Neopopulist Blog

I want to share with you a few points about Congress, Democracy and Politics:

1.  In the 18th Century when the Constitution was framed, the new forms of government were transitioning from monarchy.  The biggest concern was the democratic mob taking over.  The Constitution was drafted to protect minorities.

2.  The American republic as designed required Congress to represent the people.

3.  In the late 19th Century, philosopher John Stuart Mill and others identified large, centralized and mediocre bureaucracies as being an obstacle to self-government and good government.

4.  The American Constitution was never amended to address the threat of large-centralized and mediocre bureacracies to the people's representation in Congress.

5.  Today, the federal agencies and their private allies have more sway over Congress than the people.  This aspect is what one might call a "democratic deficit."

6.  Neopopulists believe that the people need to use democratic means to get control of Congress back and to ensure the excellent government they are not receiving from the current arrangement.

7.  Under the current environment, the neopopulist charge to take Congress back from the federal agencies would be called democracy as juxtaposed to the current "politics."

8.  The current "politics" is too rationalist, ideological and partisan to be an effective vehicle for the people to take Congress  back from the federal agencies.

 9.  Instead democracy is the way to go.

10.  Over the long run, there are two alternatives.  (1)  The people manage the government. (2) The government manages the people.  Neopopulists distinguish themselves from liberals and conservatives by preferring the former. 

11.  Ideologues want the government to manage the people -- it's a natural consequence of rationalism:  the philosopher King.

12.  Neopopulists declare the death of rationalism, the philosopher King and expert-dominated government.

13.  Neopopulists express hope in the people and their government by engaging democracy and rejecting the current left-right ideological politics.

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In a recent conversation with book publisher Richard Vigilante, he indicated that neopopulist authors should consider using the third-party, all-knowing observer point of view.

I attempted this in my recent blog article on the Vietnam War.  It was a disaster.  Our neopopulist friend John came into my office and told me that he was not a "chump" for signing his draft card for the Vietnam War. 

After some thought, I realized my mistake.  In the article, by being a third-party, all-knowing observer, I was acting as a rationalist and declaring conservatives who supported the Vietnam War out of fealty to the state "chumps." 

This was wrong for me to do.  What I should of stated in the neopopulist voice (the voice for the people) was that Presidents Johnson and Nixon treated these people like chumps -- not that I as a rationalist believed they were chumps. 

After this important dialogue, Dahlberg and I have written a new chapter showing how the neopopulist voice is not a third-party, all-knowing voice.  Instead, it is a voice for the people.  The neopopulist voice is opposed to the third-party, all-knowing observer point of view.  It's elitist.  It's rationalist.  It's wrong.

Again, Tom and I have re-learned that the battle is between neopopulist humility and rationalist arrogance. 

We are well on our way in winning that war.

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Conservatives are simply a branch of the modern, liberal rationalist tradition, along with liberals proper.  Liberals and conservatives are first cousins debating with each other, vying for dominance within the same family -- the Rationalist family.  After all, all conservatives are classical liberals, and libertarians are explicitly rationalist.  They all believe that authority is still proceeding out of reason.

Of course, neopopulists understand that the great god Reason is dead and generates no authority at all.  It speaks with a multititude of dissonant voices.

Conservatives, like liberals, believe that what it means to win is to dominate on the basis of reason.  But this is just nonsense from a post-modern Neopopulist point of view.  Reason doesn't win anything.  It has no universal, agreed upon standard of what it means to win; no universal standard of rational justification.  One cannot win, politically, culturally, morally, religiously, on the basis of reason alone.  Pure mythology.  Conservatives are repeating the myth of Sisyphus.  It is all a disgusting waste of time and energy from a neopop perspective.

One wins, historically, culturally, politically, on the basis of ordinary language, common sense, and the religious tradition.  That is, one wins on the basis of what is Good, not on the basis of what is rational.  The rational is subject to the Good.  The Good, by definition, is rational.  Neopopulist counter-culture is based first upon what is recognizably good in ordinary language and common sense, and then the realization that the good is the rational.

Rationalism actually demonstrated the primacy of the concept of the good in the Descent of Man by Charles Darwin in which we find the glorification of genocide and eugenics.  No one would consider this rational unless they already considered it good.  Thus, it appealed to Nazis as being entirely reasonable.  Reason cannot be separated from what one thinks is Good.

But reason alone, has no way of defining The Good.  Secular reason separates fact and value.  Only ordinary language, common sense (as the rules determining the proper application of moral terms) and the religious tradition can tell us what is good without intervening ideology which falsifies our knowledge of The Good.  It's the culture stupid.  It's the language, common sense and religion.  It is NOT reason.  Reason is nothing.  Reason is anything.  The Post Modern critique of Reason tells us that it has a billion voices.   It does not have one voice. 

Conservatives are rationalist cuckolds.  It is tempting to simply call them wimps, who choose to continue to debate with the Modern Liberal Rationalist tradition instead of committing real revolution against it.  (We love conservatives, but we also like to challenge them.)  But it is probably more accurate to simply recognize that conservatives are an arm of the Liberal tradition, just a competing tribe within Modern Rationalism.  They think that their experts, their reason, their science, is better than that of the experts, the reason, the science marketed by their "liberal" cousins. 

