While Hegel’s political philosophy has been attacked on the left by republican democrats and on the right by feudalist reactionaries, his apologists see him as a liberal reformer, a moderate [bold mine-DL] who theorized about the development of a free-market society within the bounds of a stabilizing constitutional state. This centrist view has gained ascendancy since the end of the Second World War, enshrining Hegelwithin the liberal tradition [bold mine-DL]. ~From the description of Renato Cristi’s Hegel on Freedom and Authority

Cristi is also author of “Hegel’s Conservative Liberalism”.  I cite scholarship on this question, since I assume that people who spend their lives studying Hegel might know a thing or two I don’t.  That is why scholars, like bloggers, make citations in the first place–to recognise that there are subjects on which others are greater authorities. 

Karl Popper, interesting, brilliant and fine man that he was, was not a Hegel scholar and was retrojecting onto Hegel the sort of exaltation of the state that he rightly found so terrifying in his own time.  He was not alone in this, but he was wrong to do this.  In mid-20th century, support for any kind of monarchy was likely to throw your credentials as a political liberal into doubt.  Because a constitutional monarchist is, almost by definition, some kind of liberal, as only a liberal or Whig would dare to suggest that the monarch be subject to the limits of a constitution (especially a written constitution), the only thing one might say about my description of Hegel is that it was a bit redundant. Pretty much all constitutional monarchists were liberals (in the 19th century, European sense), though not all liberals were constitutional monarchists.  It is possible to find in 19th century liberalism evidence of a dangerous centralising and “rationalising” tendency (demonstrated by Austrian liberals, Red Republicans and Garibaldian revolutionaries), and it is possible to criticise 19th century liberals for their close attachment to nationalism.  What you cannot do is deny that people who were plainly political liberals were, indeed, political liberals. 

Of course, when I referred to Hegel as a “moderately liberal constitutional monarchist,” a statement that is actually true whether or not some people want to accept it, I was referring to the liberalism of his day.  What started all of this was my criticism of the lumping in of Hegel into a discussion of so-called “liberal fascism,” since Hegel was neither a modern liberal nor was he a proto-fascist. 

What is strange about all of this is that Hegel’s 19th century liberalism does not actually make him look that good to me.  However, there is still a big difference between sympathising with the principles of 1789 and believing in a totalising, all-intrusive state.  That said, Hegel’s sympathy for the principles of 1789 ought to make him bad enough for traditional conservatives today that no one should need to resort to trying to pin later totalitarian ideas on him.  If you want to make the argument that 1789 led inexorably to 1917 and 1933, that would be an argument for why being a 19th century liberal is not necessarily the most desirable thing to have been.  However, for good or ill, that is what Hegel was.

Update: It is also worth noting that Hegel, while he did approve of the principles of 1789, was not an uncritical admirer of the Revolution.  Similarly, it is possible for Hegel to be a liberal without being uncritically accepting of all elements in natural rights-based liberalism.  He also had some criticism for the Enlightenment.  The more I am made to think about it, “moderately liberal” sounds more accurate all the time.

In Canada they have two national languages, but that’s one reason Canada often seems silly. They don’t even know what language they dream in. ~Peggy Noonan

With respect to Ms. Noonan, who has been pretty good, especially on immigration, in the last year or so, this is not right.  To justify our desire for English language, we should not have to run other nations in the process.  Their ways are not our ways, and that is fine.  The important point here should not be that every nation must have one and only one language, but that there should be one official and national language that provides a common means of communication and a source of common identity.  There are fictitious, meaningless nation-states whose linguistic divisions signal a deeper divide of culture, ethnicity and politics.  Take Belgium, for one.  There are others that have a common history and a reason for existing as a common, albeit federal, relatively decentralised, polity that are not the products of accidents of European great power politics or the Treaty of Versailles.  Canada is such a nation.  I understand and appreciate the Quebecois separatist view, but I have long since matured out of the weird American need to belittle the Canadian nation, which, strange as it may sound to American ears, does exist, as if we were so insecure in our own nationality that we needed Canada as our whipping boy to make us feel more American.  An American patriot does not need to disdain Canada to be more at home with who he is.  Canadians will sort out their internal debate on their own.  There is nothing necessarily “silly” about having multiple languages in a polity (it may impractical, but it is not silly–in terms of maintaining the peace, it can be the soul of wisdom in certain situations).  What is silly is pretending that a centralised, uniform nation and a mutiplicity of languages can coexist without any difficulty.

