Tory Anarchist

I think it was Peter Viereck (or was it Voegelin?) who said about Joseph McCarthy and his enemies, “I don’t like hysteria, and I don’t like hysteria about hysteria.” Well, I don’t like pedantry, and I don’t like pedantry about pedantry, either. Geoffrey Pullum’s Chronicle of Higher Education piece drubbing Strunk and White’s Elements of Style falls into the latter category. What’s worse, Pullum makes the kind of mistakes he attributes to Strunk and White. Regarding Elements’ injunctions against the passive voice, he writes:

What concerns me is that the bias against the passive is being retailed by a pair of authors so grammatically clueless that they don’t know what is a passive construction and what isn’t. Of the four pairs of examples offered to show readers what to avoid and how to correct it, a staggering three out of the four are mistaken diagnoses. “At dawn the crowing of a rooster could be heard” is correctly identified as a passive clause, but the other three are all errors:

*”There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground” has no sign of the passive in it anywhere.
* “It was not long before she was very sorry that she had said what she had” also contains nothing that is even reminiscent of the passive construction.
* “The reason that he left college was that his health became impaired” is presumably fingered as passive because of “impaired,” but that’s a mistake. It’s an adjective here. “Become” doesn’t allow a following passive clause. (Notice, for example, that “A new edition became issued by the publishers” is not grammatical.)

Pretty damning — or it would be if Strunk and White had actually claimed any of those were passive constructions. They don’t. Here’s how they introduce these examples: “Many a tame sentence of description or exposition can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice for some such perfunctory expression as there is, or could be heard.” (My link is to the online text of the Strunk-only 1918 edition, but the passage is unchanged in later editions.)

Now, Strunk and White themselves use the passive voice in that sentence, so one might say they are violating their own rules (though they’re not — they don’t say the passive may never be used, only that active constructions tend to be more forceful). But they don’t claim that their examples are all in the passive voice. Excessive deployment of the passive is only one of the weaknesses they discuss in this section. Their point is not only to urge the use of the active voice but to encourage the use of “active” transitive verbs rather than limp declarations of being. It’s sound advice: “dead leaves covered the ground” really is more forceful and better than “there were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground.”

One can fairly complain that Strunk and White perceive the threat to good style as coming from only one direction. Consider their next section, in which they command, “Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, non-committal language. Use the word not as a means of denial or in antithesis, never as a means of evasion.” “Denial,” “evasion,” “colorless” — these are tendentious terms. Someone who takes the authors’ advice too literally will always write fortissimo, without any understanding of the uses and virtues of the pianissimo. Irony, impartiality, subtlety, and negation do have a place in good writing. And bad prose can be Stentorian just as it can be anodyne, though admittedly most writers, especially in academia, err on the mushy side.

There are times when the negative construction is superior to a positive one: the negative can convey irony (and thereby emphasis) in a way that a straightforward positive cannot. And sometimes the weakness of a negative construction suggests a meaning different from (and subtler than) a positive construction, as Strunk and White’s second example shows: “He did not think that studying Latin was much use” (bad). “He thought the study of Latin useless” (good). The latter is more forceful, but the two sentences do not mean the same thing. The former allows the possibility that the subject thinks the study of Latin is of some utility, however limited. The latter asserts that he thinks it is of no utility at all. Greater force is not always to be preferred over subtler meaning.

The Elements of Styleis a stuffy book, as most rulebooks are, but its faults lie less with Strunk and White’s text than with pedants’ mindless misapplication of its rules. I’ve encountered a few terrible simplifiers whose horror of negative constructions is so great that they think all litotes a sin. But I wouldn’t lay that on Strunk and White, who in any event stand acquitted of Pullum’s charges.

Austin Bramwell thinks the writers of Takimag missed the mark in parodying NRO for April Fool’s Day. Rather than analyze his critique point by point, allow me to suggest, as straight-facedly as I can, what the actual NRO credo looks like. The ideology sketched below is not just good for Lowry, Ponnuru, and Goldberg, however — it should be a pretty good fit for Brooks, Kristol, Frum, Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity, too.