Conservatives have chosen the most decrepit and discredited weapon of all to fight the battle.  They do not want to overthrow the Modern Liberal Rationalist tradition, they simply want to dominate it with their own set of rationalist ideas.  We neopopulists, predict the fall of the entire tradition.  Conservatism as we know it can no more survive in a post-rationalist culture than liberalism can.  It would be recognized instantly for authoritarian impulses ironically dressed up as libertarianism.  It is not a big fan of democracy.  Given its rationalist republicanism it has not, and could not resist the construction of this tyrant we call the Modern Scientific Republic.

One of the clearest regards in which conservatives demonstrate their subservience to the Modern Liberal Rationalist Tradition is their intellectualism.  They play the game of positioning themselves as superior intellectuals.  This will never capture the popular imagination like a movement which, alternatively, appeals not to intellectualism but to ordinary language, common sense, and the religious tradition.  Intellectualism, ironically, is a logical fallacy which argues that if A is approached in a more critical, "rational" fashion than B, then A is more likely to be true than B.  But obviously, B might be true, and A completely false, and no matter how much A is couched in critical rationalism, leading us away from goodness, away from wisdom.

In the Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper tried to save the Modern Liberal Rationalist Tradition by insisting that "falsificationism" ("critical rationalism") was the universal structure of Reason.  An open society is a society that respects so far unfalsified ideas (traditions).  Some conservatives believe that this approach protects Christianity and free market economics even in a liberal culture. 

But "critical rationalism" has proven to be nothing but an illusion.  Who is to decide what ideas are so far unfalsified or not?  Experts have decided that Darwinism is so far unfalsified (indeed, it cannot be falsified) and that Intelligent Design Theory has already been falsified.  The courts won't let creationism or intelligent design into the public schools based on Popper's critical rationalism even though both are clearly "so far unfalsified".  In other words, critical rationalism has not created or preserved an open society. Rationalism is incapable of preserving an open society.  Only the rejection of rationalism will preserve an open society.  There is no verification or falsification of competing traditions.

This is in fact the conclusion of the post-modern critique of Rationalism.  A tradition cannot be reduced to a single observation statement.  In fact the observations themselves are "theory-laden".

Conservatives, as intellectuals, are ironically unsophisticated.  The paradox of Neopopulism is that it has a much more intellectually sophisticated understanding of intellectualism and rationalism which leads, ironically, to the rejection of both.

Conservatives cannot destroy the Modern Liberal Rationalist tradition while standing inside of it.  They cannot win, and obviously have not won, using reason and intellectualism.  They have failed to ask themselves why it is that the liberal concept of what is good is so dominant.  It is dominant precisely because Conservatives agree that what is good is Reason and Reason first; that reason has authority, more authority than ordinary language, common sense, and the religious tradition.

But, of course, Reason is not intrinsically good.  It is just a pathetic, and very modest tool for securing the coherence of traditions from inside of those traditions.  Reason has no authority.  No authority whatsoever springs from it.  None.  Nada. 

Authority is inherently moral.  If someone says to you, "Jones is a scientific expert", he is saying that Jones ought be be listened to.  But why?  Scientism separates fact and value.  No matter what the rationalist expert says, there is no reason to conclude that we ought to consider it normative.

As long as Conservatives keep talking as if Reason is the highest good, they will make no progress.  The culture will continue to be based on the Liberal Rationalist concept of the good until Neopopulists inspire the people to completely reject this nonsense in favor of ordinary language, common sense, and the tradition. 

Eventually we will even relieve the Christian Academy of all "intellectualism".  It's real mission is to simply hold Rationalism by the nose and kick its ass, every day, 365 days a year, until the culture is completely anti-rationalist and sincerely democratic.

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Dr. Frank Wright, the President of the NRB, a Christian broadcaster's association, has recently attacked Neopopulism for what he thinks is its faulty subjectivity.  He even quotes our web site complaining that our landing page banner is an obvious symptom of a viscious disinterest in objectivity.  He fears that we have abandoned the "Truth".

What a demonstration of how completely saturated even the contemporary Christian mind is in Enlightenment rationalism.  Rationalist categories have become the reflexive content even of minds informed by faith. 

Of course Dr. Wright's misconceptions about our Neopopulist tradition prove that he has read nothing more than our banner and taken it completely out of context. 

We are happy to disabuse the good Dr., especially as our Christian brother, of his misunderstandings.

First of all, our Neopopulist tradition, as will be made manifest in our upcoming book, is NOT radically relativist.  In fact it is inseparable from America's Christian tradition precisely because Christianity puts reason in its place without radical relativism.

Much of the ineffectiveness of the contemporary Christian church, let alone the contemporary Christian academy, is induced by an implicit acquiescence to rationalism.  It is perfectly obvious that the Judeo-Christian tradition preserves its power when it recognizes its inherent anti-rationalism and loses that power when it promotes naïve intellectualism which is just the hand-maiden of rationalism.  Once religion mistakenly buys into the rationalist game (and it is just a game) it cannot win.  Or to put it another way, it has surrendered in principle to an unarmed poseur.  Paul Feyerabend, our favorite philosopher of science, once pointed this out in a letter to a priest.

