Tom Dahlberg
Neopopulism is realism. It does not pull punches. Unlike Conservativism it does not believe that the battle is over reason. The battle is over two diametrically opposed views of what is good. There is no rational bridge between ordinary language, common sense, our religious tradition, and the Modern Liberal Rationalist Tradition. The raison d'etre of Liberal Rationalism is the rejection of ordinary language, common sense, and the religious tradition, precisely because the concept of what is good in our common sense, so profoundly ordered by our religious tradition, can never serve the ends of Rationalism. The ends of Rationalism are expert power and control. Conservatives, and the modern Christian academy, do not have the guts to declare liberal rationalism evil. This proves that conservatism, and what we might otherwise call the "conservative" Christian academy, are utterly corrupted by rationalism. Conservatives, like their liberal cousins (the other branch of the Rationalist Tree) believe that Reason is one of the highest goods, if not the highest good.
The Modern Liberal Rationalist tradition is characterized by two premises:
1. There is a single standard of rational justification owned by liberalism.
2. Reason determines what is good.
Neopopulism asserts just the opposite:
~1. There is no single, universal standard of rational justification. Reason is incapable of unifying the world, even when it is turned into a religion.
~2. Our view of what is good determines our view of what is rational.
The Modern Liberal Rationalist tradition (MRT) has a view of the Good which is diametrically opposed to that of our religious tradition, our ordinary language, and our common sense -- the inextricable neopopulist trinity.
The MRT believes that the all encompassing good is Knowledge. Our religious tradition, common sense, and ordinary language, fraught with talk of God, asserts that the all encompassing good is God. Only God can declare that something is good - or evil for that matter. He does so explicitly in our religious tradition. Human knowledge is neither intrinsically good nor can it make anything good which has not already been made good by God. Based on reason alone, the MRT declares many things good which our religious tradition declares evil. This includes tyranny.
Demonstrating just how confused and incoherent knowledge can become, liberalism argues that people in the original position would choose a very powerful government that would redistribute wealth. Contract theories of justice are the sine qua non of rationalism. But when people in fact vote for the other kind of government, or otherwise make choices that liberals do not consider rational, they demonstrate that, in actual practice, liberalism is the doctrine that people do not know what's good for them. They explicitly reject the anthropological foundation of day to day neo-classical economics: People are rational maximizers.
Neopopulists do not believe that the premise of neo-classical economics can be proven or disproven. We are not rationalists. All we can speak to is what is good from within our tradition. And that is all the liberals can do. But they claim to know what is good for everybody on rational grounds, and must therefore force their conception of goodness on the people and acquire the good for the people by force. Neopopulists, obviously, would let the people themselves decide what is good for them, from within their given tradition, without any demand for rational justification, and do so directly without intervening experts, including "representatives". They can only do this in a state of freedom, in their own schools, their stores, their churches, their town halls, their homes.
Liberals believe that they have the absolute, rational line on what is good. This is all incoherent nonsense. The Liberal Rationalist tradition has never produced the universal standard of rational justification that could actually bind us to any of its conclusions.
As soon as the liberal concludes that the people are not rational, and do not know how to maximize their own outcome, their own good, he has become a totalitarian. This is because all he is really doing is disagreeing with other concepts of what is good. Liberalism is the rejection of all human dignity. It is the parent-child paradigm of government. It is tyranny as the Good.
Liberalism is rationalism. Therefore it is evil. The mission of rationalism is to dominate and even destroy ordinary language, common sense and the religious tradition. Unless and until conservatives develop the courage to declare liberalism evil, they cannot win. Unless and until conservatives understand that this is not a debate, but war, they cannot win. Unless and until conservatives understand that there is no rational bridge to liberalism, no logical contact, no common standard of rational justification, and above all else, no common conception of the good, they cannot win. Until conservatives give up their rationalist roots, they cannot stop reasoning and start acting. There is a war going on between diametrically opposed concepts of The Good, and every appeal by liberals to keep debating these concepts, to keep looking for the rational solution, is nothing but a seduction for fools. Conservatives do not understand the fundamental principle of exorcism: You never debate with the demon. You command him. You order him out. When the experts start unilaterally determining who gets access to health care and who doesn't; when they start counseling the old to give up life for the good of society, it becomes blatantly evil to all but the Rationalists. It is the end of the road; the end of coexistence between the traditions.
How is the liberal rationalist possession of our culture and politics to be exorcised? By declaring it evil and ordering it out. By taking advantage of its weakened post-modern state. By engaging in the kind of spiritual warfare that will make liberals wish it had been a physical war instead. Moral, spiritual, cultural warfare is much more violent, much more shocking and shattering than physical violence. It all starts with the complete abandonment of the government schools and the Rationalist response: The attempt to control speech in private schools; the attempt to outlaw private education. This will be Lexington. This will be the start of the revolution.
