Whigged Out

Rage against the Enlightenment.

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Jonah reaches new heights of self-indulgence on today’s Ruminant, explaining why he’s a soft Whig and why Romanticism is making everything worse. Devoted listeners will be quick to catch a whiff of Suicide of the West as Jonah veers to discuss the origin of identity politics and the structural resilience of liberal democracies. Have your bingo cards and German dictionaries at the ready.

Show Notes:
—The Remnant with Allen Guelzo
—Jonah: Days of Future Past
—Suicide of the West
—Orwell’s Notes on Nationalism
—Wednesday’s G-File
—The Remnant with Tim Carney

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Comments (68)
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  1. Avatar photo
    C C Writer

    A belated "thanks" for addressing the question I asked about Whiggishness as distinct from the old Whig party(ies). Perhaps I read about the Whiggish view of history in your book, but I didn't commit it to memory as well as your other points, such as not taking for granted what we have.

    Anyway, now that I get it, I suppose I am softly Whiggish too. I more or less believe in the perfected future of humanity, but it's a view from many miles up; I don't have a timetable or a plan for exactly how we'll get there, and it will be well after my lifetime. It seems to me that if Providence or History or whatever you call it needed help reaching its endpoint, it wouldn't be the kind of help that involves us taking over and putting some scheme in place by next week. That's a human time notion rooted in primitive understandings of how higher powers operate, whereas in reality the Higher Power has his own plan and timetable. So I'd favor this rallying cry: "What do we want? An advanced civilization! When do we want it? When gradual social progress through hard-won lessons has made it sustainable!"

    And we should all get clear on the idea that one can hardly be of use to Providence or History or a Higher Power, if one can't at the very least make an effort to 𝐝𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠. If the idea of purifying your motives and your tactics to harmonize with your objectives goes out the window, then basically you've got nothing and have gotten nowhere, and you've lost the right to claim you're on that team.

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  2. Avatar photo
    Emily Spenla

    I totally agree that converts are often quite zealous. However, when it comes to Roman Catholicism, you can’t really just take some “rules” and leave others. As much as one might want to.

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  3. Avatar photo
    John Lewis

    Yes! Young people are definitely disproportionately stupid. Agreed. As a father a five, I feel very confident endorsing this position. But how I love them so.

    And speaking of kids, Pollock is kinda like Bartok. In certain moods, it’s the right flavor. There’s a wonderful Pollock at the Boston Museum of Art.

    It’s perfectly OK to not like an artist. Brahms is boring. But I’m totally fine with music lovers and -ologists attributing greatness to him. If Pollock bugs you, check out Twombly. That’s Elliot Carter to Bartok by way of linear progression 😬.

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  4. Avatar photo
    Porouke

    The boy named Sue most certainly was not transgendered. He resented the dad for naming him Sue and kicked the crap out of him in a bar for doing so. Then they mutually agreed that him being teased for his name was why he was able to kick the crap out of his dad and they made up.

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  5. Pat.Bowne

    I totally buy your explanation for why dems lost the Bubba vote, and your call for the left end of the party to get serious about all the other groups they're losing. But let's be honest, it was your party that Trump took over. Before Bubba voted against Hillary, he voted against every Reagan republican on the ticket. Yes, big chunks of the dem coalition are drifting away -- and they're drifting to the Trump GOP, not to your brand of republicanism.

    What I am really jonesing for from the Dispatch is a serious, thoughtful post-mortem about why your side of the republican party has been absolutely routed, why it was Trump's and not your party that got the Bubba vote and is getting the black and hispanic vote, and which of *your* arguments need to be questioned and changed. Because to just double down on what you currently believe and write Bubba off as romantic, populist, nationalistic, or any of the rest of this Remnant puts you in the exact same spot as us dems, doesn't it? With the exception that we at least have a party on the ballot.

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  6. Avatar photo
    John Lewis

    Couple of items:

    a) The Dispatch should publish a slim, handsome paperback of Jonah’s 12 favorite/most-influential essays by other authors (like I Pencil, the Great relearning, etc.)

    2) is Romanticism as a term apocryphal or was it generally accepted and used by those who historically fall under that umbrella? My understanding of Romanticism has always been informed through the artistic lens, and therefore favorable. Art got waaaay more interesting (and better) throughout the 1800s.

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    1. Austin from Atlanta

      I would love number 1 so much!

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        John Lewis

        Any thoughts on number B? 😉

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        1. Austin from Atlanta

          I believe you are correct that philosophical romantics did not refer to themselves with that label at the time, but I’m not certain. I imagine there are some significant quotes that the name comes from or something like that. Agreed that the impact in the art world was very positive, but I admit that I often love art for which I don’t really accept the philosophy behind it. I’m not sure how much they are tied together - did monet choose Impressionism due to philosophy? I couldn’t say.

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          1. Avatar photo
            John Lewis

            Good point. It’s surprising how many Italian renaissance artists were crappy human beings. So… to your point… I like a lot of different art; I’m sure much of it was motivated or informed by, shall we say, subpar ideas.

            I do think in general in Europe, that going from classical monophony to the late Romantic composers, going from a Davide to Repin and Manet and Van Gogh tracks an incredible enrichment in artistic expression. Not that the priors are bad. They were good too.

            As to Monet, I suspect he had definite ideas about what he was trying to accomplish, and he was certainly in dialogue with the conformities of the day, but I doubt he understood his motivating ideas as something emblematic of an historical movement. Or that his garden would end up on every dorm room wall.

            Thanks Austin!

