A CONSERVATIVE RENAISSANCE
A Conservative Renaissance © Copyright 2009 by Jay B. Gaskill,
Attorney at Law, All Rights Reserved.
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THE CASE FOR RENAISSANCE CONSERVATISM
By
Jay B. Gaskill
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This essay was extracted from a longer article by the
author, Jay B. Gaskill, the former Public Defender of
WHY THE DEMISE OF THE CENTER-RIGHT IN
AMERICAN POLITICS WOULD BE DANGEROUS
&
Why the Path to a Conservative Recovery is
RENAISSANCE CONSERVATISM
Executive Summary
Conservatives are experiencing a middle age
identity crisis. They have lost touch
with their populist roots, misunderstood their founding principles and seem clueless
about how to adapt to their apparent rejection by voters. Worse, they have been infected with the
declining moral and cultural confidence that has begun to undermine Western
civilization in
There is a cure for this malaise and it has
two coequal, essential elements:
(1) Conservatism as historical necessity
(2) Renaissance Conservatism as the wave of
the future.
Conservatism as Historical Necessity
At the most generic level, the terms “liberal”
and “conservative” describe the polarity between one’s approach to boundaries
(in human thought, relationships, interpersonal definitions, categories and
moral precepts). Liberalism (in this
sense) is the tendency to dissolve, negate or weaken boundaries, and conservatism
is the counter-tendency to harden, affirm or strengthen them.
Boundaries are essential to human
survival. This includes moral
boundaries, national boundaries and practical boundaries. Think of the boundaries between earning and taking,
between owing and paying back, between rule and consequences, between cause and
effect, between right and wrong and between fantasy and reality. Conservatives know all of this deep in their
bones. It is part of the conservative
DNA.
Liberals tend to forget this from time to
time, often with disastrous effect. That
tendency also is in their DNA.
Conservatism is historically necessary to the
survival of civilization.
Renaissance Conservatism as Wave of the Future
For reasons more apparent to most conservatives
than to the general population, Western civilization is at risk. In the worst case scenario,
The American experiment was the first example
in history of a stable creative civilization based on enduring values and
principles that contained the seeds of a world revolution. Freedom is the soil of the human creative enterprise.
Creative civilizations require a
specific kind of support infrastructure, one in which commercial, political, intellectual
and artistic freedoms are indivisible, and the moral underpinnings of the
political system are rooted in the same moral law that animated the Declaration
of
No conservative revival is possibly in the
modern era without a comprehensive moral theory of civilization, one large
enough to embrace the most constructive forms of conservatism and liberalism. That larger theory of civilization assigns
signal historical power and significance to those forms of civilization that explicitly
and organically support and promote the human creative enterprise, broadly
understood to include technical and creative innovation within an overall
moral, life affirming framework. Because
modern liberalism is bankrupt (hopefully temporarily), renaissance conservatism
has become the vanguard of the human creative enterprise, the best hope of the
future.
The
Dialogic Period
One party government is inherently dangerous. A two party government is the most stable and
productive of the various competing models ...providing there is a bi-partisan
overlap about the essential steps and policies needed to preserve
civilization. Such a core foreign policy
consensus was achieved in the
This was the Dialogic Period of US politics. The conservative renaissance will be aided by the renewal of such a consensus.
At the most generic level, the terms “liberal” and “conservative” describe the polarity between one’s approach to boundaries (in human thought, relationships, interpersonal definitions, categories and moral precepts). Liberalism in this sense is the tendency to dissolve, negate or weaken boundaries, and conservatism is the counter-tendency to harden, affirm or strengthen them.
During the Dialogic Period, the Democratic Party once
contained its own subset of the dialogic - hawks like
But the ascent of the 60’s liberals remade the Democratic Party into a narrow corridor, a claustrophobic compartment defined by an ideology that was never really shared by the populist center.
The Coming Decline of Illiberal
Liberalism
Not every liberal minded person buys into the conventional liberal catechism. Religious liberals remain alienated, and pro-military liberals are rarely welcome – except as token “showpieces”.
In the post-civil rights movement era, many traditional liberals have jumped ship when confronted by the excesses of identity politics and the occasional overreaching of remedial, reparations-motivated actions of courts, regulatory agencies, academic institutions and employers. Others, former blue collar members of the FDR coalition, are irritated at welfare abuses, the seemingly unlimited influx of foreign workers and the outsourcing of good jobs.
Many others jumped ship when confronted with mandatory social liberalism. These are among the latent fractures in the Democratic Party...once the grand FDR coalition of “working people” and intellectuals...papered over at election time via the attempted demonization of the right.
It remains to be seen whether the post-partisan aspirations of President Obama are mostly rhetoric and style, or whether his political ascendancy heralds an authentic return to the Dialogic Period.
Conservatives, at this pivotal moment in history, are like a cranky clutch of teenagers in high school, all band nerds, who have just been bested in a schoolyard brawl in which they were outmaneuvered and outnumbered.
Their leader (played by W) had first aroused the ire of their opposing classmates; then he called in sick just before the fight. This left them with little Mac, the resident tough guy, as their default leader in the fight. We all know Mac. He was that bruised but undaunted classmate who constantly picked fights against guys twice his size, lost most of them, but admirably called for a rematch and sometimes won.
The Mac archetype has fought for the
Our clutch of loosing band nerds are grousing and kvetching and plotting an unattainable revenge; they are even blaming little Mac for their troubles. Suddenly Dad (played by Rushbo) calls out from a window: “You shoulda’ kicked butt, you wimps!”
This is my message to my fellow conservatives: Grow up. Adapt to the new challenge. You had the advantage and you blew it. This is your opportunity to actually think things through before you plan your comeback. Here’s the deal: You are vision challenged, communication impaired and you don’t understand our own value. Just consider the last fifty years of conservative vision and leadership:
“Oh, the vision
thing...”
George H W Bush
"What
Richard Nixon
“Jan. 20, 2009,
marked the end of a conservative era.”
