Bill's Notes

I started writing the conservative narrative in my head ... found myself thinking there are several. The various liberal narratives are usually similar to one another -- one may see reason as the thing that dispels the darkness, another may admit, finally, that reason has failed, and that we're up in the air.

Progressives in the political sphere, however, are almost always people who deny the failure of the Enlightenment project -- to come up with a source of rationality and morals independent of God. I would've thought Godel would've taken care of that. (He proved, mathematically, that a system cannot be defined within its own terms -- it needs to point to something outside it to define its terms or becomes incoherent.)

Some didn't get the message, though; in fairness, I know a few that do. A couple of friends I know have mentioned that if you ask why enough times, eventually you come to the answer, "Because Jesus wants it that way." However, one is an independent and the other is a progressive, and both have senses of humor, which is rare in true progressives.

So I'm thinking about the conservative narrative, and wondering to myself -- why am I have trouble with it? ('Cuz Jesus wants it that way :) )

The issue is you need to know what it means to be conservative. When we Americans say "conservative," we mean "classical liberal." I understand a conservative philosophy, but not necessarily a conservative narrative. Progressive narratives seem to transcend nationality and culture -- but the conservative narrative I think in is western, Christian, and even Catholic.

I can tell the Catholic or Christian narrative. But at some point, you have to say what you're trying to conserve, which requires it, glancing at history, between choosing what to preserve and what was actually progressive. Which is a more complicated tale.

Perhaps it's this: Human nature has no history. Essential human nature involves both sublime virtue, lofty aspirations, mind-boggling brutality and wickedness. These virtues and vices run through all men.

The natural state of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. To rise above barbarism and improve man's "being," there are specific tools: technology, government, law, economics, science, engineering, art, music, etc. These tools give mankind knowledge, pleasure and power. These tools, thus, are a double-edged sword, knowing mankind's nature.

For mankind not to destroy himself, he must use these tools wisely, cultivate virtues, and become civilized. However, every generation, civilization is invaded by barbarians; in Hannah Arendt's term, they care called children. Unless mankind passes on these virtues each and every generation, the entire artifice of civilization collapses amid distraction and triviality (Huxley's theory) or a power-mad elite puts a technological boot on every man's neck (Orwell's theory).

Thus, the battle continues. The virtues must be preserved -- the whole thing depends on it. But progressives often attack virtues as benighted. They also tend to switch which virtues they like and which are wrong-headed generation after generation. As C.S. Lewis put it, licentious generations condemn violence and violent generations condemn licentiousness.

In Chesterton's formulation, the virtues themselves, when separated from faith, become like walking monsters -- and one is emphasized at the expense of others, creating all sorts of problems. Progressives, so eager to demonstrate their open-mindedness, are blind to the need to respect these virtues, to beware of replacing them easily, and from ignoring the lessons of the past. Tradition is democracy of the dead -- it usually has a time-tested social function. It may be unfair, need questioning, need altering, but change must be prudentially considered, especially in light of the new incentives and disincentives it will create. Otherwise, we'll discover the hard way what the social function was of the thing we just scrapped.

And at all times, mankind, when considering change, must remember who we are and what we are made of -- that we are sinful, fallen creatures made in the image and likeness of God. We will never be gods. We will always have limits on our being, pleasure and knowledge. We must remember are limitations can destroy our aspirations.

******

That's probably a start.

What do you think?

When I heard this kidnaping story yesterday, I thought, "Uh, that doesn't sound right." Sure enough, today the truth comes out:

The frantic search for Bonnie Sweeten and her 9-year-old daughter - which began after she called 911 Tuesday to report that they had been kidnapped in Bucks County - ended yesterday at Walt Disney World.

Sweeten, 38, and daughter Julia Rakoczy were taken into custody at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa about 8:40 p.m., the FBI said. Sweeten was being held by authorities in Orange County, Fla., and her daughter was safe.

