Does Liberalism Kill Christianity?

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Greetings to listeners. This is Jonah Goldberg, host of the Remnant podcast, brought to you by the Dispatch and Dispatch Media. Um, we are continuing our deep, deep spunking adventures into the history of liberalism and what it is and what the crisis of it is. And imagine the serendipity um of having uh Michael Bonner on to talk about his new book, The Crisis of Liberalism, The Origin and Destiny of Freedom. Uh Dr. Bonner has a defill is how is defill different than a PhD?

[00:00:37]>> Yeah, a PhD is some sort of Germanic uh innovation.

[00:00:41]>> Okay.

[00:00:42]>> Defill is the is the real thing.

[00:00:44]>> Okay. So, in the in the Anglosphere, we we reject that Tutonic filth >> and um embrace this. Okay, that's good to know.

[00:00:51]>> Yeah.

[00:00:52]>> Um he is a defill in the history of late antique Iran and the and early Islam from the University of Oxford. I've heard of it. Um after completing his doctorate, he returned to his native Canada. Um I want to just take a pause and apologize. I I've been very critical of Canada over years, but the way we've treated you in the last few years, I find reprehensible. Um, where he served as a policy adviser to five ministers in seven portfolios over the course of a decade and both federal and provincial governments, author of several books, most recently the one I just mentioned, the crisis of liberalism, the origin and destiny of freedom. Dr. Bonner, welcome to the remnant.

[00:01:34]>> Thanks for having me.

[00:01:36]>> All right. Um, what's your book about?

[00:01:40]So very simply it's to diagnose what is wrong with liberalism.

[00:01:48]Um and along the way we get a discussion of what liberalism is, how it has changed and where it came from and where it may be going. The impetus for the book I think is important to understand.

[00:02:05]I was I was invited to comment on this subject um a number in a number of different uh contexts and you know it's kind of weird for a historian of ancient Iran to sort of be asked to do that because it wasn't exactly my field but I was a policy adviser as you say I did work in government for a long time and you know liberalism is um it is or it is supposed to be the sort of animating principle of western uh societies, especially within the English speaking world. Um but everyone seems to think there's something wrong with it.

[00:02:43]>> Now, I've encountered this probably as much as everybody else has. You know, what's you know, what's wrong with it?

[00:02:49]Where did it go wrong? How did it start?

[00:02:51]Uh and so forth.

[00:02:53]>> Um but I didn't I've never really found satisfactory answers to that question or at least that you know that satisfied me. Um, and I think that if we did have satisfactory answers in general, we would not be in the mess that we're in.

[00:03:07]We might still be in a mess, but it would look different. So, I wanted to tackle it from what I thought was a uh a unique and hopefully unexpected uh perspective.

[00:03:18]>> Yeah. So I I find and as I fully admit to the reader to the listeners and I told you already I've only just started dipping my toes in and one of the things I find useful um it's it's a variation in I I work in Washington DC and in my day job I'm a inside the beltway pundit guy >> um who does weird eggghheadery on the side and um so the inside the beltway game is you immediately check the index to look up your own name. I didn't do that. But um what I do is I will often say okay so which historians is he writing is he referencing or which thinkers is he to see to sort of get a radar fix sort of triangulate in things.

[00:03:59]Um and um I have to say it was it was interesting. Uh there were name checks.

[00:04:07]I'm a I'm a defender of Fukuyama largely for the same reasons you are.

[00:04:10]>> Yeah. At the very least, I think his critics were unfair and misread him. Um, no one ever read the last chapter. Um, and you um you take out some hammer and tongs against one of my favorite um um pin cushion voodoo dolls, which is um comp I think I'd say, you know, of religion of humanity fame.

[00:04:33]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:34]>> And so one of the qu and but you don't mention uh Quentyn Skinner. I don't think you know. No, I should I should have but >> which feels like right in your alley.

[00:04:43]Anyway, the point I'm trying to get to is is that you have what I like about your argument is that you ground the idea of liberty and freedom in a pre-enlightenment tradition.

[00:04:55]>> Yeah, >> that gets expanded. But like this is the argument I've been stuck in for 10 years on the on the American right >> among the serious post-lberal crowd is that they think liberalism is a creation of the enlightenment and therefore wrong. So why don't you sort of explore this idea of like where liberalism comes before the enlightenment.

[00:05:17]>> Yeah. So um I I I want to call that outlook I want to give that outlook a name and I I I call it Steven Pinkerism.

[00:05:27]Uh Steven Pinker is the Canadian-American psychologist at Harvard who's very big on the enlightenment. He wrote a book called Enlightenment Now which you know like it's for a popular audience but I think it's rather superficial but his thesis is exactly what you said that all the amenities all all the nice things about liberalism and modernity he thinks come from the enlightenment which is to be specific it's it's a period between maybe uh the 1680s >> and then the French Revolution >> is of 1789 is often thought of as as ending it.

