Abu Hatem أبو حاتم

Eric Voegelin (d. 1901-85) was a major figure in the history of American conservative intellectualism. While not himself a classical conservative, Voegelin discussed the main theme of classical conservativism which was totalitarian movements and the revolutionary mentality.

Classical conservatives have always noted that the revolutionary mentality has never brought anything except evil. The intentions of revolutionaries to improve society are almost never realized. The French revolution brought Robespierre and Jacobin tyranny followed by the political instability of five French republics and two empires. The Russian revolution brought about the communist Lenin and the worst tyrant in the history of the world in Stalin. There are other countless examples - those who have attempted to establish revolutionary change such as Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s fascist Italy, and others have generally caused great distress.

The opposition to revolution is the bedrock of classical conservatism, nothing more and nothing less. Unlike other political persuasions, conservatism is not an ideology aiming to establish any type of perfect society. Conservatives are marked by their opposition to revolutionary change in favor of gradual and organic evolutionary change shaped by the mechanism of tradition.

Voegelin discussed the origin of totalitarian movements and the origin of such pathological ideologies as had been evident during the second world war. In his studies of totalitarianism, Voegelin found the problems of ideology as spiritually rooted in nature and that the pathologies of modern ideologues and revolutionaries beared great similarities to the Christian heresy of gnosticism. Voegelin’s analysis cannot only be applied to other countries and past and present movements, but also to the modern idea and modern mindset itself. Indeed, many have seen the neoconservative fervent urge at spreading democracy and free markets throughout the world as exactly the type of gnosticism which Voegelin referred to.

A note on Voegelin: Voegelin taught the current Pope Benedict amongst others. However, Voegelin made one major error which the conservative movement has universally condemned him for: he believed that it was impossible for man to know the truth about God (he said each society constructs its own order to make meaning, this is relativist type thinking which was universally rejected!).

Voegelin’s analysis of the gnostic is that the gnostic mentality went through many stages. Because God has created this worldly existence imperfect, and has challenged the believer with upholding the tests of faith, man experiences what Christian theologians such as Blaise Pascal amongst other Western thinkers called “the tensions of existence.” The tensions of existence were a central theme of Voegelin’s. Muslims do not truly have the same concept of the “tensions of existence,” to my knowledge, yet there is a similar concept the hardship of the believer’s living in this world, as the Prophet Muhammad said “this world is the prison of the believer.”

The tensions of existence are described as the hardships of man at enduring in the imperfect world which he lives. Since the world is a mix of both good and bad, and is not a heavenly afterlife, the tensions of existence are felt from time to time by those who experience this world, especially its hardships. We Muslims would say that the hardships and tensions of existence are a manifestation of God’s attribute of jalal or majesty and if patiently endured would be the gateway to Divine Love and Beauty as well as humbleness of the self. Voegelin described the “tensions of existence,” as arising in gnostic pathologies from the difficulty which occurs from enduring in this world.

Unable to be patient through the tensions of existence, the gnostic escapes through self-delusion. He does not blame his own sinful soul for evil and problems but instead blames God or the world. The Christian gnostics were angry for God for creating the world this way. The modern gnostics are angry at the state of the world as well. They attempt to do what Voegelin called immanentizing the eschaton or making real that which is transcendent. They would like to create heaven on earth and achieve their Utopian goals and dreams. The gnostic creates the delusion that one can achieve the “perfect society” the “heaven on earth” which they desire in this world. In the process and quest of creating heaven on earth however they create hell on earth.

The gnostic self-delusion which relieves them from the tensions of existence becomes a force for immense evil in the world. The gnostic constructs his own reality, believes in his own political and secular religions, and attempts to achieve his Utopian dreams. This what we find manifested throughout modernity - Voegelin strongly rebukes the spiritual death of man which results from his gnostic desire to achieve temporary spiritual relief. Perhaps the strongest example of modern gnosticism is in the abhorrent legacy of communism which constructed its own reality and in the quest for achieving what Marx called “communism,” led to the destruction of society, religion, property, and the killing of millions. The sad chapter of history named communism will be forever known as the paramount example of the gnostic delusion.

The Holy Father Pope Benedict has discussed this as well. When still Cardinal Razniger of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict claimed that two pathologies were destroying the world: nihilism and fundamentalism. Nihilism in its rejection of truth itself, while fundamentalism is the arrogance that one has the authority to sin against others in the cause of the truth. Both extremisms are gnostic pathologies. In the modern world today we find soulless modernity believing in no sense of morality except for the efficiency and utility of social engineering in providing others happiness; religion is fought against and rejected because it takes the place of utilitarian social engineering. On the other side we find extremists in religion, so-called “revolutionaries” who in their quest for the perfect Godly state on earth endorse unjust and sinful methods.

The neoconservatives in the quest for a perfect peaceful liberal democratic order fall into the gnostic fantasy. The Christian fundamentalists who urge war on all Muslim states to achieve a Christian world, or as Ann Coulter says killing their leaders and converting them to Christianity, fall into the gnostic fantasy. The Jewish extremists who urge genocide in the quest for a perfect Jewish Israeli state fall into the gnostic fantasy. Muslim extremists who attempt to achieve the perfect Utopian “Islamic state” through suicide bombings, and terrorism, fall into the gnostic fantasy.

It is for this reason that the classical conservatives have always opposed revolution. There may be tyranny in the world, but I will take a tyrant leader any day than one led by a gnostic revolution. It is appropriate here to repeat the counsel of the venerable Joseph De’Maistre, “The Counter-Revolution will not be a reverse revolution, but the reverse of a Revolution.”

To be sure there is much good in the world, and being good and using good means can spread goodness in the world. Conservatives have always understood this. Burke said famously that “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” However good means must be used to achieve righteous goals and the natural rights and inherent dignity of all human beings must be respected. The Islamic maxim states “good means must be used to establish good ends.” Conservatives have long found gradual evolutionary change to be more beneficial than revolutionary change. Specifically if change is established through sinful means than expect it to be unblessed. Muslims would say that such change loses its barakah or Divine blessing which accompanies good. And lastly, peaceful and good change is a different thing altogether than attempting at establishing Utopia. Don’t fall into the gnostic self-delusion!

