The Eternally Recurring Grift

Gripes against American pragmatism.

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Jonah starts on a cheerful note with lessons from Groundhog Day, but quickly the grim realities of our fallen world drag him back to punditry. If you manage to get past the brooding about Taylor/Kelce, philosophical pragmatism, and the American propensity for conspiracies, then you’ll be subjected to passages from Liberal Fascism and, worst of all, notes about anti-NATO Twitter. Good luck.

Show Notes:

–Jonah: “It’s Nietzsche’s World, You’re Just Living In It”

-Jonah: “A Movie for All Time”

–The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory

-Jonah: “Look What You Made Me Do”

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Comments (45)
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  1. Avatar photo
    The Bell Tower

    Bernard Bailyn had an interesting note on the paranoia of the founding generation and how it influenced the Revolution in the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.

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  2. Curtisw

    Dear Jonah,

    I’ve been a long-time reader/listener and big fan of your stuff (I wish I’d written Suicide – tour de force!) and find myself in “violent agreement” with you most of time, especially as I’ve perceived a growing inclination toward classical liberalism-libertarianism in your thinking (as in George Will’s – good company). Nevertheless, I must dissent from your inveterate pragmatism bashing. Philosophical pragmatism at its heart is just a counsel of educated fallibilism addressed to a Western philosophical tradition that has sought final, necessary, absolute truth – what Dewey called “the Quest for Certainty”; this is the upshot of pragmatism’s skepticism about metaphysics, Platonism, philosophical essentialism, etc. “Pragmatism as fallibilism” may sound banal, but the temptation to seek necessary metaphysical foundations for one’s preferred beliefs and practices is always strong. (See the Isaiah Berlin quote that I know you’re familiar with, and that is also endorsed by Rorty: “'To realise the relative validity of one's convictions', said an admirable writer of our time [Schumpeter, actually], 'and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilised man from a barbarian.' To demand more than this is perhaps a deep and incurable metaphysical need; but to allow it to determine one's practice is a symptom of an equally deep, and more dangerous, moral and political immaturity.”) Metaphysical claims that purport to be necessary and final are a problem for pragmatists because they can “block the road of inquiry” that we travel in our attempts to solve practical problems (Dewey), and tend towards authoritarianism (Rorty).

    Your real villain, like Hayek’s, is what we might call “scientistic collectivism,” the political theory of the marxists, progressives, and, as you document in Liberal Fascism, fascists; an important difference between the first two and fascism, of course, is that marxism and progressivism are universalist Enlightenment products, while fascism is tribal and politically Counter-Enlightenment. While many progressives were influenced by philosophical pragmatism, it doesn’t dictate progressive politics. Indeed, both Rorty and Richard Posner maintain that pragmatism has no political valence. (At the risk of undermining my own point here, I don’t think they’re quite right about this because the educated fallibilism and its associated habits of toleration and experimentation seem more conducive to liberalism than to, say, fascism) Yes, the progressives took pragmatism’s message – which is a product of philosophical inquiry in the context of secular modern science and Darwinism, in particular – to mean that there was nothing necessary about traditional ethics and politics (like natural rights classical liberalism) and concluded that we could therefore dispense with those and pursue solutions to humanity’s problems by applying the successful methods of modern science to social organization (Hayek’s error of scientism). But the latter, mistaken political project does not automatically follow from philosophical pragmatism. After all, as you note in you highly underrated second book, there is another thinker who actually subscribes to the anti-metaphysical, naturalistic, pragmatic viewpoint: Hayek (and Hume before him). The mistake made by the progressives is not their philosophical pragmatism; it’s their overconfidence, buoyed by the success of modern science, that they can socially engineer through central governmental planning a wealthy, thoroughly egalitarian, yet also diverse and free society. (This is pragmatism’s subversion of traditional metaphysical foundations plus the vision of a secularized Christian eschaton; ironic that the Left is actually so “Christian” while conservatives are actually paganesque in their acceptance of pluralism, their recognition that justice is imperfect and there will always be conflict.) Pragmatism plus Hume gives you . . . Hume, and then Hayek (see my friend Dennis Rasmussen’s The Pragmatic Enlightenment arguing that Hume and Smith and the French Anglophiles, Voltaire and Montesquieu, were all philosophical pragmatists avant la letter).

    This is getting way too long for a comment, but a few quick hits:

    Chesterton’s fence: you’re basically saying that the philosophical pragmatist is the foolish “modern type of reformer,” but the “intelligent type of reformer” is also a pragmatist, just better because more pragmatic: his reforms are more likely to work. And you’ll agree that we do need the intelligent type of reformer for progress. We call them successful entrepreneurs, innovators, inventors, Nobelists, great artists, writers, intellectuals, etc.