Bill Kristol
With the notable exception of Ronald Reagan (and a supporting actor’s award to Newt Gingrich for his attempted sequel, subsequently canceled), all of the attempts by highly visible 20th century conservative leaders to pull off the “vision thing” have ranged from the underwhelming to the lame.
.......................................Recovering vision takes, well, VISION.
Outline of the Conservative Recovery
Whenever we talk about recovery from an electoral rejection, we can mean recovery from a mere defeat or recovery from a deserved defeat.
For example, if conservatives see the recent drubbing as just the political version of those periodic seasonal and business cycles, the ensuing repairs will be superficial. The lessons of defeat will be limited to changes in style, approach, strategy and tactics. This is the advertising failure model.
But what if the defeat was earned at some level? Suppose the conservative product has become tainted in much the same way that Chinese toys or pet food or blood thinners were corrupted? Then repair is necessarily more painful, requiring more introspection, and even...real study. This is the flawed product model.
We can criticize both product and the sales campaign. But a campaign alone, however brilliant, will not do. That was the liberals’ game. Here I make the case for a transformation of conservatism into a new thing, a movement rooted in traditional conservative values and principles but drawn forward by a much larger vision.
A compelling vision is the missing piece in the conservative recovery.
Vision requires perspective.
I invite you to step back and look at the really big picture for a
moment. Human history from the
My thesis is that one general type of civilization is uniquely equipped to survive the challenges of resurgent atavism, post-modern tribalism and the collapse of self confidence of the secular intelligentsia. That general type is the creative /adaptive civilization model. The American experiment was the first, but far from the last such creative civilization. Creative civilizations must prevail in the present century or the entire game could be lost to a new Dark Age.
But without a resurgent conservative movement, ascendant and respected in the culture, the media and in government, most of the freedom-respecting zones of Western civilization will go under...possibly for a very long time. I would prefer to avoid a Dark Age rather than attempt to climb out of one.
Conservatism is the key ingredient in the defense of any healthy, creative civilization. Such a civilization is necessarily held up by two pillars: renaissance conservatism (a term and concept I flesh out in this article) and a deeper, more reasonable liberalism. I don’t like the rhetoric of apocalypse. Yes, the stakes are high, but I am confident that a renewed conservatism linked to the rescue of creative civilization will in fact prevail. Yes, there is peril. Yes, there are existential risks. This is why this vision has both historical relevance and urgency.
What passes for liberalism in the present moment is far too infected with pathological post-modernism to be a constructive player in the coming struggle. The next “winds of change” will necessarily be led by the conservatives, at least until the reasonable liberals come out of the closet to join us.
Among the current crop of postmodern liberals, reasonable minds are as rare as classical guitar players among a flock of turkeys.
BILL KRISTOL’S PREMATURE EPITAPH
On January 26, the
New York Times ran its last column written by William Kristol, the paper’s
token Neo-Con, who still is editor of The
Weekly Standard.
His piece (“Will
Obama Save Liberalism?”) began with an epitaph:
“All good
things must come to an end. Jan. 20,
2009, marked the end of a conservative era.”
Then Mr. Kristol made several telling points:
“Conservatives have been
right ... about Communism and jihadism, crime and
welfare, education and the family.
“Lest conservatives be too proud,
it’s worth recalling that conservatism’s rise was decisively enabled by
liberalism’s weakness.
[Quoting Harvard’s Harvey
Mansfield] “From having been the aggressive doctrine of vigorous, spirited men,
liberalism has become hardly more than a trembling in the presence of illiberalism. ... Who today is called a liberal for
strength and confidence in defense of liberty?”
“[M]odern
conservatism, led at the crucial moment by Ronald Reagan ... assumed the task
of defending liberty with strength and confidence. Can a revived liberalism,
faced with a new set of challenges, now pick up that mantle?
“Sixty-seven years
ago...another liberal president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt... quoted
Paine: “The summer soldier and the
sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their
country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and
woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily
conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict,
the more glorious the triumph.”
“Can Obama reshape liberalism to be, as it was under F.D.R., a fighting faith, unapologetically patriotic and strong in the defense of liberty?”
Repairing an incoherent belief
system
An episodic popular revulsion at the excesses of the left works for a time for conservatives but it doesn’t ultimately define who conservatives really are. More importantly, ones revulsion at the excesses of the left can easily be replaced by a parallel revulsion at the failures of the right. To make matters worse, conservatism, as a belief system, is in trouble; its fractures and fractiousness are fully exposed in defeat.
A coherent, relevant and deeply appealing understanding of the conservative world view is needed. I propose to start with the recovery of coherence.
Some of the divisions and teeth gnashing within the conservative tent (temporarily masked by the anti-terror surge) are ideological. They came from different takes on core conservative principles. Others were matters of style and still others flowed from practical political considerations. Divisions of this sort should not matter very much in a time of war, but our attention to God, duty and country has wandered. We’re tired of all this terror talk. We have been crippled by denial. The bickering has begun.
Among the conflicts and overlapping sub-movements within the loosely defined conservative alliance these seven stand out by virtue of the tenacious hold the still exert on “Tribe Conservative”:
(1) The religious vs. secular conservatives (the latter unconcerned about God in the pledge or the Decalogue in the public square);
(2) The social conservatives vs. the socially tolerant ones (a fracture that generates really polarizing issues like abortion vs. free choice and traditional marriage vs. ”new paradigm”);
(3) The libertarian conservatives vs. the public order conservatives (fueling the drug legalization conflict, the needle exchange nonsense, and so on);
(4) The
isolationists vs. interventionists (recalling that most isolationists went
silent when the
(5) Between the nationalists vs. internationalists;
(6) Between
the opportunists who abandoned President Bush at the nadir of the
(7) Between the tough love capitalists who would let bad banks and weak companies fail and the pragmatic, “a sinkhole drowns all boats” group.
Ironically, many of these differences have surfaced among the liberal and moderate democrats as well, but those arguments are masked by victory and the Obama “post partisan” ethos he has espoused.