Dear Father Rupert,

I am surprised.......by the speed with which the church now retreats in the face of scientific results.  The fearfulness of the church....rests on an ideology.  When I was a student I revered the sciences and mocked religion and I felt rather grand doing that.  Now that I take a closer look at the matter I am surprised to find how many dignitaries of the Church take seriously the superficial arguments I and my friends once used.....

Paul Feyerabend

Dr. Wright does not seem to understand that we neopopulists, like Paul Feyerabend, have grown up in the church of rationalism (this culture) and have simply lost our faith in it.  This should be good news, not bad news to Christian broadcasters who should better understand and explore such a phenomena.

The whole cultural crisis for the contemporary church and the Christian academy is its lack of any explicit understanding of two strategic truths:

1.  The only way that Christianity, and the political freedom it founds, can possibly be reasserted in this culture is through a massive attack on all of the rationalism which has eroded faith and freedom.  The modern scientific "republic" has to be put down.  A republic can no more be limited in a rationalist age than a pure democracy could be limited in any age.

2.  "Conservative" Christians, who are so often paradoxically rationalist, must start understanding, articulating and promulgating the difference between anti-rationalism and wholesale relativism. 

We believe that the clearest, most coherent mission of the Christian academy is to hold rationalism by the nose and kicks its ass, day in and day out, until there is no rationalism left in this culture.  The result of this is the complete liberation of religion, culturally and politically, without subsequently allowing religion to turn into religious ideology (just more rationalism) and proposing tyranny all over again.

Since Dr. Wright is concerned about the Truth, here is an inescapable part of it:  Rationalism is dead.  Yes, we are post-modern in the sense that we recognize that the Enlightenment dream of a single, universal standard of rational justification has never been realized and never will be realized.  Science is dead (as scientism). 

This means that secular philosophers and scientists do not and never will have some way of rationally binding the culture to secular models of Reality.  And it means that Christian philosophers and scientists will never have some way of rationally binding the culture to Christian models of Reality.  (Christian scientists "see" design -- irreducible complexity.  Secular scientists just don't, and there's no rational way of forcing them to see it.)  Orthodox Christianity never suggested that pure reason was going to win souls.  And frankly, we think C.S. Lewis was exaggerating if not lying when he suggested that he was forced into orthodoxy by reason alone. 

Orthodox Christianity is obviously very skeptical of human reason and pride of the mind.  Friederich Hayek, obviously a champion of freedom, and a Catholic, noticed that socialism was nothing more than "crude rationalism".  All modern statism is part of a sick, rationalist syndrome.  This is an anti-rationalist statement of Truth.  Dr. Wright is experiencing false anxiety about neopopulism.

We are confident we can get Dr. Wright, as a Christian, to join us in an increasingly conscious rejection of rationalism.  This means the rejection of the scientistic myth that there is some one method, or some one standard of justification (or even one standard of falsification) which can settle our questions about Reality.  This hasn't happened yet and it's never going to happen at the level of metaphysical model building.

Instead what we Neopopulist Christians recognize is that God is in control of human nature.  Whereas rational thinkers can build alternative models of the empyrean, none of which can be either verified or falsified, none of them can alter human nature.  Once one recognizes that the religious world view is no more and no less verifiable or falsifiable than secular world views, even when this involves objectifying human nature, subjectively we will all tend, each one of us, to either become liars (existentially inauthentic) or end up in the same tradition if human nature is universal.  God doesn't need abstract reason to be binding on people.  He has a much more powerful weapon: The moral causes and effects in human nature which He directly controls.  Neopopulists believe in moral and religious knowledge, not so-called "objective", "scientific" knowledge.  We have discovered that the latter is the myth, and the former is the reality.

In other words, from a Christian point of view, the decisive objectivity of faith is in our subjective reasons for embracing it.  How could the universe have produced our subjective demand for Christ if it was not a Christian universe?  In effect, as Christians, and neopopulists, we refuse the separation of the objective and the subjective.  It is a false dichotomy.  The only universal method for arriving at the same place is not the building of abstract conceptual models of reality, but confronting the same subjective needs.  The use and products of reason are not universal.  But if human nature is universal, then this need not be considered a dangerous situation.  A culture which recognizes the relativity of reason, and the universality of human nature (by faith) is an inherently Christian culture.

The key to returning to a Christian culture and, therefore, a political culture of freedom, is not to sustain the naïve rationalism that has consistently mischaracterized and shackled religion, but to liberate mankind's utterly legitimate subjective motivations for choosing faith over despair.  This choice is the most dramatic symptom of the objective truth of the religious understanding of reality.  Any Christian who believes in human nature need not fear the demise of rationalism but should, instead, celebrate its death.  It has kept us from focusing on the ancient subjective methods for discovering the objective Truth.  Christianity tells us that our subjectivity means something.  This is something which other traditions cannot claim.  And it is perfectly consistent, perfectly rational for Christianity to notice that human nature, from God's point of view, is an objective process which may be designed to lead to the objective Truth from His point of view, while being lived (not objectified) by the one who arrives at the truth.  In other words God has fore-ordained a lived moral journey to the truth, not an abstract theoretical road.  This is why life is worth living and is so very interesting.  This is precisely why it really means something.

