Red Toryism: A Calvinist counterproposal

The Red Tory movement is starting to garner press in all sorts of places now, and I’ll hazard to say that this is a very positive sign. Setting aside the substantive claims of Phillip Blond and Milbank for just one moment, I think that American conservatism is in a position where any substantive contribution of concerted philosophical and historical reflection can only be beneficial. The atrophy of the conservative intellect is something that should be mourned by conservative and liberal alike. American politics is built on dialectic, for better or worse, and I imagine that most would prefer a dialectic of philosophically-informed ideas and programs rather than the strange recent development of tea-party class warfare: “real America” vs. the “liberal elite.” Democratic energy is a great thing, but it’s also been an unwieldy force in American history when given political autonomy outside the bounds of civil society and self-concious traditions of virtue.

I’ve been following the British Red Tories for the past two years, so I’m glad Blond’s recent cross-Atlantic pilgrimage to the States has attracted so much attention. While I sadly wasn’t able to attend the recent two-day panel put together by Georgetown’s Patrick Deneen, the good folks at the Tocqueville Forum have posted the audio from Blond’s original lecture and the two subsequent panels: one constituted of political journalists, one of academics. While all parties seem intrigued by the proposals of Blond’s Red Toryism, one particular question kept returning (raised in various forms by Ross Douthat, Michael Hanby, and Charles Mathewes, among others): How can Red Toryism adapt in an American context so committed to liberalism?

In response, Blond seemed to make two assumptions. First, the current American context should be traded in for a more approximately British system. For instance, at one point he provocatively suggested that we transform our Senate into something resembling the British House of Lords; rather than viewing the Senate as merely a more concentrated version of the House of Representatives, the Senate should be recast as a collegial body more committed to civil virtue and society than to partisan, democratic interests. Now, historically, I think one could make the argument that this is fairly close to the original intent for the Senate, although I think the founders were more formally concerned with giving the individual states a powerful federal voice in the Senate, in contrast to the ostensibly more populist House. But, short of reversing the seventeeth amendment, that’s a tall order to fill. I wonder whether Blond, as a Brit, is giving due consideration to the continuing anti-federalist tendencies in the States, as evidenced by the recent push for nullification (a phenomenon that shouldn’t have surprised as many people as it did). I share Blond’s desire for a sense of civic virtue, protected by the “tertiary,” derived good of the state. However, Blond’s exhortation concerning the superiority of the centralized British monarchy struck me as atypically tone-deaf. I’m certain that I’m far more sympathetic to the idea of a classical, constitutional monarchy than the vast majority of American Red Tory sympathizers, but even I had a moment of involuntary recoil at Blond’s statement. And putting aside any constitutional reactions, I’m worried that Blond may have betrayed something of the hierocratic tendency in (British) Red Toryism. But perhaps an American contribution to Red Toryism could provide the necessary countervalence to this.

This leads to what I saw as Blond’s second assumption, which was a certain association of the rhetoric of contemporary liberalism with its actual practice in the American political system. Here, again, I should say that I’m very sympathetic to Blond’s critique of contemporary culture’s adoption of a religion of “choice,” which I’m convinced does follow quite naturally from a Lockean or Rawlsian liberalism. And the present state of American congressional debate is quite damning evidence against our de-ontologized, polarized political system.

That said, I’m still left wondering whether the proposed alternative of Red Toryism avoids the tendency to make the state “ultimate” in some sense. I’m willing to forgive some of the excessive rhetoric against liberalism, even as Blond approvingly quotes Joseph Goebbels’ critique of liberalism (which seemed uncharacteristic of the usually charitable Mr. Blond). However, I sensed at times that Blond views the state as having a certain ontological and hierocratic privilege which appears at odds with his preference for locally diffused power structures. I very much appreciated his support of an antique liberalism as a “tertiary,” rather than a primary good — that is, as a political structure which can testify to, but not possess the “good beyond the state.” And yet, at other times, he appears to identify the state too closely with that “good beyond” for my own more republican tastes. As Calvinist political theorists have maintained, the desacralization of the state doesn’t preclude civil society from protecting or even supporting the “good beyond” and the sacred.

I suppose that the essence of my critique — and it should be taken as a friendly, sympathetic one — is that Blond’s peculiarly British form of Red Toryism sometimes appears to privilege the state in such a way that the political structure itself is too closely associated the “good beyond the state.” Perhaps an American antidote is called for — one that is infused with a Calvinistic republicanism that is historically and theologically suspicious of any ultimate, realized political virtue. Rather, this American Red Toryism might reinforce Blond’s “tertiary” good of liberalism by way of pursuing civic virtue as a means to an end, and not the end itself. I tend to think that our first premise should be a denial of any civic ultimacy. The old Calvinistic motto might come in handy here: the finite cannot possess the infinite. Crucially, however, this is not to deny some connection between the present good and the “good beyond,” but it does force us back into a state of poltical humility as we orient ourselves to that higher good. Mathewes’ proposal for a “proleptic” pursuit of the good beyond strikes me as helpful here, or perhaps also Eric Gregory’s moderate Augustinian perfectionism.

In the end, I think I’d just like to see an infusion of cynical-humanistic-Calvinist-republicanism into Blond’s Red Toryism. However, even if that’s a pipe dream, I’m grateful the Red Tories have brought this level of discourse to an impoverished American conservatism. Welcome to America, Mr. Blond.

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There’s been a recent flood of excellent commentary on Red Toryism. Aside from the Tocqueville Forum panel, further reading might include:

• Patrick Deneen in the WaPo on Red Toryism and the tea parties
• David Schaengold on Blond’s use of Alasdair MacIntyre
• Ordinary Gentleman Will offers up a fair dose of pessimism
• A Front Porch reader offers some constructive criticism of Red Toryism’s practical alternatives
• The New York Times duo: Ross Douthat (audio link); David Brooks – “The Broken Society”
• Also: the introduction of Red Toryism bears a striking resemblance to the last year’s bare-knuckled debate between the Front Porch Republic and the Postmodern Conservatives (a brief bibliography)
• Pomocons Peter Lawler and James Poulos offer indirect contributions to the discussion as well; Lawler on Orestes Brownson and the American constitution is provocative stuff