    Berkowitz on Rorty: Berkowitz, like most of Rorty’s legion critics, faults him for not being philosophically serious enough. But this is Rorty’s point: taking philosophy – i.e., the Quest for Certainty – too seriously makes one authoritarian if one believes himself to have successfully identified final Truth (with a capital “T”) or disillusioned, cynical, and nihilistic if one feels that he has failed in the Quest (with a capital “Q”). Berkowitz objects to Rorty’s rhetorical approach to arguing for liberalism and human rights: “They work well for us. You should try them.” This is a simplified version (offered by Rorty – I get it) of Rorty’s position that stories (literature, movies, journalism, historical narrative, etc.) are more effective with more people than philosophical argumentation at converting them to your point of view – in this case, to liberalism. It’s not correct to say that Rorty believes that one can do no more than make a bald claim that “liberalism is better.” Rorty is for “keeping the conversation going” by offering nonliberal interlocutors more and more examples of the positive consequences of liberalism (granted, from the liberal point of view) in the hope that something will click. Rorty is Humean and Fukuyaman: liberalism, if you care about peace and prosperity amidst fairly broad social pluralism, is the “last conceptual revolution” for us, as he puts it, although incremental improvement and adaptation is never ending. Rorty catches flak from the postmodern radical Left for his (left) liberalism because they (like you?) think his pragmatism should lead to a radical post-liberal politics. But he rejects that. Rorty’s take on Nietzsche will have to wait for another time but suffice it to say that Rorty as a pragmatist appreciates Nietzsche’s attack on metaphysics but dissents from his illiberal ethics.

    (Also, I don’t get the point of Berkowitz’s story about the dissertation defense (which sounds a bit embellished, but that’s fine) as a critique of Rorty. Rorty gave the correct response to the situation: Rorty had read Rawls, as he has read pretty much all of the important philosophical works of the Western tradition. Berkowitz says, although he doesn’t give any evidence, that in spite of Rorty’s own personal example, Rorty’s work encouraged the grad student to think he didn’t have to read the stuff he criticizes. It’s a weird way to criticize Rorty, because it’s not like Rorty defended the student for not reading Rawls . . . .)

    On Dewey: As you know, the long-lived Dewey wrote . . . a lot. And quite often vaguely. But arguably his considered position was, unlike that of many progressives (like Stuart Chase), not in favor of statist centralized planning by technocrats. He rather imagines that all important organizations, government and private corporations, should be democratized, and that an appropriately educated citizenry/workforce will be able to, like the scientific community concerning the workings of the natural world, come to an ongoing, deliberative rational consensus about how social life will run. His problem is that identifying the common good is not like solving a well-defined scientific problem; there’s just normally a lot more agreement in the scientific community about what the problems are and what counts as a solution. I think this interpretation of Dewey is consistent with his praise of “war socialism,” which he sees not as the ideal but rather as just showing that you don’t need obsolete classical liberal notions of property rights and market competition to achieve material goals. He’s wrong about this because peacetime prosperity and producing matériel to win a war, as Hayek points out, are very different goals.

    Finally, James on “the moral equivalence of war”: The funny thing about your perpetual castigation of James’s phrase is that his essay that employs it is easily read as endorsing a very conservative position: that patriotic service to one’s nation is necessary and important for producing civic virtue, a healthy and productive politics, and a flourishing political community. And that service is based on our ineradicable desire for communal belonging and to sacrifice and struggle for our group (the martial virtues), but James, as an anti-war liberal, aims to channel this desire to peaceful, humane ends (one imagines that a 21st century James does not declare war on “nature,” however!). I indicated above that I trend pragmatic(!) classical liberal-libertarian, but even I am attracted to the idea of national service for our young pre-adults, through which they earn the right to be autonomous adults and citizens. I agree that the one line in James’s essay that states we are “owned” by the state has fascistic ring, but I dismiss it as an unfortunate rhetorical flourish. Mussolini would object to the rest of the essay. The point of James’s recounting of humanity’s bloody tribal history is to highlight what we must try to overcome, not to celebrate it. Fascists do not want to merely fight a “war against nature” by building civil infrastructure and farming more land. They want to fight a war against other nations. I think you overread James’s phrase as something sinister.

    Final comment (really! Though I do have a bunch more . . . so much left unaddressed): Your whole riff that ideas lag practices and the high theory is “PR” for power politics is pure pragmatism – never a more Rortyan sentiment was uttered!

    All Goldbergian gratitude to you for what you do – keep it coming!

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  3. Avatar photo
    Erik Martin

    You convinced me. After watching the world turn crazy around me, finding The Dispatch was like finding a small island of sanity. It's worth $100/year to support it.