Sweeten will be extradited to Bucks County, where she faces charges of making a false report and identity theft, both misdemeanors. The investigation is continuing into possible theft charges, said Bucks County District Attorney Michelle Henry.

[]

The efforts to track down Sweeten - which included an Amber Alert and massive local and national media coverage - began when she told a Philadelphia 911 dispatcher about 1:45 p.m. Tuesday that she had been abducted by two black males and stuffed into the trunk of a Cadillac.

Emphasis mine. It was the "two black males" that got me thinking ... and the Cadillac ... plus the whole TV-movie feel of the story. Too stereotypical. When certain types of suburban white people commit crimes, such as trying to kill their spouses, or kidnap their own kid to flee a marriage, they blame generic "black males."

Pairs of black men don't go around stuffing suburban white women and their children into trunks of Cadillacs. Sorry if I'm stereotyping as well. If you end up in the trunk of two black dudes' car, it's because you and your spouse owed them money, or you were involved in a drug deal, or otherwise tried to mess with them.

My two cents. YMMV.

For centuries, malevolent authorities oppressed mankind and set up the world for the benefit of a few rich, usually white males. Superstition and lies kept people in their lowered station; when that didn't work, the power used force. Unfortunately for The Man and His minions, a few brave souls, interested only in truth, questioned the authorities, invented science and reason, and began to dispel the superstition, lies and dogma.

As the darkness subsided, these truth seekers showed us the way to emancipation from ignorance and want. This emancipation threatened the privileges of the elite, and thus began five centuries of struggle between progressives and conservatives — progressives seeking to shine light on ignorance, folly and oppression of the past, and thus dissipate its power, and conservatives seeking to suppress and silence this truth-seeking, in order to protect their economic interests and preserve their illusions.

Galileo. Copernicus. Kepler. Again and again, the truth-seekers pierced the veil of ignorance (not in the Rawlsian sense) and pushed back conservatives, creating a new, more just and better civil order. The Church and its heirs, the source of many of these superstitions and oppressive institutions, was forced over generation after generation to concede point after point — on gravity, on geo-centricism, on the divine right of kings, on witches, on reason and mathematics, on philosophy, on the creation narrative, on slavery and on serfdom. The rise of capitalism created a new class of oppressors, and capitalisms excesses pit the progressives on the side of labor, safety, and environmental protection against the conservative defenders of monetary privilege, environmental devastation, child labor and impoverished labor.

Again and again the progressives told the truth, and the conservatives were forced to retreat each and every time when the truth came out. Conservatives were forced to retreat on segregation and racism. Progressives then turned to emancipating women, and conservatives were forced to retreat on sexism, women in athletics and the workplace, and women's equality. Even on matters of taste, such as art, music and literature, progressives forced conservatives to retreat because of their creativity, leaving conservatives' clinging to ignorant old ways and at best outdated culture.

This trend has continued to this day. Progressives seek to correct the inequalities of capitalism and still seek to end poverty and ignorance, opposed still by conservatives who in each case, eventually lose. Progressives noticed that antibiotics and the pill changed the old need for institutions to control human sexuality, and they eagerly embraced that liberation, extending the emancipation program to homosexuality, transgendered people and bisexuality.

Emancipation also continues through detailed source-based criticism and social change within all the old, formerly hidebound institutions that used to oppress — everything from the churches, to the universities, to the mass media. All values and assumptions, from what men and women are like and what their conditioned to believe about themselves (and who benefits) are open to question, and require change ti improve equality and justice between the sexes, the differently abled, the races, and well, everyone. Progressives embrace change and technology, and even greater human progress could be made if the conservatives would just get out of the way and let things take their course, and not cling to their ancient ignorance, superstition and racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, and hegemonic hatreds.

