On the functional role of 'Woke;' Huntington, and Abstract, Imaginary Threats.

For various reasons, not the least because it's so rarely done, I am planning to teach a course on 'modern conservatism' this Fall. I've been canvassing folk on what to teach, and what I should read first. Friend of these digressions, Chris Brooke alerted me to Richard Bourke's (2018) "What is conservatism? History, ideology, party" (EJPT). I will surely return to this essay because it pressed a lot of my habitual buttons when I read contemporary history of political thought in its 'Cambridge' inflection. But that's for another time. Bourke, in turn, took me back to an essay (previously unfamiliar to me) by Samuel P. Huntington: Conservatism as an Ideology" (1957) published in APSR. Yes, that Huntington (1927–2008). I promise you that Huntington (ca 1957) can be rather interesting, even prescient (and no, it's not about the clash of civilizations).

If you are very impatient, feel free to skip the next three paragraphs. Bourke is a/the leading scholar of Burke today, and so I payed special attention to a section titled, "The Burke myth." Bourke claims that "the conservatism of Oakeshott and Huntington, like the liberalism of Hayek and Rawls, reflects an effort to fabricate an ideal, to stake out territory – to label in order to legitimise a particular system of values." (Sadly, Bourke is unfamiliar with my own work on philosophical prophecy.) In particular, Bourke treats Huntington as a kind of modern Humean who, first, thinks that liberty presupposes authority. And, second, "that a conservative programme was necessary for the survival of the tradition of liberal politics in America." On this reading, Huntington, then, criticizes those (like Russell Kirk) who understand themselves as 'conservative,' but who in their lack of understanding of American political culture end up in reactionary places. The role of Burke is, following Strauss' reading of Burke (according to Bourke), to legitimise "existing institutions without prescribing for them any particular content." Bourke goes on to challenge Huntington's reading and use of Burke. I return to that some other time. So much for Bourke on Huntington (well mostly).

Huntington distinguishes among three ways of understanding conservatism as "a system of ideas concerned with the distribution of political and social values and acquiesced in by a significant social group:" first, as an aristocratic response to the French revolution. Second, as "an autonomous system of ideas which are generally valid. It is defined in terms of universal values such as justice, order, balance, moderation." In fact, those political agents that adhere to this second way of understanding conservatism may well understand it as a "preferable political philosophy under any historical circumstances." (emphasis added) And third, a situationist one in which a "recurring type of historical situation in which a fundamental challenge is directed at established institutions and in which the supporters of those institutions employ the conservative ideology in their defense." (emphasis added.) Notice that, one can accept this three-fold taxonomy even if one is not a conservative. One can even think, as a dispassionate scholar, that one of these kinds of notions best describes conservatism in history while not endorsing it as a political agent or from a normative perspective. As Huntington observes the three kinds of conservatism posited by this taxonomy only differ analytically in relation "to the historical process." 

Now, Huntington himself thinks that if we look at the role and function that Burkean ideas play in conservative thinking then conservatism really amount to "the rationalization of existing institutions in terms of history, God, nature, and man." And this is why Huntington claims that the situationist analysis of conservatism (as a system of ideas) is the correct one. While it is hard to imagine this merely as an academic exercise, I reiterate the point that the internal logic of Huntington's argument is such that Huntington is not required to accept the moniker 'conservative' (in the situationist sense) for himself.

Rather, the significance of Huntington's argument is that conservatism is a set of strategies that are available to those who wish to defend existing institutions and cannot count on agreement over the values or goals immanent in those existing institutions. So, thus, conservatism is always a strategic, second best option in the context of fundamental political pluralism for those who wish to defend the institutional status quo to a considerable degree. This is compatible with Bourke's reading of Huntington, but it has an important component that Bourke does not comment on. Let me quote the evidence before I explain what I have in mind (and also why I emphasized 'fundamental'):