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  4. Twbennet

    Well, don't you know exactly what you had in mind, but one movie that seems to add or redefine a common term might be Gaslight. Probably means the same thing as a noun, but it's a nice new verb.

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  5. Charvondersaar56

    Does free will exist? Have Sam Harris on the Remnant!

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    1. Avatar photo
      Porouke

      Or Leo Tolstoy.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Dave T

        I would listen.

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        1. Avatar photo
          Porouke

          I imagine that would be quite the PR coup for Jonah and the Dispatch.

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  6. Charvondersaar56

    Yes, the Berkowitz pod was very good - please invite him back.

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  7. Charvondersaar56

    Please invite Leon Aron back to the Remnant to discuss Ukraine and the Russian presidential election.

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  8. Goatprairie

    Interesting remark about Hitler by Jonah. Many people on the right and left like to depict Hitler as belonging to the liberal or conservative side. Many people on the right claim that Hitler was a leftist because Nazis were supposedly for national socialism. The early Nazis were anti-capitalist, but Hitler was more than willing to ally with and take the money of major German industrialists and businessmen. He certainly wasn't a Marxist.
    And many people on the left think that Hitler was some kind of conservative. He took their money, but he wanted to rip traditional Germany apart and replace it with his vision of a new Germany built on his horrific ideas. That's about as far apart from a conservative ideology as you can get. The gov. has all the power and the individual is nothing is not a conservative ideology. Certainly, not an American conservative ideal.
    Jonah accurately depicted Hitler as a radical. The Nazis wanted to tear down everything. Hitler wasn't even quite as radical as many other Nazis in that regard, but he was still pretty radical.
    Because many conservative Germans saw Hitler as a decent alternative to communism, they backed him. Hitler himself remarked that he was neither conservative nor communist. He even scorned German conservatives.
    He was certainly glad to take their money of course. But Lenin was quite happy to take the money of western businessmen who wrongly saw the new Soviet state as the future. Useful idiots or something like Lenin remarked. Hitler thought the same about German conservatives.
    He made a huge issue about defeating communism because he saw communism as the biggest challenge to Hitlerism i.e. Nazism. But Nazism at its heart was about uprooting most German traditions and replacing it with what Hitler wanted.

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  9. 698Kroll

    As a reader of the g file for several years, I was slow/late coming over to the Dispatch (it was after KDW moved over). I have become an avid listener to the Remnant. As with your columns, I enjoy the discussion and the insight into the thought process you bring. Much Mahalos.

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    1. Goatprairie

      I came over as well after a period of time. Both Goldberg and Williamson leaving NR was like Ruth and Gehrig leaving the Yankees. Fortunately, NR still has some good, provocative writers, but I couldn't stand not reading Jonah and KW.
      Allah Pundit is an added bonus after he left Hot Garbage or whatever it was called. It is now mostly real garbage. He was about the only one worth reading there.
      I recall he took the greatest amount of crap from the cultists after he, among the very few who did, resisted the proclamations of many people that Trump was their hero and everybody should kneel down and worship the orange idol.
      Stirewalt is good too.

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  10. Avatar photo
    Charley Warns

    I've been watching this very lovely Hallmark series on Netflix, "The Good Witch." So on Groundhog Day, I just happen to be on the show's Groundhog Day episode. Like what are the odds of that?! It's like having the Christmas episode line up –by chance– so that it's seen on Christmas. I didn't plan that. Sorry to be so Catholic about it, but that's got to be a sign. God is telling me it's time to let this moment's domino fall ... put a penny on the stylus to advance the tune.

    This passage from the foreword in "What is Conservatism" is from Jonah: "Conservatism also recognizes the authority of the past and the lessons it teaches. Nothing is ever good enough when measured solely against an ideal. Only when measured against the experience of the past can we truly understand what counts as progress. And with that understanding comes perhaps the most indispensable conservative orientation: gratitude."

    By reliving the same day over and over, Phil is able to measure his own progress. He is writing his own prescription. He becomes thankful for what he's got. (Go with that.)

    From the book: "An assault on individual freedom, in the authoritarian manner, will not restore us to virtue, because virtue cannot be legislated." ... "The free economy permits morality but does not guarantee it; the coerced economy guarantees immorality." ... "If there is no value system with which we may rebuke the pretensions of despots, what is to prevent the rule of force in the world? If there are no objective standards of right and wrong, why object to tyranny?"

    As Dostoevsky put it: "Without immortality, all is permitted." In your grave it won't matter how you lived your life.

    I understand the above passages from the book, but I'm not yet grasping the connection to the movie ... yet.

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