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Dr. Robert Crane, a Muslim convert and former foreign policy adviser to President Richard Nixon, gave a speech three days ago concerning the “Transcendent Law and a New Paradigm of Civilizations.”  Crane looks favorably at Ibn Khaldun, and discusses his influence on Toynbee and others who studied civilizations and the natural order.  Crane affirms the need of society to conserve the natural order saying:

The balance to be maintained in every civilization as embodied in every world religion is among order, justice, and freedom.  This paradigm of balance teaches that order, justice, and freedom are interdependent.  When freedom is construed to be independent of justice, there can be no justice and the result will be anarchy.  When order is thought to be possible without justice, there will be no order, because injustice is the principal cause of disorder.  When justice is thought to be possible without order and freedom, then the pursuit or order, justice, and freedom are snares of the ignorant.

Without consensus on the proper nature of order, and of justice and freedom as essential parts of a single whole, rather than as independent pursuits, no civilization can continue to exist.  The twin roles of religion in all of its traditionalist manifestations, including the monotheistic and “revealed religions”, and especially Islam, are the spiritual well-being or happiness of every person and the maintenance of consensus on the responsibilities and rights necessary to live in an ordered society.

Crane is good at merging the ecumenic and universal concept of the natural order from all angles, whether in the Muslim mystic Rumi, Ibn Khaldun, or Toynbee.  Since the issue of the natural law, natural order, liberty, and tradition are dear to me, Crane’s exposition within an Islamic context finds in this blogger a highly receptive audience.

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Frank S. Meyer was perhaps the most well known fusionist conservative political theorist in American history. Meyer’s task was to merge both the classical liberal wing of the conservative movement which aimed for economic and civil liberties, low taxes, and opposed the New Deal, with classical conservatism which saw tradition as the highest end.

Murray Rothbard, a prominent figure in the resurgence of American classical liberalism, criticized Frank Meyer’s fusionism for its “muddled logic.” Either reason he said, was the foundation of political society and liberty, or tradition, not both.

The conceptual chaos of conservatism may be traced back to its origins: a reaction against the New Deal. Since modern conservatism emerged in response to the particular leap into statism of the 1930s and 1940s, it necessarily took on the features of any “popular front”: that is, defined more by what it opposed than what it stood for. As a result, conservatism came to include a congeries of opponents of the New Deal, who had little positive in common. If we wish to inquire what all of these groups had in common, beyond sheer hatred of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, I can think of only one theme linking them all: opposition to egalitarianism, to compulsory levelling by use of state power; beyond that, conservatism is Chaos and Old Night. Even negative reaction to the New Deal no longer suffices for anything like a coherent stance, since not only is there a problem of which aspects of the New Deal to focus on, but also whether the post-New Deal system should remain in place and be subject only to marginal adjustment – that is, whether conservatism should be a holding operation – or whether the system should be repealed in toto.

The answer to this question is that fusing tradition and liberty is not fairly difficult whatsoever. The vast majority of the first classical conservatives and traditionalists - including Burke - where Whigs who believed that tradition intrinsically entailed economic freedom. Even non-Western traditionalists, such as Ibn Khaldun (who certainly believed in tradition in society) found transgression against economic freedom as the impetus to societal decline.

Meyer’s contention that tradition in and of itself entails liberty, because liberty is an essential aspect of tradition, solves the holistic problem of modern conservatism. Liberty is fused with tradition because they are two things which must not be rent asunder. As psychologist Abrham Maslow wrote, the third force in psychology is that when one whole is rent asunder pathology results. Maslow was discussing science and religion, and legalism and spirituality, but what he says is true. As Christ says, may God bless him and give him peace, in the New Testament “What therefore God hath joined together, let not men render asunder.” As Muslims we wholly agree with this teaching.

The tension between liberty and tradition however is not the main dividing line between classical liberalism and classical conservatism. The early classical conservatives were a type of classical liberals. Burke in his Notes on Scarcity disapproves of government intervention in the economy, welfare programs, and affirmed religious toleration. And although De’Maistre, the second founding father of classical conservatism, rejected democracy in favor of monarchy, his economic views were market-oriented nonetheless (he surely was no socialist).

As Rothbard recounts the main tension between liberty and tradition is the question of what the paramount guiding principle is - reason, or tradition?

On this question the Burkeans and traditionalists side with tradition over abstract reason. Modern Burkeans such as Jim Kalb note that although reason can achieve objective truth, the bounded rationality of man makes tradition a much better guide. The classical liberals always side with reason, for reason is that which establishes the natural law and natural rights and understands that it is self-evident that man has rights given from God, or nature, or reason.

Meyer attempts to fuse both together. But ultimately, there must be a source that is relied upon, reason or tradition. The American Burkean traditionalists such as Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, and modern “paleoconservatives” such as Pat Buchanan, Samuel Francis, Jim Kalb and others relied upon tradition first and foremost. The classical liberal American conservatives or “The Old Right” (which constitute the overwhelming vast majority) such as Robert Taft, and others, relied upon reason first and foremost.

Conservatism is a big tent. There is the “Old Right” of Grover Cleavland, and Robert Taft which may be called pure classical liberals. There is the “New Right” wherein the isolationism of the past was shunned for interventionism (in some circles, not all) and where Burkean classical conservative ideas were revived.

The central question amongst these varying New Right branches was whether the state should use coercion to enforce morality. Some said no, absolutely not. Some said yes, absolutely. And others said each community should decide at the smallest level (federalism, or the European Union and Catholic teaching of “subsidiarity”).

The antiwar right is right with me wherever their political persuasions lie. However, what is my take on this matter? I am a traditionalist fusionist.

Yet my traditionalism is not as extreme as Jim Kalb who sees it as more important than reason. I lie squarely in the camp of reason, and it is reason as Meyer clarified which is what tells us that tradition should be followed. And tradition, and reason, tell us of the benefits of liberty. Thus I am a Burkean Whig, a conservative with enough of a dose of (natural law) classical liberalism to be a federalist on moral issues (in the spirit of the principle of subsidiarity!).

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I have blogged on this before, but more thoughts.

