Conflicts in Conservativism

 

Business has the responsibility to utilize resources and maximize production within the rules of a free and honest culture. Moral responsibility is personal.

                             Conflicts in Conservativism

That human beings start out crooked and prone to sin means we require strong social institutions meant to form us, and that we cannot thrive in their absence. It means the good of the individual cannot be achieved in a society that is not meaningfully attuned to the true common good. But that human beings are made in a divine image and possessed of inherent dignity means that each of us has rights that in practice amount to constraints on what society can do to us. In this sense, the conservative anthropology points toward both communitarianism and individualism, and the tension between the two emerges in every conservative effort to wrestle with real-world governing challenges.

This is a thoughtful and provocative remark by Levin and is worth some reflection. The origin of human dignity, the nature of human error, these are basic elements that any thinking culture must at least consider. If it does not, then the culture has made up its mind on other premises that the culture should be able to express.

Interstitial

This is from de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Chapter IV:

"Despotism which by its nature is suspicious, sees in the separation among men the surest guarantee of its continuance, and it usually makes every effort to keep them separate. No vice of the human heart is so acceptable to it as selfishness: a despot easily forgives his subjects for not loving him, provided they do not love one another. (Italics mine)He does not ask them to assist him in governing the state; it is enough that they do not aspire to govern it themselves. He stigmatizes as turbulent and unruly spirits those who would combine their exertions to promote the prosperity of the community; and, perverting the natural meaning of words, he applauds as good citizens those who have no sympathy for any but themselves.
Thus the vices which despotism produces are precisely those which equality fosters. These two things perniciously complete and assist each other. Equality places men side by side, unconnected by any common tie; despotism raises barriers to keep them asunder; the former predisposes them not to consider their fellow creatures, the latter makes general indifference a sort of public virtue.
Despotism, then, which is at all times dangerous, is more particularly to be feared in democratic ages. It is easy to see that in those same ages men stand most in need of freedom. When the members of a community are forced to attend to public affairs, they are necessarily drawn from the circle of their own interests and snatched at times from self-observation. As soon as a man begins to treat of public affairs in public, he begins to perceive that he is not so independent of his fellow men as he had at first imagined, and that in order to obtain their support he must often lend them his co-operation."

If this reminds you of Anne Applebaum's observations that both the Nazis and the Stalinists in Eastern Europe attacked the right of association above all the perceived individual rights as the most important to crushing a people, it should. This is a serious observation and deserves some thought. Does a culture's integrity depends upon the bonds among its individuals? And if it does, does the technique of  something like identity politics destabilize the nation?. And favor the despot?

Athletes and their Crowd

When Steinbrenner was buried, not a Yankee player was in attendance. When LeBron James weighed his choices he thought not once of the Cleveland fan or his community. Yet somehow the fan feels the athlete has an investment in him and his world, has some concern about him, responds to his cheers and exhortations. He feels they are joined by their common interest in his team, that the fan is the famous "twelfth man."

This identification is a true public relations miracle. How the coddled, babied, egocentric, self-absorbed and money addled athlete could possibly be seen by the public as representative, heroic, outgoing and responsible in his community staggers the imagination. How many local citizens have to be shot, throttled, beaten, thrown up on, wrecked, groped, raped and terrorized before the community figures it out? The athlete is not one of them. He is not a community member, not a local citizen. He is an obnoxious visitor at best, an alien mercenary at worst. And he cynically exploits the community's best unifying hope: To create a common bond and direction among its people.

This world needs achievers and we need to note them. Heroes would be great, too, but we need achievers. We need them to prove the value of distinction, to show the rewards of effort and sacrifice. We need them to emulate. And we need communities; we need the feeling of some occasional unifying point where we can gather, like around a campfire, and share in our commonality and recognize our filial bond.

We ask too much of these athletes. Let them play. It's the game and the audience we are there for.