As the dizzying days of Christmas and the new year give way to other concerns, the coming mid-term elections in the United States are being pressed upon us by heavy media breathing north of the border.
Republicans are especially busy trying to come up with a rhetoric that does not mirror the comedy of their last (seemingly) unending set of presidential primaries. And the Democrats are nervously occupied with trying to figure out who they – and the GOP – might nominate right now. It promises to be a daft and bizarre season for both sides.
Slipping slyly into view, stage right, is an affable seeming, balding, youngish man, Yuval Levin, playing the part of Irving Kristol (1920-2009), who was the leading architect of neoconservatism, which he called a political and intellectual movement for disaffected ex-liberals, like himself, who had been “mugged by reality.”
For folks who find the behavior of the present mutation of the GOP and much of its personnel intolerable, Levin is the suave, nimble and unabashed repackager of that party’s ongoing war against so many Americans: women, Hispanics, African-Americans, Asians, both the poor and the middle class, especially workers, teachers, American’s leading universities and their faculties, and students. That list is long.
In this job, Levin’s work is presently unending, for his many of sponsors seem to embody a still large, if slowly shrinking, portion of the the U.S. population that has been voting against itself so often that this flaw has become a habit. Voters are vigorously encouraged in this self-wounding practice. In turn, this calls for Levin to never specifically contradict the illogic and mendaciousness of attacks on large swaths of the citizenry, but to artfully wrap them in a soothing rhetoric, and a calming style that makes even the GOP’s most predatory political practices seem less nationally – and personally – dangerous than they really are. He has recently written a book that will interest those wishing the GOP would, by some miracle, large or small, begin to both embrace rationality and a touch of comity, as well as trying to display useful concern for the plight of Americans less well-off than the Congressional millionaires’ club.
Yuval Levin, 36, was born in Haifa, Israel, and brought by his parents to the United States when he was eight. The family hoped New Jersey would be a part of the “promised land.” It turned out to be so. He often tells reporters that he learned his English from “The Cosby Show.” Soon, his intellectual attention was caught by the conservative and then sharp-minded and adroit wordsmith, George Will, writing for Newsweek and the Washington Post. In the air then the teasing contrarian echoes of Will’s mentor, William Buckley, Jr, were still fresh in the minds of many. He was the founder and editor of the National Review magazine, and almost single-handedly the uber-eloquent genius founder of a new, modern Republican Party in 1955.Levin graduated from D.C.’s American University, then entered the conservative-flavored doctoral program of the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought. Now Levin has polished and re-titled his dissertation regarding two differing views of the French Revolution. Titled “The Great Debate,” it pits one of the brightest conservative thinkers in England, Scottish-born Edmund Burke (1729-1797), a man Levin has long admired and studied, and his polar opposite, Thomas Paine (1737-1809), the English-born fervent voice of the American Revolution. The two men agreed on Britain’s monarchical misjudgment and mistreatment of the English colonists in America. Burke specifically warned George III against heavy-handed taxation and commercial limits of the colonists.
Titled “The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of the Right and the Left,” Levin’s handling in the book of his two protagonists – despite his deep sympathy for one and his disagreement with the other – is surprisingly well, even delicately, measured. One seldom encounters such balanced consideration among Republicans today. When it is apparent, it is usually slashingly offset by some social or political species of delinquency. This is a consequence of the expulsion of the party’s brighter, more sage (thus, more Burkian) political leaders.
The debate between Paine and Burke has long been seen as defining the differences between the “right” and the “left,” though even rough-handed politics implies more subtlety than that indicates. Paine welcomed the “era of revolutions,” because he believed that “man” – meaning humankind – “must have the right to choose.” Paine saw reason as a great liberating force needed in both life and politics. Burke takes a less bold stance, arguing that not choice, but the intricate cluster of obligations issuing from our social relations – family, community, nation – form us, shape us, and steadies personal and national lives, and thus lead to more useful behavior. He did not believe that humankind was a totally rational species capable of making abrupt, successful, choices that sweep across entire societies. But Burke went on to introduce a “provocative” note into the debate. Even many of his most ardent admirers (at the time and since) have been embarrassed by his odd paean to Marie Antoinette.
Levin begins by writing history, as one admirer complains, only to switch to “writing political theory.” This is because he wants to tie the Paine\Burke debate to today’s awkward, often slovenly and destructive political panorama. Levin is an eloquent and appealing political assessor in many ways. This, detractors say, is his job: To make currently radical, punitive GOP ideas palatable.
For some voters, independents for example, that characterization may seem more pugnacious than instructive. Yet Levin, at least in his present authorial incarnation, suggests that this look back at the history of two prominent thinkers engaging one another in an extensive debate can be useful. Besides the debate, they wrote one another both privately and in public papers. For one thing it moves both sides away from the heat and emotion of immediate engagement, and provides space for more rational thought.
In an interview, Levin has pointed out that “Burke, and conservatives that came after him, were struck by what was working. That‘s (b)ecause (Burke) begins with very low expectations of human beings... So he’s amazed by anything that works at all. And he wants to build on (that), rather than try to uproot society and fix its problems in a {radical} way.”
On the other hand, “Paine thinks there is no excuse for failure, that things should work better, and that means that when we see society in which injustice reigns we have to start from scratch and fix problems in a radical way.”
“One thing conservatives could learn is Burke’s disposition to policy” Levin says. That is, “conservatives should want to solve public problems before they get so (large and complex) that they invite radical solutions. (Burke) was a reformer. He wanted to be engaged in governing in a way that today’s right doesn’t do enough of ... There’s a kind of recoil from the particulars of governing, from policy, in a lot of the rhetoric on the right. They would do well to think (more) about policy.”
“How do we find a balance between order and liberty, between progress and tradition?” Levin asks. “We still face those questions today. (Looking at Burke and Paine discussing these problems) you can learn about ... the roots of your own beliefs, and your own arguments ... “ By looking at history, Levin says, in the ways that are difficult to do in the intensity of the moment ... “can calm down our disagreements a little ... and let us think about what it is that we are actually disagreeing about.”
At a moment of political disillusionment, a call for calm and self reassessment from the right? Something of a surprise for many citizens.