Cultural Neutrality, Education and the Content of Conservatism

This reflection is the result of my thinking further on a recent Auron MacIntyre piece that was one of the topics of discussion during my recent interview with Gio Pennacchietti.

Yes, I gave an interview. Gio Pennacchietti of Gio’s Content Minded Corner (@giantgio …although his tweets are now protected so if you beg nicely and slip him a folded bill or three, maybe the bouncer will let you in) and I recorded a long conversation last week (three plus hours!) in which we talked about the “Austrian painter” (you will have to listen to find out why that is funny) among other things. Gio said it should be posted in the next few weeks, so subscribe and make sure you don’t miss it. We began something like 50 conversations, got into a topic and then veered off onto a tangent that led to a new conversation. We talked about Canada, the world’s first post national pseudo-country. Canada is not a thing. @Tinkzorg is correct about this. We talked about the near breakout of “the political” during last year’s trucker protest. We discussed Ellul, Schmitt, del Noce and much, much, more. We also talked about Auron MacIntyre’s recent piece: “Cultural Neutrality Is a Dangerous Lie—and it never existed.”

It’s a good piece and Auron is doing what he does best: “noticing” things. There is real value in “noticing,” as the left propaganda machine works hard to keep us from really seeing what is going on, seeing through their rhetorical tricks and the way they structure arguments so as to avoid having people object to their agenda. This article in particular pokes at the idea that the public school system is ideologically neutral. And while it is useful to “notice” what is happening on the left and to understand how our political system is actually working—people tend to react favorably to criticizing the left—one of the things desperately needed on the right is for it to figure out what it actually stands for. I am not sure that the right knows anymore what it stands for, other than being opposed to the left. That we are all agreed on. The left is bad, evil even. I have found that content which criticizes the left always does better than content which holds up a mirror and tries to point out that perhaps a bigger problem than the left is that the right has no real idea what it means to be conservative or right wing. Outside of a few internet ghettoes, much of the mainstream right really cannot put any meaningful content into the “conservative” bucket, so as to distinguish us from our so-called political opponents. Often, when you dig into so-called “conservative” ideas, they are often not actually, you know, “conservative.”

The problem is that identifying the content of conservatism inevitably involves looking closely at and challenging many of our core assumptions. Once you do start doing right-wing prolegomena, why the right loses to the left so frequently becomes much more clear: it doesn’t offer a clearly different option. At root, far too many on the right share most of the core cultural assumptions of the left. Once these are looked at more closely, they suggest a path forward, one which is unpalatable to many on the right. Another reason for not winning.

The main topic of Auron’s piece is education and its supposed ideological neutrality. His argument highlights, with specific regard to the public education system, the fallacy that our democratic institutions are content neutral, that they exist without ideology. They are unbiased mechanisms which merely allow political content to be expressed. In a similar vein, the public schooling system is the common property all of the citizenry and is thus supposed to teach without regard to any particular political or religious affiliation. The schools are meant to pass on the knowledge of basic “Americanism.” They are supposed to teach a “fact based” understanding of American history. Just the events, ma’am, the way they happened. They are supposed to teach “civics,” that is, how the nation’s shared institutions work. And they teach reading, writing, math, science and the like. Culturally neutral. Basic “American.”

In a sense, this understanding aligns well with how many conservatives think of themselves politically. They are the guardians of “basic Americanism.” They are see themselves as protecting the core of what America was intended to be. The “Tea Party” desire to reclaim the original intent and understanding of The Constitution and the original function of the institutions of government is very much at the heart of this sentiment. They look around at the current landscape and see a corruption of the original intent of America’s Founding Fathers. The path forward then is to cleanse America of these influences and get back the “true America.” If we can get rid of the corrupting influence of these left wing zealots, our institutions can go back to a politically neutral “Americanism.”