Samuel Huntington wrote many years ago that (classical) conservatism was the only political theory which did not truly have an ideology or a vision of a perfect society it strove for. He wrote that the opposite of conservatism was not liberalism or socialism, it was radicalism, for the core of classical conservatism is the opposition to revolutionary change and the preservation of tradition (amongst other things).

The benefits of being a counter-revolutionary are very important. Edmund Burke’s entire Reflections on the Revolution in France is a exposition of the detrimental qualities of revolutions and how they destroy man and human nature. The revolution based in such ideals as liberty and human rights ended up creating a Jacobin dictatorship’s secular religion and the first historical instance of government terrorism in Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. Burke adds, and you guys already had a constitution! Joseph De’Maistre, the Catholic Burkean and counter-revolutionary in the French revolution perhaps said it best, “The Counter-Revolution will not be a reverse revolution, but the reverse of a Revolution.”

The central theme of classical conservatism is that for change to be effective and beneficial it must be weeded out through the natural mechanism of tradition. This has been understood in many times and places in history. Ibn Khaldun understood this very well, he writes on how very upright and religious people have caused immense hardship through violent revolutions against tyrannous rulers. Instead of achieving justice, such upright people inadvertently start civil wars and very rarely succeed at what they do. And if they do succeed, they often have corrupted their souls so much that their rule becomes itself an extension of injustice. St. Thomas Aquinas notes that slaying of tyrannous Princes often does nothing but make things worse.

The Prophet Muhammad, may God bless him and give him peace, forbade revolutions and violent revolts against tyrannous rulers. Instead he ordered Muslims to civil disobedience of such a ruler’s unjust commands, and patience in God.

Thus the “revolutionary mentality” or radicalism is the absolute polar opposite of conserving the natural order. It is for this reason that the revolutionary is always wrong, even when he is right. Revolution is not something good nor something natural it is something unnatural and pathological.

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The following political philosophers in some way supported unnatural order, nihilism, relativism, and the abolition of liberty. These are who not to read, the callers to misguidance:

1. Plato - hands down the worst political philosopher who ever lived. Tied with Marx as the most evil human being in history. The first communist, collectivist, and totalitarian autocrat.
2. Thucydides - his analysis of history is ingenious, but his claim that justice is impossible is utter falsehood.
3. Machiavelli - might makes right, ignore morality in politics.
4. Rousseau - society is unnatural, we must destroy society.
5. Voltaire - reject everything your forefathers gave you, we must create the perfect society of which we are progressing towards.
6. Leo Strauss - there exist no natural rights, and no natural law; however people must not know this because then we will have anarchy, thus we must lie to the people and tell them to obey religion for the sake of liberal democracy, and understand that the best form of morality is statesmanship or the obedience to a “Leader” who may transgress so-called “natural rights” for the good of the state (i.e. Lincoln, Bush).
7. Hegel - history has laws, there is an end of history, and it is the State.
8. Marx - perhaps the single worst human being who ever lived, transgress against tradition and property rights to help the poor under “socialism” which simply makes the poor continually poorer.

Of these, perhaps the most evil, are Plato, Marx, and Strauss.

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Most of those who encounter political thought end up somewhere by the side of positivism, scientism, relativism, or social engineering. The self-evident notion that reason and experience lead to knowledge and truth - one which no rational human being can deny - is often repressed for a nihilistic belief in nothing. It is in this sense that Eric Voegelin once said that “if philosophy is not the search for truth, it is simply the cataloging of opinions.”

That all moral judgments are equal, that human beings cannot know anything, and that law itself is just random orders backed by threats to make continuity in our lives are the modern tenets of the postmodern secular religion. Eric Voegelin himself wrote about this discussing how the root of such secular religions was the gnostic desire to create heaven on earth in the world. The order of history has been the history of order. Every society attempts to view itself in the natural order of God’s creation.

Instead of seeping through myriads of pages concerning post-Enlightenment catalogs of opinion, wherein the mind which God has endowed and blessed man with is denigrated into either an “organizer” of truthlessness (postmodern nihilism) or the slave of human passions (utilitarian social engineering, socialism), it is important that one have a reading list of the alternative conservative works of political thought. No, not the gobbldygook neoconservative propaganda you find on your local library’s shelf (that itself is also Straussian nihilism, masked in religious language). The classics silly!

