IF EUROPE IS MODERN WHY NOT DISDAIN MODERNITY?:

GERMANY'S SELF-HATING CONSERVATIVES: Anti-modernism is gaining ground among the German right (Sabine Reul, 9/17/04, Spiked)

It is perhaps not surprising, then, that a new kind of anti-modernism is gaining ground in conservative thought. If even the welfare state is now seen as being the result of bad maths and cynical electioneering, how can writers and politicians who lay claim to the conservative label defend anything good in their postwar tradition? As a result, some have begun to thrash about, seeking guidance from older pre- or anti-democratic strands in nineteenth-century conservatism. In this context, political arrangements that once were seen as being essential to Western democracies are becoming the targets of vitriolic disdain.

Radical conservative currents are gaining access to the political mainstream. Hans-Herrmann Hoppe, the German-born American Professor of Business Science and member of the conservative Ludwig von Mises Institute in Alabama, has found a highly receptive audience in Germany for his pamphlet Democracy - The God that Failed.

Hoppe shares the view held on the right-wing fringes of American politics that not only parties, but even the state itself belongs on the rubbish heap of history. He calls for an 'elitist civil law society', where autonomous local communities led by individuals with 'natural authority' govern themselves - and where those who possess nothing have no say. Hoppe calls for the foundation of 'free territories', in which, of course, there would be neither immigrants nor welfare systems.

His pamphlet may seem eccentric, but the proximity of his views to many current assumptions is striking - which explains the positive response it has received. Hoppe's harangue about the state as a body that only devours money, conducts unnecessary wars and prevents people from living 'naturally' is far from alien in today's anti-political climate. Though Hoppe presents an extreme version of the belief that modernity has nothing good to offer, he is certainly not alone in thinking this is so.

The tendency to draw regressive conclusions from the current crisis of confidence is gaining strength. The question is, how can relations between people and politics be made more productive and forward-looking? Though the word 'participation' has never been used as much as it is today, the distance between people and politics has rarely been bigger. This is related to the disparaging view of the citizen that prevails in political debate. In Germany, the citizen is today regarded either as a stubborn and greedy obstacle to market reform that needs disciplining, or as a faint-hearted creature in need of therapy and protection.

This degraded view of people corresponds with a mindset that sees nothing worth defending in the best our societies have achieved. It presumes that passivity and perversity are the defining features of humanity, thereby subverting the creativity, courage and commitment that, in the real world, people practice every day.

Okay, so why isn't it true that modernism/socialism fed the natural human inclination to greed, passivity, perversity and faint-heartedness and made Europeans morally debauched dependents on the social security state? The denial that those are things to which humans are inclined is a denial of Man's Fallen state and of thousands of years of the Judeo-Christian/Western tradition. If the folks who do deny it ended up with societies that no longer function--and which look particularly bad in comparison to our still rather religious society here--isn't it appropriate to suspect their denial?

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 17, 2004 10:55 AM