The problem is that this is not how “democracy” or education works. First off, we have to understand that democracy is itself not content neutral. Those who put in place democratic institutions, envisioned them being used by people to govern “democratically.” That is, they were not intended for the people to vote to end democracy and install a dictatorship. Democratic institutions were intended to be used democratically by a people who believed in democracy. Democratic institutions require a people who believe that the will of the people can be and should be and is best expressed through democratic institutions. It is a belief that through these institutions a people can discuss their own future and through that discussion can give expression of the truth of the general will. But for a people to do this, they have to be able to think and act “democratically.” The process whereby each generation learns to think democratically is a process of cultural formation. This is the educational process: the enculturation of the next generation of democratically capable citizens.

This was something Carl Schmitt observed about democracy. It is only possible for a people who can think democratically, who have a culture of democracy. How do people lean to understand and express their will? The people need to be educated into the process. They need to be taught how to understand their will as a people as well as how to express that will through democratic institutions. Democracy as an institution can only arise within a people that can think democratically, that has a culture of democracy. Those democratic institutions can only thrive and survive within a people who have been enculturated to be a democratic people. Once taught, they are then able to express their will democratically. This is not something which arises spontaneously, nor is it something innate in all human beings. It is a something which can only arise in a particular cultural context and must then be taught to succeeding generations.

Thus, notes Schmitt, democracy requires an “educational dictatorship” so as to form a democratic people. In order to sustain a democratic people, there must be a mandatory education process which imparts to them the culture of democracy. Does this seem like a contradiction to you? It is. There can be no other way. If you do not enculturate people to be culturally democratic, the ability for self-governance through democratic institutions will diminish within society.

“Only political power, which should come from the people’s will, can form the people’s will in the first place.”

We have to understand that the idea which many have, that the schools are not supposed to teach “beliefs,” that is, the content which matters most, they are just supposed to give them the tools they need to decide for themselves, is a fallacy. The decision to not teach content—core beliefs—is in itself a form of content. Just as not deciding between two choices is itself a choice, so too, trying to be content neutral is itself a content choice. The desire for institutional neutrality is both a fallacy and at the same time an abdication of the core purpose of education in a democratic society: to educate citizens that can act democratically. Just as democratic institutions are meant to be used democratically, so too, schools in a democratic society are there to enculturate the young into a democratic culture. Democracy requires an educational dictatorship. Even if you bristle at the term “educational dictatorship,” it captures well the idea that if you wish to have a “free” society built around democratic institutions, then it requires a mandatory involuntary education into the culture of democracy. This is the purpose of the so-called “neutral” public education system.

This, for me, is one of the reasons my wife and I, and now our own children, were not educated in the public school system. Instead, we make many sacrifices financially to send our children to private Christian schools which is part of their enculturation into the Christian faith. We do not want our children being raised with “public” values. That is the term my kids use for all the youths who are schooled in the public school system: “the public kids.” We recognize that this process of formation into the Christian worldview with its belief and moral system needs to be intentional. Approaching it with the idea that “we don’t want to force our faith on our children” is an abdication of our responsibility as parents. Of all the people whom we want to know Christ, our children are at the top of the list. So we do all we can to ensure that their foundational worldview is Christian. So, if you believe it important that your children grow up to embody everything you think an “American” should be, is it not incumbent upon you to do all you can to help that in the formation process? Is the schooling system not an important part of that process?

In free, democratic countries we carry around a bunch of ideas within us that undercut this process. We believe people should have the freedom to think and believe as they choose. No one should tell you how to think. You should be free to express your views, even if they are contrary to popular sentiment, even if they contradict the core founding principles of society. We bristle at the very idea of propaganda. It somehow seems wrong that an arm of the state, the public schools, would be instrumental in forming the thinking of our children. We want the schools to be neutral, to stay out of the business of shaping our children. Just teach them the basics and given them the tools they need, as if education can be a content free technology that can then be used however the student chooses once the process is completed. The problem is that this is not how technology works, nor is it how education works. You are always teaching something, some message, some content. One of the major choices you must make with education is what content are you going to teach. You are going to teach something, whether you like it or not, so what will that something be?

