I put some posts up on Medium, continuing my research on Locke and Strauss, focusing on Locke’s natural law theory. I called his ideas of Christian natural law and liberalism the Lockean Twins. The two provide checks and balances against each other in a society - wisdom balancing freedom, and a tendency to err on the side of freedom to balance human fallibility in achieving and agreeing upon the wisdom. But natural law considerations have been stripped from positive law and public administration in the 20th century. The result has been a loss of common sense and an increase in absurdity. Here, I will follow those posts up with some sketchy thoughts on what might be done. I have some relevant long-term predictions on the future in a previous post, but in the present I contemplate a more activist approach. I am not sure whether I am being absurd or serious, maybe both. Writing this gives me a feeling like what the old Marxist cultural theorists must have felt in their scheming against the system.
So what should we do, we who yearn for a return of a society based on what I am calling the Lockean twins of Christian natural law and classical liberalism? Christian natural law is gone from public administration and even liberalism (e.g. rule of law, toleration, moral equality of individuals) is being undermined by viewpoint neutral relativist extremism (moral neutrality cannot tolerate the toleration of those with firm moral principles). By maintaining a hope for liberalism I must reject the idea of a quick and dirty authoritarian solution to the current decadence. In any case the culture right now is so far removed from Christian natural law that it’s hard to imagine a quick fix that would endure. The path back must be a longer and more principled inverse-Gramscian struggle for the culture. If we compare New Right authoritarianism to Marxist revolutionary exuberance, what we need now is a more pessimistic and patient Critical Theory for conservatism. This would have to be a coordinated multi-generational effort to undermine the radical viewpoint-neutral culture we have now to soften it up for the eventual return to values at a critical moment in the future.
Frankfort School evil geniuses Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer recognized in the early 20th century that the West was inoculated against Marxism and that violent Revolution was a non-starter. Rather than plotting a coup in the short term, they designed a new plan that would slowly undermine the culture by pounding relentlessly on the cracks and flaws in the West. It is called Critical Theory because of its focus on negative attacks without building up any positive theoretical framework that could be attacked in turn. Adorno referred to this approach in Hegelian jargon as “negative dialectics.” It worked so well that now the West is taught to despise its own history. Cut off from its foundational principles, the West is now being transformed unnoticed into something entirely different.
A conservative critical theory could exploit the success of the current secular and relativist revolution. Conservatives are now on the outside and the tables can be turned. The new regime, being now in power, can’t help but build up positive structures to replace the old morality. Here’s what a conservative critical theory would look like. The absurdities of the new culture would be brought into focus and attacked mercilessly. This is starting to happen to some extent. New divisions and cracks in the viewpoint neutral regime would be exploited (e.g. conflicts between trans rights and women).
But the fight will not be won just with Christopher Rufo and Libs of TicToc exposing CRT propaganda and grooming in schools, and with Matt Walsh exposing the absurdities and cognitive dissonance of modern gender ideology, or the absurdity of After School Satan clubs in elementary schools, although this type of effort would likely be the public face of the movement. Ideally these focused attacks on the most glaring absurdities would go viral and thus become increasingly decentralized. But even with virality, there still has to be a core of theorists (probably academics) providing direction and discipline, and coordinating the messaging and principles of the movement. The new conservative critical theory needs to have positive principles like Christian natural law and liberalism that are used to guide the movement and provide a long-term vision, at least within the core and among the elites. If we follow the Critical Theory template closely, this internal communication would be under the radar or even Straussian esoteric communication with a more mainstream and acceptable exoteric facade. However, a Straussian duality might be too much in contrast with the straightforward common sense ethos of conservatism to workable. In any case, as the movement gains adherents turned off from the absurdities of extreme viewpoint neutrality and ready to promote a return to values, there needs to be communication from the core to the new faithful.
As the numbers grow, insiders must be placed into positions where they can subtly influence key institutions such as academic departments, corporate cultures, and especially education toward liberalism and natural law. Even a simple but deliberate example of public intellectuals failing to conform to pure secularism in lectures or academic writing can have a large influence, even if it is just signaling to others that dissent from the viewpoint-neutral regime is ok. For example, scholars writing positively of the impact of Christian beliefs on the development and prosperity of the West could go a long way, even if this communication is low key or even esoteric and intended to be understood only by other like minded thinkers.
Slowly, connecting natural law conservative thinkers to a core of theorists with a coordinated plan will give them hope that societal change in the direction of the good and Christian natural law is possible, and will motivate them to take what small action can be taken now, or even just to speak up a little when they would otherwise have gone with the flow. Maybe these efforts in combination with some periods of religious renewal (which have happened from time to time throughout modern history) will spark something bigger. Hopefully it doesn’t take a major catastrophe to shake things up.
I am sure that the absurdities of radical viewpoint neutrality will continue to pile up and will continue to be picked on. I am also hopeful for some degree of positive change within academia and education in the medium term. The more far-fetched part of this pipe dream is the sort of disciplined, principled, and coordinated conservative movement (even if the coordination is mostly underground) toward Christian natural law which would be required. In any case I will be watching the future with hopeful interest because a radically viewpoint neutral moral system is unsustainable in the long term. The vacuum must be filled with something, and the return of values is inevitable.
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