Not only that, but given this great 500-year-old narrative of progressive emancipation from ignorance and want, only someone with psychological problems could seriously disagree with any of this, and only the stupid and the ignorant could remain a conservative ... or someone who's trying to protect their privilege. The former group deserve our efforts at consciousness-raising; the latter deserve our scorn. In any case, history is on our side, as always, progress continues, even if a few stubbornly cling to the darkness and miss the train. But there's a new dawn ahead for mankind, if we can overcome these conservative obstacles in time. In that new dawn technology will reverse Adam's curse and liberate us from work, greater healthcare from disease, raised consciousness from war, and reason will liberate us from jealousy, anger and strife, and we will live like literary Indians in peace and harmony with one another and the earth, returning to an almost child-like simplicity.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a play about an abusive couple who made up a story about a non-existent son. For years, apparently, George and Martha have worked together to pretend they had a boy. They have an agreement that neither is ever to mention the "son" to others. When Martha violates this rule, George alters the narrative -- he kills off the boy in a terrible accident. Martha is shattered by the change. Apparently, she takes a lot of comfort in this illusion.

When it comes to politics, controlling the narrative is crucial. If one side finds itself in the other side's narrative, it's all over -- one side is the hero, and the other side is the villain.

From about 1932 to 1980, the Democrats flat-out controlled the American narrative. They didn't control the facts, but they controlled how the facts were told. And we humans tend to remember stories and to tell the story of our own lives in the sense of these over-arching narratives. We see ourselves as characters in a larger story. We become committed to our characters, we develop our own storylines, and they affect how we see the world, how we act, and what we think is important.

In 1980, a masterful storyteller named Ronald Reagan came along and interrupted the liberal narrative. Some were so convinced by his retelling of the American story that they changed sides. Others, like myself, waited to see how things would work out -- when the facts clearly showed that Reagan was correct on economic and national security policy, we changed sides belatedly.

However, Reagan didn't triumph. He merely started an argument. On economic policy and issues like statism, however, the GOP gained the upper hand. Liberals needed to talk into our narrative, our story, and by 1994, we had control of Congress.

But at no point did liberals entirely concede the narrative. They kept telling stories, especially in Hollywood, in the press, and in the universities, and refused to concede. The GOP, however, still struggled with certain aspects of the cultural narrative -- the Dems have always been able to paint the GOP as racists, sexists, xenophobic ... and the GOP has largely been on the defensive, and sought instead to inhabit the liberals' narratives -- that is, work within the terms established by liberals. The result, for about 20 years, was that liberals found themselves having to prove they weren't tax-and-spend (that is, trying to work within the GOP's story) and conservatives tried to show they weren't racist, sexist or otherwise mean-spirited (that is, trying to work within the liberals' story.)

I am speaking of how the story plays out in the media and in people's perceptions -- not how people actually are, if you follow. In fact, both political parties talk about the importance of "the narrative".

Both Bush presidencies, among their other failures, were failures to maintain and strengthen the conservative narrative bequeathed by Reagan. And folks who did continue the conservative story simply weren't as good storytellers as Ronald Reagan. It didn't help that certain regional voices dominated. Clinton, however, was often our best friend, repeatedly stealing conservative themes and trying to insert them into the liberal story -- a sign of victory that certain conservatives took offense to, out of sheer stupidity.

After Dubya busted the paradigms with his big-spending conservatisms, the movement is really in the shit, as far as storytelling, both on cultural and economic grounds. Events (the economic meltdown) didn't help. And then a photogenic, smiling candidate with an atrocious background has taken control of the narrative, enabled by a compliant media and Hollywood stars who hated that Reagan proved them wrong and were eager for vindication.

Conservatives first step to rebuilding needs to involve re-casting the narrative. But before we take power again, we need to look at the demographics. There are two groups of natural conservatives -- Hispanics and blacks, who should be our allies. We have the Asians and the whites, particularly white males, but that's no longer enough. We are on the verge of checkmate and permanent minority status.

What is the new narrative? That's the question. I'm still mulling it over.