American conservatism is not only divided, it is lonely. The left-ideologies easily attract international allies, because that is where the left originated. Even libertarians have some international traction; after all, laissez faire has a French origin.
But an American conservative doesn’t particularly connect
with a French conservative or a British conservative in the same way an
American of the left or a libertarian intellectual connects to a counterpart
European. Why is this? We Americans are the world’s most powerful radical individualists. That alienates us from the socialist left
and the fascist right alike, both of which consist largely of
collectivists. And the American
conservative ethos and resulting policy stances don’t fit comfortably with the
European mindset. I suspect that this
alienation is because, from a post-Royalist, post class dominated perspective,
American conservatives are morally isolated as well. American conservatives, including most of the secular wing, are among the world’s most advanced moral conservatives. This is masked by our culture’s hedonistic rock-rap adolescent cultural exports. As a result, American conservatives look simultaneously out of touch and inhumane. In European eyes, Americans are the outrageous, impossibly rich and unbearably crude cousins, the ones that our “old country” relatives love to emulate and disparage while never seeing or admitting the contradiction. And the conservatives are the grumbling old dudes and matrons who have slipped from power and relevance.
Liberals take note:
Being distinctly American is not a conservative liability; it is the
conservatives’ secret weapon.
REPUBLICANS AS ROAD KILL
The American conservative movement was run over by the Obama Express because its primary political expression, the Republican Party, was road kill. Like the road runner in the cartoon, conservatives fell into one trap after another and they got run over. Their injuries were not fatal, but they are doomed to live in that cartoon until the Conservative Renaissance takes hold.
A
Road Hazard Map
[1] The Reactionary Trap
When conservatism is defined
as a reactionary response to events and trends, it becomes vulnerable to
changes in those trends and events:
Conservatism has traditionally been defined by circumstances in these three ways:
(a) As just a reaction to the economic excesses of liberalism. An excellent example: taxpayer rebellions that inevitably follow the costly failed liberal altruistic social experiments.
(b) As just a coalition of those who are threatened by the basic security negligence of the left. An example: grassroots law and order reactions to the social disorder following soft-on-crime administrations.
(c) As just a single issue reform movement. Example: the house-cleaning conservative leaders that evict corrupt liberal politicians.
[2] The ‘Callous Upper Crust’ Trap
When conservatism as
seen as a collection of ideas and allegiances united only by common interests
(read “greed”) but not by a vision of the general good and a better future, it
is tolerated as a sort of occasionally necessary “upper class coalition” to be
trotted out whenever the liberals really screw up. When any part of the collection of ideas and
allegiances fails to deliver...or even appears to fail...the “I told you so –
they’re just the arrogant upper crust” narrative prevails.
This partly explains Bill Kristol’s point that conservatism succeeded when Reagan succeeded and failed with the Bush administration.
People are far less ideological than core conservatives and core liberals. This should not be a surprise. Real people, with real lives tend to distrust ideologies. They credit results over political theories.
But there is a serious complicating factor: The perception of success or failure can, for a significant time, be managed – even controlled - by the media. When, as is now the case, the media is saturated with liberal reporters, editors, commentators and news-filters, the success-failure perception can be profoundly warped.
The great mortgage credit meltdown is a perfect example. Liberal social policies were allowed to corrupt lending practices; political and economic greed then exploited the loose-credit opening, and propelled the entire national economy into a financial crisis. This was a joint liberal-democratic-republican debacle that could have been averted by adherence to conservative fiscal principles, had they ever been applied. A neutral media would have blamed the democratic leadership, along with the subset of complicit republicans and the culpable politicians’ greedy handlers embedded throughout a corrupt financial system. But Mr. Bush’s accountability would have been limited to “a failure in leadership”. And the conservatives (McCain included) would have been seen as prophets whose warnings were ignored in the greed-rush.
[3] The ‘Incoherent, Looking Backwards’ Trap
When conservatives
cannot agree on a single coherent definition for conservatism, other than “not
liberalism”, they tend to lose confidence; then they look backwards. Whenever the “wave of the future” is captured
by the liberals, the conservatives become a marginalized shadow movement.
There are three
conflicting formulas of the “conservative world view”. All of them are vulnerable to the ‘looking
back’ trap:
Libertarianism, in its “pure” form, becomes isolationist and disconnected from the practical requirements of polity and public safety such that very few “post 9-11” thinkers are willing to take it seriously.
Business conservatism scans differently in the global economy, leading most voters to suspect an elite government –corporation alliance against their interests. The internationalization of the business sector has broken the vital psychological link between the immediate lives and welfare of most Americans and that of the international companies that cater to several nations but seem accountable to none.
Traditional values have been Balkanized and confused by multi-culturism, making a reasonably coherent and inclusive conservative position difficult to frame, and nearly impossible to market.
None of these formulas is individually adequate to weather all of the modern challenges to civilization. Moreover, without an overarching, coherent theory of governance and progress, these formulas will not...whether separately or in some ad hoc combination...be capable of rescuing conservatism from its current perceived decline.
But a truly robust conservative renaissance is within reach.
THE
KEY
THE
PRODUCTIVE VS THE ANTI-PRODUCTIVE
The Manipulative elites vs. the
Productive Doers
A Distinctly American
Populist Lesson: There are only two
great “class” divisions in the populist mind that really matter: those who work, create value and struggle to
make productive things happen for themselves, their families and the community
at large, and those who manipulate the former group.
In the populist mind, the manipulative class includes the idle rich, the idle poor, and the political and cultural leaders who exploit the productive “class”.
The coming populist reformation will be driven by the events and exigencies of the next few years because these challenges will bring the failures of elites of right and left to address the core populist values and concerns into sharp relief.
The intellectual elites could have seen this coming. Think of the California tax revolt, the popular resistance in many states to judicial or administrative attempts to impose political correctness (as in the aborted attempt to conflate gay rights with the earlier post-slavery struggles of the civil rights era) and the abrupt right turn by the democrats on the border security issue.
