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THOMAS K. SARROUF, JR.
It has been said that the mob that stormed The Capitol was a threat to democracy. Wrong! That mob was democracy, and the populist (and democratic) impulses of the mob are an existential threat to the Republic. As John Adams wrote of the government in the Massachusetts Bill of Rights, “to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.” The American conservative is one who, at the very least, strives to uphold America’s founding documents and the values contained therein. One of these core founding principles is the separation of powers between branches of government, but also the notion that the sovereign should be stripped of all power. In America, the people are sovereign, for it is from the people that the government “derive[s] their just powers” and legitimacy. By keeping power out of the hands of the sovereign through the creation of a republican government, the Founders hoped to extend the longevity of the American way for all time, and avoid the tendency of democracies to devolve into tyranny. Thus, an irreducible facet and value of conservatism is and should be anti-populism. Populism appeals to the democratic impulses of man. We can understand this by evaluating the rhetoric of President Trump, who routinely criticized the “swamp” in Washington: the cabal of political elites, the mainstream media, lobbyists and “special interests” and the academic intelligentsia of unelected bureaucrats running the administrative state. He often called these people “sick people,” “stupid people who do not know what they are doing,” and said that “[he] alone [could] fix it.” By contrast to the “swamp,” he placed the “average American.” This is the core of political populism: a distrust of traditional politicians and political processes, cries of a “broken Washington,” and a suggestion that the average person should be in charge. It is exactly the same idea that is routinely captured in the Leftist phrase, “power to the people.” We can also see the democratic parallel, as literal self-rule is the heart of the democratic way. But we are not a democracy, and thank God for that. We, the average people of America, do not belong in power; that is the place for elected officials, who are supposed to represent the best of the people. Our officials come from the people and are elected by the people, but they are not the people once they ascend into their governmental roles. The government is a separate entity from the people. When President Obama says that “the government is us,” not only is he wrong--seriously mistaken--but he also commits a grave offense against the American philosophy. We should not follow in the footsteps of his errors. And the answer to elected officials not living up to the standards of the institutions to which they belong is not to become complacent with the vices of populism. Such complacency abandons the high values that formed our civic institutions; it is about recapturing the formative spirit of those institutions within our civic life. It is making the officials worthy of the positions to which they are elected. Our politics has to get away from the idea that “I am not going to vote for this GOP swamp creature” because they represent the “establishment.” That is falling hook line-and-sinker for the Leftist and democratic position that individuals should have priority in politics. We should like what politicians say insofar as they convey ideas that comport with American values and policies that will be effective for helping Americans. We are not “swamp creatures” versus “the people,” we are conservatives locked in battle against forces that are bent on subverting our way of life; we must not fall into false distractions and fall for lies that pit us against one another. For example, I like Senator Ben Sasse, not because he’s a “good guy,” which I am sure he is, but because he says many good and true things about the American philosophy, and because I agree with his policy proposals, such as repealing the Seventeenth Amendment. The idea that we have to vote for people, because only a certain person can solve the problem, or because only they really know the problems of Americans and care about them, is a path to the perdition of tyranny. At the core of the American philosophy is a distrust of the ability of the people to directly rule themselves, which is why our government is a representative republic; stoking the frustrations of our flawed institutions by invoking a populist rhetoric that is inherently linked to an individual will doom those institutions forever. I return to Adams: a government of laws, and not of men. The populist impulse that places a priority on a person is neither conservative nor American. America under populism will not long endure.
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Don't Date a Liberal9/5/2021 Thomas K. Sarrouf Jr.
