Chesterton’s Freeway
I’ll be publishing my follow-up on the Techno-Optimist Manifesto soon, but in the meantime, I have a new article up at Discourse reviewing Patrick Deneen’s book Regime Change. Deneen is one of the leaders of the new pack of anti-liberal conservatives, and this is his attempt to articulate the positive agenda that in their view would replace a society organized around freedom—a new political “regime” to replace the current one.
It turns out Deneen’s agenda is not really about specific policies and reforms. It’s about one thing:
The title of the final section of the book—“What Is To Be Done?”—is consciously copying Lenin, who despaired that the working people would never make a revolution on their own and called for an elite “vanguard” of intellectuals to make it on their behalf. Similarly, Deneen calls for a “people’s party,” but one led by “an elite cadre skilled at directing and elevating popular resentments.”
He does not champion “the people” against “the elites,” but instead calls for a new elite that will rule in the people’s name—a sort of “Conservatism-Leninism” in place of Marxism-Leninism. The difference is that this alleged elite will be conspicuously religious….
I won’t call Deneen’s book a blueprint for authoritarian populism because it is not that specific. It is a wish for authoritarian populism, a fantasy in which he and people like him will be granted power by a strongman.
Deneen is curiously negative about Donald Trump, and instead seems to be interviewing for a position as court philosopher in the regime of Ron DeSantis. But his hope for an elite of virtuous “aristoi” comes up against the plain fact that when you appeal to authoritarian populism, Trump is what you actually get.
Read this review to get an idea of the threat posed by the anti-liberal conservatives, but I can’t advise that you read the book itself—not because of its content but because of its style. I cut this paragraph from my review, but I’m going to share it with you because I’ve got to complain to someone.
Deneen is no fun at all to read. His prose is clunky, pretentious, and heavily reliant on the bald assertion of an idea that is then hammered in by such endless repetition that the average reader—the one who has not already committed to his editor to produce a review—is likely to give up before he finally moves on to the next point.
Deneen’s big mistake is to frequently cite Alexis de Tocqueville in support of his opposition to progress and innovation and in favor of “stability and continuity” and the complete absence of all change. But I know my Tocqueville backward and forward, and the thing that jumped out at me is that this supposed “conservative” is proposing to completely expunge the American national character as described by Tocqueville. Check out the review because I show the contrast in detail.
The most interesting new idea I developed in response to this book is what I call “Chesterton’s Freeway.” It’s based on an old story from the British conservative G.K. Chesterton about a reformer who find a fence blocking a path in the woods and hastily tears it down. Chesterton cautions us to first find out why the fence was built in the first place.
I turn that on its head.
If you are wandering through the countryside and suddenly come across a bustling eight-lane thoroughfare, do not immediately dismiss it as a violation of the pristine woods or an unnecessary modern invention. First, ask why it was built: why the forest was cleared, why the road was made smooth with great effort, why people found it necessary to have freedom of motion at this location.
Find that out before you go building fences across it. Many of the freedoms that the nationalists like to criticize—for example, a secular, religiously neutral government—are actually the hard-won solutions to centuries of conflict. It would be a shame to block them up.
On the optimistic side, I note the contrast between Deneen’s fantasy of authoritarian power and the results of Tuesday’s election, where voters largely rejected the conservative agenda, particularly on abortion. (More on that soon.)
He cites “recent American elections” in support of his idea of a conservative populist uprising, but he only really has one election that supports this idea—an election in which the “populist” won with less than 50% of the vote, and fewer votes than his opponent. Similarly, he anticipates the need for “postliberalism” in the era of “an exhausted Western civilization, an emboldened Russia, and a rising China”—none of which is particularly panning out, either.
There are some lessons here about difference between being a “populist” and actually being popular.