What are the challenging events and exigencies of the next
few years? The broad outlines are
already clear. The pattern was first evident
with the oil and hostage crisis under the non-populist President Jimmy Carter
and became blatant with the
There are a number of vital sub-issues, among them the primacy of the English language, the obligation of the elites to control the influx of unassimilated “outsiders” and to vigorously promote the assimilation of the “newly arrived” and the fervent wish of those who work for a living to be able to retain their earnings. These populist issues (in altered form) are alive and well in Europe where the elites may have irretrievably mucked things up. Here, the American elites on the right and left are on notice that there is still time to avert disaster.
Incidentally, when one is discussing disaster in the context of growing populism, ‘disaster’ can take one or both of two forms: (1) The trigger event that inaugurates a true populist eruption – through neglect or deception – actually happens; (2) We get a powerful, irresponsible populist figure on the stage bent on ‘sticking it to’ the elites.
The notion of a populist reformation is that the elites will be able to reconcile rational policy to the main populist concerns before a triggering disaster takes place. The game so far has been one of obfuscation, placation and deception. In the hyper information age, this game is now over. Information flow has been democratized. But the dominant media is still in charge....
COMMON SENSE
ECONOMICS
The revolting specter of a broken financial system fueled by pampered executives (as many of them democrat-pandering as republican-pandering) who pursue ultra short term paper profits over long term real world gains is so profoundly unsettling that a populist rebellion is inevitable in some form. The fears and anxieties in the current electoral-economic situation introduce a mob psychology wild-card effect that will mask the larger trend...but not for long.
Most conservatives
are not yet wrapped in elitist cocoons and not yet ready to surrender the
future to elite leftist fools.
Conservatives should be willing to step up to the task at hand.
Armed with an
intelligent and conservative populism, moved by the vision of a better
civilization, conservatives should be prepared to challenge the liberals to
engage with us in next Dialogic Period.
A Conservative Populist
The first of the two
major political parties that manages to integrate the legitimate wisdom and
common sense of American populism with its own ethos can become a durable
majority. If parties both achieve this,
we will enter a long and healthy Dialogic Period.
Each party needs a leader whose visceral commitment to a muscular and farsighted defense of the homeland is immediately recognized as authentic, a leader who speaks with a distinctly American voice, with the voice of a modern populist. The remaining populist issues, as important as they are, will remain secondary until the jihad against civilization has been decisively defeated.
This must be content not stylistic populism because Americans can tell the difference.
Here’s what the post 9-11 version of a renewed American populism might look like:
Liberals find it incomprehensible that “ordinary” working people, who (from the perspective of the Euro-centric left) have no prospect of gaining great wealth, would nevertheless oppose confiscatory taxation of estates. This is because these liberals don’t take the American dream as seriously as do the so called “common” people. There is a core populist agenda which sounds discordant to liberal ears.
Eventually the political landscape will be reformed. Even the shadow of jihad against the West will fade.
Then everyone will be forced to face and solve the energy production independence issue. And that other, sleeper issue, that won’t go away, will be center stage:
Who will be working in this country at what jobs, for whom and at what pay?
Resurrecting the Undead:
“A Fighting Faith, Unapologetically Patriotic and Strong in the Defense
of
The shock treatment has been administered. Conservatives have three years or so to
reflect, then plan and act to resuscitate a renewed American dream. Here is the outline of a robust, new
conservatism, adapted for Century 21. It
is relevant to the special social and economic conditions and challenges in the
Without philosophy, there is drift; without realism there is failure.
I recently toured the
John Kennedy library in
In the absence of a
new Reagan, Republicans and blue dog democrats could do worse than to unite
around the vision of JFK, a president willing to
lower taxes, build up America’s defenses and declare the promotion of liberty
here and in the world as America’s fighting faith.
OUTLINE OF A FIGHTING FAITH
In The Defense of
On this surely Conservatives
& sane Democrats can agree
Elements of Renaissance Conservatism
Conservatism as a universal idea:
Conservatism’s insights into the human condition will be seen as a necessary feature of a healthy, developing and growing civilization and, inter alia, as providing a constructive redefinition of liberalism. In this development, liberalism is not repudiated, just called to its highest form and partly integrated. This strengthens the conservative critique of modern and postmodern liberalism’s excesses;
Creative conservatism:
Renaissance conservative values and policies will be recognized as
a vital support system for a specifically creative
civilization. This thread is separate
from the populist reformation discussion.
I am personally persuaded that the pursuit of a truly creative
civilization, as a movement, and as an organizing political / moral principle,
will be the principal engine of constructive change in the world for the
foreseeable future. In this context, the
creative forms of civilization will be seen as profoundly normative, and
as presaged by the ongoing American experiment.
Conservatives must be in the vanguard of that movement on the American stage
just as
Renewal of the Dialogic Period:
Renaissance conservative ideas will be instrumental in restarting the Dialogic Period. A fresh, positive vision of civilization enriched by conservatism’s contributions is the most effective way to restore balance to a media crippled by the ideologies of the extreme left. To transform the currently sclerotic media will require the power of fresh ideas driven by the dawning realization that the pursuit of creative civilization is the wave of the future (I expand on this below).
Getting Blue Dog & Reagan Democrats back in the
game:
As I write this part, the news is
full of “Purple Finger II”, the latest elections in
Renaissance Conservatism is more than a
shotgun marriage of convenience and political exigency. It represents the careful integration of
faith in liberty, the populist reformation, the restored Dialogic Period, the
advent of bipartisan conservative alliances, and the political adoption of the Creative
Civilization Model. Neither
conservatives nor liberals can exclusively “own” the creative
civilization. So the question of the
next several years becomes: Can old-line conservatives ride this horse?
CREATIVE CIVILIZATION IS THE
NEW MODEL
The politically correct left find it impossible to
acknowledge that all civilizations are not equal. Some are more creative and life affirming than
others and not coincidentally the creative civilizations are dedicated to the
preservation of freedom. Freedom is the
soil of the creative spirit.