I am the only conservative in my family. Everyone on my mom’s side, with the exception of my late grandfather, is left-leaning, and everyone on my dad’s side, including our large extended family, is quite liberal and increasingly progressive. My dad might be the only exception, as he is personally conservative, though is “moderate for moderacy’s sake,” which might be considered a soft form of Burkean prudential conservatism. But as far as staunch traditional conservative politics goes, I stand alone. It is actually a meme in my family, as any political conversation is a 1v15, almost by definition. And that is all fine with me. The unconditional love of family is higher than politics, and I love my family dearly, politics aside. A valuation of the family as the fundamental unit of society is essential to conservatism; in short, when it comes to family, “we’ve got to stick together” is rightly the conservative motto. Being the sole conservative in my family has also been grounding for me personally. As my friends like to spurn “the Left” as such, I must be more careful and considerate, lest I unfairly damn my own kin! Being the sole conservative has imbued a certain level of respect for the Left, and keeps me slightly more restrained, which I think is necessary, especially these days. A story: at a family holiday gathering a couple years ago, one aunt asked me if I felt burdened by the liberal ethos of the family, or if that difference made me resent them in some way. Channeling my inner Aristotle, I replied, “filial piety is a virtue.” I meant that only as a facetious way of saying “no.” My philosophy professor would have laughed at such a joke; sadly for me, my family is not versed in the intricacies of Aristotelian virtue taxonomies, so they were mildly offended. They interpreted it as me saying that I love them from the necessity of virtue rather than unconditional love, and I must admit that is not an unfair interpretation; I should have been more straightforward. But as the conversation continued, we ended up talking about whether I would date a liberal. My straightforward answer was that I would not. They, again, were offended, as they took that as a personal slight against them. Leave it to the Left to take things personally. They conflated being a member of the family with building a family with someone else. Perhaps because they all agreed, more or less, this was not such a manifest issue, or because the landscape of politics has shifted in a more partisan direction since they were building the family. Point being, a conversation ensued, and I thought my reasons for why I would not date a liberal were worth putting in writing, so here they are: the psychological argument; the argument from culture; and the question of judgment. A disclaimer. These arguments cut both ways. I will be looking at things from a conservative angle, but for the liberal reader, these arguments are still worthy of consideration, albeit in reverse. Also, these arguments are hardly deductive proofs, and are not hard and fast rules. There are plenty of exceptions. The Psychological Argument Individuals are psychologically different. Interactions between individuals are thus governed in part by the interaction between the psychological profiles of the individuals in question. Those traits and characteristics that we find annoying about another person, or endearing or desirable, is the relational agreement or disagreement between myself and the other. It’s not relative; there are some traits that are objectionably intolerable and undesirable. But relationships are somewhat beholden to the psychological “goodness-of-fit” principle. That is simply at the level of the individual. There is also relevant and interesting empirical data about how various groups of people differ psychologically. For instance, men and women are psychologically different along the “Big 5” personality trait model (sadly, all of the information I am about to present exists behind a paywall, but to learn more about these phenomena, go to https://www.understandmyself.com/ and take the official “Big Five Aspects Scale” test). Women are more agreeable compared to men; women are slightly more orderly than men, and men are slightly more industrious than women; women are significantly higher in neuroticism (negative emotion) compared to men; men are rated higher in intellect, which is defined as interest in abstract ideas, compared to women. These are just a few of the major differences. These are not laws of nature, but by looking at the results of someone’s test, it is possible to guess their gender with perhaps 70% accuracy, which suggests a considerable psychological difference between the sexes in aggregate. So on top of individual-level differences, there is also a pattern that emerges that suggests sexual difference. Superimposed on top of that are differences in political and moral psychology. Liberals are significantly higher in “openness to experience” than conservatives, and conservatives rank much higher in levels of conscientiousness than liberals. There are also other trait differences, though they are less pronounced or do not predict any political leaning. Jonathan Haidt’s work on moral psychology shows a similar pattern: liberals tend to value harm/care and fairness/reciprocity, while conservatives value those same two moral foundations, albeit less than liberals, as well as authority, sanctity/purity, and ingroup/loyalty. Thus, we see that people with different political ideologies are likely to have some sort of underlying psychological difference. To review, there are individual-level psychological differences, which plays a role in how well people are able to get along. For instance, someone who loves to go out and party, which would indicate a high level of extroversion, might find someone who stays in on weekends, indicative of low levels of extroversion, to be quite boring. Stack these differences up for each trait, and one can see why two people might not get along. But then add gender differences, and on top of that, the underlying differences in political psychology, and one could see how these compound to make a relationship difficult. Of course, it is conceivable that liberals and conservatives fall in love and make it work, as the differences could also cancel each other out, but as Jordan Peterson says, “It’s very difficult for people who widely differ on those dimensions to come to consensus, because it’s not just a matter of opinion, it’s really a matter of really different types of people.” To demonstrate this, I composed a matrix of what this might look like:
