On Wednesday, Andrew Walker published an excellent piece in which he critiqued the sensationalistic and unrealistic political rhetoric of your Dale Partridge, Brian Sauvé Reformed testosterone-bro types. It’s worth a careful read. Walker’s analysis makes a few critical points that are worth teasing out a bit more than he did so that people can grasp some of the political philosophy and theology quietly undergirding so many Reformed-Twitter salvos that usually bring more light than heat. I’ll limit myself to one because the President’s Cup is on and Scottie Scheffler needs my attention to make putts.
Burkean and Tocquevillian Change
In what for many probably read as a throwaway sentence toward the end of the article, Walker suggests that Christians should take a more Burkean or Tocquevillian approach to change. Some Christians will not be familiar with Alexis de Tocqueville, and even fewer with Edmund Burke. Taking Burke as representative, what Christians should know about Burke’s approach to political philosophy and affecting political change is that it was conservative in the truest and oldest sense of the word.
Burke wrote at a time when political philosophy was shot through with speculation about a “state of nature” out of which governmental power emerged in the form of “social contracts” between the state and its denizens (e.g., Hobbes and Locke). Roughly, the idea was that people gave up certain freedoms in exchange for various protections because few wanted to live in a world in which “every man is an enemy to every man” and life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” (Hobbes). This social contract—and in particular, upholding it—gave the state its authority, its legitimate monopoly on coercive force.
This was all fine and good at one level, but ideas never remain sequestered in books and philosophy seminars. Instead, informed by these philosophies, statesmen began to make suggestions for political action. The arena for thinking well about statecraft took a few steps away from 17th and 18th century Europe and “real life” and a few steps toward thought experiments and broad conceptions of the ideal state. No one's head was completely in the sky, but that's where they breathed the freshest air.
Enter Burke.
Oversimplifying drastically, Burke suggested the history that has gotten us this far is the only arena in which we have any real experience and the arena of all of our greatest social and political achievements (along with our greatest failures). Instead of speculating about states of affairs dreamed up by idealists and philosophers, Burke’s philosophical approach was grounded in doing what has worked well for centuries and changing only what must be changed over time—hence, “conservatism.” Of course, change on conservatism is, by its nature, incremental and a product of careful reform.
Furthermore, in addition to being conservative, Burke’s approach was also pragmatic. If political philosophy is going to be the handmaiden of political action, shouldn't we spend most of our time thinking about what we actually have a chance of accomplishing in our day? Hypothetical societies, contracts, and states of nature were fun to discuss over a pint with friends, but while allowing that philosophical constructs can be helpful, shouldn’t the present historical moment at least set some boundaries on how and where we channel our energies? Burke’s answer was a robust, “Yes.”
In asking Christians to take a more Burkean/Tocquevillian approach in their political thinking, Walker is asking Christians to spend more time thinking about what they might actually achieve in their own time instead of what they might privately desire or passionately exclaim on social media. Do people realize what would actually have to occur before the changes for which they are loudly lobbying even have a realistic context in which to take place? This kind of reasoning does not exclude taking action today in the hope of shaping the future, but it often excludes actions that pretend such futures can be fast-tracked to the present. It resists the idea that we are potentially on the cusp of dramatic political change simply because we can write books and blogs about our preferred future.
To be sure, some of the suggestions are theologically/morally good, but have no chance of happening prior to the revolution brought by the return of Christ.
Other ideas are mostly or entirely bad.
Mercifully, they too are completely unrealizable in any political climate resembling our own. And yet, these ideas tend to receive the most oxygen in a very small but vocal corner of Christian social media.
Abolishing the Nineteenth Amendment? Absolutely no chance of happening, and shouting about it is simply a form of signaling one’s “brand” to a very small group of Christians (many of whom believe themselves to be the last sober-minded, faithful folks). Suggesting that blasphemy laws be established and mosques shut down in conjunction with modifying the First Amendment? Again, absolutely no chance of happening. Returning to the magisterial church-state arrangements of the 17th century? Don’t hold your breath. Proclaiming that women shouldn’t be able to hold political office? There’s a better chance of speaking with Queen Elizabeth.
Even if they were good ideas, bringing about these changes in our day simply cannot be accomplished on a conservative approach to statecraft. This isn’t because conservative individuals are cowards who eat their steak well-done, but because they believe conservatism as a philosophy of action should ground our political thinking. In fact, many may believe that a realistic approach to cultural change within the boundaries of our historical “givens” best explains the absence explicit commands to abolish slavery in the New Testament.
Simply put, at that time, such a world was simply not even conceivable because of how much of culture and economy depended on slavery. Such a call would not only have supplanted the Gospel as the social and political focal point of the Christian faith, but would have been as futile as someone calling for the abolition of money or the formation of one-world government in the 21st century. Even the best aims require the right contexts to have any chance of transforming entrenched patterns.
If this is true, then only an uprising or complete reset of society could achieve such changes in one’s own lifetime. As it turns out, few people were more aware of this than Karl Marx.
To Marx and his disciples, it was painfully obvious that conservative politics were not conducive to the kind/degree of change they sought and thus, they proposed an operative political philosophy on the other side of the spectrum—revolution requiring force. Oddly, Reformed social media edgelords seem to display an affinity for such an approach even if they aren’t willing to publicly go all the way or haven’t read much Marxist philosophy. For them, the talking and respectable dialogue simply hasn’t moved the needle nearly enough, if at all, or perhaps it has moved the needle in the wrong direction. It’s time for forceful action.
As an example, after complaining about Christians who seek to make fine distinctions and engage in tactful political maneuvering in the American machine, Brian Sauvé recently concluded:
“We’re all just Nazis to them. Unpersons. The only answer is to stop caring about what your enemy thinks of you and defeat him. Anything less than this is permitting your enemy a seat at your councils of war.”
Critiquing those within the Second International who argued that rule by the proletariat should be realized through democratic process, Vladimir Lenin writes in The Tasks of the Third International:
“Ramsay MacDonald disposes of the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat [rule of the working class] in a couple of words as if it were a subject for a discussion on freedom and democracy. But it is not. It is time to act, it is too late for discussions.”
For Lenin, of course, to “act” meant to revolt—you can’t play ball on the enemy’s terms, and only comical pedants “fail to understand that voting within the bounds, institutions and customs of bourgeois parliamentarism is a part of the bourgeois state machinery that has to be broken and smashed from top to bottom in order to give effect to the dictatorship of the proletariat, in order to pass from bourgeois democracy to proletarian democracy” (TTTI).
Now, I’m obviously not accusing Reformed-Twitter of being Marxist—but their “talk is over, time for battle, don’t care about the world, destroy the enemy” approach has far more in common with Marxist political thought as it relates to change than conservative thought, and Christians listening in should be aware of it. Burke and Tocqueville would not approve—neither would the plodding, non-revolutionary approach of the early Church.
Are Christians willing to thoughtfully consider and articulate what political philosophy we are assuming under the guise of “faithfulness?”
Could you identify what political philosophy undergirds your theory of social action? If not, it's something to consider, and now is a great time to do so.
But don’t consider skipping leg day or holding your wife's purse while she goes to the bathroom—some thoughts are simply too dangerous for thoughtful reflection.