The fall of communism hasn’t created a global community of democracies. It turns out the Russians don’t want to be like us. The Arabs don’t want help from infidels. The Iraqis’ democratic moment has turned into sectarian chaos. The Palestinians have turned theirs into a civil war. ~David Brooks

I am reminded of Sir Steven Runciman’s claim in his history of the Crusades that the the conflict in the late twelfth century leading up through 1204 between the Byzantines and Latins was a good example of how cultural tolerance was most successful when cultures relatively rarely interacted with one another.  Proximity and conflict tend to coincide.  The idea that increased communication, contact and awareness of other peoples would lead to greater integration, unity and acceptance is fantastical.  Greater integration also involves increased pressures caused by close proximity; greater communication includes the possibility of fatal miscommunication.

I can understand why this idea is attractive and tempting, but that is no excuse for believing it to be true or finding it to be surprising.  For instance, is anyone surprised by this:

The globalization of trade has sparked nationalistic backlashes.

Of course it has.  Globalisation involves a certain loss of control, a loss of power and, yes, a loss of sovereignty.  That is why a great many people very reasonably object to it.  Those who are interested primarily in securing the interests of their nation are going to take a dim view of a process that inevitably deems the claims of the nation as secondary at best.  Despite everything he has just said, Brooks adds:

It could be we just need to work harder to overcome racism and tribalism.

As if a lack of effort was the problem.  It is in the compulsion to “overcome” boundaries and the hard-working efforts to “overcome” racism and tribalism that the origins of the reactions against these efforts are to be found.  This overcoming, whatever its intent, appears to many people to be an attempt to obliterate their identity, their distinctiveness, their independence after a fashion.  This “overcoming” appears to them to be a conquest by hostile forces.  Nothing has so retarded the gradual change in attitudes of any one people towards other peoples as the concerted efforts of their elites to make them accept other people.  It has in some formal ways hastened technical integration, but ensured that social integration, if it will ever happen, will be deferred for generations. 

Brooks offers a more plausible alternative:

But it could be the dream of integration itself is the problem. It could be that it was like the dream of early communism — a nice dream, but not fit for the way people really are.

And again:

People say they want to live in diverse integrated communities, but what they really want to do is live in homogenous ones, filled with people like themselves.

My impression is that most people say this because they have been trained from the time they were old enough to believe that this was a basic moral truth.  They do not actually see much value in diversity itself, but believe that to deny the value of diversity is to be a bad person.  If they say that diversity is what they want, it is because they have been told that this is what they are supposed to want.  The idea that there is something acceptable, indeed normal and understandable, about this disinterest in diversity is still fairly controversial.  It will take another generation before it is once again entirely unsurprising.

So that graph [of oil prices] looks like this {draws a ‘V’}.  So what I did is I went to the Freedom House freedom index….Yeah, Freedom House, they actually index freedom in countries….Free and fair elections, newspapers, NGOs, political participation, and I overlaid the Freedom House freedom index on the oil price graph for four countries: Iran, Nigeria, Russia and Venezuela.  What does that look like?  Well, the freedom index for these petrol-estates, states highly dependent on oil for their GDP, looks like this {draws the top of a triangle}…Oh, well that’s interesting.  See, the price of oil looks like that {draws V again} and the freedom index looks like that {draws top of triangle again}.  What does that tell you?  It tells you that the price of oil and the pace of freedom operate in an inverse correlation.  ~Tom Friedman 

So my offhand response to that would be: why on earth would you start a war in the middle of the Near East, thus driving up oil prices to $70 per barrel?  I have no idea.  I’m sure Tom knows.  Just ask him in another six months.