It's time for even the popular Christian mind to get past all of its naivete about subjectivity, objectivity, Truth, and Reason.  The best way to start is to cooperate in spreading the news of Rationalism's demise.  What a delightful mission for Christian broadcasters as well as Christian professors.

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One of the hardest and most difficult questions to answer is why neopopulism now?  An inability to answer this question will put the neopopulists in the kooky or eccentric category.   So, how should this question be answered?

One key to the answer may be understanding the Vietnam War and its politics.  Here are some neopopulist observations:

BACKGROUND: 

1.  The political decisions made to engage in the Vietnam War (like the Iraq War and Afgan War) were rationalist exercises.   Part of the reason the American decision to go to war was rationalist in nature is that the Congress' power to declare war was, for all intents and purposes, abrogated by the Presidency and its agencies.

2.   The fact of the executive abrogation can not be understated as to the effect and conduct  of the Vietnam War.   An imperial Presidency, just like an imperial monarchy, can wage an unpopular war for a long time. 

3.  The desire for an "honorable end" to the Vietnam War reflected a Presidential desire for self-preservation.   The people likely did not care whether there was an honorable end; they just wanted an end.  The people were not vested in whether there was an honorable end or not.

 4.  "Just war" theory in itself is rationalist.   Neopopulists believe that the people's dialogue about engaging in war should be in ordinary language:  weighing the advantages versus the disadvantages.   Just War Theory can be used by politicians, academics and other elites to suppress the people's ordinary language dialogue.

 5.  Scientific warfare, including scientific weaponry,  favors bureaucrats in influencing Congressional decisions regarding war.  The more Congress and the bureaucracies become committed to scientic warfare, the more cozy Congress and the bureaucracies become. In turn, the closer Congress and the bureaucracies are on scientific warfare, the more  difficult is for the people to influence Congress on important issues of war. 

6.  Military drones, unpiloted aircraft, are a particular conundrum.  It is now being discussed whether the Afghan War can be fought prinicipally by drones rather than soldiers.  By making foreign wars scientific and impersonal, the imperial Presidency will only consolidate power vis-a-vis Congress and the People regarding waging war.

ANALYSIS OF OPPOSITION TO VIETNAM WAR

6.   Analytically, there were two American camps on the Vietnam War:  the wise guys and the chumps.

 7.  The wise guys understood from the beginning that the Vietnam War was an unjust war.  They refused to be drafted.  They refused to allow their children to be drafted.  Many fled to Canada instead of fighting in an unjust war. 

8.  However, the wise guys' resistance to the Vietnam War was not neopopulist.  The wise guys were rationalists.  They opposed the Vietnam War for ideological reasons.

9.  The chumps were people who, out of fealty to the Presidency and the United States, went along with the war.   They allowed themselves and their children to be drafted to fight the war.

10.  The chumps became the "silent majority" that Richard Nixon appealed to to become President of the United States.

NEOPOPULIST CAMP OPPOSED TO VIETNAM WAR AS RATIONALIST EXERCISE

11.  Regrettably, there was no third camp during the Vietnam War -- for neopopulists. 

12. The neopopulist camp would have been opposed to both the Vietnam War and the wise guys because both embraced rationalism.

13.  The neopopulist camp would have recruited chumps to join in opposing the Vietnam War as a rationalist exercise.

14.  Politically, the neopopulists would have opposed the Vietnam War as a rationalist exercise by working  to restore the republican balance between the People's Congress and the Imperial Presidency.  The Imperial Presidency and its bureaucracies had gained too much power and influence over Congress.

15.  Said in another way, neopopulists would have been concerned about the process used to go to war.   The nation should have never gone to war unless the decision was properly vetted -- meaning that the people through Congress representing the people (not the bureaucracies) approved going to war. 

16.  Neopopulists view the process by which America goes to war as gravely flawed by substantial democratic deficits never intended by the Founders.  The result is the Imperial Presidency.

 17.  Compare the war powers of the British Monarch to the America's Imperial President.  The British Monarch has power only on paper. Parliament and its Prime Minister have the power.  In America, the Imperial President has the power.  Compounding this problem is that the President's bureaucracies adn the defense industry have greater influence over Congress than the people. In America, the war-making process is anti-democratic  -- which can not be said in the same way about British government. 

18.  So, in this specific regard, do you prefer the British or American system for deciding to go to war?  Again, neopopulists would not answer this question, but insist that the question be asked and answered.

ABSENCE OF NEOPOPULIST RESPONSE TO VIETNAM WAR LEFT TWO RIVAL, RATIONALIST CAMPS

19.  The absence of a neopopulist response to the Vietnam War left two rival, rationalist camps:  Wise Guys / Democrats / Liberals vs.  Chumps / Republicans / Conservatives.

20.  The Wise Guys / Democrats / Liberals, despite anti-Vietnam War credentials, became pro-state rationalists.  These people support the Imperial Presidency, a weakened Congressional power to declare war and President-initiated engagement in foreign wars.

21.  The Chumps / Republicans / Conservatives, in spite of being burned on the Vietnam War, became pro-state rationalists.  These peopole support the Imperial Presidency, a weakened Congressional power to declare war and President-initiated engagement in foreign wars.