Rationalism cannot be defeated by Rationalists ("conservatives"). It has to be defeated by Neopopulists who know it is war, and that the weapons are ordinary language, common sense, and the people's religious tradition. Rationalism is defeated by faith, including faith in the authenticity of the people, which conservatives do not believe in. Some of the people can be fooled all of the time, all of the people can be fooled some of the time, but all of the people cannot be fooled all of the time. Neopopulism operates on the knowledge of the good, including the goodness of this faith in the people.
Why are conservatives so hesitant to join Neopopulists in this declaration that Liberal Rationalism is evil? They have two reasons which are obviously compelling from inside of their classically rationalist tradition: (a) They do not wish to suggest that liberals are evil by declaring liberalism evil. (b) As classical liberals they are in love with reason, with "critical rationalism" (see Karl Popper), which they wield better than modern liberals do. They are narcissistically satisfied by Rationalism. They actually see themselves in the Rationalist tradition more so than liberals.
As realism, Neopopulism understands that the sin can in fact be separated from the sinner. Our religious tradition teaches us this and it is born out by experience. An evil man chooses evil precisely because he knows that it is evil. An evil man is not confused about what is good and what is evil. We Neopopulists understand that most people who call themselves "liberal" do not understand that Rationalism is evil, and are therefore fools, not literally evil, from the standpoint of our own tradition. A few do know that it's evil. A few do celebrate its destructiveness. But most who find themselves in the Liberal Rationalist Tradition are simply running from their fear of unreason, of religious ideology and religious forms of rationalism. They know not that they have run into the arms of the enemy. Neopopulists, too, run from religious ideology and religious rationalism. We know how to discern our true anti-rationalist religious tradition from the rationalist corruptions if it, including empty intellectualism and fundamentalism as reductionist religious ideology. In any event, conservatives should understand that it is essential to condemn the rationalism itself as evil and notice that this is not the condemnation of liberal mankind. We hate the sin, not the seduced and enslaved sinner.
In addition to recognizing the need to declare Liberal Rationalism evil, conservatives must give up their narcissistic love of reason; they must stop watching themselves in the mirror reasoning brilliantly from their own premises. They must recognize the futility of Reason as an effective weapon. They must despair of reason and run to their knowledge of the Good, of ordinary language, of common sense, of the religious tradition. They must become a do tank, instead of a think tank. They must become prophets instead of debaters. They must find passion for the Good, even when the Good is not recognized by neo-classical economics. They must give up on the "market place of ideas" and understand that in the grit of history there is only a market place for competing practices of what is good -- not theories, not abstractions. They must give up on social science and embrace common sense and ordinary language. They must grow past intellectualism. They must hold Rationalism by the nose and kick it in the ass. They must preach the mystery. They must preach the Gospel.
Christ stands in front of Pilate, having preached about the mystery, the good, about sin and redemption, without philosophical pretense, without Rationalist analysis. He has not written a thing. He is the Father and the Son of an incredibly powerful tradition which Pilate is about to guarantee with his own actions -- a complete naïf, a tool of history, the cuckold of God. Christ confesses that he is the Truth made flesh.
And Pilate, the Rationalist as skeptic, asks Him: "What is Truth?"
Pilate walks away, knowing that he will not get an answer he can believe even if he waits for it. He knows that Christ is not Plato. There is no logical contact. There is no debate. There is no argument. He knows that Christ is innocent of all the pretense shared by both him and the Sanhedrin. And from our point of view, there is only the deadly silence of God for those who cannot see themselves in someone who is standing right in front of them. It is not about what Pilate, the Rationalist as skeptic, thinks it is about. It is not about justified belief. It is not about Reason. It is about the Good, the Truth Incarnate; standing there within reach, concrete, in plain sight. Pilate walks away before Christ can answer. He does not want to hear the answer. He does not believe it is relevant. He does not believe he can even understand it. And he's right.
Pilate did not condemn Christ for preaching His Gospel. He condemned Christ because Christ could not, and would not answer the question to either his or the Sanhedrin's satisfaction. Christ would not, could not explain Himself to a world that could not and would not understand. He said only enough to prove that they had no desire to recognize the Truth, to listen to the Truth that was standing in front of them. He said only as much as they wanted Him to say. Two different traditions. The new and the old. The new chasing out the old with a language the old one cannot comprehend. At the very moment the new one seems crucified, dead and buried, the old one has been transcended, passed by. The Sanhedrin, and then Pilate as its puppet, demand proof that the new tradition will not give them until it's too late. The plan is not to help the old tradition preserve itself, but to destroy it.
The world does not hate Christ because he was a Jew or because he condemned sin and demanded repentance. The world hates Christ, because he would not answer the question to its satisfaction. It is not good enough for Christ to be who He is. He must explain why. He must debate. He must reason with us. He can't just be the Truth. If he's the Truth, then our Reason is useless. Our reason tells us so.
Christ did not bow down to Reason. Neither do Neopopulists.
Blogs