[00:06:12]>> Um, first of all, I think it's kind of weird to think that everything that you like comes from that one sort of roughly hundredyear period uh in early modernity and you don't find anything that you don't like in that period. I just I find that just kind of a peculiar outlook. Um but the the the the Pinkerist thesis is basically liberalism has a virgin birth uh at the at the end of the somewhere between the end of the 17th century and the the opening of the of the 19th which suggests that there's no sort of prevalent thought world that that that helped to shape it from before and that it represents a a break a sudden rupture with the the the past and I wanted to attack that notion and you know uh defeat it. Why is that significant? It's significant because you don't understand liberalism if you think that it came out of nowhere in uh early uh modernity. And if you see if you're determined to see it as a reaction to everything that came before, you will not understand, for example, why people like John Lockach and Jefferson and practically everybody in between and some people before that like Hobbes or what have you take these assertions about human liberty, equality, and um moral autonomy and so on and so on. why they take them all for granted.

[00:07:53]Why they make no effort to attempt to prove that they're true?

[00:07:57]Why do they do that? Because everybody already believes that.

[00:08:00]>> Mhm.

[00:08:01]>> And why do they believe it? Because obviously there are nuances as to, you know, precisely how people phrase these things, but they're taken for granted.

[00:08:10]Uh we hold these truths to be self-evident is how that era effectively closes. Mhm.

[00:08:17]>> Uh and uh essentially the liberals are the the the partisans of freedom, liberals, if you want to call them that, although they didn't always use that word, they are preaching to the choir. They are preaching to the choir because they already inhabit a much older thought world that takes these things for granted in which they have already been successfully either proven or chewed over for centuries to the point where the contours of the debate even if they don't get finally settled are still well known to everybody. A good example is free will. You can't uh Dr. Johnson, Samuel Johnson famously says, "We know the we know the will is free and there's an end on it." Meaning, there's no point in discussing this further. You you you can't prove it. You just have to accept that it's true because if you don't, none of this none of this stuff makes sense. Um so the theory, the pinkerist theory is basically that liberalism has no particular foundation. and it just kind of comes out of nowhere and hangs in the air and >> Mhm.

[00:09:25]>> and and that's the end of it. And I I would just say that that's obviously wrong.

[00:09:29]>> I like Stephen Pinker personally. He's been on here. Um >> I I like him too. I I'm not trying to say I don't he's not a bad >> Yeah, it's very Yeah. And I I think the Better Angels book, which one can critique from one angle or another, is a very valuable contribution. I think the blank slate book was a valuable contribute. I think I remember writing about this years ago and and I don't want to do injustice to it or overstate it, but >> I think in the Enlightenment Now versus Blank Slate, he has two really contradictory views of Edmund Burke. Um, which bothered me a great deal, but be that as it may, so I think that this is a it's a very valuable point. You know, one of the things I am grateful to the post-liberal crowd for is forcing me to actually do the homework to figure out why they're wrong. Um, in in so far as >> I probably use the phrase enlightenmentbased democracies a million times. And I look, I think we are enlightenment based democracies. It's just you sort of just it's it's it's shorthand, right? But it doesn't mean that the I I like your point about how it's not a virgin birth, right? But um you know my colleague Yvalin likes to point out that Dtoqueville in Democracy America gives something like a thousand-year history of liberalism and doesn't mention the enlightenment and he's like a product of it, >> right? I mean it just it there is a much longer backstory to it. And one of the things that the post-lberal crowd does is make it sound like John Lockach put these runes and incantations on paper and all of a sudden the metaphysics of the West were all screwed up and we've been on the wrong path ever since. And I've I've increasingly come to the position I I don't want to say I don't want to be wiggish or anything, but um I've come much much closer to the idea that a lot of liberalism is actually cultural >> and the ideas of liberalism are often lagging indicators that try to raify or systematize ize cultural prerogatives.

[00:11:43]And the example I often use, people are sick of hearing about it on here, is things like the fourth amendment, right?

[00:11:48]Where in the in American Fourth Amendment, you can't have someone can't search your home without a warrant and that kind of thing. And >> um the idea that a man's home was his castle goes back to weird Tutonic Wiccan, you know, like like uh tribes.

[00:12:04]And >> it gets cleaned up. It gets systematized. It gets ide ideologized, right? It gets into Black's law dictionary. It gets, you know, gets into the Blackstone's decision and all the it gets into the common law and then by the time it comes to the United States, it's this pure inalienable rights. You know, John Lock, he talks about toleration for these dissident Protestant sex and how that's really important and blah blah blah blah blah. And then he says, "But not the Catholics, you know, let's not go crazy." Yeah. And by the time you get to America, Thomas Jefferson's writing about notes of toleration. He's saying, you know, not only are the Catholics should they be tolerated, but the the the Muslims and the Hindus and the pagans and the Vikings and all the rest, they all need to be tolerated. And it's >> so like the ideas in many ways are um the cleanup crew for these cultural more Hyekian worked out on the ground things. you have a slightly different take because you you bring in more religion and metaphysics. So, I'm just wondering what you think of all of that. Is it helpful, unhelpful?