22.  Now we have these two rival, ideological camps -- but no neopopulist camp.

23.  If there had been a neopopulist opposition to the Vietnam War, it is unlikely that we would have a political scene with two political camps full of pro-state rationalists.   Neopopulism could have won over the right or left, perhaps, both leaving the Country with neopopulism, not rationalism, at is cultural core.

POST-2008 ANALYSIS OF CONNECTIONS BETWEEN IDEOLOGY AND POPULISM

24.   After the 2008 election, there has been a lot of discussion about the connections between ideology and neopopulism.   This discussion has led to little insight because the analysis has been conducted according to rationalist lines.

 25.  Neopopulists contribute to the post-2008 analysis by pointing out that neopopulism is independent, separate and apart from ideology. There are no hybrids between neopopulism and ideology.  For example, "compassionate conservatism" is just as rationalist as "conservatism."

26.  The focus of neopopulism that illuminates its difference with the ideology of today is:  the government has the burden to show empirical evidence that each of its programs benefits, and not burdens, the people. 

27.  Today's ideologues don't care about proving that government is doing its job:  benefitting the people.

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Tom Dahlberg 

In a well known scene from the movie "Braveheart" the Scottish highlanders gather at Stirling to fight the English for their freedom.  The Scottish nobles are also present and propose to negotiate with the English.  They have every reason to do so since they have lands and titles in England.  To a large extent the Scottish nobles and their elite counterparts in the English army are rooted in the same tradition.

William Wallace arrives in time to disrupt the compromising cowardice of the Scottish nobles.  He rides across the field behind the nobles not to negotiate a peace, which he knows will not insure the freedom of his countrymen, but to pique a fight.  He insults the English elites and prevents the Scottish nobles from continuing to compromise with the tyrant.

If we use the English in this scene as a metaphor for the Modern Liberal Rationalist Tradition (MRT), then the Scottish nobles are contemporary conservatives - related to the enemy by virtue of sharing the same kind of lands and titles, the same kind of assumptions about how to work things out, about how reason works.  William Wallace and the highlanders are neopopulists.  They are there strictly to pique a fight; to kill the monster, not to talk to it.  The highlanders are disgusted with both the English (the liberals) and the Scottish nobles (the conservatives).  All the conservatives are really good for is flanking the archers at the end of the battle.  It is the neopopulists that will have to cut the heads off the liberal rationalists with a direct attack.  Again, the Scottish Nobles and the English are rooted in the same political paradigm, the same tradition.  They fight over who will control it.

Modern conservatives, coming out of their classically liberal roots, are Rationalists just like their cousins the liberals.  They continue to dialogue with the rationalists, based on the assumption that Reason is still the legitimate monarch of liberals and conservatives alike.  Neopopulists are not here to make peace with the monarch, to share the same culture with liberals.  Neopopulists are here to pique a fight with them, by insulting them, abusing them, and swarming over them.  Reason is not our king.

Conservatives, like liberals believe in the myth of the open society based on reason.  (See Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies.)  But critical rationalism has not resulted in an open society.  The ordinary language, common sense, and Christian religious tradition of the people have been pushed into the cultural ghetto.   It is perfectly obvious that the mainstream media, the universities, the bureaucracy, the government schools, Hollywood, and even some churches have pushed the people's tradition, and the people's language, to the periphery.  Rationalism has not and cannot preserve an open society.  Radical relativism is more likely to preserve an open society than rationalism.  But we don't have to go that far.  We just have to promulgate the fact that rationalism has already been discredited.  Conservatives are afraid of this.  It will make our political culture too democratic.

Neither Darwinism nor Intelligent Design theory are actually verifiable or falsifiable.  Both have a legitimate claim to being "science" since science has no distinctive method except in the eyes of the terminally half-educated.  But "critical rationalism" (Popper's belief in the rational standard of being so far unfalsified) has done nothing to open up the schools to a different point of view.  All the modern liberal rationalist tradition has to do is keep dominating education and teach generation after generation that science is whatever it says science is, to keep our society closed.  Conservatives, as rationalists, keep approaching the bar with rational arguments that they think should convince the liberals in control to provide the open society.  But it is not working.  As long as the appeal is to the same tradition, to the same worship of the great god Reason and his incarnation in "science", they cannot succeed.  The approach is simply not radical enough.

The naiveté of the specific tactic involved is perfectly obvious to neopopulists.  In the first place the Intelligent Design advocates buy into the falsifiability standard for science, and argue that Intelligent Design Theory (ID) is falsifiable and Darwinism is not.  But it's just not true.  (See the whole post modern critique of falsifiability, as the supposedly universal standard of rational justification, in Kuhn, Quine, and Feyerabend.)  In other words, from the outset, ID advocates buy into naïve rationalism and then they are surprised when they lose to a culture which is saturated in the idea that design theory is inherently religious and unfalsifiable.  The fact that Darwinism is not falsifiable is never addressed by the liberal tradition.  It is an article of rationalist faith.  Again, these conservatives, resting on the rationalist tradition, just like their opponents, cannot win fighting on that liberal cultural ground.  They are too naïve to understand what neopopulists understand.  You win this game by rejecting the entire playing field.  You don't play on their rationalist field.  You destroy it.  You burn it, bomb it, plow it under with the post-modern rejection of the entire rationalist myth.  You get out of the public schools and then you teach your children to kick rationalism's ass every day of their lives.  That's how you win.