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  7. Avatar photo
    Tracie

    I *think* this is the most recent podcasr where you aired your dislike for mid-century abstract expressionism. It's interesting that you think the problem with Rothko's and Pollick's is that they're exessively conceptual.

    Not so for everybody. The part of my experience that most resonates with my experience of the great Rothkos, Pollocks, and the works of lesser knowns like Adloph Gottlieb is my charismatic experience in the evangelical congregation established by my great grandparents, when I was a child.

    Once I grew up enough to want to frame my experiences with words, I lost my ability to have those trance experiences. Art has served much of that need since, music and less conceptual art - the kind you just let wash over you without making categories.

    A poet I met in Chicago wrote a piece that connected these things. It's an appropriately ranty poem. A key passage:

    "...every day he slang the blues blacks and reds

    torn between the gutter and the glory

    guiltlessly guilelessly godlessly

    turning battle fatigue into jazzed-up joy

    surreptitiously superstitiously suspiciously

    turning out portraits of gods and demons

    dancing in his head

    nattering about in his heart

    conjuring who-knows-what in his soul

    screeching and singing and speaking in tongues

    eagerly earnestly effortlessly

    turning out hyperanimated visions of eternal turmoil

    so endlessly extraordinarily effective

    you stopped

    and stared..."

    But not everybody.

    Art is a place where it's safe not to attempt to analyze and contextualize what moves you. It's not some secret code, it's just a non-verbal experience, that starts in the visual senses.

    Not an arrangement of ideas, but designed to short-circuit analysis. So, in that sense abstract expressionism is Romantic. That's probably why you dob't like it.

    (The full poem is by Charlie Newman. Here's a link:
    https://scars.tv/cgi-bin/works_e.pl?/home/users/web/b929/us.scars/perl/text-writings/q0963.txt)

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  8. R. James

    Jonah's assertion about the "liberality of English culture" shows a real ignorance when it comes to English history, particularly with its treatment of Gaelic people, Catholics and their colonial subjects. There was very little "liberality" when it came to England's treatment towards those groups. Whigs were also particularly guilty of this too.

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  9. Avatar photo
    EmmyCab

    23:44 - Listening again, and I meant to tell you that I LOVED your description of Roger Stone, lol!

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  10. Avatar photo
    Dan Baldwin

    I'm pausing at 44:43 into the podcast, where Jonah is talking about Byronic Heros and the concept of romanticism as a backlash to the universalism of the Enlightenment, because I'm reminded of a scene from "Who's the Boss" (that great 80's sitcom) where Mona has to confront her angry grandson about why she's not a "conventional" grandmother.

    Her grandson angrily asks her why she couldn't be a normal grandmother who bakes cookies and has no sex appeal. And Mona replies gently that she tried--she tried her hardest to fit into that mold but she couldn't make it work. She had to be who she is.

    And that is the response I have here--I tried to be a stable married man who had kids. I really did. I did all the right things, married who I thought was the right woman, and I followed all the rules laid down by Tim Carney and Jonah and all the other "pro-marriage as social stability" people. Doing so got me divorced, deep in debt, and unhappy. It took trying again with my second wife only to become widowed, to accept that my real nature is a "Byronic Hero".
    The conflict here is that I do recognize the truth from a macro-perspective of what the pro-marriage & kids and family valuies crowd is saying. What I wish those folks would pause a moment to say (and what Jonah DID say after his excellent podcast with Tim) is that they recognize it's not for everyone. And that sometimes one can try their hardest to achieve those things and fail. And that others can achieve those things, only to realize it brings them nothing but misery.

    Just that acknowledgement that this platform of family and children and obeying social norms cannot ever be universal, and that there are those who either cannot ever conform, or who tried and failed and missed their chance. Just the dignity of acknowledgement for them/for us/for me would mean a lot.

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    1. Avatar photo
      EmmyCab

      I agree. Sometimes it seems to me like family is elevated to the point that it flirts with idolatry. Like you, I get it from a macro perspective, but... As a never-married, no-kids, 50-year-old woman, I think I'm still a valuable and contributing member of society. I pay my taxes (including massive amounts of school taxes), do productive work, keep my house maintained and my yard properly mowed, obey the laws, etc. But at times I feel like I'm almost portrayed as an anti-social who's contributing to the decline of Western Civilization, lol.

      Churches can be particularly bad. After being an active member in good standing for many years, our pastor declared one Sunday from the pulpit, "The new focus for our church is families! Building up families... encouraging families... And a family is one or more." I LOL'ed at that last part. One person may be a household, but one person is not a family. (But I suppose "The new focus for our church is households!" just doesn't have the same ring to it, ha ha.) I never did understand why the focus of our church couldn't be something like missions or prayer or a thousand other things that would include the WHOLE body of Christ. Sigh.

      So... I'm still just me, out here paying my school taxes and sucking for not having offspring, lol.

      One thing I did learn years ago, though, is that no one is ever really considered to have arrived in this department. If it's not "When are you going to get married?" then it's "When are you going to have kids?" and if it's not that then it's "When are you going to have more kids?" and then it moves on to "When are you going to have grandchildren?" and so on for everyone in some form or fashion, endlessly. Wherever you're at on that arc of milestones, you can just about count on it not being good enough. ;)

      But outside of the central planners, people are mostly just asking because they care about you and it comes from a place of love.

      I am sorry about your second wife.

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      1. P Satter

        "Churches can be particularily bad." There can be some church culture trends that, sadly, don't actually originate anywhere in the New Testament (which itself is equally supportive of both marriage and of singleness, whether unmarried, divorced, or widowed.)

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        1. Avatar photo
          EmmyCab

          Totally agree. :)

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