[00:13:11]>> It's helpful.

[00:13:14]the the kind of evolution that you're describing I would say happens um because those traditions or or sort of much older cultural practices get filtered through uh Christianity.

[00:13:33]>> Mhm. which has a um small p progressivist view of of history that takes takes older things and sort of uh I don't know what the right word is.

[00:13:51]It sort of uh christens them if you will.

[00:13:57]>> Mhm.

[00:13:58]purges them of the of of uh older accretions and sort of re renews them and and hands them on. You talk about the I guess you call it the castle doctrine or something like that.

[00:14:11]>> Yeah. Um the same thing happens with just very basically with Aristotle and Plato or classical um thought gets sort of re-engineered as a as a as Christian um metaphysics and then handed on. Um but history is generally believed to have a kind of teological have a direction to it and that the you know some of the stages that you pass through are uh discarded or the the the accretions are thrown away. That's the spirit of the reformation or the spirit of the Gregorian reform that I make so much of in in the book. But other things are are handed on and sort of re-engineered to fit the uh the prevailing uh worldview. It's not as though things get sort of laid down once and for all in the very distant past as it as as would be the case for example in Confucian thought and then they stay the same way forever. They in in in the in the west they tend to evolve. Mhm. So there's an I often shorthand it as a Tom Holland argument, but actually it's much richer and Jurgen Hobbermas has made you know the argument that basically western secular ethics and and right systems. It would be nice if they came from someplace else than Christianity, but they came from Christianity, right? or or you can say Judo Christianity because I think the the core idea of the moral worth of the individual is begins in Judaism and gets expanded in Christianity.

[00:15:52]>> That's true.

[00:15:53]What is your explanation for the turn where if you if you talk to I don't we we shouldn't turn Steven Pinker into a >> bunch into an avatar for a whole class of people but there's a group of people who consider themselves sophisticated morally and intellectually evolved and educated quote unquote small L liberals who think Christianity is ins serious fundamental conflict with that liberalism. Where where do where do you think this comes from?

[00:16:29]>> So I I do think that there is a conflict now. Um but it's almost like a sibling rivalry or or an edipole struggle in some kind of Freudian uh sense. But like that's that's just a poetic description of it. what has actually happened is curiously I would say a process that unfolds within Christianity itself and that there's a sense in which the uh Steven Pinkers of the world are essentially mental or in intellectual Protestants.

[00:17:09]>> Mhm. uh in in the mold of of uh uh Luther, Kelvin and and Loach that the spirit of the spirit of late medieval Christianity is actually not uh one of blind faith or like the the the sort of caricature of of uh uh extreme dogmatism and so forth. It's it's actually one where faith and reason are in some kind of mutual relationship, sometimes conflictual and sometimes uh working together or sort of pulling pulling in the same uh direction. And the spirit of the age was to was to believe what you knew and to know what you believe.

[00:18:09]Therefore, one current of thought in that in that direction is that faith is essentially uh not exactly a separate thing from what you what you know, but you have to you have to have a there has to be an appeal to reason. And if you have the appeal to reason then the uh all the appertinences of faith the you know or the ceremonies the incense the the the the veneration of saints and the miracles and so forth are sort of going to do nothing but cloud your judgment.

[00:18:50]And therefore you need to focus on the uh uh the appeal to the the the appeal to the rational faculty and clear away all the other stuff to see the world more clearly.

[00:19:06]That is the spirit of the enlightenment.

[00:19:09]>> Mhm. And you can see the enlightenment almost as the kind as a kind of um late late medieval thought world on on on steroids. It's a it's a natural consequence a natural consequence of it.

[00:19:27]You have to mix in the idea of a kind of um humanist style because they've thrown away the the sort of arid dry scholastic reasoning and syllogisms and the the sort of dull >> uh presentation of of of of aricetilian reasoning >> and they write very beautifully. Um, one could even say I mean Steven Pinker is is is a very clear uh elegant writer in in many ways. Voltater was too. But the overall spirit of this sort of the the life the life of reason the appeal to clear facts and obvious uh self-evident truths and so forth. That's that may as well be the voice of of Anelm as much as of Thomas Aquinus Voltater uh or Pinker.

[00:20:19]So, it's a process. It's an it is a it is an evolutionary process, not a sudden break. That would be my uh piece there.

[00:20:29]>> Right. But I mean, Right. So, one of my long-standing definitions of conservatism, >> which I like my my basic view is that American or conservatism in the Anglo-American tradition is about more than what we call classical liberalism.

[00:20:47]>> Yeah.

