In a struggle against a revolutionary idea, it is only possible to use ideological elements which are a thousand times more radical, or adapt principles which represent a total reaction against them.
~ Francis Stuart Campbell (a.k.a., Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn), The Menace of the Herd
This quote from the mid-twentieth century book, The Menace of the Herd, by the late, learned Austrian Catholic philosopher and early National Review contributor, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, is indicative of the basic theme of all his writings, which was his persistent and unremitting opposition to the French Revolution and its heirs in all their forms. His writings were a revelation and an inspiration for my early political thinking, especially in clarifying the differences between those lamentable, but sometimes unavoidable, post-revolutionary political classifications of Right and Left.
He was perhaps the first author I read who thoroughly debunked the popular myth that nationalism, militarism and fascism were in any sense properly ‘rightist’ impulses. Like so many failed ideologies, these were the truncated, distorted and lifeless expressions of legitimate and honourable sentiments and convictions, but they were taken up or tolerated by so many otherwise genuine rightists in various times and places because they seemed to be the only widely available modern expressions of ideas that rightists found worthwhile but could no longer express in their traditional forms in a way that would appeal to the mass man.
K-L’s quote helps to explain why these half-way houses for defenders of traditional societies and established social and political orders have consistently failed to endure or produce anything much better than crude bellicism, reductionist and hollow definitions of national and cultural identity and a dreary subordination to the government as the last vestige of anything representing an authority. It is also part of the reason why American conservatism, always compromised at some level by sympathies with Enlightenment thought, has consistently failed to check the revolutionary idea and does not usually express itself in any language but that of its mortal foe.
The failure to embrace what Mel Bradford called the “reactionary imperative,” the vital response when there is no longer anything of the old and desirable order to be conserved, leaves those who should be hostile to the revolutionary idea and its implications to resort to sterile collaboration with the assumptions and principles of that idea.
2 comments
July 29th, 2004 at 7:46 pm
Jon Luker
Abandonment of the revolutionary ideals of the Enlightenment would itself by revolutionary, would it not? How do you see the abandonment of these ideals playing out here if such were to occur?
July 29th, 2004 at 11:23 pm
Daniel Larison
Thanks for the questions, Jon. Such a change, were it to occur, would be revolutionary only if it were to occur rapidly and if it involved a dramatic redistribution or reorganisation of power and ideas in a relatively short period of time. This is both unlikely and, in a sense, undesirable. Such rapidity implies passion, greed and lust for power, all of the things which motivate the revolution but which should not motivate us.
The sober rejection of insane, that is unhealthy, ideas cannot partake of the same spirit that moves revolutionaries, and so abandoning the madness of 1789 is revolutionary really only in the sense of one of the original meanings of the term, which is to come full circle. And yet in the process of being restored to health, the patient has not been restored back to his state prior to the illness but has been rejuvenated. If we were speaking theologically, it would be like the sinner who repents and is redeemed–he has been twice changed, once by imperfection and then by embracing perfection, and it is the same way here. (This is not to explicitly identify a political view with Christian truth, but to provide a helpful analogy.)
To really oppose the revolutionary idea, though, I don’t believe either a rapid change or a huge shift of power and ideas could happen without an equally rapid collapse of whatever movement or persuasion instigated the abandonment of the principles of 1789. It would, in a sense, be like forcing long-term drug addicts to go cold turkey with no other treatment.
It is one of the great insights of European conservatives that the revolutionaries represent artificial and cheaply constructed notions imposed on living realities, so it is one of the greatest errors to believe that an attempted reversal or negation of the revolutionaries’ work would be any less artificial, even though grounded in better principles. Without maintaining a spirit of patience and cultivation (of those around us and ourselves), the reactionaries cannot reverse or heal the damage done over the past several centuries, and I believe this spirit of patience and cultivation militates against adopting a revolutionary mentality or tactics of any kind.
As Joseph de Maistre said, more or less, the counter-revolution is contrary to revolution, so the abandonment or replacement of revolutionary principles, while a significant change, cannot really be revolutionary in the modern sense of the term. It would imply a radical change of political and social order, at least in the long term, a metastasis, but in the sense of renovatio, renewal, and not the deconstruction of a stable order.
To think of it this way requires us to conceive of the Revolution as it has been, namely a destructive and disordering force in society, culture and politics. In the classical model, regimes all gradually suffer from decadence that causes them to sink into those forms of government approximating the regime idealised by revolutionaries. Because the process is in some sense cyclical, this decadent period need not last forever and will almost inevitably (I don’t say absolutely, because I am not a determinist) be changed.
Maistre said what he said because he believed, as I understand it, that revolutionary principles were akin to a disease in society and his advocacy for a constituted society, monarchy and a sane understanding of human nature were the medicines for this disease. Put in those terms, abandoning revolutionary principles would be like recovering from a chronic illness. The recovery really is the negation of the malady, and not simply a reverse image or copy of the same towards a different end.
The difference between a serious reactionary and someone you might call a radical rightist is how long they are willing to wait to cultivate the recovery of the old and desirable order. A reactionary would want huge changes in our priorities and habits, of course, but he would also understand that these things could no more be swiftly imposed or introduced without the same dislocation and social ruin that the revolutionaries have given us. What venerable institutions remain must be preserved, and the general rot stopped, but the cultivation of a truly humane and orderly society would necessarily take generations of slow adaptations to accustom people to the restored order and to attach their loyalties to it. In this cultivation of sound principles, the best hope we have is through good living, sane education and persuasion of those around us.
Elections and other democratic processes have conditioned us to think in the short term–to conceive of short term solutions and quick answers to corruption that has set in over decades and even longer. As in medicine, the glaring cultural wounds can be bandaged and treated, and that is the immediate practical work to be done, but the conversion of the society to a commitment to sane and consecrated, harmonious order is the prescription that will take much longer to achieve.
The short term is the time in which the desire-driven agenda of revolution prospers (because the consequences remain far off enough to escape notice, among other reasons), but it is in the cultivation of a long view, in which we hold the conviction that the race does not go to the swiftest, that reaction might find lay the foundation for the rest of the structure that subsequent generations will build upon.
As for how such an abandonment of Enlightenment ideas would develop, it would be very difficult for me to say. Some necessary prerequisites for such an abandonment to occur on a noticeable scale in the next fifty years would be the end of all federal involvement in education (and preferably the end of compulsory education), the active cultivation of contrary principles by a core of writers, scholars and local influential figures as well as the concerted detachment by the end of the fifty year period of a noticeable number of people from partisan politics on the national level. There would, of course, have to be some protections against the revolutionaries’ turning the state and media apparatuses against these efforts, though what form these might take exactly I could not say.
People would be called to live their ordinary lives as they have done, devote themselves all the more to families and churches, ignore the pleas to political activism and eventually the trivia of participating in national elections. In their way, the political mobilisations of ordinary Christian folks have inflicted much damage on those folks in the distorted priorities and convictions inculcated by the political hacks. This is just aimless brainstorming, but local and state history organisations, European heritage associations and associations aimed at reading Western classics might serve as some good vehicles for undoing some of the damage. There would have to be many more similar sorts of things encompassing other cultural and community activities.
These would be the sorts of practical things that could replace the vain activities of worrying about irrelevant elections and suchlike. The small gains won from such a course of action would seem laughable to the ideologue with his program, but reactionaries are first and foremost cultivators, creators and builders, and they cannot engage in these activities in the slapdash and ignorant fashion of their adversaries. It is not a prescription for heroic and sudden recovery, but it might just help do the trick.