Where Things Stand

by Mark Anthony Signorelli (February 2015)

So, to my mind, the first and most consequential error of our commentariat has been to interpret the murders in terms of ideas, rather than in terms of virtues. But even taking these events in light of the ideas at issue, the dominant interpretation on offer from our pundits has been predictably facile. The typical picture that has emerged is of a conflict between what is alternately labeled “freedom of speech,” “Western values,” or the values of the Enlightenment (and the conflation of all these things together hints at the systematic confusion that reigns in our culture), and on the other, the aggressive, totalitarian impulses of the jihadists. In this narrative, the cartoonists assume the role of martyrs for unfettered expression, the unqualified right to offend, and even blaspheme, and we who admire their courage are assumed to acquiesce in these principles (such as they are), or else to advocate some form of moral equivalence between them and their antagonists. The ideological choice before us is presented to us as one between advanced liberalism or retrograde fanaticism, with little middle ground to find between them. And it is precisely this dichotomy that I want to call into question.

Incidentally, this is the character which most political conflict is going to assume for people like me in the immediate future – bitter and often violent rivalry between various loci of power invariably estranged from our deepest convictions. The journalist Rod Dreher has popularized the notion of the “Benedict Option,” by which he means a conscious detachment or withdrawal of traditional-minded persons from the dominant culture, in order to create communities grounded in alternative values. Much interesting discussion has ensued concerning what exactly such a detachment would entail, but I think one thing it most certainly does entail is the acceptance of the fact that in our lifetimes, the primary centers of power will never stand for anything resembling our beliefs, and that when they go to war – as they increasingly find themselves doing – their victories will never represent the triumph of an order we find fundamentally congenial. All of our loyalties will be pragmatic, attachments to forms of power that appear least dangerous to us. It is of the utmost importance that we are perfectly candid about this, lest we find ourselves swept up in the flurries of cant and fervor that burst out in times of crisis.

Numerous commentators on the right have called out their liberal antagonists on this score, reminding them of the way they themselves have whittled away at our customary protections on the liberty of debate. But in the course of doing so, they have routinely appealed to this chimera of absolute freedom, placing the offense of progressives primarily in their violation of a kind of compact, whereby we accord each and every citizen the right to say (and really, on present interpretations, to do) anything at all, so long as we are entitled to reserve this license to ourselves. Whatever else such an opinion might be called, it cannot be called conservative, for conservatism has traditionally understood that the exercise of any freedom – including the freedom of expression – is always qualified by considerations of truthfulness, decorum, human dignity, and neighborliness. Matthew Arnold, himself no conservative but a figure who represents what I would call the broad Western tradition of inquiry far better than any living conservative, dismissed the notion that there exists a right “to say what we like:” 

Avowals of absolute freedom, then, are as preposterous coming from the right as from the left, and bound to lead to similar levels of hypocrisy. Consider the fact that conservatives routinely declare the need to fight the ideology of the jihadists, but rarely go into great specifics about what such a confrontation would entail. That’s because, quite obviously, it would entail proscriptions on the sorts of doctrines that could be taught in mosques and madrassas, and indeed, on the very proliferation of these institutions, and such prescriptions necessarily represent an impingement on the absolute freedom to teach and debate. There is no way to “fight the ideology” and preserve an unqualified right of expression. We simply cannot have it both ways.

Instead of approaching the issue in light of this plain fact, endless numbers of pundits have subjected us to endless babble about the role of “religion” in modern society, as though there were no relevant differences between religions, and no political or cultural distinctions one would wish to make in light of those differences. So for instance, there has hardly been an article published about the Charlie Hebdo cartoons which did not, at some point, reference the infamous painting of Andres Serrano, with the clear assumption that we cannot differ in the way we expect our society to respond to these respective provocations, as though there were no particular reasons to favor – and to wish the institutional structures of our country to favor – a body of doctrine which has been the source and foundation of much of our own political, artistic, and moral heritage, over those which – whatever their merits or demerits – have been entirely alien to the historical development of our civilization. 

If this sounds like a bleak take on our present situation, I can only say that I cannot imagine how anyone can contemplate the state of affairs in the West, and not think bleak thoughts. There is conflict in our future, and we may as well steel ourselves now for this reality. At least such pessimism will prevent us from falling prey to the dubious parties beginning to arise across Europe, claiming the will and the knowledge to set things right. These too are manifestations of the spiritual vacuity of the West, originating in the infantile supposition that whole centuries of neglect towards the intellectual, aesthetic, and moral underpinnings of a civilization can be solved by a trip to the ballot box. We are way beyond the stage where policy can be of any use, and if I could offer any political counsel to my contemporaries, it would be to beware of those in office seeking to fix things.

capable of enduring the shocks of the brutal strife beginning to engulf us all.

 

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