[00:20:48]>> But a conservatism that doesn't conserve the classical liberalism isn't worth conserving. Right. in that once you once conservatism no longer has that that tent pole or that spine of classical liberalism which doesn't have to be theoretical just be cultural you know liberalism um it becomes illiberal and that's when horseshoe theory stuff makes sense right that's where um because illiberalisms are best various illiberal systems are just different contests of power for certain constituents quencies or causes or tribes or identities or or whatever.

[00:21:26]Um but so one of my long-standing I probably wrote this 20 years ago definitions of conservatism is comfort with contradiction.

[00:21:34]>> Yeah.

[00:21:35]>> The idea that um good things can be in conflict. That there is no unity of all good things. That freedom is good but eventually freedom can get to a point where it conflicts with another good which is order. Right? And um >> and people like Frank Meyer and other people talk about how this is this inherent tension is the essence of western civilization going back thousands of years and and what where my thinking has changed a little bit in recent years is that um I increasingly think that liberalism can also best be understood as comfort with contradiction because liberalism of the sort that you're talking about is capacious. Right. So you're talking about Christianity having this conflict with other forms of liberalism. I think that's true, but it can be a healthy tension or it can be a negating, you know, a zero- sum conflict, right? There are there's a spectrum there. And I'm just wondering like is it a do you think it is a problem for liberalism today to or some of the chief for for the school of thought that says that liberalism is cannot live in easy compatibility with religion. That that is that is one of the reasons why you get post-lberalism.

[00:23:02]Is that is this a a cancerous form of thinking? You know, because if you if if we're going to cut off religion from commitment to liberalism, >> I don't think that's very good for religion, but I know it's not very good for liberalism. Um, and like >> how do you how do you square that circle? How do you make liberalism safe for for religion and vice versa in the 21st century?

[00:23:30]>> Short answer, I don't know. long answer.

[00:23:33]Uh we can observe that it was safe in um what uh what we call cold war liberalism.

[00:23:44]>> Mhm.

[00:23:46]>> I like cold war liberalism. I I I'm old enough to remember the Cold War and the the beige trench coats and the uh you know large George HW Bush glasses and >> things like that. Um and uh that that was what Judith Schclar called the liberalism of fear, >> right?

[00:24:08]>> And it was much less uh you know its critics say it's it's too narrow. Uh it's uh unadventurous and it's not particularly uh it doesn't really emphasize the sort of uh self creating um like radically self-actualizing element that liberalism was supposedly supposed to have. Can can I read for a second? According to whom? Like when when did when did liberalism rightly understood involve this cult of Rousoian sort of authenticity where I get to be >> true to myself and not conformist to any external notions of social good of bgeoa morality. I mean like this feels like this Rsian turn that I don't want to have to defend liberalism against because I don't think it's particularly liberal and it's not the kind of liberalism that I like. But there are a lot of people who believe it that that yeah the cult of authenticity and shock the boogeoisi is inherent to liberalism.

[00:25:15]And I think that's almost a Patrick Denine point more than it is an actual liberal point. But anyway, >> I think that there is a reading of John Stewart Mill.

[00:25:24]>> Yeah. Later Mill too, right?

[00:25:27]>> Yeah. That is it's not that much of a stretch to to get you there.

[00:25:32]But then again, it's also pretty obvious that there's a lot that Mill would never have contemplated that is now quite ordinary. Um, but times change. Um, I can point to if there's a book I might mangle the name. Um, it's by Samuel >> Moy of Yale.

[00:25:57]>> Um, and I think it's just called Cold War Liberalism. And it's sort of a portrait of of mid 20th century thinkers including Schclar and Isaiah Berlin and Lionol Trilling and a handful of others.

[00:26:11]In any case, his his thesis is basically that cold war liberalism sort of forecloses the the the more radical uh uh vision of earlier liberalism. Now, >> liberalism against itself. That's >> liberalism against itself. Okay, there you go. good good psychoanalytic name.

[00:26:30]Um so uh if you uh I mean from from my perspective I don't know how you can look at contemporary politics and think the problem is that liberalism just isn't wild and weird enough. Like I just don't know how you could >> come to that conclusion. Um, but I'm also I think like you I'm also very skeptical of the idea that what needs to be done is to completely surpass liberalism and the liberal tradition altogether because it's worn out and and uh sort of it's like eating itself like a snake or something like that. I think that many of the post-lberal critiques are just uh or at least there's often some insight from them. uh that may be a good sort of corrective. But western societies have been shaped first of all by Christianity for so long and second by this idea that political freedom that that that personal freedom is the goal of our politics.

[00:27:43]>> Uh I just don't think you're going to escape that. Mhm.