Points of Light & Darkness
Over the span of
pre-modern human history, the creative nodes within the human experience stand
out like brightly lit cities on the dark side of the earth as seen from
space. We think of Florentine Italy, the
efflorescence of science in Ninth Century Islam, the many sparks in
Beginning in the mid 1800’s, the face of
The FIRST SPARK:
Starting with geniuses
named Aristotle, Plato, Archimedes and Pythagoras, and others – all were
figures dismissed by the postmodern cultural left as “dead white men”, an
astounding efflorescence of logic, history and the arts flourished in ancient
Even 21st century readers are occasionally
startled by the modernity of some of these creative achievements, compared with
the many dreary subsequent eras. The
seminal efflorescence of creative and exploratory thought in ancient
The Long Darkness
Flash forward to
post-Roman Imperial Europe. All human memory of that Greco-Roman cultural and
creative outpouring was reduced to a precious few ancient Greek texts that
resided mostly in a handful of monasteries after the economic, cultural,
political and military disintegration of the
The Islamic World’s
Efflorescence 750–1250 CE
During
I note particular admiration the work of Al-Khwarizmi (Alghorismus) after whom the algorithm was named. Muslims not only passed on Greek classical works but also introduced new scientific theories, including the theory of the pendulum, the basis for measuring time.
The European
Renaissance 1100-1650 CE
The
Anglo-Euro-Japanese-American Techno-renaissance 1700-2000
But the greatest
economic and technological progress in all human history was concentrated in a
110 year period starting about 1890.
During this period the
Among the innovations of the 1700’s were:
The Steam Piston Engine, The Mercury Thermometer, Iron Smelting,The Franklin Stove, The Lightning Rod, The Steam Car, The Steamboat, The Circular Saw, The Hot Air Balloon, Bifocals, The Automatic Flour Mill, The Threshing Machine, Artificial Teeth, Vaccination ...
Note the acceleration in the: 1800s:
The Locomotive, The Submarine, The Screw Propeller Steamboat, The Steam Locomotive, The Gas Stove, The Band Saw, The Arc Lamp, The Miner's Safety Lamp, The Stirling Engine, The Stethoscope, The Bicycle, The Electric Motor, Portland Cement, Photography, The Internal Combustion Engine, The Friction Match, The Thermostat, The Magnetic Acoustic Telegraph, The Reaper, The Electrical Generator, The Braille System, The Refrigerator, The Combine Harvester, The Incandescent Light Bulb, The Sewing Machine, The Electric Printing Press, The Steel Plow, The Magnetic Telegraph, The Electric Telegraph, The Closed Diving Suit, rubber Vulcanization, Artificial Fertilizer, Anesthesia, The Typewriter, The Fax Machine, The Ice Cream Maker, The Pile Driver, The Safety Match, The Pneumatic Tire, The Sewing Machine, the Rotary Printing Press, The Safety Pin, The Telephone, The Passenger Elevator, Gyroscope, Bunsen Burner, Celluloid, Undersea Telegraph Cable, Oil Drill, Lead Acid Battery, Light Bulb, Linoleum, Pasteurization, Player Piano, Roller Coaster, Barbed Wire, Dynamite, Vacuum Cleaner, Cable Car, D C Electric Motor, Electric Street Car, Gasoline Carburetor, Loudspeaker, Stapler, Induction Motor, Phonograph, Microphone, Cathode Ray Tube, Cash Register, Roll Film, Safety Razor, Seismograph, Metal Detector, Electric Fan, Blowtorch, A C Electric Motor, Automobile, Motorcycle, A C Transformer, Gasoline Engine, Contact Lens, Gramophone, Ceiling Fan, AC Electric Power System, Kodak Camera, Ballpoint Pen, Harvester-Thresher, Escalator, Zipper, Adjustable Wrench, Photography, Telephone-Exchange, Carburetor, Tuned Wireless Communication, Radio Transmission, Milking Machine, Diesel Engine, Radiotelegraph, Remote Control, Car Self-Starter, Magnetic Tape Recorder, Gas Turbine...
Now take in a partial overview of the really big explosion in the 20th Century:
The Neon Lamp, Rayon, Electrocardiograph, Powered, Controlled Airplane, Tractor, Radio Tube Diode, Sonar, Helicopter, Washing Machine, Cellophane, Geiger Counter, Gyrocompass, Neon Lighting, Hydroplane, Parachute, Radio Receiver, Stainless Steel, X-Ray, Liquid Fuel Rocket, Tungsten Filament, Pyrex, Sonar Echolocation, Cruise Missile, Radio Crystal Oscillator, Polygraph, Radar, Sound Film, Television, Wind Tunnel, Xenon Flash Lamp, Aerosol Spray, Cotton Picker, Sliced Bread, Electric Dry Shaver, Antibiotics, Electroencephalograph, Band Aid, Synthetic Insulin, Mechanical Potato Peeler, Rigid Dirigible Airship, Microwave Optics, Disposable Razor Blade, Vacuum Cleaner, Air Conditioner, Radio Telescope, Nylon, Turboprop Engine, Jet Engine, Ballpoint Pen, Xerography, Fiberglass, View-Master, Computer, Velcro, Nuclear Reactor, Undersea Oil Pipeline, Aqua-Lung, Electron Spectrometer, Slinky, Microwave Oven, Atomic Weapons, Mobile Telephone Service, Bikini, Transistor, Polaroid Camera, Long Playing Record, Holography, Atomic Clocks, Credit Card, Oral Contraceptive, Nuclear Power Reactor, Floppy Disk, Optical Fiber, H Bomb, Hovercraft, Medical Ultrasound, Radar Gun, Geodesic Dome, Hard Drive, Video Phone, Videocassette Recorder, Jet Boat, Integrated Circuit Chip, Communications Satellite, Pacemaker, Laser, Optical Disc, Cochlear Implant, Human Spaceflight, Light-Emitting Diode, Space Observatory, Computer Mouse, Space Dock, AT M, Hypertext, Video Game Console, Packet Switching, ARPANET, Relational Database, Space Station, E-Mail, Liquid Crystal Display, Microprocessor, Pocket Calculator, MRI machine, Ethernet, Personal Computer, Microcredit, Microfinance, Gas-Electric Hybrid Vehicle, DNA Sequencing, Digital Camera, Gore-Tex, Personal Stereo, Mobile Phone, Spreadsheet, Compact Disc, Scanning Tunneling Microscope, Artificial Heart, Internet, Lithotripsy, Polymerase Chain Reaction, DNA Fingerprinting, Statin Cholesterol Drug, Digital Light Processing, World Wide Web, Global Positioning System, LED, Non-Mechanical Digital Audio Player.
