Histories Parsed
Age of Exhaustion
Joshua Mitchell
How the triumphalist mutation of liberalism and the anti-liberal politics of identity have together brought us to the age of exhaustion.
In
watching the flow of events since the turn of the century, even the
casual observer cannot help but be struck by the divergence of opinion
about their meaning. The title of this essay gives the reader notice of
the direction of my thinking, namely, that these several decades
constitute the serial unfolding of two competing party
understandings—one from conservative Republicans, the other from
progressive Democrats, of the meaning of history, each of which guides
domestic politics and foreign policy into definitive and sometimes
procrustean channels. While the conservative version has recently
foundered and its adherents are seeking to find their voice anew,
progressives celebrate the seeming inevitability of their vision (as did
conservatives after 1989). But they approach a shipwreck of their own.
The conservative version failed because
it was predicated on a fixed and unwavering understanding of human
nature that was supposed to be true for all peoples, at all times, in
all places: Liberal Triumphalism. The historical task, many
conservatives thought, was to order politics and commerce in accordance
with that vision. At home, this vision has not prevailed, and what
remains of it is under escalating attack by progressives who have been
emboldened by their hold on political power and nearly all the other
institutions in society. Abroad, the failure—ideational, not military—in
Iraq and Afghanistan to transform authoritarian regimes into
liberty-loving ones has raised deep and troubling questions about how
universal this particular conservative vision of human nature really is.
The conservative “end of history”—ended.
In the progressive moment that is now upon us, progressives argue for a
new version of the end of history. Categorically opposed to Liberal
Trimphalism, progressives offer up a vision that is nevertheless naive,
unworkable, and dangerous. Where conservatives largely sought to extend
their own fixed understanding of human nature abroad, progressives have
sought, with some success, to overwhelm longstanding political,
commercial, and societal understandings at home. Divided by what they
oppose, conservative Republicans at the end of the Cold War and
progressive Democrats today have nevertheless been united in their
belief that an “end of history” of their own devising is, in principle,
possible to engineer and to manage.
This brief sketch has a certain heuristic
elegance. It does not, however, fully canvas the facts and ideas that
swirl about us “like mental dust”, as Alexis de Tocqueville called them,
when describing the status of ideas in the democratic age.1
A more nuanced reading of the contemporary moment and describes three
different paradigms that organize the facts and ideas around us and vie
for our allegiance. The reason is that not all conservatives, and not
all progressives, fit neatly within one or another of the two basic
paradigms; the Venn diagram overlaps—within the minds of conservatives
and progressives, and within the parties of which they are
members—complicate matters. This is especially true today for
conservatives, because recent failures have brought certain background
strands of thought to the forefront,2
whose proponents now seek to offer them up as the organizing center for
the next generation of conservative thinkers and politicians. But this
is true also of progressives, whose recent victories have prompted some
to wonder, as E.J. Dionne recently put it,3
whether we are witnessing an “acceleration of history.” This question,
unthinkable while conservatives dominated the field after 1989, will
invariably set modest progressives against the more emboldened sorts,
and divide a now ascendant progressive party over the question: Just how fast
is America as we have known it, and the world beyond its borders,
bending to the will of progressives—or, rather, to the will of history
itself?
The three paradigms that vie for our
allegiance, therefore, are: Liberal Triumphalism; the anti-Liberal
Politics of Identity; and The Great Exhaustion.
Liberal Triumphalism
Read More...
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/10/10/age-of-exhaustion/