[00:27:47]>> That is how we all think in the west and that if somebody said the best thing to do in politics is to sort of diminish personal freedom, you know, in general, I don't think that's going to get a hearing. And second, um I all of our institutions and sort of the the thought world that we live in has been has accustomed us to to to think that way. So I prefer to speak of something like reorientating liberalism to and some post-lberals do this too. Uh I don't know if we necessarily agree, but I would say the idea the idea that the good life consists either in nothing that there's no good life just, you know, do whatever the hell you want or that the good life is best uh instantiated in the exercise of free will, which is kind of like a Rossian >> Mhm.

[00:28:44]>> position. I I don't I I can't really get behind that. I think it need I think that yes we are morally autonomous but we have to use our free will. We have to exercise our moral autonomy to choose what is good not simply what we like and we should be accustoming ourselves to like what is good. Now that may seem like a naive thing to say as though merely as though that kind of formula was just going to solve everything but that's just not how people talk anymore.

[00:29:16]>> Mhm. They don't they the you know like people talk about people first of all tend to emphasize extreme subjectivity which you will find both among left and right libertarians uh as though you know your personal story your personal truth your lived experience is the sort of the measure of all things which it is not and you can clearly see how that just sort of destroys a society if everybody thinks that Okay. Um but uh also if you uh if you get really sort of obsessed with uh uh uh you know expanding uh your personal choices infinitely even if you're you know without any kind of moral judgment or guidance or whatever you don't have again you corrode society but you also don't have liberalism, you just have anarchy. So, um, you know, there's a there's a post-lberal critique in there, which I think is fair. Uh, but it wasn't I mean, it comes from 20th century thinkers like Michael Sandal, I think, is one guy.

[00:30:31]>> I don't know if he's considered a post-lberal or not, but he certainly never used that term as far as I as far as I know. But um I would like to hear uh I would like to hear elites and thought leaders and what have you pander less to personal private experience and subjectivity as the sort of key to the good life or whatever and more to uh shared uh uh more to a sort of unanimous truth as a shared social possession if that makes sense.

[00:31:10]>> Yeah. So I spent a lot of time thinking about this and I think one of the ways you square the circle is um understanding that the pursuit of happiness speaking in American terms that the pursuit of happiness is an individual right but it's best realized in groups.

[00:31:29]>> Yeah I I would agree.

[00:31:30]>> Yeah. It's like people are happiest in family people are happiest in community.

[00:31:35]Uh, real communities are local things where you see people's faces and people have names. They're not abstract communities that you experience mediated through screens and they're not national communities. They're your neighborhood, right? First and foremost, or your church community or your synagogue or whatever >> localism.

[00:31:52]>> And I also think that one of the problems, again, speaking in the American language, I don't speak fluent coded Canadian. Um, so >> uh, but I think you understand, you're more fluent on the stuff than I. Um, we talk way too much in the language of democracy and not enough in the language of republicanism.

[00:32:11]>> And the I, you know, there's a big debate among my egghehead friends about what the difference between a democracy and a republic is, what do people mean when they say we're republic, we're not a democracy? Um, I think there are a lot of there are a lot of people on the right who love to do this sort of scolding. we're not a democracy, we're a constitutional republic. And they think they've settled an argument.

[00:32:34]>> And then you ask them, well, what do you mean by constitutional republic? And they they start to fall apart because they that was their mic drop and they got nothing more for me. And um I I think that the one of the things going back to your arguments about medieval Christianity is that >> I want put it this way. Subsidiarity I think is one of the most important concepts that doesn't get its due >> in so far as I want absolutely with the exception of things requiring national security considerations like military and and espionage and all that kind of stuff and a few other maybe law enforcement related things with you know all that. I want virtually no illiberalism at the national level, right? I mean, it I the limited government means limited to very specific core things, but so long as you have the right of exit, I have far fewer problems with a very tough-minded kind of communitarianism at at a very local level.

[00:33:36]>> Yeah. Because the only the way human beings actually find happiness in life is by finding institutions that are sticky, that have things about them that they have to like give of themselves to. And we've lost the ability except in cliched movies about sports and military platoon. The I the idea that you give up of yourself something to a cause that's greater than yourself is only ever talked about in national politics where I think that idea is literally poisonous. But at the very local level, I think it is the essence of the of a life well-lived. And yes, >> it's getting that balance right. Right.

[00:34:15]It's that those things that are in tension. you fix the tension by getting power at the right political level and we've lost the ability to talk about that kind of thing.

[00:34:25]>> Yeah. And I I mean I think that I I I I I'm with many of the post-lberals when I blame a strain of liberalism for that. Mhm.

[00:34:41]>> If if your definition of liberalism involves what um Peter Ducker called a protest against institutions, >> Mhm.

[00:34:52]>> you know, change the system, >> right? uh then you won't have any of that because the spirit of community will just be corroded every time some new generation or crop of people come comes in because they want to change everything and or they think that they can't understand it and and therefore the thing must be abolished.

[00:35:12]Um I think that that's a real problem.