And so it goes...
THE CREATIVE
INFORMATION EXPLOSION: 1900-Present Day
Marshal McLuhan (1911-1980) is forever known for a single aphorism, “The medium is the message”. Less well known is the fact that he was a converted Roman Catholic and the “patron saint” of WIRED magazine.
A renaissance conservative needs to be aware of McLuhan’s insights on more than a superficial level.
Consider that in McLuhan’s conception all of the new communication technologies (think print technology, then the new media) profoundly affect the way we think, act and understand the world.
McLuhan has persuasively argued that print communication technologies created the modern Western world. The print culture was inherently individualistic, leading to democracy and capitalism. In the 1960’s, he predicted that profound social changes would result as we entered the era of “electronic interdependence”. The new communication and information transfer technologies would de-emphasize reading in favor of graphics and sound, causing the culture to migrate from fragmented individualism to a “tribal base”, the so-called “global village.”
We might now detect a return to
individuation as a result of the phenomenon of the individual, handheld
multi-media device.
Electronically recorded and transmitted music and images, increasingly available and at decreasing unit cost, have made music from Beethoven to Beyonce, drama from Shakespeare to the Matrix, available on a hand held device almost anywhere on the planet earth 24/7/365. Censorship has become more difficult at the same time that intellectual piracy and the glut of raw talent clamoring for attention have made individual creative endeavors less profitable for the individual aspiring artist.
But the information technology explosion has generated a parallel explosion in the creative arts. Tracking the constantly expanding numbers of movie and television productions during the 20th century is like tracking the first nanosecond of the Big Bang or the fist second of a nuclear explosion.
Among the new art forms, still in their infancy (at by the development standards of pre-modern eras) are these:
A friend of mine, a classicist, has been complaining about the degrading influence of the American ‘”adolescent culture”, one in which the classics (think Mozart, Bach and Vivaldi) are falling away. I agreed with his trend assessment and also agreed, to a degree, with his complaint, but I couldn’t help but note a couple of things: The new information technology effective preserves the rich classical legacy and ensures a continuing audience. Even a tiny fraction of the current population listening to, say, the Beethoven Ninth exceeds (in absolute numbers) the entire audience numbers for the entire corpus of Beethoven’s musical output for his whole life, and the following half-century.
Cultural conservatives who are hostile to modernity in all its manifestations can contribute less to the discussion than the renaissance conservatives. The creative arts deserve conservative support, especially as they celebrate beauty, life and human freedom in the context of the love of beauty and the celebration of life.
AYN RAND AND THOSE JOYFUL INDUSTRIALISTS
Late in the 20th
century, the understood scope of human creative activity was broadened to
include technology. This was a key
insight of the American, former soviet émigré, novelist / philosopher, Ayn
Rand. It follows that a creative
civilization must necessarily have a free economic system as well as robust
protections for creative expression and free communication.
There are certain moral and practical principles that make
up the foundation of an explicitly creative civilization. Providentially,
these moral and practical principles were set out in the American founding
documents. Creative activity
flourishes in an intensely free society and withers in a bureaucratic
tyrannical one. No wonder
Almost every innovation listed in the previous section represents the happy confluence of at three forces: (1) Creative freedom; (2) Protection of the creative process either via a powerful patron or a robust patent / copyright intellectual property system; (3) and in the 20th century, the operation of the risk-incentive-profit sequence.
It is not coincidental that the technical or so called
“industrial” creative innovations since 1700 have collectively done more to
improve the lot of the so called common people than all the previous creative
innovations in art and science combined.
We should not forget that the epicenter of these innovations, of their
inspiration, application and development, was and still is the
The insight that a civilization should provide the
foundations of law and peaceful transitions of power is incomplete. The atavistic forces that would cripple or
destroy Western civilization carry a sharp lesson for us. When the Taliban took over on
While the spread of an authoritarian and fanatical theocracy that animates the jihad against the West minimally meets the definition of ‘a civilization”, it is manifestly hostile to free human creative endeavors. This prompts us to take up the simple, but profound agenda that will transform the conduct and defense of all modern civilizations for centuries to come. The task of furthering the expansion of creative civilizations and defending them – and their free institutions - has from now on become the overriding goal of the human enterprise.
The universal goal of purposively fostering creative civilizations means that the idea of American Exceptionalism is not jingoism, but the epicenter of an uncompleted world revolution.
To survive and flourish over time, a civilization must provide robust, proactive protection for all peaceful creative activities – and the special conditions of freedom in which the human creative enterprise flourishes. In this new paradigm, creative activities (and the concomitant freedom of expression and communication) are to be defined very broadly, including but not limited to the free exchange of political ideas, art forms, cultural, spiritual and esthetic creative products, technological innovations, and human exploration of the cosmos. As to all of these creative expressions of our humanity, the protection of intellectual property and robust firewalls against censorship are paramount among the creation-friendly conditions that civilizations are now charged to provide.
Therefore it would be a profound mistake for conservatives to neglect the creative arts as if they were some inessential frill in a creative civilization, in contrast with technological innovation. And it would be even a greater a mistake for the liberals to embrace the creative arts against technological innovation in some deluded Luddite frenzy.