This is the question that the right has shied away from for a long time because it smacks of authoritarianism, of despotic brainwashing systems. We think of ourselves as the people who desire free thinking and free speech. We do not “brainwash” children. That is the stuff that communist dictators do. Americans do not brainwash their children. They just don’t. And because of this, Americans are losing America to the cultural Marxists who understand the need for an educational dictatorship and are quite willing to form your children. Its not just the schools, elementary, high school and university. It is also the media and entertainment industry. Almost every television show teaches left wing ideas in and through the stories they tell. They especially push the values of the sexual revolution. And as I discussed in a previous piece—The Culture War: It Really Is All about Sex—the major opponent in the culture war is not secular “Americanism,” but rather Christians and the institutions of the Christian faith. Why? Because enlightenment liberalism becomes a very different thing if is not planted within an overwhelmingly dominant Christian culture.

Within a Christian culture, freedom is the freedom “for” virtue. Once the Christian culture is dissolved, freedom is about personal choices, being freed “from” all unchosen bonds. No one telling you what to do or how to act. You are free to make your own personal choices. You are autonomous. You are free. You can be anything you want to be. You can pursue any path you want to take. No one has the right to tell you what to do. You are free. You are an American.

Unfortunately, this is an understanding of “freedom” that would be unrecognizable to the Founders and the culture of their day. Yet, this kind of autonomous individualism without limits is what the ideas of enlightenment liberalism look like once the deposit of Christian culture has been used up and spent without being renewed and replenished. One might argue that enlightenment liberalism sprang out of and is a natural extension of Christian ideas; or one might argue, as I do, that enlightenment liberalism was, and is, fundamentally hostile to the Christian faith. Either way, liberalism as liberalism cannot survive if it is not planted in and nourished in the soil of the Christian faith. Without Christian teaching, the idea of freedom as freedom from our base sinful urges, from original sin, from bondage to Satan, so that we might live lives of virtue and obedience to the will of God as instantiated within his creation order, cannot be sustained.

Either way, we are getting at the nub of the problem and why merely “noticing” the left’s so-called sins against America by pushing their “woke” agenda in the schools is not enough. People on the right need to get over the idea that the things the left are doing are somehow “anti-American.” To call them “communist” or “socialist” allows you to dismiss these ideas as somehow foreign and alien. Maybe they are. But at the same time, the labels are dismissive. The left does not view itself as embodying ideas that are alien to Americanism. Rather, they see themselves as presenting the true understanding of what America is supposed to be. They are realizing the true America. How do we know that this is what they are doing? Well, their ideas resonate with Americans. They use the language of freedom and democracy in ways that many in the country find credible. You might counter that their control of media and the institutions of education have allowed them to brainwash people and corrupt their understanding of America. And now you understand. This is exactly what Schmitt meant when he talked about how democracy needs an educational dictatorship in order to form citizens who can think, feel and act democratically. The left has embraced the inner contradictions of democracy and the right needs to do the same. But they fight an uphill battle.

Why is this? Because the right embraced the idea of proceduralism (David Frenchism…fighting for the right of trannies to hold drag queen story hour because that is what freedom loving people do) and the cultural neutrality of institutions, it allowed the left to slowly and quietly take over all of the institutions of media and learning. Any attempts by conservatives to do the same will be branded as authoritarian, or ham-handed, or an infringement on artistic freedom of speech or some such. Because the left was allowed free reign to take over and dominate all the major institutions of cultural production and formation they have now become its owners and guardians. They get to define what it means to be an American. And because of this, most Americans have embraced left wing ideas.

The one exception, and this grows weaker all the time, is Christianity. Even if they cannot eliminate Christianity, they try to subvert it and subordinate it to the dominant culture, either through an embrace of the sexual revolution or through the influence of managerialism and a market mentality (the church growth movement). As I have argued elsewhere, because the left now possesses the main organs of cultural production and formation, they are the “guardians” of American culture. They use this to maintain, to conserve, their power and position. This means, however much they may protest, that conservatives are reacting against the left-wing mainstream, official understanding of American and what it means. This forces conservatives into the “reactionary” role.