The nature of conservatism as an institutional ideology precludes any permanent and inherent affiliation or opposition between it and any particular ideational ideology. No necessary dichotomy exists, therefore, between conservatism and liberalism. The assumption that such an opposition does exist derives, of course, from the aristocratic theory of conservatism and reflects an overconcern with a single phase of western history at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries. The effort to erect this ephemeral relationship into a continuing phenomenon of political history only serves to obscure the fact that in the proper historical circumstances conservatism may well be necessary for the defense of liberal institutions. The true enemy of the conservative is not the liberal but the extreme radical no matter what ideational theory he may espouse. (46; emphases added)

On Huntington's approach, conservatism as a situational system of ideas is compatible with a number of institutional ideologies (including liberalism, but not restricted to it). It follows that conservatism is opposed to those (revolutionaries and radicals) who wish to overthrow the existing institutional arrangements dramatically. Huntington here uses the Schmittian term, 'enemy.' The use of 'enemy' is not an accident, because Huntington uses it again a number of times in a passage I'll quote and discuss below.

As an aside, Bourke overlooks the Schmittian conceptualization that Huntington deploys. Schmitt is mentioned by Bourke, but only in the context of Armin Mohler's early treatment of Schmitt as belonging to the strains "of conservatism with ‘radical’ tendencies."

That is, on Huntington's view the (situational) conservative draws on Burkean ideas in the context of a mortal challenge to the existing status quo. Interestingly enough, this challenge (the enemy) can be domestic or foreign. It follows from this analysis that absent such a challenge (real enemies) there is no real or authentic conservatism.

My present interest is not to defend the claim in the previous paragraph on behalf of Huntington. (Regular readers know I do not speak for conservatism.) But rather to explore what, in fact, according to Huntington's diagnosis, occurs in circumstances when such a mortal challenge is absent. As Bourke notes, Huntington is scathing about what he calls 'New Conservatives' of the sort that he associates with Russell Kirk. I quote (the second out of three criticisms):

Secondly, many New Conservatives are astonishingly vague as to the nature and source of the threat to what they wish to conserve. Historically, conservatism has always been the response to a direct and immediate challenge. Conservatives have not usually been in doubt as to the identity of their opponents. Among the New Conservatives, however, the enemy is seldom brought clearly into focus. To some, the foe is Liberalism, although little agreement exists as to the meaning of this term. To others, it is modernism, totalitarianism, popularism, secularism, or materialism. For some New Conservatives the enemy is irrationalism and to others it is rationalism. This confusion, of course, merely reflects the fact that the economic prosperity and political consensus of American society make any conservatism oriented towards domestic enemies absurdly superfluous. Hooker, Burke, and Calhoun fought real political battles against real political enemies. Lacking any flesh and blood social-political challenge, however, the New Conservatives fashion imaginary threats out of abstract "isms." (471; emphases added)

In my view, this passage -- much more than to teach that conservative ideals are needed to make liberalism survive Stateside (which does conclude Huntington's argument) -- is the real point of Huntington's (1957) essay. It is to diagnose how a kind of radicalism of a certain sort is generated, almost accidentally, in the context of pretty fundamental social peace. 

Contemporary readers will recognize how 'woke' (an abstract 'ism') plays the functional role today that Huntington diagnoses among the would be targets of his contemporary 'New Conservatives.' The point is not to trivialize. The fact that a threat is imaginary or invented, where in reality there might be at most a minor nuisance, does not mean one should be sanguine about the social and political consequences of very real mobilization against such a threat. Civil wars and other wars can be fought over absurdities (as realists like Spinoza and Hume emphasize).

A certain kind of radical is originated when those who associate the threat they themselves originally fashioned with the institutional status quo. This is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy in which radicalism is a possible side-effect from inventing an abstract ‘ism’ as a mortal threat and then associate that threat with the institutional status quo or ruling/social ‘elites.’ Again, our own relatively affluent age offers us many examples of this. Even if you think that Huntington is wrong about the nature of conservatism historically, he may be right about one mechanism of such radicalization.