1. Edmund Bukre - Reflections on the Revolution in France. Tradition is a natural mechanism which preserves the natural law and order. Burke was a Whig and not a Tory, he thus argues the importance of economic freedom. Revolutionaries are always wrong, even when they are right, those who promote “uprising” or “revolution” are simply backwards radicals who have the worst of human nature brought about in them. Those who sit around and discuss politics and abstract theory are contributing to societal sickness if it is excessive - abstract theory is not what makes good governance but experience. Society makes man good, and it is natural, man without society is an animal. This is the bedrock of European conservatism.
2. Ibn Khaldun - al-Muqaddimah. Societies rise and fall based upon natural laws. Human beings are social animals and need interdependence to survive. Human solidarity forms the foundation of society and thus civilization. Economic freedom is paramount to a functioning society - high taxation yields low profits, price controls lead to shortages and problems, and commerce is a natural way of making a living as long as it is honest. Over indulgence in luxury leads to a lopsided human being who emphasizes the sensate. Civilizations fall primarily because of (a) the infringement on property rights and economic freedoms, and (b) the turning back on tradition and culture - the fitra or natural disposition and innate natural virtues of man at birth.
3. Joseph De’Maistre - Study on Sovereignty. God gives the sanction of societies and government, not the people. Societies are natural institutions which are formed in the Divine will. Isolation is unnatural, interdependence is natural. There was no time previous to society for man. De’Maistre says agreeing with Burke, “Man’s natural state is therefore to be what he is today and what he has always been, that is to say, sociable. All human records attest to this truth….”
4. Confucius - The Analects. Society imposes upon man various duties. There must exist a balanced mean which pervades man’s actions in society. Justice, charity, respect, modesty, and compassion are all aspects of ethical conduct. Friendship, filial piety, community, and society are vital realms of man’s existence and hence his happiness. Virtue must underlie society for society to thrive.
5. Aristotle - The Politics. Every political community is formed to fulfill some sort of end. Human social cooperation is exponentially more beneficial than isolation - it gives a comparative advantage. Human beings are rational social animals. Justice is to give every human being their natural right - such as their natural right to life, and property. The good government is that in which the government rules for the benefit of the governed and not in unjust plundering of the populace in the governmental self-interest. The problem with a democratic government is that the poor and rich will have tense relations - the poor will attempt to use their numbers to transgress against the rich’s property.
6. Ibn Tufail - Hayy ibn Yaqzan (Live the son of the Wake). The story of a human being living in isolation on an island himself who uses human reason to understand God, the natural law, and the importance of the natural order of the universe.
7. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica. Man’s happiness is achieved through the obedience of natural law. Freedom is devotion to God through the obedience of natural law. There exists a natural social, political, economic, and scientific order in the universe which is naturally set by God. Pondering the universe leads to the knowledge of God and his nature. Going against God’s nature leads to unhappiness in this life and various problems. Man by nature is social and cooperative, and it is the Divine natural law that societies will be formed by men.
8. Alexis de’Touqeville - Democracy in America. A Whiggish conservatism discussing the pros and cons of democracy in America, especially the faults of democratic society.
9. Lord Acton - Essays in the History of Liberty. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
10. Arnold Toynbee - Civilization on Trial.
11. C.S. Lewis - The Abolition of Man. Man’s nature is destroyed when morality is outsourced and simple school children are made to believe the dogmas of relativism in replacement of morality and ethics.
12. C.S. Lewis - The Four Loves. The importance of brotherly love in civilization, agape and charitas.
13. Reinhold Neihbur -Christ in Culture. A discussion of the various manifestations of how culture treats God.
14. James Madison - The Federalist Papers.
15. Eric Voegelin - A New Science of Politics. Positivist relativist science and political discourse which cares only for social engineering and not for morality and human order will give liberal democracy an empty nihilistic core of which it cannot stand. If liberalism is to survive, it must stand on higher moral principles than the aggregate satisfaction of pleasures. Totalitarianism arises out of moral and religious vacuums in the quest to create utopia on earth (immanentize the eschaton) which creates hell on earth. People cannot live without some sort of religion, even those who reject religion end up creating secular and political religions to make order.
16. Russell Kirk - The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot. A summary of the tenets of conservatism throughout history, specifically European conservatism. The utmost tenet of conservatism, according to Kirk, is the belief in the transcendent and natural order.
17. Friedrich von Hayek - The Constitution of Liberty. Hayek merges together two concepts - the importance of tradition as a natural mechanism at weeding out behaviors or activities which lead to hardship or unhappiness and the spontaneous order which results in affirming interpersonal cooperation from the marketplace. Both tradition and the spontaneous market order are aspects of the natural law, in that both are natural (Burkeans called “tradition” itself as a semi-Darwinian “natural selection” of behaviors) way of things.
18. Friedrich Basitat - The Law. Justice is giving everyone their due natural rights. Socialism is thus injustice. Democray often contributes to socialism because the rich use government to help business, while the poor use government to tax the rich. Instead of cooperation and trade, you have two wrongs which don’t make a right. Plunder and conquest are illegitimate means of gaining wealth, and the web of injustices which springs about in societies lead to their ruin. The law’s main purpose should be enforcing natural rights and the markets. Extending the right to vote or democracy is sheer ruinous delusion - capitalism and markets, not democracy, is the paramount institution to be maintained.
19. Karl Popper - The Open Society and Its Enemies. Societies which are open and self-criticizing prosper. Societies which are closed and punish dissent fail. As Thomas Jefferson said “Dissent is the highest fom of patriotism.” Popper’s thesis is that continual self-correction is the best political community. Failed philosophers such as Plato and Marx did not understand this point.
20. Ludwig von Mises - Socialism. Socialism can never exist because of the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism. The free market allocates resources to those who subjectively value them and thus is the most democratic institution created. It also maintains private property rights. Men are by nature inequal, but helping others must be private to really count.
21. Richard Weaver - Ideas have Consequences. The conceptions one have of the world, one’s belief systems, and our worldviews have consequences in the political and social realms. The Enlightenment mentality has ruined the West and not given it success. The Middle Ages was not the “dark ages” but indeed contained many reflections of the natural order which we have transgressed against and thus dealt with the pathological consequences. Imperial warfare, and relativist morality will be the emptiness that ruins the West.
22. Robert Nisbet - The Quest for Community. Read all of Nisbet’s books. His core thesis is the importance of intermediate institutions such as the community in the context of individualism. Communities, churches, and other social institutions cede their voluntary virtue to the power of the state. This causes such institutions to be weakened, the state to be expanded and powerful, and the shirking of responsibility.

There are other authors to be sure. Each of which emphasizes their own aspect of the conservative political philosophy - social order, natural law, custom, civility, the rejection of utopia, anti-socialism, economic freedom, civil liberties, community, localism, and the importance of God in life. I am sure Joshua Snyder at Western Confucian knows a few more Confucian conservative thinkers. I also know a few more Islamic ones, such as the social thought of al-Ghazali and Rumi.

However, the booklist above, if read through fully, should give one a firm grounding in the worldview of the natural order.

The purpose of political theory is nothing more than policy. Thus voting policymakers, even if they do not subscribe to the conservative worldview, should read those books!

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Dr. Imad ad-Dean Ahmad discusses Islam and economic freedom, the virtues of capitalism, natural law, John Locke and his connection to Muslim Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan which ushered in his belief in natural rights theory, and Ibn Khaldun and the subjective theory of value’s influence on the Salamanca Thomists and thus the Austrian school on Antiwar Radio.

Some notes. I don’t agree with everything Dr. Ahmad says always, but he is a very intelligent person in Physics (his Ph.D.), economic history, and its relation to Islamic thought. What he says about Ibn Khaldun on the subjective theory of value is correct, and it is well known that many of the early Thomists such as the great Fransisco Suarez, had this conception of value as subjective (instead of the debunked notion of Just Price).