Friedman actually makes a moderately intelligent argument that oil-rich countries are lousy candidates for democratisation.  Though he does not say this, he might have added that natural resource-rich countries are able to live off profits from exports in such a way that enterprise and invention are discouraged and do not have the proper incentives.  These countries do not need to make things and create wealth, because they are already awash in natural wealth that other people wish to possess.  It is a lack of extensive supplies of natural resource, within reason, that spurs cultures to become more favourable to enterprise and invention. 

Oil is a buttress for state revenues and state power.  Every state that relies heavily on it for its revenues tends towards the authoritarian and autocratic.  Therefore, you would have to be some sort of unusually foolish person to think that Iraq, with one of the largest proven oil reserves on earth, would be an ideal candidate for democratisation and a model for the rest of the region.  Your name might well be Thomas Friedman.

Profiles in bad precedent-citing:

When we talk about combating global warming, what are we talking about?  We’re talking about changing the weather.  We’re talking about changing the weather.  If we pull it off, it would be the biggest project mankind has ever undertaken since the Tower of Babel.  We’re talking about changing the weather. ~Tom Friedman (via Ross)

Someone get this man a copy of Genesis!

Did Fred once lobby for an abortion “rights” group (via Ambinder) to try to get the “gag rule” restriction eased?  Members of the group say yes, and Fred, naturally, denies it.  Hm…who has more reason to deceive?  I was somewhat skeptical, but then this part of the article persuaded me that Fred had done the deed:

At one of the meals, she recalled, Thompson re-enacted a cowboy death scene from one of his movies.

That sounds like something Fred would do. 

This will probably not seriously hurt Fred’s appeal with GOP primary voters, since that appeal is based on so much smoke and mirrors in the first place.  It isn’t as if people are rallying around him because he is such a great champion of conservative causes, but rather because he is simply not as bad as the major competition.  In the end, he could have saved himself a lot of grief by admitting that he once did do this lobbying work, but subsequently viewed the matter very differently.  Instead of having it be a blot on his record with conservatives, he could have used it to show the sharp contrast between his former lobbying and his voting record, which is actually fairly good.  This will obviously not help with pro-lifers, who can hardly be thrilled that he blew of a big NRLC meeting and went overseas to spout Liz Cheney’s propaganda in Britain instead.

I can think of lots of people to blame for the current polarization, but that’s not the point. ~David Ignatius

That’s right.  We wouldn’t want to find out who is responsible for the current state of affairs, since that would entail making criticisms of the responsible people, which could be divisive and offensive to someone (especially those being criticised).  Having discovered the responsible party, you might get carried away and start proposing alternatives, and before you know it you might start organising with people who agreed with your alternatives to…implement them!  If we go down that road, we might as well just surrender to the jihadis now, since we can’t possibly operate an adversarial representative government and combat jihadism at the same time.  Thank goodness we have Ignatius to save us from partisanship, which is surely a fate worse than death.

If you believe the Bush presidency is a failure, what then?  Do you delight in whacking him like a piñata for the next 18 months with your only objective a Democratic blowout victory in the 2008 election? ~Cal Thomas

That would hardly be my objective.  As anyone knows, the object of whacking a piñata is to get at the delicious candy inside, plus the visceral satisfaction of the whacking itself.  I’m not sure what the equivalent of the candy would be in this metaphor (impeachment?), but just striking the piñata for the sake of breaking it seems like a decent option at present.  Thomas seems to have written this column under the odd impression that Democrats are the only ones who think Mr. Bush is a failed President. 

Thomas continues:

Politics has always been a contact sport, but in the past – even during difficult times – there were those who transcended partisanship, putting the country first. In her book “Team of Rivals,” Doris Kearns Goodwin writes of how Abraham Lincoln brought his severest critics into his administration to work with him, not against him, for the promotion of the general welfare.   