The danger of the reactionary position is that it typically embraces a “past-utopianism.” This type of thinking looks back into the past and sees a particular moment in the past as instantiating a kind of utopia. It may not have been perfect, but it was the best things are going to get. The prescription, then, is to sweep away the present order so as to replace it with the past utopia. This is the essence of the reactionary position. It is the mirror of the future utopian who wishes to sweep away the present order to make way for the glorious future. The reactionary simply replaces the glorious future with the glorious past.

What is the alternative to revolution and reaction? It is to realize that the past is not something of the past, closed off to us, but rather present to us in tradition and in unchangeable transcendental values. The idea of “tradition” says that there is a living cultural deposit that can be nurtured today. The present order does not need to be swept away. Tradition, though, is more than merely the ideas of the past brought to bear on the present. It is a recognition that there is a timeless, transcendent, living set of ideas against which our present actions can be judged and measured. There is a supernatural order that presses and impresses itself upon the material.

There are those who would try to access this without religion, a kind of “secular transcendence.” This is the generally the project of those today who would try to revive and apply the ideas of the Classical period to today. The “Forms,” in that regard, become an a-religious common deposit that all of us can access to provide the kind of metaphysical superstructure, a tradition, that can then revive our culture and society, giving a set of standards by which to live. The problem with this is that these ideas are not mere technologies that can be abstracted and applied at will to any new situation. The kind of ideas that have the power to shape a culture always have the force of religious devotion. People would need to really believe in Classical paganism as a living religious system. Not as mere myths, but as an actual living religious belief. I just don’t see this happening. Whatever value there is in Classical thought, it cannot anchor a cultural revival. So where do we find a living transcendent religious belief system? That is correct: Christianity. I suppose one could argue that Judaism, Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism could also be embraced, but these are, other than Judaism, also culturally alien religions. I would argue that to embrace them would be the end of America as America.

But what are we opposing? What are key components of the value system of the left? It is all fine and dandy to talk about renewing the Christian foundation of America, but what are the key ideas of the left and what then would be the conservative, Christian, alternatives?

One of the main foundational ideas of a democratic society is that of “equality.” In theory, every citizen who is included in the franchise and has a vote, is intended to carry the same weight, the same value, as a person as every other person who is included in the franchise. It can be argued that we have equality before the law, even if personally and materially our situations differ. Once we are before a judge or stand in the ballot box, each citizen has the same value as any other and must be treated the same. In reality, we know that equality is not a thing. We differ in so many ways that whether it is equality of opportunity or equality of outcome, whether it is equality before the law, and even the equality of the ballot boxes they are all fictions.

Is the right in the position of arguing against the democratic idea itself? Contained within the democratic idea is some understanding of equality. Can the right recover a living idea of democratic equality, one person one vote, which can meaningfully counter the left’s stated quest for equal opportunity and outcomes for all? It is a powerful idea which they apply hypocritically and cynically to gain power and advantage for themselves. But, nevertheless, it is an idea that they can clearly use in the media and in the educational system as a weapon against the dark and malign intents of the right whom, they argue, wish to keep people down because of their biases and prejudices and their secret desire for hierarchy. If the left are the guardians of “equality;” then by their definition, and they define this through the media and the schools, conservatives are thus advocates for inequality.

What is the right’s position on the democratic idea of “equality?” Is the right for inequality? From a propaganda position, the right in a bind. Are they still in favor of the democratic impulse that all people, all citizens, can and should participate equally in a democratic society? If so, what does that look like? If not, the right has to be prepared to defend a position that will be attacked as anti-democratic and by default un-American. How is the right’s position then more American than that of the left? This is not entirely clear to the common man. “We are for equality, but not that kind of equality,” is a tough sell. It is the left’s conception that broadly captures the common understanding, even when people reject the extremes of quotas and the mandated equality of outcome. This a problem for the right.