1.)  All men are endowed by their Creator with a.) the right not be aborted, b.) the right to a pro-American government, and c.) the right to ever increasing prosperity. (Regarding “b” — democratic governments are necessarily pro-American, and pro-American governments are necessarily democratic. Any apparent contradictions will be resolved upon closer examination.)

2.) America stands for these fundamental rights (including the application of 1b to the rest of the world). Although America has made some mistakes in the past, those failings have been substantially rectified and to dwell upon them is anti-American. Evils that can be pinned specifically on Southerners, however, may be discussed without any suspicion of anti-Americanism. For these purposes, the South is a foreign country, like Germany.

3.) The evils that still besmirch the country, such as abortion, are the work of a small, unelected elite — the liberals.

4.) The American people are fundamentally good and intuitively subscribe to the rights outlined in 1. In fact, all people around the world deep down believe in those rights.  Everybody wants to be American.

5.)  But people in other countries are prevented from becoming Americans by their evil, undemocratic governments. Some of these governments, in Europe for example, are run by secular liberals. Other governments, the really evil ones, are run by anti-American dictators whose sole mission in life is to destroy America and the rights that she represents.  These dictators, whatever ideology they claim to profess, are all fascists.

6.) The only other nations that have always embodied the rights enumerated in 1 are Great Britain, which is really the same country as the United States (but a little worse off for being closer to godless Europe), and Israel.  Lately, Georgia and Ukraine have joined the Enlightened nations as well.

7.) Good liberals basically believe in point 1, but they don’t believe strongly enough. This is the sin of moral relativism. Martin Luther King was better than most liberals, but even he didn’t believe in America enough — enough, that is, to support the Vietnam War. (Sometimes, as Bramwell notes, it may be conceded that King wasn’t altogether down with 1c either.)

8.) Bad liberals are really fascists, and unpatriotic conservatives are really bad liberals.

9.) Every time the United States topples an undemocratic government, American values automatically prevail. This natural cause-and-effect sequence can only be thwarted by a failure of will on the part of American leadership (an effect of enervating liberalism) or by subversion from anti-American tyrannies elsewhere.

10.) Elite institutions of higher learning are thoroughly controlled by anti-American liberals and fascists who are indoctrinating our youth. Of course, conservative pundits who matriculated from Yale, Harvard, Princeton, etc. are unaffected by this.

11.) Taxes and interest rates must always be kept low to ensure ever increasing prosperity. Deficits don’t matter.

Not everyone on the establishment Right agrees with all of these points — a handful dissent from 1a or 1c, for example. Nor would anyone on the establishment Right phrase some of these credenda quite so bluntly. But I think on the whole this is a fair characterization.

Lest anyone jump to conclusions, I’m not affirming the opposite of each of these points, nor am I arguing that the creed is wrong in every particular. But as a worldview, it certainly is buncombe, a potlatch of liberal platitudes and militaristic hubris.

From Irving Babbitt’s Democracy and Leadership (1924):

A chief danger both to ourselves and others is that we shall continue to have a frontier psychology long after we have ceased to have a frontier. For a frontier psychology is expansive, and and expansiveness, I have tried to show, is, at least in its political manifestations, always imperialistic.

I’ve been a student of Austrian economics for about eight years. But now, with the financial meltdown vindicating everything the Austrians have said about the Fed, fractional-reserve banking, and the business cycle, I find myself little motivated to write about such things. Obviously I’m not an economist, and excellent popularizing work on these topics is being done by others. Instead, I find myself impelled toward a still neglected field: conservative constitutional philosophy. This past weekend I’ve been immersed in the works of Irving Babbitt. (Which aren’t strictly speaking about constitutional philosophy, but actually have great bearing upon it. What I particularly like about Babbitt is his constant emphasis on the danger of overreaction — arid neoclassicism or pseudo-classicism prompts wild romanticism, for exmaple; the true humanist or classicist seeks a via media.) The works of Willmoore Kendall, George Carey, Jeffrey Hart, and Claes Ryn are of keen interest to me at the moment, as is the “high church conservatism” of Burke, Coleridge, and Arnold.

This probably isn’t the most lucrative direction in which to point my efforts, but it’s my trajectory nonetheless.