Well, actually, he was working for the promotion of the war effort against the South and not exactly “the general welfare,” and he didn’t do a lot of transcending partisanship, since he only brought Andrew Johnson onto the ticket in 1864 because he feared he faced the real danger of losing the election.  Notoriously, many of his early top generals were obviously political favourites chosen for their connections to big Republican pols and not for their ability to command men in battle.  That was part of the system, but hardly one that resulted in success.  The Cabinet was made up of Lincoln’s political opponents within the Republican Party–he did not appoint Vallandigham to be Secretary of War!  The members of the Cabinet may have disagreed with each other (Seward and Chase forming one particularly bitter pair of opposites), and they may have had old grudges against Lincoln, but this was the sort of transcending of partisanship that would allow John Warner and Trent Lott to work side by side.  Lincoln bringing in Seward is the sort of bold aisle-crossing that would have President Bush embracing John McCain (which he already did, after a fashion).  Lincoln may or may not have been a smart politician, but I have to wonder whether his example is one we want to follow.  I tend to think that when you start ordering the killing of large numbers of people whom you claim as your fellow citizens, you have rather failed as a leader of the nation.  Whatever else he was, he was definitely not David Broder with a beard. 

There then follows, in classic High Broder style, a lament about the division of the nation:

This is a foreign notion in our day of 24/7 cable news, talk radio, fundraisers and polarizers. These exist and profit from stirring the pot, never achieving harmony or consensus.  Each has a vested financial, political and career interest in division, not unity.

Thus spake the professional pundit and frequent guest on FoxNews.

Thomas goes on:

While that might make bloggers feel good and occupy their time until the next election, does it strengthen the nation against multiple threats?

Well, if it can put some pressure on Congress to check the abuses of the executive and help curtail his reckless foreign policy, which is in turn adding to the dangers our country faces, it may do just a little bit of good.  Turn that question around: have the reliable apologists of the administration been preventing the correction of erroneous policies?  Have they helped perpetuate dangerous and foolish courses of action?  Actually, whatever the tremendous flaws with their arguments, they have been engaging in something we in a free society like to call “speech” and “political argument.”  Supporters of bad policies, especially wars that have lost the support of the public, will often look to stymy, discourage and shut down a wide-ranging debate on the policies themselves and on almost anything else.  The lack of unity and consensus is not taken as a sign that the policies lack sufficient public backing and are therefore being carried out in express defiance of the voters, but rather as evidence that we, the citizens, are somehow failing the government and the goals the government has set forth for its policies.  What these arguments miss is that the government’s goals will never be achieved if they lack the support of the public, and the public will (ideally) withhold that support if the goals are unrealistic, misguided or fundamentally wrong.  When your allies are riding roughshod over the land and calling all of the shots while the opposition cowers in the corner, there were no great cries against the evils of partisanship from Mr. Bush’s supporters.  Back then it was taken as given that the fierce partisan style of the President was part of his “leadership” and it was natural and appropriate to act in this way.  Now that GOP triumphalism has come back to bite them, some are taking shelter in the cave of “centrism,” compromise and consensus.  So enamoured of bipartisanship has Thomas become that he even supports the appointment of blue-ribbon panel called “Americans United”!  Eat your heart out, Unity ’08.

He comes to the conclusion:

Assembling a group of respected Republicans and Democrats, bypassing the rank partisanship of the Democratic congressional leadership, and declaring his final months in office will be dedicated solely to attempting to do what’s right for the country and not for Republican advantage in the next election might – if successful – have the incidental benefit of helping Republicans in 2008.

The problem is that Mr. Bush believed that this is what he was doing with the immigration bill.  It was magnificently bipartisan, uniting establishment figures of left and right like nothing else, and Mr. Bush evidently sincerely believed that it was the “right thing” the country, since he was willing to say that opponents of the bill “didn’t want” to do the “right thing” for the country.  No one, except perhaps Mr. Bush, Mel Martinez and Karl Rove, could have confused the immigration bill with something designed to help Republican prospects in the future.  It was exactly what Cal Thomas calls for today–and it was repudiated by a broad (and bipartisan!) majority of the U.S. Senate.  The problem with Mr. Bush’s policies is not that they have been too partisan, but that they have been bad policies.  No amount of backslapping, “improved communications” and aisle-crossing will change the reality that Mr. Bush is simply out of sync with the country on many of his major policies.