[00:35:15]Um I don't think that it has to be a part of liberalism but I think unfortunately for many people it has been. Um then there's also just I think it's just a fact that those little communities that that um uh promote human flourishing don't really scale up. They just don't.

[00:35:37]>> Mhm.

[00:35:38]>> Um they have to be kept at the right uh size. Now, in a place like Canada, um I don't know if this is true elsewhere, but our cities don't really exist. Um they are creatures of the provinces, what you would call states. They don't have political parties. They don't have um constitutions. I think many American cities have constitutions of some kind, >> charters or charters. Yeah. Um and they uh they are too big. Um Toronto is by American standards I think maybe just sort of on the lower end of a large city but it's uh it spraws forever and instead of the instead of an amalgamation sort of instead of an elomeration of of different burrows and what have you it it it was made into one huge thing. So I don't know how I don't know why this is but I think you find this in the states too for for different reasons uh or possibly some of the same what should be municipal concerns just sort of disappear into sort of bizarre internationalist obsessions with >> causes halfway around the world. um municipal politics has been dominated by um you know uh people who hate Israel for some reason and I I I I don't I don't know how that becomes a municipal issue >> but >> it's as though people have become unable as you say even to like not just to talk about it but even to think about what a municipal issue what a municipal thing is or like what it means to live in a particular place in a particular city with its own unique concerns. I mean, those concerns may be annoying or or frustrating or or completely insoluble, but there's still your local concerns.

[00:37:43]>> Yeah. It's like Tom Tom Soul's distinction between the constrained and the unconstrained vision, >> I think, gets it some of this. You get people in I mean it's like in the 1960s in the protest in the United States against the Vietnam War, you would get students that would take over some cafeteria at Berkeley or Stanford or whatever and they would say, "We want longer library hours. We want uh take-home tests and we want a full and complete withdrawal of American troops from South Vietnam." You know, and it's like two of these things are legitimate requests.

[00:38:15]But um yeah, >> I think one of the best statements of this problem um of this problematic thinking comes in Barack Obama's second inaugural where >> he describes the individual and he describes the state in the federal level and and he says no indiv I mean I'm doing this from memory but you know no individual can teach all the teacher train all the math teachers that we need and no individual can put a person on the moon and So for the things we can't do on our own, we need to do we need to work together for the government, you know, with a sense of national unity.

[00:38:53]>> Yeah.

[00:38:53]>> And this completely erases cities, states, churches, synagogues, the, you know, the the shriners. I mean every civil society institution imaginable and that it's just simply the individual and the national state and a wasteland of dassinated non-connectivity anywhere. I mean the family gets mentioned, right? This is sort of why my breed of right-winger at the time freaked out about this life of Julia thing. This was like this.

[00:39:22]>> Oh yeah, I remember that >> individual woman and anything that she couldn't provide for herself that may have been provided by a family or a husband or you know a father or mother or parents or community or church whatever anything that she couldn't do individually it was the state in Washington providing for her and this kind of eraser of the senus of a healthy society is one of the things that I think >> yes >> is a product of mo what I would now call modern progressivism. M and I'm just kind of curious >> how do you so like one of the reasons why I was interested that you brought up uh Augustus Compt for the for listeners who don't know I mean as if I have listeners who don't know um but he was the um major 19th century uh intellectual who came up with this thing called the religion of humanity which was supposed to like where Isaac Newton would be a saint and this kind of thing and >> yes >> one of the reasons I got into him uh started pulling on the thread about him is that Herbert Crowley the father of American progressivism, uh, editor of the New Republic, adviser to Wilson and to TR, um, wrote the sort of Bible of American progressivism, the promise of American life, was literally, not figuratively, but literally baptized into the religion of humanity by his parents >> and that connectivity of what Compt was going for, Compt who invented the term sociology and a few other things. Um, uh, I see American progressivism coming out of the, uh, the progressive era in America.

[00:40:54]It's not wholly illiberal, but more illiberal than a lot of modern left of center people have ever really truly grappled with. And I'm kind of curious where >> where do you place progressivism in the story that you're telling?

[00:41:09]>> And you're free to say I I'm completely wrong. That's to that's fine, too, you know.

[00:41:14]>> Uh, no. I I agree to a great extent, but I think that K gets overshadowed by John Stewart Mill.

[00:41:23]>> Mhm.

[00:41:24]>> Um he's sort of like Mill's guru, sort of spiritual guru. And I I use the term spiritual advisedly because um Mill uh saw the religion of humanity from K and liked it but wanted it to be uh better, more more um believable, more uh properly suited to a British uh character.

[00:42:00]and he succeeded.

[00:42:04]They have so I mean the the the religion of humanity according to Mill has no rights of baptism. It has no calendar of saints.

[00:42:17]It has no liturgy the way uh K did. But it still has it still has humanity itself as a kind of uh god figure.