A few more notes: Hayy ibn Yaqzan is highly noted in Western thought, but the more authentic expositor of traditional Islamic theology is Ibn al-Nafis’ masterpiece Theodactis Autodidactis which I believe is still not translated into English. Khaldun also noted the importance of gold based currency, like the Austrian school, the idiocy (and Islamic prohibition) on price controls, and the importance of economic freedom and property rights. This was all in the 1300s, and it is well known that Islamic jurisprudence accepted the market since the origins of Islam. Fernand Braudel notes this in his works on the history of capitalism which he traces back to the Egyptian stock market in Cairo, and the markets which existed in early Islamic civilization.

The importance of conserving (a) natural order, (b) natural law, (c) tradition, (d) liberty - most especially economic, (e) spontaneous order, (f) the maintenance of social order, is something ecumenic. There have been such thinkers in every time and place. Whether in the depths of China with the Confucians, the Catholic Thomists, the British Burke, the anti-Enlightenment De’Maistre, the American Russell Kirk, etc. The natural order is known through reason in every time and place.

These general principles taken together form the core of true rationalism. By whichever name it is truly called, such conservative principles are self-evident. Time and place again have we understood the importance of the natural order and tradition for happiness. Economically, liberty is the only natural way to trade. We must eschew conquest and central planning. Capitalism is justice and built civilization and sustains it. This historical law has been observed once and again, whether by Ibn Khaldun in the Muqaddimah, or Aristotle in the Politics. Economic freedom is in itself an aspect of justice, natural law, and the natural order, and ecumenically we “conservatives” realize this. Good job Imad ad-Dean Ahmad.

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Federalism has always been a very important aspect of American conservatism. However, why not make big moral policy decisions in Washington and impose them on the states? This is the question that confronts American policymakers today. The federal government under both the Republicans, and previously the Democrats, has imposed social, economic, and environmental policies upon all of the states. In fact, in comparison to other countries such as Germany or Canada, it can be probably correctly argued that the U.S. today is a very un-federalist system.

Why not use a central government to impose important rules quicker, instead of waiting for all 50 states? Bob Barr, the ex-GOP congressman, debated neoconservative Sean Hannity on this issue a few weeks ago on Fox News. Hannity had said that issues such as drugs, or homosexual marriage should be banned on a federal level. Barr said that they should be banned on a state level to insure both principles of conservatism: freedom, and tradition.

This is an important question, and its answer becomes obvious when the benefits of federalism are realized.

First and foremost, the more centralized power becomes the more corrupting and dangerous it becomes to liberty. The great Lord Acton said this best, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” There needs to be no great elaboration on this point. It is well known.

But secondly and most importantly, politics is a moral activity. Most people do not think like this. However, political philosophy, the essence of political discourse, is in reality a branch of moral philosophy. Politics is normative. What should be. If we assume that everything that should be is a valid response, then we are postmodern relativists and nihilists who do not believe anything is truly good or bad, but simply an opinion.

Religions involve political judgments. This is unavoidable, because governance and what the government should do are moral normative questions. This is why we find in Catholic social teaching extensive expositions of economic and political policy, such as the great Revarum Novarum on economic teaching. We also find in Islam political and social beliefs such as that price controls are forbidden as well as usury or interest.

If religions contain political teachings, how are we to reconcile this with the fact that there is a “separation of Church and state” in the U.S.? Is it necessary that this be changed? No.

The so-called “wall of separation” between Church and state has been greatly exaggerated and misunderstood in this day and age. Religious freedom means that people be free, and not forced, to believe in whatever religious beliefs they want. Religious freedom is not anti-religious, it exists in various manifestations amongst the varying faith professions. However, the “wall of separation” is misunderstood due to the fact that many believe religious freedom means freedom from religion. This is due to the fact that many do not realize that the Founding Fathers were classical liberals who believed in natural law and natural rights - as Thomas Jefferson makes clear in the declaration of independence. Our Creator endowed us with these rights. Yet during the Enlightenment, and in the modern day, there were also many atheistic relativist classical liberals who did not recognize natural rights. This was perhaps best shown in the French revolution wherein a state “civil religion” was instated by Robespierre. The Jacobins who ruled France attempted to create a “religion of reason,” and the essence of the revolution was atheistic. The great Catholic political thinker De’Maistre, inspired by Burke, attacked the French revolution for this reason.

This empty relativist nihilism is what gave great headway for government plans of social engineering and utilitarianism. Why doesn’t the government encourage abortion in its state-provided health care plans? How about the government encourage certain behaviors or discourage them? Fortunately, the U.S. is a more religious country than elsewhere where this has been tried (i.e. Europe), and thus political officials of both parties are not shy to claim their religion has encouraged their seeking the good for others in their legislation. In some countries such as France where laicism is the norm, to even state that one’s religion has encouraged one’s legislation is anathema. Thus, religious people who believe morality comes from God, are thus prevented from legislating in their conscience and are forced to support some sort of relativist judgment which seeks undefined socially engineered “common good” which the “government” is responsible for.

If all politics is moral, and morals for religious people are primarily religious, then how is a Liberal Democracy to survive?

The answer is that liberal democracy, in its origins, was primarily an answer to this very question. How can religious toleration exist amongst differing peoples in the same state? John Locke, known as the founder of liberal democracy, himself wrote a pamphlet on the matter entitled A Discourse Concerning Religious Toleration wherein he stated that religions should be tolerated by the government (he gave two exceptions - Catholics and atheists, the former because of their papal allegiances and the latter for the sheer dangerousness of their impiety). Jefferson also pondered this question which was the essence of the innovation of liberal democracy.

If all religions are tolerated, must there necessarily be relativism? No. There are two different types of moral judgments which have been traditionally been typified throughout the ages. Firstly there are what Islam terms huququllah or the rights of God, what Christians refer to in the Lord’s Prayer as their trespasses, and what John Stuart Mill called “self-regarding actions.” These are actions which are intrinsically immoral but of which there is great dispute amongst the different religions and moral philosophies. Drinking alcohol, eating pork, jealousy, interest, are examples of such actions.