Stop preaching the conservative gospel!  Stop preaching the conservative gospel!  Stop preaching the idea that the liberals just aren't as rational as conservatives.  This will never change a thing.  Instead, blow up their entire pretentious tradition by freeing your mind from it completely and then the minds of your children.  Reject the entire paradigm.  Reject the whole idea that there is some way to establish what is objectively true in some binding way.  Yes, the objective truth is out there.   But if you could force it on people then you would be God.  Stop pretending to be God.  Stop thinking that Reason has one voice and that it speaks through you.  This is as crazy as thinking that you speak for God.  If God wanted you to be able to bind people with reason He would have given you the power to do so.  He has not. 

The power that He has given you, Mr. Conservative, is to assert your practical knowledge of Good and Evil; in effect, the power to preach the gospel.  He has given you the Word, embedded in ordinary language.  He has given you a religious tradition rooted in history and ordinary language, not in philosophy or in the "science of man".   Preach it.  Denounce the Modern Liberal Tradition for the evil thing it is.  Demolish it by describing its naivete; its completely passé faith in reason.  Convert people from the worship of reason, which was never satisfying, to the worship of ordinary language, common sense, and their religious tradition.  Disintegrate the Modern Liberal Tradition by paying no attention to it (it pays no attention to you); by walking away from it.  Get your neighbors to come with you.  Walk out of Egypt to the Promised Land.

Religion is more powerful than philosophy.  Philosophy is more powerful than economics.  Choose your weapon.

Neopopulism will keep pounding it into your brain that the Modern Liberal Rationalist Tradition (MRT) believes that it owns all of reason, that it is not a tradition.  It will never be self-aware.  It has no knowledge of good and evil.  The devil created this tradition precisely because every man, woman and child on earth does have objective knowledge of good and evil and, therefore, evil needed a tradition which lacks this knowledge.  Liberalism can never be authentic.  Why talk to it as if it is?   It can never be self-critical.  It will never recognize its true, pathetic nature.  Why would you try to relate to it in any other way than to laugh at it and walk away?  It cannot hear you.  It cannot communicate with you.  It cannot understand you.   Slaughter it like the mindless animal it is.  It is standing between your children and your front door.  Why would you tolerate a rabid dog attacking your children?  That is exactly what it is doing.

Stop preaching conservative rationalism!  Start preaching the death of the great god Reason and the resurrection of the Christian God -- which is a complete mystery!

William Wallace was right.   He understood that negotiating with the nobles, both Scottish and English, was death.  Caving into their tradition, trying to work within their tradition, was hopeless.   It's war.  The rationalist tradition needs to be slaughtered by us savages the way the English were slaughtered by Wallace and the highlanders at Stirling.  Neopopulists are Huxley's savages.  We do not want peace with rationalism.  We are here to pique a fight.  We are here to put the ugly dog down.  Permanently.

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The rationalist age that we live in has seduced the people with a big lie.  This lie is that rationalism is moderation and that all other traditions are extreme.  Precisely the opposite is, of course, true.

Enlightenment rationalism arrayed itself against the extremes of royalty and the church, to the extent that both were authoritarian.  But it served as the foundation for creating and sustaining the most authoritarian class in history - the experts, the "scientists", the "intellectuals", the philosophers, the bureaucrats.  The authoritarianism of all other traditions is a Sunday school picnic compared to the authoritarianism of rationalism.  Rationalism, by its very nature, by commission, is totalitarianism.

Marx was nothing but an Enlightenment rationalist and materialist.  The implementation of Marxism requires totalitarianism.  The Nazis were enamored of Darwinian rationalism and committed themselves to both the reasonableness and goodness of genocide and eugenics. 

Rationalism is extremism.

Nothing is more extreme than a tradition which claims that it transcends all traditions, all perspective, all bias and relativity.  Nothing is more extreme than a tradition which claims it has the ultimate method for establishing objective truth.  And nothing is more phony and false.

Rationalism in all of its permutations is extremism.  As scientism it is a religious faith which presents us with the bald-faced lie that it has eliminated faith from life.   In all of its ideological instantiations, Marxism, Darwinism, Freudianism, Behaviorism, Positivism, Environmentalism -- it is nothing but reductionist absurdity.

Neopopulism is the death of rationalism in our culture.  We deny it for its extremism.

The elite and the experts descry all populism as the death of reason, because they do not wish to be stripped of their power.  They think that they can continue to call on reason as if it is rationalism and no one will notice.  But we're going to get everyone to notice. 

They accuse all forms of populism of "irrationalism".  But of course, we believe implicitly in the modest claims of real reason, which is worked out primarily within traditions, and simply attends to their coherence.  This modest role for reason will never support the authority that the elite and the experts demand. 

For the elite and the experts there is no moderation.  There is no in between.  There is no golden mean when it comes to reason.  Reason is either the god that gives them their power or it is nothing.  We are not the extremists.  The rationalists are the extremists.