THE CONSERVATIVE CONTRIBUTION
TO THE HUMAN CREATIVE
Modern conservatives are the political world’s most reliable friends of personal safety and liberty. They are the architects the conditions and institutions that hold up human freedom and liberty, the very soil of all human creative activities. Conservatives were the first to extol and advance the virtues of human technological creativity as a vital strand of the human creative enterprise. In this new era they are the friends and allies of human creative activity everywhere it is repressed.
Beyond that, conservatives almost uniquely understand the critical role of boundaries as part of the creative support system. Boundaries are as essential the creative enterprise as cell walls are to biological function. From the moral and legal boundaries that make creative civilization stable and capable of self-defense, to the deep understanding of moral limits that will enable us to survive our own terrifying inventions, the conservative instinct to protect essential boundaries is part of the creation support system.
Conservative communities need to be in fruitful liaison with the creative arts communities. The creative arts, in their highest forms, operate to challenge trivial boundaries, but illuminate our essential ones. This essay is not the place to go much farther with this, so I conclude with three takeaway points:
(1) Because conservatives are natural defenders of freedom, they (we) understand at the gut level that art should not ever be harnessed to any political agenda or religious institution.
(2) All art is worthy of strong conservative support (and the individual patronage of conservatives) when it celebrates life and freedom;
(3) Artists were the original entrepreneurs.
A Conservative Recovery Project
Any conservative recovery that fails be robust and coherent, fails period. A successful conservative recovery in the current left-leaning environment will necessarily be organized around the real life concerns that transcend popular ideological stereotypes. Ultimate political success depends on the ability of conservatives at every level to find, sell and implement good solutions, the very efficacy of which will serve to expose the dysfunctional approaches of the current crop of illiberal-liberals.
Renaissance conservatism, as I have described it
here, immediately overcomes the conservative reputation for status quo
thinking. This will swiftly become the
one conservative brand that trusted to effectively and creatively solve the
problems that liberalism typically neglects to actually address – as opposed to
merely posturing about them. As it
happens, these are the primary problems facing
Any short list of this nation’s biggest problems necessarily includes four areas:
(1) the looming energy insufficiency;
(2) the prospect of food supply shortages (already foreshadowed by rising prices);
(3) the stifling of creative thinking through the political and cultural censorship called political correctness, media group-think, and the smothering of the arts via bureaucratic subsidies and political “expectations”;
(4) the growing toxicity of post modern relativism. This has given rise to deteriorating family relationships, cultural baseness, educational failure and growing moral illiteracy. All of the these malign developments are the consequences of moral boundary decay.
A confident and forward conservative program will replace the acceptance of scarcity with the pursuit of abundance, trump ineffectual gestures with creative accomplishments, unmask the politics of posture, strengthen our firewalls against predators, corruption, and disease, and secure family life from the forces, economic and cultural, that threaten to dissolve it.
Here are the watch words of the recovery:
The renaissance conservative movement will attract the participation of competent, forward-looking conservative leaders with strong communication skills because it is the wave of the future.
APPENDIX
POLICY & POLITICS
IMPLICATIONS & APPLICATIONS
“Fifty-six percent (56%)
of
“In his first inaugural address, Reagan declared that ‘Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.’ Fifty-nine percent (59%) 59% of voters still agree with him.
“Reagan also strongly believed that tax cuts are good for the economy, and 57% of voters continue to share that view. Only 17% disagree.”
Scott Rasmussen
TACTICS AND APPROACH
1. _________________________
EMERGENCIES
In the popular mind – and mostly in reality – conservatives are better at emergencies than liberals. This is because, for the most part, conservatives are associated with tough mindedness, decisiveness, and a practical approach, the kind common in the world of business and the military. The worst side of conservatism is the picture of resolute inaction.
Almost every emergency, from war to weather, from plague to plummeting assets, is predictable. The military has contingency plans for almost every threat. It is inexcusable for conservatives to squander their reputation for “can do” preparedness (as Bush 43 did in Katrina) by allowing even the appearance of deer-in-the headlights vacillation or indifference or unpreparedness. The popular image of a liberal government facing a crisis is Nancy Pelosi standing with solemn nervousness behind a general who has been trotted out for show.
Conservatives are judged by a higher standard and must live up to it.
Conservative leaders in an emergency must always get the job done, breaking heads and bureaucratic inertia as needed. This actually requires a set of plans (A, B and C) and even drills. No major conservative public figure can afford to have an economic, foreign policy or national security air pocket. Conservatives need a strong brain trust, shared, with every leader worthy of the role, an executive leader cohort that must be held to A or B+ levels of basic knowledge in any of the subjects that can become the subject of an emergency.
This is the conservatives’ secret weapon, because, like the poor, emergencies will always be with us.
This is especially true of financial emergencies which seem to be tied to a hidden seasonal calendar. Financial crises like the present one always present rich opportunities for public education at the same time that they are being addressed. Most, but not all such emergencies represent a betrayal or ignorance of core conservative principles, such as the precepts of common sense economics. Even a failure of “regulation” violates conservative principles when the taxpayers’ moneys are put at risk by foolish, under-controlled bureaucrats. Sometimes remediation is slow (especially in large scale disasters), but even then the people expect and respect a sense of ongoing, unremitting effort at problem solving.
Moreover, people are almost immediately receptive to prevention measures. And when the measures represent the implementation or strengthening of conservative principles (and it almost always does in the economic arena), education and explained remediation become one in the same.
2. ________________
WHAT ABOUT ALL THOSE LOOMING PROBLEMS THAT WON’T LEAVE US ALONE?