March is shaping up to include an unusual number of talks for me. Last weekend I took part in ISI’s “God and Man at CPAC” panel. Video exists and should eventually be up at ISI’s website. Next Friday I’ll be commenting on the security and foreign policy panel at the Austrian Scholars Conference in Auburn, Alabama. I may be giving two more talks, in Georgetown and St. Louis, before the end of the month. Details are still in the works. I enjoy giving the occasional lecture–it cuts into time for writing, but it’s good to diversify.

“Our Enemy, the President” — an essay in applied political theory. The title nods at Albert Jay Nock, but much of the inspiration for the piece comes from Willmoore Kendall (and, between the lines, Bertrand de Jouvenel and George W. Carey).

“Is Conservatism Dead?” — a response to Sam Tanenhaus’s “Conservatism Is Dead.” I briefly argue in this University Bookman symposium that a love of Disraeli does not necessarily make one a conservative and that the Cold War Right repudiated Burkean conservatism from the very beginning, when it chose not to heed the anti-anti-Communist wisdom of Viereck, Kennan, Lukacs, and Nisbet.

“Getting Reagan Right” — I was pleasantly surprised by William F. Buckley Jr.’s posthumously published Goldwater book, Flying High, which turned out to be, in part, an affectionate look at the pre-Goldwater Old Right. (Clarence Manion figures prominently.) Buckley’s The Reagan I Knew is equally surprising, seemingly influenced by the Reagan revisionism of Paul Lettow and John Patrick Diggins. I give WFB considerable credit for rethinking Reagan, rather than regurgitating the conservative movement line. (I’ll be discussing Buckley at ISI’s “God and Man at CPAC” panel this Saturday, by the way.)

And, going back to late ‘08, “McGovern Beats Nixon,” my argument for how the reaction against George McGovern created a new, less conservative, more authoritarian Right.

The project — well, a project — that has been taking my spare time away from ye olde Tory Anarchist is the new publication of Young Americans for Liberty, the Young American Revolution, for which I’m serving as editorial director.  The first issue will be out in about a week and features, among other things, Jim Antle on the end of big-government conservatism, Nathan Origer on Andrew Bacevich’s The Limits of Power, yours truly on the struggle between Barack Obama and Ron Paul for the next generation of America’s leaders, a provocative essay on war and the religious Right from rising young star George Hawley, Tom Woods on who really deserves blame for the financial meltdown, a Dylan Hales review of Bill Kauffman’s Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet, and Patrick Ford’s interview with Ron Paul about the congressman’s next book and future political plans.

Here’s a teaser vid YAL put together:

We’re going to have a launch party for the magazine on Friday, Feb. 27 (during CPAC), 9 pm at the Asylum Bar (2471 18th St NW, Washington D.C.). More details about that on Facebook.

Naturally, I’m keeping my eyes out for young talent to write for the YAR — we’ll produce two issues per semester out of the gate, and plans for the second issue are already being laid. Contact me if you’re a student or young-ish person interested in writing. One of the exciting things about YAR is the opportunity to feature the work of students and other not-yet-professionals alongside veteran conservative and libertarian thinkers.

There are two ways to get YAR, by the way: a four-issue subscription is complimentary with a donation of $50 or more to Young Americans for Liberty, or if you’re under 39, join YAL and a a subscription is included in your membership dues.

Updates have been slower than ever because I’ve been devoting much of my spare time to helping Young Americans for Liberty with a special project. I’ll reveal more about that soon and, with a bit of luck, start carving out the time to update this site properly again. For now, just remember: patience is a virtue, virtue is a grace, and Grace is a little girl who wouldn’t wash her face.

From a rather interesting 1977 essay by Jeane Kirkpatrick in Commentary:

Research has established that the party regular is attached to politics by social as well as ideological incentives (and sometimes also by material incentives) and that such attachment encourages the virtues of the good team member: cooperation, perseverence, loyalty, service, and the will to win. The ideological perspective, in contrast, is hostile to the construction and maintenance of organizational solidarity, for several reasons: first, because persons attached to politics by ideology do not identify themselves with organizations but with a point of view, and their commitment to organizations is therefore weak, instrumental, conditional; second, because persons attracted to politics by ideological incentives tend to hold relatively extreme and intense views and to have relatively comprehensive ideological orientations which encourages them to see particular questions as part of larger wholes. This in turn means that virtually any policy or issue can be perceived as involving “fundamental” questions of conscience which cannot be compromised without a sacrifice of “principle.”