The counter-revolutionaries will try to reconstruct rationalism again and again.  They will always try to revive "the Enlightenment". 

But it is too late.  We have already moved on to the real Enlightenment -- our post-modern understanding of the failure of rationalism.   And this leads to the rejection of all rationalist, authoritarian government.

Feyerabend understood that the death rationalism is the resurrection of democracy - or should be.

Now politics, as I understand it, is in many ways related to love.  It respects people, considers their personal wishes, does not "study" them whether by polls or by anthropological field work but again tries to understand them from within, and connects suggestions for change with the thoughts and emotions that flow from such an understanding.  In a word: politics, rightly understood, is firmly "subjective".  It is impossible to develop "objective" theoretical schemes for it.

I fully agree with those who demand that people be protected from peer group and leader pressures.  But this caveat applies not only to religious leaders such as the Reverend Jones but also to secular leaders such as philosophers, Nobel Prize winners, Marxists, Liberals, hit men of foundations and their educational representatives: the young must be strengthened against being imposed upon by so-called teachers, and especially ratiofascists...and their peers.

If Americans like the "inflation of goods, images, ideas, traditions." look forward to new and improved hair sprays, car models and soap operas, and use money as the ultimate measure of value, then a dissenting intellectual may of course plead with them like a preacher but he becomes a tyrant if he tries to use more powerful means of persuasion.

Excerpts from Farewell to Reason 

 

Feyerabend always emphasized that science itself was just another tradition and that the elevation of it in modern times to an authority that supposedly trumps any subjective system of values, adjudicated democratically, is the limit of absurdity.  There is no "objective", binding basis for this "ratiofascism".  It is simply the competing subjective passion of those whom it empowers.

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Tom Dahlberg

Nothing could be more ironic than Marx, perhaps the most spectacular idiot in history, imagining that he is infusing the "proletariat" with power by destroying private property.  Property is power.  The more property in the hands of the people -- you and your neighbors -- the more power the people have and the less power the state has.  Lenin understood that his statism depended upon the elimination of private property.

Socialism is naive rationalism.  New Leftists like David Horowitz became ex-leftists after realizing that the destruction of private property was the destruction of all freedom.  Obviously if you have to get permission from the government (say your collective's committee) to use and dispose of property -- whether it's the gas you consume to take a family vacation, or the cash you want to donate to your church -- the oppression is comprehensive.  The idea that one could simultaneously dispose of the whole idea of property and liberate people is the all time greatest rationalist absurdity.  Marxism inevitably led to totalitarianism.

Henry George, one of those soft-headed evangelicals who went liberal (read: rationalist)  attacked property with a philosophical abstraction at the turn of the 20th century.  This was not a coherent expression of his Christian faith; it was his conversion to rationalism.  He appealed to the same kind of abstraction used by ideological environmentalists today.  George thought that people should not be allowed to own land, even though they should be allowed to own what they actually produce.  He thought  men have no right to own a natural object which has preceded them.  George proposed a single tax on land to fund all of government, and even a neo-classical economist like Milton Friedman was sympathetic to this idea; proof positive that neo-classical economists are rationalists just like socialists. 

In the Old Testament God gives the land to the people.  He tells them to go into the land and "possess" it.  There is no suggestion here that people should not be allowed to own something "natural".  The land was God-given, and no force on earth had the right to take it away from them.

One of the best things our government ever did was award ownership of land to the people, who either paid cash for it or earned it by supplying the price that the government demanded -- homesteading it.   Our government was once sane enough to see the benefit to all of society in the private ownership of land.  This is not to deny the benefits of public ownership (by all of the people) of some land.  It is to simply insist that land can and should be owned privately.  It is a concrete, essential, pragmatic human arrangement based on common sense and experience.

Today, we all know of aging couples who have been chased out of their real estate by rising property taxes.  This is evil.  They have worked all their lives to own the land and then because of rising taxes they are reduced to renting "their" real estate from the government.  If they cannot pay the rent, they are thrown off of "their" land.  This is the kind of evil that an evangelical like Henry George would apparently support.

How can we own anything that we produce with the fruits of our labor if we cannot own land?  Onerous real estate taxes can be used by the government to control most if not all of what we produce by controlling the land we need to produce it including the ore, the soil, the timber, the water, the plants and so on.  In what sense can any of the crops we produce be separated from the land as the matrix of their production?  Should the government own all of our farms?  In what sense do we "produce" a natural object like an ear of corn, or an apple in an orchard?  If we shouldn't be allowed to own the land as a natural object, why should we be allowed to own what it naturally produces?

Neopopulists may disagree about this but I, for one, believe in the abolition of the property tax.  The property tax is a direct attack on the whole idea of property (real estate and everything which is contingent upon it) based on the abstract rationalist notion that it does not belong to anyone in its "natural" state.  In fact, this is a clearly anti-religious, naturalist notion.

