Conservative Sensibility and Progressive Common Sense
The first section of Sunday’s Post, by fortune or design, had two articles face to face. One a segment of long-time columnist George Will’s new book, “The Conservative Sensibility;” the other by the retiring long-time artistic director of the Shakespeare Theater Michael Kahn. They are well read together to understand an important aspect of the American debate.
George clearly sees himself as inheritor of the mantle of Russell Kirk, William Buckley, and even Edmund Burke as, methinks, does the Washington Post. I read him often to get the conservative point of view which I believe is a valid and useful tradition for a democracy. I must admit that I find George a better baseball analyst than political pundit. In his punditry, he often does what I suppose we all do from time to time. That is, accuse others of the faults we ourselves exhibit. In other words, seeing the sliver in the other’s eye but avoiding the beam on one’s own.
In this segment Will accuses Senator Warren, President Obama, and progressives in general for “being a pyromaniac in a field of straw men” which is a delicious phrase. He attacks them for advancing “the progressive project of diluting the concept of individualism.” My sensibility is offended by this accusation because I consider myself a progressive with a strong sense of the uniqueness and dignity of every human being and an advocate and defender of individual rights. I, with many of my compatriots, consider myself both conservative and progressive, and yet I am one of his straw men. I first remember Will’s egregious fault when he dennounced Richard Rorty, another of George’s straw men, for his wonderful little book, “Achieving Our Country,” a personal experience of the old left tradition in 20th century America.
George has a notion of progressive, stemming from Hegel through Marx, as a believer in the inevitability of human advancement when clearly the thirteenth was the greatest of centuries never attained again. I suppose there are some folks who believe in inevitability and “being on the side of history,” just as they believe in the Flat Earth and other Facebook conspiracies. But that is quite the contrary of contemporary progressives who believe that we must act together if we believe that we can do better.
George’s notion of a progressive is a person who relies on the State to get things done. While we do try to hold government accountable and believe government should protect and promote all the people’s rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we also realize that the public should not be equated with government, but rather with people acting in concert, that is, those with the power of and over government. All people acting voluntarily, not corporations, not just wealthy white Anglo men who head these corporations, not those with a monopoly of the tools of violence, is where true power is to be located.
George’s notion of a progressive is one who limits individual liberties through laws and rules of government. However, we progressives distinguish liberty and freedom or, if you want, “freedom from” and “freedom for.” Laissez faire individualism does not inexorably lead to a state of freedom. Public space must have boundaries which citizens have set through an inclusive public process. We are progressive when we learn and act to be progressing and when we have faith in ourselves learning and acting together set our boundaries.
George does accept government’s duty to protect persons’ rights to pursue happiness. But it’s clear that he is talking about private happiness which comes by individual wealth creation. He does not consider “public happiness” (as articulated by Madison, Adams, and Jefferson) which is the recognition and power that is achieved in publics. Progressives have no antipathy supporting private wealth and believe that Maslow’s lower rungs in his hierarchy of needs should be assured by the whole society acting through government. Unless satisfaction in the realm of necessity is attained, there is no opportunity to achieve full human actualization in the realm of freedom, i.e. the public realm.
Across the page from A20 to A21 is the article by Michael Kahn who refers to his final production “The Orestea” written by Aeschylus and updated by Ellen McLaughlin. I saw and reviewed this masterpiece which exposes the darkness of cruelty in humanity and shows the way out of the circle of vengence through empathy and by forgoing violence. “The Greeks knew when they were building their fledgling democracy than it would not survive selfish vendettas. It is necessary to make the difficult decisions, to choose the community over the individual, the truth over the easy answer, patience instead of anger.”
This is progress, though fragile, according to those of us who have read and lived the history of ideas and of organized public action to renew democratic institutions in our neighborhoods and cities, our nations and our world. We can do better. Yes, we can.
There is no conflict in advocating for the individual whose value and uniqueness are invigorated through communal interaction. Social action for the common weal reveals and develops unique individuality far more than self-interested aggrandizement. The progressive project does not dilute, but actually fortifies, the concept of the individual as it chooses the community over the individual.
A true conservative should recognize that.