Update: On the same theme of “why can’t we all just get along?”, I give you David Ignatius.

Steve Benen at the Monthly comments:

I don’t doubt that Ignatius means well, but his argument is lazy and hard to take seriously.  It’s easy to urge Americans to get together; it’s a challenge to lay out an agenda for them to rally behind. It’s simple to tell people to stop arguing; it’s hard to talk about solutions. The column reads like Broderism at its least persuasive.

Which is pretty unpersuasive.

But in fact, the real Africa is quite a bit different. And the problem with all this Western stereotyping is that it manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of some current victories, fueling support for patronizing Western policies designed to rescue the allegedly helpless African people while often discouraging those policies that might actually help. ~William Easterly

Prof. Easterly is on a roll this month.  His Foreign Policy article on development ideology was excellent (my comments are here), and he offers a much-needed corrective to the common media portrait of Africa (starring mainly Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe).  As Prof. Easterly supposes in his latest, the developmentalists have an institutional interest in exaggerating the nature and scope of the problem (much as governments have an interest in exaggerating security threats, etc.).  The larger the problem is, the more important, necessary and powerful they will become (or at least this is the hope), so they have a real incentive to continue to deem all of Africa to be a failure by their standards.  That in turn makes the developmentalists that much more relevant to “fixing” a problem that is already being addressed, albeit at less-than-miraculous speed.  Then comes the revelation that the developmentalists really don’t want you to hear:

In truth, Africans are and will be escaping poverty the same way everybody else did: through the efforts of resourceful entrepreneurs, democratic reformers and ordinary citizens at home, not through PR extravaganzas of ill-informed outsiders.

Just imagine–a world with no NGO junkets, no meddlesome international bankers and bureaucrats, no self-important actors who are out to save mankind!  Okay, let’s not get carried away.  Those things will all continue, but if African nations are fortunate they will not have these things inflicted on them.  These nations have been poorly served by the way in which development lending has been done and the way in which foreign aid has been distributed.  These nations will be the ones that achieve increased prosperity, provided that the developmentalists do not sabotage it, retard it or discourage it through their historically unsuccessful policies.

Still, the sour complaints and dire prognoses of 1992–oh, my God, the budget deficit will do us in!–were quickly overtaken by events. ~Bill Kristol

Yes, including such “events” as the 1994 election of a Congress that began to impose some of the fiscal restraint that ideally comes from divided government.  Deficit doomsayers may have been overwrought in 1992, but it was the Perot campaign pushing the deficit to the middle of the debate and the public’s support for balanced budgets that began to head off any potential woes of running deficits year after year.  Relative fiscal restraint combined with the post-’91 recession recovery led to the fat years of the last decade.  It didn’t just come out of nowhere, but was the result of a number of people drawing attention to a problem and attempting, however fitfully and half-heartedly at times, to address it.  Optimists are great ones for minimising the problems that can actually be solved while undertaking impossible projects to reorder entire societies, which is why they are doubly useless when it comes to running a polity.  

Kristol continues:

What’s more, the fear of many conservatives that we might be at the mercy of unstoppable forces of social disintegration turned out to be wrong.

Well, according to the Iraq standard of social disintegration, I suppose they turned out to be wrong.  In other respects, most of the things that troubled social conservatives in 1992 are still around and have become in some cases worse than they were.  Where there was greater concern about cultural rot and crime in the early ’90s–because these seemed to be and actually were the more salient problems of the time–fears of eroding national identity and security, both physical and economic, contribute to very real anxieties.  Some social problems have become less severe in the last fifteen years, but they nonetheless remain great.  Of course, Kristol is an unusually bad one to assess whether or not these claims were vindicated, since he did not accept many of them back then, either, and he is instinctively inclined to find pessimistic views unpersuasive.