[00:42:31]>> Mhm.

[00:42:31]>> And it has um what's the word? Uh it has a clergy.

[00:42:38]I think that is the through line that contemporary progressives see themselves like Thomas Soul says as a particularly as an anointed class like a clergy like a like a priesthood uh with with a sort of technocratic and quai spiritual power to direct the course of politics and to direct the course of history. Uh so I think Colt is an influence, but he's a distant one >> and and and that a more immediate one is the uh the sort of Protestant religion of humanity, if you will, uh from from Mill. Um, I think that a lot of progressives don't understand that they are actually closer to classical liberals than they wish to admit.

[00:43:41]>> Mhm.

[00:43:41]>> That's that's my view. Um, I don't think that they're of the mold of someone like uh who would you say like a like a sanist or a or apier figure. I don't think that that that's not um like they're not jackabins.

[00:44:05]Um but they're liberals in a hurry. I'm with you and I I am trying. You know, I for all I know, you have no idea who I am or where I'm coming from, but like I'm a longtime mainstream American conservative who got off the Trump train. And >> yeah, >> so I'm sort of ideologically grounded but politically homeless. And um and given the craziness of the American new right and the enduring craziness of what I would call the American hard left, whatever, um I'm trying to have more grace in my heart for people who I may disagree with about tax rates or um entitlement reform, but actually care about facts, right? and are willing to have an a small L liberal argument about deploying reason and logic and facts to what the optimal policies are. And so there are people on the center left I can talk to more comfortably than there are people who I was a fellow traveler with for decades on the the far right because there is so much sort of new nationalist post-liberal integralist stuff that I at a fundamental level I disagree with and just a lot of BS >> on on parts of the far right that I just can't tolerate >> from people who are allegedly speaking in my name. So I'm I'm I'm willing to buy your definition or your your distinction here of classical liberals in a hurry to a certain extent about progressives. At the same time, I think there is I just had my friend Noah Rothman on here. We wrote a whole book about uh political violence in the left. There is a tendency among mainstream decent progressive left people who in their own life would never commit violence, would never teach their children that violence is okay, but they got this weird sweet tooth for it, right? they they make allowances and they forgive >> behavior, you know, like in in in America yesterday was just huge controversy because there were some hardcore left-wing activist journalist types who were essentially talking to the press about Luigi Manion, the guy who killed uh the head of United Healthcare. And they were all saying, you know, f Brian Thompson, the guy who was murdered, you know, while out running. um because healthcare prices are too high. The the the the the apologies for the weather underground for the Black Panthers in the 1960s, the apologies for sort of, you know, Yeah.

[00:46:40]>> the rights of >> it. I wish people on the center left who make allowances or have blind spots for this understood how much permission this gives people on the right to fear and distrust the left.

[00:46:55]>> Yeah, I I agree very strongly with that.

[00:46:58]However, I would add two things which are sort of half-formed thoughts.

[00:47:04]I think that the left-wing taste for violence has it has two I think it has two other elements to it which are often uh forgotten. Mhm.

[00:47:20]>> One element is something like the idea that we always have to be on the side of the of the guys struggling against the system, >> the downtrodden. Right.

[00:47:32]>> Right. So that's an old that's an old idea. Um long long pedigree to that. Um, and if it gets deeply ingrained enough, as I think it has been, instead of saying the downtrodden are so downtrodden, they have no, you know, they're they're leading a kind of like 14th century style peasants revolt.

[00:47:55]>> Mhm.

[00:47:55]>> You move from that to something more like the guy who's leading a revolt must be very downtrodden and and we must be on his side. Whereas that's doesn't that doesn't follow. Okay, so that's element one. Element two is a kind of uh third worldism. Third worldism is coming back into vogue. Um I mean in in some sense it it never went out of style, but the term is coming back into vogue.

[00:48:26]uh the Weather Underground and the um like the Policario front and like the uh >> Otter Minhoff gang. I mean, we can go on. Yeah.

[00:48:38]>> Yeah. Just try trying to think of these weird terms. uh the the PLO, you know, all all of these the the the Algerian Liberation Front, you know, like they they and and the Vietnamese the Vietkong like they they were beloved by left-wing uh intellectuals >> um because they were part of a seemingly global struggle against uh the West. Um, a lot of these left-wingers, even if they wouldn't dare say so in public, although some do, they are much enamored of the Iranian uh tyranny, the the the the dictatorship of of of mas and and and thugs simply because they appear to be resisting something else that they hate, capitalism, uh, the Anglo-American world in which you know the British are still somehow manipulating and controlling you know these like imperial proxies or whatever. The whole thing is is a ridiculous fantasy which goes back to Soviet meddling. It's like a it's like a folk memory of Soviet meddling in in in the non-aligned >> Yeah.

