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14 Apr 2008 06:12 pm

Obama: A Laschian Conservative?

A reader writes:

As we get closer to the general, the statement "Obama is just another liberal" seems to be popping up more and more.  Or as your recent dissenting reader put it, Obama is just another "opportunistic, heavily secular left liberal who looks disdainfully on "quaint" traditional American lifestyles." Given your own conservative predilection, I'm mildly disappointed that you (or anyone else for the matter) haven't offered any serious rebuke to the charges.  You've been content, rather, to admit that your conservative philosophy sometimes admits that a liberal is the best choice at times, and perhaps mention the possibility that Obama transcends such labels.

Yet I think the significant thing to note in relation to the label of liberal or conservative, as applied to Obama, is that it stands or falls with how one would characterize the politics of Christopher Lasch:  whether Lasch is a malcontent Leftist or an eccentric Paleoconservative.   In either case, Obama represents the most prominent Laschian politician we've yet to witness.

Obama, like Lasch, argues that the foundations of a strong social order are to be found in the small communities.  These communities are themselves built upon individuals united in an Emersonian virtue ethics, which allows for religion (and hunting) to play a prominent role in social stability without attributing to it any role in macro-policy.  Critiques are forcefully leveled at the corporate elite, not because it's some zero-sum game and the elites are winning (vis-a-vis Edwards), but because the essential role of any business is to provide a service to its community; those banks which underwrote loans for duplicitous mortgage brokers failed in this responsibility.

As my own copy of The True and Only Heaven (and for that matter my copy of Revenge of the Elites) is currently on loan, I'll simply reference a few quotes on Lasch's wikipedia page:

"The tradition I am talking about ... tends to be skeptical of programs for the wholesale redemption of society... It is very radically democratic and in that sense it clearly belongs on the Left. But on the other hand it has a good deal more respect for tradition than is common on the Left, and for religion too."

"...any movement that offers any real hope for the future will have to find much of its moral inspiration in the plebeian radicalism of the past and more generally in the indictment of progress, large-scale production and bureaucracy that was drawn up by a long line of moralists whose perceptions were shaped by the producers' view of the world."

And, of course, no comparison of Obama and Lasch would be complete without at least mentioning Lasch's extensive apology of Hope (hardened by memory and tragedy) that together we may yet build a better future against (blind) Optimism in the progress of the modern machine (over and against quaint beliefs and traditions that "divide us").

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