What is the right going to do about the idea of “progress?” Does it believe in scientific progress? Technical progress? Economic progress? If it is willing to throw its support behind these ideas, why would it not be willing to give its support to social progress? Following on the democratic ideal, should the right not be in favor of ideas which promote greater personal freedom, greater autonomy, greater personal choice. Should the right not be for freedom? Isn’t “freedom” what America is all about?

Or are should there be limits to freedom? Should there be limits to progress? Should science be limited? Should the market and the economy be limited? Should limits be put on technology? Should limits be put on personal choices like sex and sexuality? Should there be limits on speech? If so, by what authority should they be limited? There is no real mechanism within liberalism itself which can generate these limits, unfortunately.

In today’s political parlance, both left and right have embraced a fairly limit free approach to science and technology. In many ways the left has embraced the power of technology and technique to manage “social” progress. The left has typically wanted to place limits upon the market for reasons of fairness and equality. The right has typically wanted a free and unencumbered market. When it comes to personal choices, both left and right want a fair degree of personal autonomy. For the most part, both left and right want social progress, the difference being one of pace. The left pushes forward and the right urges caution. The more that one puts an examining eye upon left and right, the more you realize that they are more or less fighting over which form of progressive liberalism will be dominant.

No one really want limits. Or if things are going to be limited, they want people to limit themselves. But the question remains, what can limit the ideas of liberalism? The only force capable of doing such a thing must draw from something outside liberalism, from a real transcendent moral order, a supernatural, metaphysical moral order. From this order the authority can be drawn to say, “no, that is far enough.” What belief system can provide access to a living relationship with the transcendent moral order? Correct: Christianity.

I would argue that the only way to “save” liberal democracy is to subsume it under the authority of Christian teaching. This creates a problem. I would argue that one of the intentions of liberalism from the very beginning was to throw off the authority of the church, and with it Christianity, and its moral emphasis on boundaries and limits.

This brings us back to teaching. Is the right prepared to subsume liberal democracy under the authority of Christian teaching? Are Christians prepared and able to reclaim the living heritage of their tradition, grounded in a transcendent moral order as distinct and separate from liberalism, holding it accountable, willing to place limits upon freedom, choice, personal autonomy and rights so as to better conform society to the transcendent and eternal? The imposition of limits also means that the content of teaching at all levels will have to conform to these limits. Democratic, scientific, and intellectual debate will occur within these limits. Media and entertainment production will occur within the limits of this transcendent order. Economic activity will occur within the limits of this transcendent order. Technology will be implemented within its limits. Democracy and even liberalism itself will occur within these limits.

There really is no other way. The secular right will either be so ineffectual because it essentially shares all the same ideas as the secular left, or it will fall into the trap of embracing some form of atheistic past utopianism, but without real faith in the myths it is reviving. Essentially Fascism 2.0. Sweep away the present order and, return to the mythic era of 1776. Or the mythic era of 1950. Or 1990. Its all the same impulse. All doomed to the same fate. Whatever force does challenge the left for dominance must be able to provide a living content that can then be taught in the schools. It can be the sub-message in the entertainment industry the way that all stories are now all liberal stories. They will be stories informed by the living faith which Christians have in a transcendent moral order, the order that is the basis of the authority to teach and shape culture. There is really no other living belief system which can rival that of the dominant secular left. This is what the culture war is about. This is what the idea of a value neutral secular state is all about. It is the attempt to get Christians to give up the culture war before it starts. This really is a battle between two value systems, two faiths. Right now secular liberalism and its belief in “Progress” has the upper hand. It wants to destroy its main rival: the living Christian faith. And while small temporary gains can be made by those who embrace secularism at opposing the excesses of secular liberalism, in the end they share all the same basic fundamental principles. It must be Christianity that stops liberalism. It was always destined to get to this point. There can be only one.