GREEN GRASS AND HIGH TIDES FOREVER?:

Providence and the President George W. Bush's theory of history (James W. Ceaser, 03/10/2003, Weekly Standard)

WHAT DO CONSERVATIVES think today about History? As President Bush readies the nation for war, an abstract question like this one seems out of place. And yet, having raised this theme himself in recent speeches, President Bush has been faced both at home and abroad with widespread criticism for his use and abuse of History. Echoing others' arguments, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen has accused the president of claiming to speak for "destiny and providence." European critics charge the president and his conservative supporters with a dangerous triumphalism born of a conviction that huge metaphysical forces are aligned on America's side. America, Bush is said to believe, represents God, History, and God in History.

It has, of course, come to be accepted in modern times that presidents will speak of History, provided only that they mean nothing by it. Whenever presidents wish to elevate the tone of an address, they invoke History. History becomes the omniscient observer, watching over the president's and the nation's shoulder. History--we all know the phrases--is "judging" or "testing" us, it will "record what we do," or, in its sterner moments, "will not forgive us." Used in this way, History has become no more than a figure of speech, the great empty suit of modern rhetoric.

The problem with President Bush, so the charge against him goes, is that he has gone beyond these merely ritual usages. When he speaks about "Providence" and "history,"as he did in his State of the Union address, he unfortunately takes his own words seriously. This criticism, if it is one, is worthy of investigation, all the more so because it is conservatives who traditionally have worried about the pretensions of History. Is President Bush really guilty of what his critics accuse him of, or have they failed to read him closely? [...]

MODERN CONSERVATISM, meaning the conservatism that took hold of the Republican party with Ronald Reagan, established itself on a different plane from that of History. It has rested on the standard of nature, and conservatives have looked first to permanent principles enshrined in documents like the Declaration of Independence. At the same time, conservative statesmen have recognized that people also expect an account of where things fit into the flow of time. Political leadership must do justice to the experience of history.

But conservatives have been perplexed by the question of History, and their thought and instincts have pulled them in different directions. During the long period of
Progressive intellectual dominance, conservative thinkers contested the Doctrine of History, but from opposite ends. Some accepted the idea of Progress, arguing with liberals over how to achieve it. Progress, these conservatives insisted, would be the order of the day if only society abandoned measures of collective planning and put its trust in the forces of the market. Something of this spirit survives in modern libertarian thought.

Other conservatives found fault with the whole idea of Progress. Southern Agrarians referred contemptuously to the "Gospel of Progress," decrying the thinness and materialism of the vision. Others insisted that the Doctrine of History failed to prepare people for the inevitable trials, tribulations, and reversals that were intrinsic to man's experience. Progress was a cheap elixir that sold short-term hope at the expense of longer-term understanding. Who living in the middle of the twentieth century could even begin to square the idea of Progress with the experience of the times? A more sober way of thinking was demanded, one that took account of what many conservatives called the "tragic sense." Some pushed this sense to the point of gloominess. Since tragedy proved the falsity and fatuity of the idea of Progress, it was welcomed as an indispensable companion. Conservatism became associated in some quarters with refusing to accept success for an answer.

Conservatives also balked at any idea of an inevitable plan controlling the course of events. The Doctrine of History view removed responsibility and control from human actors, especially from actors inside the political realm. It eliminated nobility and greatness. Had it not been for Lincoln or Churchill, to pick two examples, would the course of human affairs ever have been the same? The French theorist Raymond Aron was celebrated for his classic formulation of this theme. History, Aron insisted, is ultimately an account of "events," where an event is "an act performed by one man or several men at a definite place and time . . . that can never be reduced to circumstances, unless we eliminate in thought those who have acted and decree that anyone in their place would have acted the same way." As this last condition is an absurdity, it follows that the Doctrine of History is a delusion. History, from a human point of view, must be indeterminate.

These thoughts about History were in the background when the liberal idea of Progress collapsed in the 1960s. Conservatives faced an unprecedented situation. The old shibboleth that named conservatism the party of order and liberalism the party of progress could now be no more than half true. If only by comparison, conservatives had become the more progressive force. But it was not just by default that conservatives captured this dimension in 1980. The new conservative leader, Ronald Reagan, was an inveterate optimist, as strong a believer in the American project and in the capacity for transformation as any president in American history. Following Reagan's cue, a new generation of conservatives emerged that put any hint of doom and gloom in the closet and made an unshakable confidence in the future the emblem of conservatism. Grover Norquist's claim was typical: "From Ronald Reagan, conservatives have learned optimism and discovered they are on the winning side of history."

The legacy of the Reagan years has left conservatives with the question of how to incorporate this message of optimism into conservative thought. Two different paths, not always clearly delineated, have been suggested, and while the practical differences between them may for the moment seem small, the theoretical differences are enormous. In one account, conservatives espouse a Doctrine of History of their own in the form of a conservative idea of Progress. What is supported by natural law, they argue, must necessarily manifest itself in a predictable way in the historical context. Since, for example, liberal democracy is the system natural to man, one can be sure it will spread throughout most of the world in centuries to come. Other conservatives refuse to cross what they see as the philosophical red line between nature and history. While conservative principles offer the best prospect for progress and have proven themselves in many areas, nothing in the historical realm ever happens by necessity. Conservatives must continue to keep in mind the place of accident in human affairs and the importance of political choices, which of course can also lead to reversals of fortune.

GEORGE W. BUSH is the product, far more than his father, of the modern conservative movement. Like Ronald Reagan, he is a self-described optimist who once went so far as to chastise a conservative intellectual for the sin of pessimism. What Bush has added to the mainstream of conservatism is a religious dimension, which in the case of the question of History includes the theme of Providence.

Here's another issue--the delusion that History is on one side or the other--that the Security vs. Freedom paradigm sheds substantial light on. Because the fail to comprehend that the struggle between their respective ideals is eternal and that the pull exerted by both is immensely powerful, both Left and Right are able to convince themselves that when they win a series of battles they've won the war. So a period of continually expanding government and ever greater redistribution of wealth, from 1928 to 1980, led the Left to believe that the security they offer had been accepted once and for all. They underestimated the degree to which people would come to chafe at the surrender of freedom that such security required.

Similarly, many conservatives now kid themselves that the victory over Communism and the global turn to free trade and free markets marks a final recognition that at least economies must be structured so as to maximize freedom. They fail to comprehend how much differently people will view free market capitalism when unemployment is at 10% than they do when it's at 4% or even 6%, or when inflation is running rampant, or when the economy actually starts shrinking instead of growing slowly, etc.,...

Thus, any time the tide turns in favor of one side or the other, they come to believe that they've "won", when, in fact, the ebb tide always returns.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 3, 2003 10:11 PM