Secondly there are what Islam called huquq al-’ibad, what Christians refer to in the Lord’s prayer as “trespasses against us” or against human beings, and what John Stuart Mill called “other-regarding actions.” Such actions are known through reason and natural law and are objective, and morally absolute throughout time and place. They refer to the natural rights of other people which must not be transgressed. They are self-evident and axiomatic and are discussed in my welfare post. These rights must absolutely be in place and governed with in a liberal democracy. Thus stealing, killing, harming others, are all absolutely wrong and must absolutely be forbidden.

This is why many classical Muslim states, such as the Ottoman Empire, did not impose Islamic law upon Christians and Jews. While obviously, killing, stealing, and other violations of natural rights were prosecuted against all groups by the State, individual religious moral judgments, “self-regarding actions,” were judged by the basis of each millet or community. Each people had their own courts. It is well known that alcohol and pork were permitted for instance to Christians and Jews under the Ottoman state. The Malikite rite of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence extends this to Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Confucians, and all other religions to exercise their religious freedom. While obviously, as with all religions, there were many points at our history in which regretful things happened which reflected various heresies.

Thus comes federalism. Milton Friedman in his Capitalism and Freedom notes that if political issues are solved through the local level, there exists more freedom in a society. For, as Friedman states, one may move about easily from city to city or state to state, but there is very little room to go amongst the jealous countries of the world.

“Social issues,” or self-regarding actions, often affect the entire society. Many immoral actions may affect only oneself technically, but because of the organic nature of society they pervade the entire community. An example is drugs, or prostitution, many would not stand living in a city where they exist. Moreover, with the conservative emphasis on tradition as a natural mechanism at weeding out the bad, unnatural, and pathological, legalizing such matters contradicts with conservative principles - and as we stated earlier, politics is a moral and thus oftentimes religious activity. Yet the conservative principle of liberty would entail that one should be able to do these things.

Thus the principles contradict.

Federalism is the best solution for this problem. Liberty is maintained, as one may move about from city to city or state to state, to chose where one may enjoy the most wholesome and happy life one wants. Yet at the same time, cities and states are given the power to maintain tradition and the majorities’ views of traditional morals. All of this is maintained with the understanding that there are moral absolutes agreed upon by the Abrahamic faiths, the Eastern philosophies (such as Confucianism), the Greek philosophers, and classical liberalism. This natural law, what Michael Walzer calls “the overwhelming consensus of morality,” must not be transgressed. Thus there should not be laws, no matter which state, which transgress one’s right to life or property.

Natural law theorists, both modern and classical, have referred to the importance of absolute moral values (natural rights) with “victimless crimes,” “self-regarding actions,” etc. as the difference between crimes are vices. A crime is a transgression of the rights of others known through natural law. A vice can be a immoral action one does or personal sin in religious terms which does not transgress other’s natural rights.

In the end the entire debate between the more libertarian conservatives and traditional conservatives is united through federalism. For it was Thomas Aquinas himself who defined freedom as “devotion to God through the obedience of natural law.”

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Traditionalists, conservatives, and religious people have had problems with welfare programs such as social security, socialized medicine, and other government programs for decades. However, there are two common fallacies which cause ‘progressives’ and irreligious people to accuse the traditionalists and religious of immorality. Firstly, they claim that those who oppose such programs would rather have a dog-eat-dog “jungle” society based in competition and shunning altruism. And secondly, they claim, that people who oppose such programs are simply greedy and hypocritical because they intend to harm the poor and further their poverty.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. But since this unfortunately a widespread misconception, let me explain why the welfare state is the immoral and uncompassionate answer - in moral, social, economic, and political terms:

(1) The natural right to private property

Man owns his own labor. Or we can say, it is self-evident that God has given man temporal worldly possession and dominion of his self and his labor. This is not simply a subjective relativist moral judgment. This is morally absolute and intellectually axiomatic. Due to this fact, we realize naturally, before any mention of Divine Revelation, that generally men are endowed with rights to life and labor (and hence his private property) of which there must not be aggression against. The details and nitty-gritty of such rights are knowable through Divine Revelation, but this general self-evident truth is known naturally, and thus given the nomenclature of natural law.

The Chinese had a concept of this axiom. It is well known that the Confucians had a conception of natural law which involved the arising of a spontaneous order or invisible hand through human cooperation. They also had a notion of the axiom of non-aggression, and the right to life and property.

The Greeks had a concept of this axiom. Aristotle writes in the Politics that justice is giving everyone his due, and his rights. Justice in this sense is non-transgression against natural rights, not the notion of social engineering by a government which recognizes a right-less people and thus attempts to instead seek the aggregate subjective “good” for the “most number,” otherwise known as utilitarianism.

The Christians had a concept of this axiom. Thomas Aquinas writes of this in his Summa Theologica, in his commentary on Aristotle. Natural law is the natural order of things, which involves duties and rights.

The Muslims had a concept of this axiom. Al-Maturidi, Ibn al-Qayyim, Al-Shatibi, and Averroes write about al-tahseen wal taqbeeh or the objective ability of knowing right and wrong. All of these scholars wrote concerning how the unaided intellect could find self-evident natural laws however not the “specifics” of such laws which were known through revelation. Most of the general outlines of the natural rights of others (an Islamic concept called huquq al-’ibad) could be known with pure reason they argued. In the words of al-Maturidi murder is self-evidently wrong because one is transgressing against another’s self, while stealing is naturally and self-evidently wrong because one is transgressing against another’s possessions and labor.

Thus, the moral ideal is justice, and justice is making sure that each person gets their rights. When rights are seen as alienable, from governments, subjective, and relative, this does not takes place. While stealing from a rich man to feed ten poor may achieve a just ends, the Islamic legal maxim is ends are judged by their means, and evil means must be objectively and absolutely labeled as what they are. What if the rich man were to use his wealth to invest in his children’s education and help them achieve success in life such that they would not have to take other’s property? There are countless examples of how transgressing natural rights leads to unnatural consequences. Ibn Khaldun notes that the beginning of the end of civilization is the transgression of property rights.