The essay in question is called “Why the New Right Failed” — failed, that is, to nominate Ronald Reagan, John Connally, or George Wallace in 1976. Four years later, of course, the New Right would play an important role in both nominating and electing Reagan. I think Kirkpatrick’s assessment of the ideological vs. the partisan mind is mostly correct, but over the past 20 years the Republicans have figured out a way to span the gap. Rather than having the ideological activist give his loyalty directly to a central organization, which after all cannot possibly faithfully represent every interest of a coalition on every point, the activist only has to be loyal to his particular niche organization, and these can then coalesce with the leadership of other broadly sympathetic ideological groups. This is exactly the approach Paul Weyrich and Grover Norquist followed in organizing the contemporary Republican Right. Rather than trying to build a broad but unorganized electoral coalition, the strategy is to build an organized — hierarchical is maybe just a bit too strong — network of sympathetic groups.

Furthermore, while Kirkpatrick points out that it’s rare in eletoral politics for voters to have a genuine choice between two candidates representing wholly different ideologies, it is possible through propaganda to create the impression that any given electoral contest is between two radically divergent philosophies. The more that nonpolitical — that is, non-state-controlled — issues of identity and culture can be brought into political discourse, the easier it becomes to construct fictional polarities. The differences between Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and to all appearances of what’s to come, Obama (with Clinton II as his secretary of state) are pretty meager. But “culturally,” or propandistically, every four years has been a showdown between freedom-loving American patriots and countercultural McGoverniks, according to the narrative set up by the Republican coalition. The Democratic narrative involves wealthy, out-of-touch, racist Republicans trying to oppress the already oppressed.

There are a couple of layers of irony to all this. The New Right seemingly succeeded after 1976, by nominating and electing Reagan. But the Reagan Revolution and 1994 Republican Revolution in Congress, changed very little. The “success” of the New Right was literally illusory — new myths, new propagandistic images, took hold in the public discourse, camouflaging a the fundamental continuity and identity between the two major parties. (That’s not to say nothing at all of substance changed — both Carter and Reagan represented represented some change from the Truman/Johnson/Kennedy and Nixon mentalities of their parties. But business as usual resumed under the two Bushes, Clinton, and now Obama.)

An excursion to two outlets of Half-Priced Books in San Antonio, Texas (my redoubt for the Christmas season) netted me the following:

The Anti-Federalists, by Jackson Turner Main. Reading it now.

The Florence King Reader, by Florence King. Will make a monarchist of you, if you aren’t already one.

A Matter of Opinion, by Victor Navasky. I’ve been meaning to pick up a copy ever since it came out in 2005. I browsed TAC’s review copy before sending it to Chilton Williamson to write up. There are some interesting passages about the business side of small magazines.

On Human Conduct, by Michael Oakeshott. A real find, this, and a good value even at $15.

50 Years of Dissent, edited by Nicolaus Mills and Michael Walzer. Features Dwight Macdonald, C. Wright Mills, David Bromwich, Irving Howe, and many more, though it looks to be less interesting overall than those names would suggest. Still, for $5, why not?

Perjury, by Allen Weinstein. Classic account of the Hiss-Chambers case.

On Morality and Society, by Emile Durkheim. You can’t have too much Durkheim.

Rousseau’s Political Writings, edited by Alan Ritter and Julia Bondanella. It’s a Norton Critical Edition. Purchased mostly for the Robert Nisbet essay included in the critical material, though it’s useful that the book also compiles short reactions to Rousseau from Voltaire, Hume, Samuel Johnson, Casanova, Adam Smith, Tom Paine, Kant, Maistre, John Adams, Benjamin Constant, Proudhon, and Tolstoy.

The Conservative Mind, by Russell Kirk.  A mint copy of the seventh revised edition from 1987 in a striking lime-green, text-only cover. My copy of one of the later printings of the seventh edition is in an ever more tattered condition, so for $8 I thought I might as well pick this up. I won’t be taking it back to D.C. with me: it’ll be just as well to have a copy on hand in San Antonio whenever I see my family.