The Argument from Culture I would not want to paint the picture that political belief is solely the basis of our psychological tendencies or characteristics; if political belief is determined this way, then there is no reason to assume that all belief is not merely the product of personal psychological, biological, and neurochemical variations between individuals; if this analysis is taken too far, one gets the picture that all human ideas are merely the product of external forces, which is an overly-reductionist view of the human being. Furthermore, it paints a troubling picture with respect to man’s freedom; Haidt’s work proves less problematic in this regard, as his idea of the “moral matrix” is that these five traits are something akin to the Lockean faculties, and open to revision within the human being; in fact, if Haidt is able to talk about it as moral psychology at all, that is because man is free to form judgments. There is an entire realm of transcendent political philosophy that exists in addition to the psychological nature of man; we have spiritual, intellectual, and physical dimensions integrated into one being, so in addition to the psychological basis for political belief, there are also real reasons that inform political beliefs. Contra Freud, all reason is not rationalization. The argument from culture stems from the proposition that “politics is downstream from culture.” In other words, political beliefs do not exist in a vacuum, but are informed by larger cultural norms and values. These cultural values are antecedent to political society, and inform the structure, laws, and procedures that the political society follows. For instance, the equality of people was the cultural value that inspired the overthrow of the so-called “divinely sanctioned” monarchy during the American Revolution. Another example of this is the observation that countries with majority Muslim populations do not, as a general rule, have high levels of negative liberty, and the religion informs how the political society takes shape. Again, conservatives place a great deal of emphasis on conserving the “Judeo-Christian values” that undergird the American political sensibility. Therefore, many of the political differences between people are actually indicative of larger cultural chasms; this is not always the case, but the exceptions seem to prove the rule. This is increasingly true between conservatives and progressives, as they make a number of vastly different assumptions of human nature and the world. In the realm of dating, this would mean that people with differing politics have differing politics because they have different values, and it is the value differences that count. The value differences point to the fact that two people want different things, not just politically, but in life. A conservative might want low levels of welfare because they value individual responsibility and achievement, whereas a liberal might support a robust social safety net because they value solidarity and the common good. In a political analysis, one could break down these values and give arguments, but in the realm of dating, what matters is not why people differ in values so much as the fact that people have different values, which like psychological differences, can lead to significant strife and discord between a couple. This argument probably does not hold as strongly for moderates, as the moderates likely value a lot of the same things, though one still has to analyze why someone is moderate. It’s the underlying beliefs that inform our politics, and it is those beliefs that matter most in a relationship. Thus, the argument from culture. A caveat: the proposition that “politics is downstream from culture” is not true, strictly speaking. It isn’t false, but it is, as a means of explaining the genesis of political beliefs, incomplete. More properly considered, it is a two-way street: politics draws on larger cultural norms and traditions, and the legal and political structures and decisions can likewise change and shape the culture. The reader will notice that my argument does not require the proposition to be solely true, but I only make the caveat to correct a popular albeit insufficient political argument. A Question of Judgment Above, the policies themselves were not the subject of inquiry, but the underlying values that informed those policies. Here, I want to say that the policies themselves actually matter when it comes to dating. The policies affect the lives of America and the world. The policies shape our social, political, and economic landscape. If the person with whom I propose to build a family supports policies that I believe will make the country, the life of my children, and me worse off, why would I marry her? Small political policy differences are one thing. But if two people are substantially disagreeing on many, most, or all political issues, and each thinks the other’s policies are doing harm to the country, then how highly can they really judge each other? I am an isolationist and nationalist. I am strongly opposed to so-called abortion rights. I am in favor of low taxes, banning pornography, and the proliferation of religion in schools. I strongly support gun rights, federalism, and constitutional originalism. If my spouse opposes all of those things, is it really a good idea to marry her? I think that other ideas are not good for America. If my spouse is to propose political policies that I think are ruinous to the country, what do I think of her judgment? If I say, “Well, she is judging wrong on all of these policy positions, and those ideas are, I think, quite harmful to the country for reasons X, Y, and Z, but I think she has great judgment” does that not make me crazy? Judgment matters. Thus, the question of judgment. There are many who would say, “that’s her opinion. She is entitled to it. Why are you discriminating against her beliefs?” I do not disagree with any of those objections. My future wife is entitled to believe whatever she wants; that’s beyond my control. The human conscience is free by nature. Everyone is entitled to their own political beliefs, much in the same way people are free to do as they please, within reason, in America. However, that does not mean that all political opinions are equally good or should be considered equally valid. If two people have contradictory political views, and each believes they are right about what is best for the country, then surely they must be mutually exclusive; someone has to be wrong. Abortion cannot be both moral and immoral at the same time and in the same respect; that’s logically absurd. So she is entitled to her opinion; that does not mean she is right. I could also be wrong, but I think I have developed a sound judgment on an issue, as does she, and therein lies the problem. There are others who would extend this argument to say that I am implying that one should not be friends with people who differ from them politically. That is unequivocally not what I am saying; I have many friends across the political aisle; my whole family is across the political aisle! Politics can play a part in friendship, but determining friendship solely on the basis of politics has many troubling implications: it misses the other dimensions that bring friends together: shared interests, company, and in an Aristotelian sense, someone with whom to strive towards virtue and the Good. The same argument applies to family: family is antecedent to politics, so political differences in the family should not strain family relations. But in dating and creating a household, we are talking about something wholly different. Unlike friendship, dating and marriage are exclusive. Unlike family, who we do not choose, we choose our spouse. And when we select a spouse, that is not like picking with whom we would like to be friends; marriage is something higher than friendship, and it’s much more important. Values trump interests and commonalities; values are the foundation of the household and the family unit. Character matters; if friendship entails the mutual pursuit of virtue, then that is even more important in a marriage. |