When the incomes of people are progressively taxed unproportionally, while others pay no tax at all, simply to fulfill some utilitarian project of “helping people” ultimately justice is lost. And justice is the natural order of things. As the Islamic mystic Rumi affirms, justice is putting things in their right place. Rumi writes how naturally watering flowers is justice, while throwing away water on thorns is not because it is wasting water. While this is not exactly what is meant by political and legal justice, it does give us a good understanding of its essence. The essence of justice is balance and natural order. Indeed the Arabic and Islamic word for justice is al-’adl which in one of its etymological roots refers to “balance.”

When rule of law is not sanctioned, when the State may simply unfairly treat some to some laws and others to other laws, then justice is not being served. Justice is when all are given their dues, or in the words of Aristotle all are payed their debts. Natural rights are natural, not relative, and the welfare state is the state in which many are deprived of their natural rights and thus justice itself becomes a relativist fantasy.

(2) It shirks responsibility

This was the argument of the famous sociologist and political theorist Robert Nisbet. Instead of traditional societal intermediaries - the soul of civil society - providing direct and local aid to the poor, the responsibility is shrugged off for “the government” or “the rich.” This simply weakens the power of intermediate social institutions such as local schools, communities, churches, mosques, and extended families, in providing for a more personal, and obligational relief. Instead helping others is seen as the responsibility of “the state” making the state more powerful at the expense of the communities. By giving this power to the state, society imperils itself into establishing the state as some sort of “sugar daddy” or father figure which provides everything one needs.

As Burke says, a society which is too political is a sick society. When “government” is seen as the answer to every single problem of the human condition, then watch out because society is diseased. Oftentimes such people establish a utopian belief in government as the vanguard of progress.

On top of all of this, when responsibility for the poor is shirked people begin to give less to charity and the poor end up hurting. A comparison of charity giving from the United States where welfare programs are comparatively much lower, and Europe where welfare programs are extremely high, finds that the U.S. has much higher rates of private charity than Europe.

When responsibility is shirked and helping those in need is seen as an obligation of the state and not a private obligation of communities, churches, mosques, and families, then a self-righteousness arises while the traditional beauty of individual relief to the poor suffers.

(3) Moral hazzard and dependency

This argument is often exaggerated. However, nonetheless, it is important. If the state will automatically provide to those who will not provide for themselves, it is inevitable that many will act in their self interest and not work. It is essentially the subsidization of unemployment. A society which does not collectively believe in work and personal work will be a sick society. The Prophet Muhammad, may God bless him and give him peace, once said that it was better to go cut a tree and sell its wood than to beg. He also said that working to provide for one’s family is actually an act of worshiping God. To reject work for subsidized unemployment does not simply weaken an individual, it weakens the entire organic body of society as a whole and encourages dependency on the state as the solution to all ills. Dependency is a drug which prevents self-improvement in the poor.

(4) Inflation hurts the poor more

There are only two means for the government to finance its debts - taxation and inflation. We have discussed taxation already, and that often by taking one’s money and thinking they can spend it better government bureaucrats prevent many good uses of one’s property (giving the poor, educating one’s children, private enterprise benefiting the economy,etc.). However, taxation is often not the means used to finance government expenses (and the welfare state - specifically medicare, medicaid, and social security - are the core of government debt other than the warfare state). Instead, inflation or the debasement of government-issued currency is also used. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke noted this by stating that “some inflation is good” because it lessened the government deficit.

Inflation destroys savings and capital. Poor people on fixed incomes are hurt the most. In the quest for utilitarian utopia, we continually make the entire populace poorer and poorer. If a depression or recession or economic downturn caused taxation revenues to decrease - the financing of the welfare state would rely on either (1) more taxes - or taking the money of a selected few, or (2) more inflation - or making everyone collectively more poor.

(5) Progressive taxes

Karl Marx once wrote that two taxes - the progressive tax, and the estate (death) tax were not economically viable. Instead he wrote that their only pure purpose was to bring about a socialist economic system. He was right (for once). The progressive taxes punish people for making more money. They steal from one group, the rich, and although they can afford it - stealing is still stealing. Making it harder and harder for people to get ahead - especially the poorest who are just destroyed by payroll taxes which finance such programs, and subsidizing dependency, create a grotesquely pathological society.

(6) Private charity trumps public welfare

Those who dislike welfare do not dislike charity. On the contrary, giving to the less advantaged is a core aspect of classical conservatism (which Wall Street money-hungry “conservatives” don’t like), the Abrahamic religions, and the natural law tradition. However giving should be private. Private charities, communities, families, churches and mosques are not only more efficient than public welfare, they also make responsibility forefront and are extremely personal. By truly participating in helping the needy oneself, one is much more emotionally attached and benefited spiritually. Moreover, personal and private charity strengthens society and intermediate institutions and rejects dependency on a “father” patron government.

It is the traditional way. And something is traditional because it has worked for generations. Revolutionary rejections of tradition often throw the baby out with the bathwater and lead to pathologies not seen for generations.

It is for all of these reasons that classical conservatives, classical liberals, traditionalist, believers in natural law and natural rights, and members of the Abrahamic faiths have rejected the all-encompassing welfare state. It is not because of a love of money or hate of the poor, but for a love for the poor and society. In the end it all boils down to whether one has a relativist notion of morality wherein the essence of all policy lies in simply satisfying aggregate passions or creating utopia, or an objective notion of morality wherein there are moral absolutes and natural rights.

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We have been waiting for this day for a long, long time. Ever since January and the absence of a President in Lebanon, we have been waiting for the civil war to break out.

Today with the Sanoira government’s seizure of the telecommunications system, Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah called the acts “a declaration of war.” There has been gunfire and RPG fire in the streets.

For the first time in a long time, CNN and MSNBC are covering something other than the Presidential campaign.

What is next for Lebanon?

Well, this is the failure of democracy in the Middle East. Democracy just does not work, especially the factionalism and confessionalism of the Lebanese system, in the Arab world. It is not that democracy is outdated or a bad form of government, it is just that the Arabs are not advanced enough for democracy at the current moment. What is the use of democracy without the rule of law, democratic institutions, and civil society?

