intellectual history. The thinkers most associated with the Tragic Vision are Isaiah Berlin, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Friedrich Hayek and Hobbes. Many of them are conservative.

And here's another perversity of human nature. Many conservatives resist the theory of evolution even though it confirms many of conservatism's deepest truths.

Nice to throw that in. Whether the "many" of the "many" include Hayek, who knows?

Who cares?

Iraq has shown us how evil we are.

Sorry I can't solve all these vexing philosophical questions in a single blog post, folks, but over the years I've been trying to defend Western Civilization a little bit at a time. (In that context, I can even remember agreeing with David Brooks.)

And hell, I'm human, and I can at least partially understand Brooks' frustrations. Over the weekend someone I greatly respect told me that we should have left Saddam Hussein in power. I disagree, but I don't think that makes me a follower of Rousseau.

What brings out my Hobbesian side is little things. Things like seeing people deliberately throwing their garbage (not litter, but garbage) in the middle of a public parking lot when there are trash cans nearby. Such clear evidence that there are people on whom the social compact is hopelessly lost tends to bring out my inner Saddam Hussein -- but that's an essay I'd rather avoid lest I be misunderstood by the kind and gentle Rousseauvians.

posted by Eric on 02.22.07 at 09:34 AM

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Comments

What's your argument against Hobbes's basic insight?

Liberty is only a meaningful and good idea within a Hobbesian framework. Without at least some form of culture -- that is, customary rules -- there is no difference between liberty and the actual war of all against all. This does not mean, however, that there should be rules for everything -- merely that civil war is not a state of affairs conducive to individual rights.

The constitution is supposed to reconcile the need for a strong government with the desire to avoid an intrusive one. Otherwise, we could have stuck with the Articles of Confederation.

Benquo · February 22, 2007 12:15 PM

Wow. The PI piece suffers from the minor flaw of missing the point completely.

This is the same story that we see from time to time that tries to say that Classical Liberalism is alive and well, but those mean conservatives and their hard hearts just don't get it. This one is just written to maximize the Dead Philosopher Namedropping Quotient: the more names you use (and about whose works you implicitly claim to be expert), the smarter than your readers you are.

The point that the piece misses is that the nexus of Multi-culty, Diversity, and Social Justice by which modern liberalism has been captured is perpetuating and exacerbating the problems it is ostensibly intended to solve. On the one hand, multiculturalism and enforced diversity have a ghettoizing effect. On the other, the Social Justice demagogues have to employ an ever-smaller screen to identify nuggets of injustice in sifting for their donations.

Socrates · February 22, 2007 12:28 PM

Hobbes advcated an unchecked ruler. In Rouseau, as interpreted by Kant, the general will cannot generate a contridiction, therefore limiting the power of the state to laws and policies that are rational. Why does the choice have to be bewtween Hobbes and Rouseau? Does the contract with the sovereign place the sovereign in a state of nature as Hobbes stipulated, or is the sovereign also bound by the rule of law, as it is in the American Constitution?

Charles Barton · February 22, 2007 02:16 PM

Benquo, while I admit to occasional sympathy for Hobbes, I see him as a voice for absolute centralized authority, and I think the founders of this country rejected that view in favor of a more Lockean view.

Eric Scheie · February 22, 2007 02:50 PM

It strikes me that George W. Bush is the perfect example of the Hobbesian president. He behaves as if he is beyound the rule of law. one of Bush's more odious "Hobbesian" characteristics, is his use of lies as a tool of Presidential power. Bush's lies have now got him into deep trouble with the American people, Illustrating the weakness of a Hobbesian sovereign for a modern society. Stalin was the perfect Hobbesian ruler.

Charles Barton · February 22, 2007 03:13 PM

The social compact in the U.S. has broken down because the governing classes reneged on their end of the deal, which is to leave the individual alone as much as possible.

Brett · February 22, 2007 04:23 PM

In the context of a contrast with Rousseau, rather than a clear comprehensive endorsement of Hobbes's philosophy, I think it's reasonable to take "Hobbesianism" to mean the assertion that a strong order-enforcer is necessary.

When Hobbes argued against liberty, his arguments were mainly valid against pre-Hobbesian, simple liberty. Post-Hobbesian, liberty-ism has tended to be more sophisticated (excluding a certain sort of democratic messianism among neocons). Spinoza, for instance, in his argument for religious tolerance in his Theologico-Political Treatise, almost parrots Hobbes's foundational argument about rights word for word.

Of course, it's possible Brooks really did mean to endorse every single implication of Hobbes's argument, but I'm not sure it's fair to assume that, especially since there are ways of reading his endorsement of Hobbes that cast him in a more coherent light.

Benquo · February 22, 2007 04:47 PM

Yes all that boon of Government to do everything for one... mind you they take all the responsibilities from the individual and with that goes the right to have personal oversight upon them. Big Governmentism and the Nannystate... government is for *your own good*, so just let it be a lovely authority to control your life. And if you dare to disagree, I am sure some new re-education program will be invented to help out such wayward souls. Or plastic shredders installed into warehouses... So wonderful to see the effects of handing it all to a 'strongman'!

Of course that is only the half of it, and the other half is even worse, wanting to dissolve National Sovereignty by breaking the People into every tiny division it can get so it can craft something that is a numerical majority, but only by turning off so many people to democratic concepts that the support for Liberty and Freedom disappears. Such a great idea and there are terrorists out there to help, too! Soon we will all head to a nice Transnationally Progressive Tyranny with all of those who know exactly what to do will put themselves in charge for our own good. Heaven forbid that you even whisper the ideal of the Universal Rights of Man as an Individual! And that to be Universal they apply to all peoples and that centuries of tyrannical rule does not mean that the people there *want it*, instead just trying to survive and escape the aforementioned shredders, torture rooms, gulags, death squads, secret police, double secret police, the really secret police, and the gun toting dictator is a task in and of itself. Yes, that is a social condition! And, no, it is not genetic. The variance within the human genome is so miniscule that I often wonder at the long term genetic viability of the species as a whole.

Whatever did happen to the idea that people will try to form societies, try to put a just and fair government together and strive to *keep it* because it is more civilized than despotic rule and tyranny? I really do doubt that Iraq was assembled with 'the consent of the Governed', but then they have never even really understood what that means until the last couple of years or so. Heard of it? Yes. Practice it inside their own Nation? No. But to some that just means that they deserve to have despotic tyrants over them with an authoritarian government that can just take over everything you have, anything you make, anyone you love and, finally, you.

But then the societal roots of US democracy are not only from the Classical Greek lineage... we have a second form that greatly influenced our society from the Norse and their sovereignty over the British Isles and some goodly sections of northern coastline on continental Europe. And under that conception even Kings were forced to bow down to that convocation of the People. Mind you those folks were seen as the 'nasty, brutish and short' kind and not mentionable by those putting high-minded ideals of civilization together so might have been a bit overlooked. Be that as it may I am sure that those wishing to put people under strongman governments to be *taken care of* do not mean that in the immediate mafia sense.

At least not at the beginning...

ajacksonian · February 22, 2007 04:56 PM

The problem is that Brooks presents us with a false choice, the division is not between "hobbesians" and "Rouseauites", but as Mr. Scheie notes between Lockean and Rouseauites. On one hand we have people who beleive in liberty and responsibilty, and on the other a bunch of people who believe in freedom and are looking for a mommy to spank them.

I took this totally in the wrong direction, didn't I?

Billy Oblivion · February 22, 2007 06:11 PM