By JAMES BARESEL
Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West by R.R. Reno. Available in Kindle and hardcover versions on amazon.com.
At least until recently, the bulk of the Western world had been unfortunately firmly and even dangerously stuck in the past. That is the argument put forward by First Things editor R.R. Reno in his most recent book, Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West. The past to which he refers is, of course, not that of the Christian Western. And it is not the era so beloved of aging radicals, the socially revolutionary sixties and seventies of the last century.
It is the decades which immediately followed World War II, decades whose combination of bland conformism with a reasonable degree of “base level” normality has led them to be treated as stereotypical of conservatism.
Reno shows the truth to be entirely, even diametrically different. Rather exemplary of a sane way of life, the second half of the 1940s and the 1950s saw the development of what he calls the “postwar consensus” — an ideology of “tolerance” and “diversity” shared by those at all points on the “mainstream” political spectrum. Debate has concerned whether shared goals are better served by centralizing or decentralized and limited government and by a largely free market or a more regulated one. Debate has taken place over what elements of Christian and natural law morality serve, or are compatible with, a tolerant and diverse society, and over whether Christians, Jews, Muslims, those in homosexual relationships or others most need to have their real or supposed rights defended.
What has not been debated is whether a “tolerant” and “diverse” society is either desirable in principle or possible in practice.
The foundation of the consensus ideology is a rejection of metaphysical realism, the belief that there is a universal human nature, absolute moral principles grounded in that nature and an objective purpose to human existence. What the consensus ideology substitutes for the foregoing is the nominalist belief that there are only individuals, whose existence has no objective purpose and who, therefore ought to be free to live their life in whatever manner they want provided do so does not entail “violations” (usually understood as some form of physical harm or coercion) of other individuals.
The “left-wing” version of this ideology considers Christianity (or religion as such) a primary threat to such radical individualism and the state as a primary defender. The “right-wing” version reverses this, seeing the state as a primary threat and Christianity as anything from a largely useful and friendly influence to a considerably lesser danger.
Far from the right-wing version of this ideology being an isolated or marginalized viewpoint, it is a decisive influence on the so-called “conservative” establishment, having been embraced and promoted by such prominent theorists of capitalism as Friedrich von Hayek. A favorite of “public intellectuals” associated with the Republican Party, Hayek’s close associates included Karl Popper, who not only wrote some of the most extensive philosophical works rejecting metaphysical realism but was a teacher of George Soros — whose Open Society Institute was named after one of Popper’s books.
Many “establishment conservatives” who facilitate, or at least fail to thwart, leftist attacks on borders and Christianity and leftist promotion of abortion, homosexual relationships, “transgenderism” and so forth are not merely weak or compromising but are committed to pursuing a culturally leftist, “tolerant” and “diverse” society. Despite conflict over economic theory, right-wing and left-wing variants of the consensus ideology share a materialistic worldview.
Both prioritize material, economic advantage over religion, culture, and key aspects of traditional Christian and natural law morality. Both believe that a “tolerant” and “diverse” society best facilitates the pursuit of material, economic advantage.
What allowed, or at least considerably enabled, this ideology to gain dominance was the massive scale of evil committed by Nazi Germany. Almost overnight, much of the Western world became convinced that a “tolerant” and “diverse” society was the only alternative to societies which, by being in some sense “exclusive,” differed from Nazi Germany only quantitatively, in the extremity to which they are “exclusive” and to which they take treatment of “outsiders.”
Because of their rejection of “tolerance” and “diversity,” traditionalist conservatism and nationalism came to be viewed as tending, however much or however slightly, in the fascist direction. And despite the fact that true fascism had ceased to be a threat as soon as World War II ended, it loomed much larger than the very real threat of Communism in the public mind — in part because so many people had experienced the war against Hitler, in part because Hitler provided cultural leftists with a club with which to beat traditionalists and nationalists, and in part because fascism was seen as a greater ideological evil than Communism and socialism not only by leftists but also by capitalists committed to a “tolerant” and “diverse” society.
Today this consensus ideology is increasingly giving way to something the approaches a return to normality. As the “moderate mainstream” moves more and more radically to the left in domestic policy, with the uncontrolled influx of dangerous categories of person through tacit toleration of officially illegal immigration and moves toward open borders, as Western culture is more and more undermined, “populist nationalism” is rising as a defense of at least some shreds of Western and even Christian society and gaining in power almost by the day.
While recognizing that this movement is often enough flawed, and in some manifestations even presents real dangers, Reno demonstrates that it is motivated largely by such normal human loyalties as patriotism, that its rejection of many ideological and practical evils of the “postwar consensus” is (overwhelmingly) not grounded in attitudes which bear meaningful similarity to the evils of fascism, that attempts to dismiss it as fascist are counterproductive as well as paranoid, and that if its very real concerns are not acted upon by governments, the result is likely to be disastrous.
Apparent Sympathy
Despite his generally fine analysis, Reno does put forward two positions which are both problematic and of sufficiently central importance for his topic for some critique to seem called for. One is that there are times (the World War II era among them) when there are “good reasons” for aggressively promoting certain concepts of “tolerance” and “diversity.”
Given that the phrase and the two words in question each allow for innumerable definitions, it would appear that such qualifiers can only have one of two bases. One is a desire to seem (for the sake of persuasiveness) or to feel moderate. The other is some real sympathy for the attitudes behind the errors he critiques. Such sympathy could be as meaningless as sympathizing with Communism out of desire to see poor people fed. Or it could be as problematic as feeling attracted to the idea of a classless society while recognizing creation of a classless society to be impossible.
Reno’s second problematic position is his apparent sympathy for nineteenth-century liberalism, an ideology he rightly stresses was concerned with limiting government rather than with “tolerance” and “diversity.” That nineteenth liberalism is preferable to the “consensus ideology” is not at issue. Neither is the question of whether it is or is not the most tolerable of modern secular political philosophies. The problem is that nineteenth-century liberalism rests largely on the same presuppositions as the right-wing variant of the consensus ideology.
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