Instead, we find that democracy in the Middle East actually precipitates problems. Contrary to the neoconservatives’ arguments, democracy simply increases competition amongst the various factions in Iraq, or Lebanon, and simply turns each group against each other, increasing tensions. As they say, “all politics is tribal,” if in the U.S. Obama is getting over 90% of the black vote - and Hillary is getting a clear supermajority of the white women vote - then why do we blame anyone for voting their tribe?

Lebanon, to any hardheaded realist view of the situation, is not going to be solved by lofty ideals like democracy. Lebanon is a pressure cooker of Sunni, Shiite, Maronite, Druze, secular, socialist, and capitalist. Everyone is in their little camps which eventually break down to a March 8th alliance supported by Iran and Syria, and a March 14th alliance supported by the U.S. and France. Everyone is playing their cards. It is international politics, each side seeking to alter the Lebanese bloc of the wide balance of power.

“Democracy,” just means a way of choosing leaders. Unlike common belief, it is not the “only” or “best” form of government. Throughout the centuries philosophers have defined governments not by the way of choosing their leaders - but whether they rule for their own sake or for the sake of their peoples (like Aristotle). Moreover, the American founding fathers themselves feared and hated direct democracy for the “tyranny of the majority,” and ignorance of the people in directly choosing their leaders. In the words of American political philosopher Willmore Kendall, the founders made it such that majorities would have to be so enduring that they lasted several years - in electing a President and a Congress - and to survive many challenges of minority rights, until they would be passed.

Friedrich Bastiat, an eighteenth century French economist, writes in his The Law, that one unfortunate byproduct of democracy is that because one group will use government to achieve unfair advantages - for instance big business - then the people will use government to also achieve unfair advantages - for instance creating more and more regulations and programs against business and pro-labor. In the end, Bastiat claimed, you had a hodgepodge of laws created for the sake of injustice on other groups - and since two wrongs don’t make a right, you had a web of injustice.

This has been the theme of many modern political scientists. James Buchanan, the founder of economic public choice theory, notes that one of the major flaws of democracy is that different interest groups can often change the rules of the game in their favor. Since human beings are rational actors, he argued, they will rationally want to benefit their groups through government law. Instead of a market economy and fair playing field and instead of the preservation of human dignity and natural rights, we have such absurdities as the government (specifically the Federal Reserve) bailing out the investment bank Bear Stearns, and then the Congress attempting to bail out owners of failed mortgages. This is a classic textbook example of Bastiat and Buchanan’s sentiments.

Many places in the world are simply not developed enough for democracy. It is not the tell all be all. Nor is it the raison de’Etere of American foreign policy. Every state looks out for its own national interest first and foremost. In Lebanon, democracy has brought about two civil wars since its inception following World War II, and now most probably a third. People vote for their tribes. It is true, all politics is tribal.

There is no doubt that tyranny and totalitarianism are oppressive regimes. Yet, how many states in the world enjoyed peace and prosperity under limited benevolent monarchy? Although speaking of monarchy is today taboo, many monarchies - classical and modern - have been limited governments which did not dare to transgress against human rights. In fact, the first “limited” government in the world, and indeed one of the forefathers of a society based upon liberty and human rights, was the British monarchy following the Glorious Revolution of the sixteenth century. The monarchy of the Muslim world, even under the Abbasids, still recognized certain inalienable human rights. In fact, some modern political scientists noted that monarchies taxed their citizens far less than democracies.

Does this mean democracy is bad? Of course not. But like every government system conceived by man, it is flawed. And one of its chief flaws is that it simply cannot maintain the limited government it strives for. As Winston Churchill said “democracy is one of the worst systems of government, but the best conceived by man.” Its power grows throughout the ages, like it has in every country it has been tried in. Although it may start out divided and limited it slowly becomes more absolutist and in favor of certain special interests and factions. This is what Israeli historian J.L. Tallmon called totalitarian democracy, or absolutism by the people. Tallmon noted that some of the worst regimes in history have been absolutist by the people.

Although America’s divided branches of government have saved it from much of these squabbles - one must still note that executive power has grown severely, especially in the past eight years, while at the same time Congress encroaches slowly upon our civil liberties (the Patriot Act), our property (zoning laws and eminent domain) and everything else in our lives. When Hillary Clinton decided that she wants a “windfall profits tax” i.e. - the government thinks, in its subjective preference, that the oil companies have made too much money with their record profits (with I may add, go along with record expenses - the oil companies’ profit margins are about 7%, very “reasonable”) and thus choses how much is “too much” and then steals its view of the “excess” with a 90% tax for whichever “reasonable” time period the government wants.

We may vote these people in, it may be democratic, but it is injustice nonetheless to transgress against the natural human right to one’s property and to limit one’s economic liberty. It may be the will of the majority, but justice, in the monotheistic religions as well as the natural law tradition, is - to quote Aristotle “giving everyone his due.” It is yet another example of Bastiat and Buchanan’s sentiments.

Furthermore, value economically is subjective. There is no such thing as an “excess profit” except to one’s subjective mind. Profits are subjective. Goods are sought because of their marginal utility. One of the greatest economic blunders of the Middle Ages was the notion of “just price,” or the conception of some sort of objective price value of economic goods. The neo-socialist Muslim world does not understand this, but their ancestors would. As the Cambridge History of Economics notes, Muslims affirmed the price mechanism even back to the Prophet Muhammad (saw) himself who banned price controls. It was Ibn Khaldun himself whose works influenced the Salamanca school of the Thomist monks who refuted Aquinas’ view of the just price.

Democracy has in it that unfortunate tendency, as all government, for a growing encroachment of government power and the curbing of liberty. “Power corrupts,” Lord Acton says, “and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The more absolutist our democracies become, the more dangerous they become domestically and abroad. This is especially manifest in the streets of Lebanon at the moment and the war between Hezbollah and the government. What we are witnessing now is simply a power struggle - a power struggle by person, by sect, by faction, and a proxy-war by different great powers. Whether they are fighting for an Iranian proxy to fight Israel or threaten Arab hegemony in the region; or for the United States or France’s attempts at establishing a proxy to maintain a regional balance-of-power: make no mistake, this has nothing to do with democracy. This is simply realpolitik.

I am not a hard headed realist, but sometimes thats the only thing that a situation portends…

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