Here’s the daunting short list in arbitrary order (i.e., no priority is implied):
Overcoming the jihad lunge for our jugular;
Recovering from the current economic mess;
Preventing another mess like this one;
Achieving energy sufficiency & reliability;
Ensuring future
Enabling future career and job opportunities for the middleclass;
Fixing the entitlement drain and avoiding its future burdens;
Repairing public morality;
Stopping the spread of WMD’s to irresponsible regimes;
Curbing crime and restoring neighborhood safety in
Protecting against
Stemming the expensive flood of not-assimilated migrants;
Reversing the outsourcing of good American jobs;
Repairing the hollowing out of American manufacturing;
Achieving health care availability, portability, affordability and quality;
Lowering taxes and restraining inflation;
Building education quality, safety and availability;
Realistically addressing climate adaptation and melioration;
Promoting conservation of natural resources;
Improving environmental health;
Expanding public recreational access to nature;
Raising healthy and safe children with a bright future;
Reconciling technology and morality;
Stopping an American decline;
Preventing an American defeat and humiliation...
3.
___________________
HIGH PRIORITY
PROGRAMS FOR CONSERVATIVES
[See the thumbnails below]
4.
___________________________
THORNY & PROMISING
ISSUES FOR CONSERVATIVES
THUMBNAIL APPENDIX
Enlarging On Some of the
Foregoing Priorities & Issues
HIGH PRIORITY PROGRAMS FOR CONSERVATIVES:
[Here, I briefly
address taming nukes, paying physicians, engendering growth, stopping crime and
starting new industries]
Clean, Endless Energy at Reasonable Cost
The energy crisis, oil supply anxieties and concern about large scale climate change (leaving aside the extent to which the latter is anthropogenic or cyclical) have created the perfect storm of expectations. We need a new primary energy source. But when you cut through all the fantasy solutions, there is only one contender standing. In the real world only one proven, off-the-shelf technology is actually capable of providing an indefinite supply of energy without any dependence on hydrocarbons or foreign supplies at all. That is the old fashioned fission reactor technology, now in its third, and by far safest, generation. And the fourth generation is close at hand. The ideal distribution network for nuclear energy is another old fashioned, off-the-shelf technology, the electric grid.
Here’s the clean, little secret: The waste and operational safety problems in
the
This is all about security (something the nuclear navy has solved), political will and overcoming irrational fear. Surely, this is a readymade issue for smart, well informed conservatives.
Widely Available Market Based Medical Care Support
Physicians hate working in the HMO environment (socialized medicine “lite”) in which the former family doctor has become a harried, overworked figure whose primary function is as gatekeeper, effectively demoted to a paraprofessional who is expected to shunt patients to a pharmacist, a specialist, or back home after (in most cases) an unsatisfactorily abbreviated contact. The discontent among physicians forced to do this should be a message to all of us.
The emergency rooms – forbidden by law from turning anyone away - are full of uninsured sick people, most of whom would not otherwise seek “emergency” care. Hospitals dramatically overcharge for services; then they under-collect. If you’ve ever seen a real doctor on a pay-for-service basis (no insurance forms to fill out), you’ve probably been pleasantly surprised at the reasonable fee and the high quality of the visit compared to the “free” HMO experience. Virtually no one is actually shopping for medical services. Prices are invisible going in; they are obscure and inflated going out. Unsurprisingly, medical care costs routinely outpace inflation. Conservatives need to remind everyone that this is happening because the whole medical payment and service delivery system is bureaucratically insulated from consumer driven market pressures.
The insurance model is flawed because the risk pool is too small to amortize the big ticket patients. Moreover, the opportunity to cherry pick patients is too difficult to resist. Conservatives know that you don’t get something for nothing. And older conservatives know that, eventually everyone gets a disease or condition that gets you excluded from new coverage for some pre-existing malady, tendency or diagnosis. Cost transparency and informed consumer choice need to be combined with very large risk pools supplemented by prudent humanitarian subsidies. Nothing should be allowed to force a physician or patient into a public payment system.
This is a problem ready made for intelligent, flexible conservative solutions. A number are on the table, but conservative leaders seem to have become as tongue tied and inarticulate as our last president.
Crime & Taxes; Public Safety & Growth
These should be “no brainers” for any thinking conservative. I leave it to others to flesh this part out.
Launching American Commercial Domination of the Aerospace Economy
I blame Richard Nixon and Jimmie Carter for breaking the momentum of the American space program. Here’s the deal: We can legitimately invoke national security considerations to keep the key manufacturing elements of the space program and its related industries on American soil with a predominantly American work force. We can make space “ours” without violating so called “free trade” requirements and protectionist trade retaliation. The success of Boeing as a distinctly American institution is a direct product of the earlier aerospace push of the Kennedy-Johnson years. The same kind of technology push will revitalize the entire American transportation industry sector.
Why bother to “conquer” space? Forget the last three science fiction movies you enjoyed. Forget colonization of Mars for now. Near earth orbit is already a huge profit center involving trillions of dollars. And that is only because of the growing communications sector. In the next thirty years, some nation or combination of nations will be harvesting, using, developing and profiting from immense energy resources, climate modification technologies, mining, industrial processes and a burgeoning tourist industry, all in that zone between 50 miles over our heads and the moon, only about 250,000 miles away. If you thought terrestrial real estate was valuable, stable orbits, the L5 zone and other economically valuable “real estate” within the immense volume of well-lit space just overhead will be as sought after with the same fervor that drove the exploitation of the new world.
Will
THE CREATIVE SURGE
What can I possibly be talking about here? Renaissance conservatives are linked by personal predisposition and a common ethos to all of the creative ventures of humanity, particular those that celebrate human life, beauty and creation itself and the technologies that make it all possible. The conservative task of the moment is to link this ethos to the larger agenda of forming, fostering and protecting a creative civilization, to all of its creative features, technological, spiritual and artistic, and to demonstrate in all its forms, and to join our rhetoric, actual behavior and policies, such that they are deeply linked to this end.
Here is the message:
All benign human creative activity transcends party, politics and ideology. And bless the rebellious, anti-conventional members of our creative subcultures. Pierced body parts and purple hair included, they are renaissance conservative allies ... even if they don’t yet “get it.”
There is more to be said and accomplished. After all, this is just the Beginning....
____
Author Contact Visit “The Policy Think Site”
Jay B. Gaskill www.jaygaskill.com
Attorney at Law