The concrete,  pragmatic, historical reality is that land is first possessed by all the people as a gift from God which cannot be reversed by any government.  The people then divide it into private property based on the common sense realization that freedom and productivity is impossible without private property, including real estate.  Even North American indians were territorial, killing each other over encroachments.  The idea that people do not naturally crave land ownership, that they have somehow been corrupted by unnatural needs, is nothing but ideological mythology.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob prospered at God's behest.  They owned lots of natural objects -- cattle.  And finally, their descendents were given the most precious thing of all -- the land itself.  Stewardship implies control; it implies property rights.

What God has put together, let no man put asunder.   Free your mind from all phony, ideological rationalist notions about the evils of property, including land.  These notions are simply meant to allow the government to steal your property so it can control you completely. 

Elsewhere we have emphasized the necessity of the  people owning and controlling the means of cultural production -- the schools.  The foundation of this freedom is owning and controlling the land, and what it can produce both naturally and by your labor. 

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Tom Dahlberg 

Neopopulists have a dim view of modern autobiography.  This is because so much modern autobiography is an ideological reduction of the subject -- a self-serving documentary of the figure's virtues and so-called accomplishments.  In other words, modern autobiography like that of Barack Obama and other political figures, to use that category in particular, is just the construction of a myth, a rationalist dream; it is a falsification of its subject.  It is rationalism as opposed to realism; idealism as opposed to authenticity.  And therefore it becomes completely boring.  

But I have just read an exception to this rule, and it has taught me that when autobiography becomes authentic, it is really just biography.  The writer just happens to be his own object, which he knows very well and has revealed almost, if not, completely.  He transforms autobiography into biography.   

This is David Horowitz's literary achievement in his autobiography "Radical Son".  Horowitz brutally objectifies himself in his own story and easily gains both the respect and the affection of the reader.  The story really starts with his own immutable humanity (which we believe is Grace in action), which then leads to guilt (always the destiny of true humanity), which then leads to confession (again, the destiny of true humanity), which then leads to Grace (the ultimate destination of true humanity).  Horowitz notices that his new friends in the "conservative" movement believe in the objectivity of the moral rules, but recognize that everyone fails to live up to them, and therefore find Horowitz no more or less human than themselves.  He contrasts this to the puritanical pretense of his old "friends" on the Left. 

Horowitz, having traveled all the way to Grace as the inevitable end of the truly human, seems happy to mete it out to others, and did so consistently through some very trying situations with people he loved.  This too is always the beautiful end of humanity.  If anything, Horowitz is too hard on himself for loving extremely flawed people.  Being flawed himself, he found it instinctive.  

I had this book on my shelf for years and for some reason never had the time to read it.  When I finally picked it up last week, on a whim, I quickly found that I could not put it down. 

Every Neopopulist should read this book.  From our point of view Marxism is just a bizarre instantiation of unfalsifiable rationalism.  Horowitz puts flesh on this claim.  

Horowitz's humanity leaps off of every page of this book.  It becomes absolutely clear by the middle of this modern political epic, that his break with the absolutely nutty, crazy Leftist community he was living in was inevitable to the exact extent that Grace was keeping his humanity intact.  It is the sheerest miracle that his humanity could survive in the pseudo-community he voluntarily submitted himself to during the first half of his life.   This patent humanity, somehow conferred upon him in a permanent way, inevitably led to his guilt over all of the rationalist, ideological reductions of simple morality he could see in the left wing violence of the sixties and seventies; violence that very few others in his sphere were willing to confront as a personal or political issue. 

From a Neopopulist point of view, it's clear that Horowitz did not leave the reductionist ideology of the Left because the great god Reason told him to, but because of his moral knowledge -- his common sense understanding of the difference between right and wrong which he was true to even when it condemned him.  The knowledge of good and evil was the data, the experience that Left ideology could not account for. 

Just as importantly, Horowitz has learned in his lifetime that it is not about being able to live up to what's good, but to confess to what's good, and struggle with ourselves.  You can't get more human or more attractive than that. 

Even David, whom one gets to know so well in this book that it becomes natural to refer to him as "David", notices at the end of his story, that someone or something seems to have been watching over him, even though he insists that he is only nominally religious.  

David, you cannot be as human as you are without being inherently religious.  As you noted yourself in your wise observations about the Left -- it's all religious.  We all live by faith.  Neopopulists are keen on that truth.   

No human being can judge another for taking the dirt road to Grace.  We all take the gnarly dirt road.  And when we arrive we're all covered in dust.  In the end this grittiness is interesting and attractive.  This is the beautiful paradox of Grace.  Horowitz has become wonderfully gritty.  

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Tom and I have had a debate about which term better describes the American government today from a new populist perspective:  modern ideological state or modern ideological republic?

We have decided on "modern ideological republic" for the following reasons:

1.  The framers of the constitution of the American government created a republic -- representative democracy as some might say.  That form of government worked very well in pre-modern times when governments were not huge, centralized and bureaucratic.

2.  In modern times, the modern republic consistes of huge, centralized bureucraceis and has consequentially  become biased towards huge and centralized  bureacracies -- an ideological bias from a new populist humanist point of view.  Thus, the modern republic is ideological -- the "Modern Ideological Republic."

3.  The phrase "Modern Ideological State" sounds more like a Platonist concept because it is not rooted in the framing of the American constitution.  The phrase is not neopopulist enough.

Those were the reasons we changed our mind.

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