[00:50:00]>> uh world. And uh I think that greatly explains a lot of the uh um penchant for the sort of attraction to violence and resistance movements and people who are killing billionaires or CEOs or uh what have you. And uh I don't think it has a uh you know like one would struggle to to connect that to liberalism but >> but there was a time when in in European history when it was a liberals throwing bombs and trying to shoot uh priests and uh um the aristocracy and things like that. So um this theory that you that you are right to resist something or that that you must be part of a resistance movement. I mean, Hillary Clinton even used the word resist the resistance >> against Trump as though it's like the the French resistance or or you know, uh the Algeria or something, you know, it's there are reasons to be opposed to Trump, but it's not quite, you know, >> right quite the same. Um, I think there's something there. And as I say, it's kind of a halfbaked thought, but I think we're going to hear more of this kind of thing as we uh as we get into this century.

[00:51:32]>> Yeah. I mean, this for me, my part of my explanation for it, it goes back to the thing I was asking you where I interrupted you and asking where the hell does this cult of authenticity stuff get laid at the feet of liberalism. And I think part of the problem is is that liberal liberalism like I really appreciate your argument that there's actual metaphysical heft to liberalism about the the the the moral imperative of freedom and the individual souls and and I and I'm very sympathetic to that. At the same time, the success of liberalism as a system and its ability to work within a more secular culture >> leaves a lot of people with a hunger for meaning, right? What Robert Robert Nisbet would call the quest for community to feel like they belong to something, right? And there is something about supporting radicalism and violence that feels like it's filling up a hole in some people's souls that I think the the secular aspects of liberalism lends itself creates opportunities for psychologically.

[00:52:43]Um, and I don't know I so I I I'm very I'm a Hayek guy, right? So like um when you say there was a time where liberals were throwing the bombs and going after the priest, I I get what you're you're saying, but in after 1848, right, you basically have this split.

[00:53:06]>> It's it's a little bit of a just so story, but you know, it it's it's not entirely the full story, but it's a helpful shortorthhand for it. um where the social question about fixing all of the inequalities and problems created by capitalism obsessed some people and figuring out the process of liberalism.

[00:53:28]You know, rule of law, some sort of representation, uh fair courts, property rights, free speech rights, this kind of stuff. Yeah.

[00:53:37]Was the political question. I'm a b I am three cheers for bgeoa morality process liberal um >> political question stuff and I don't think and I think the problem with the social question stuff >> is that it >> it becomes a political religion kind of thing it it fills the part of the brain of religion >> and that's the that is the greater tension between liberalism and >> um quote unquote But religion is the fake religions of politics >> pretending to be real religions.

[00:54:14]>> But isn't that what people like John Stewart Mill intended?

[00:54:19]>> Mhm.

[00:54:20]>> Um and I think that I mean we can't interview him. Maybe he would feel that it it wasn't quite right. Maybe he was speaking a language that uh appealed metaphorically at the time. But when when when Mill is talking about uh the admiration and K too when when he's talking about the admiration that he has for the the mediev the high medieval church and the the unanimous consensus that and the the the sort of uh uh tensile strength that the medieval papacy gave to feudal life. He wants to carry that into the into modernity and uh that is his great uh intellectual project. Uh and he he arguably succeeded and that there's a kind of there's a kind of political liberalism that becomes very much like a religion.

[00:55:30]>> Um it's just a religion without ceremonies. It's it's the religion of humanity without without the the saints and and and hymns and ceremonies. Now, just as an aside, Ste I've heard Steven P Steven Pinker speak and say things like it's a mystery to him why people don't get together and sing hymns to John Stewart Mill and and put up putting up icons of uh you know, Voltater and Isaac Newton and and and and what have you. And he thought, you know, maybe we should do that. Well, that impulse is clearly I mean it's kind of silly but that impulse is there uh in the absence so one could well say that the rel the liberal religion of humanity is a is a silly thing but it's still a better one than some other alternatives uh Nazism and and uh bullsheism are like religions too >> and um so is so is something like uh what would you say the sort of cult of uh the cult of the self like that that that's you know there is an impulse there >> there's a whole body of stuff about environmentalism behaving like a real >> environmentalism is a perfect example um it has a kind of esquetology has like an a looming apocalypse that has to be averted like Greta Tunberg is like a like a prophet like figure.

[00:57:03]>> And if you read Earth, Earth in the Balance by Al Gore, I mean, it's like it's got the original sin narrative and Francis Bacon is Francis Bacon for for Gore is what um Yokim of of Fior is for Eric Vgelen and what William of Aam is for Richard Weaver. It's like these original thinkers who put us on the wrong path to all sorts of things. And um but I I I don't I I'm sorry to interrupt, but you're bringing up Pinker, you're bringing up Mill again.

[00:57:34]It gets me back to my fundamental question. It's like let's say that let's say that maybe this is what Mill intended. Okay. And I I I don't mean this as a disrespectful thing, but why should we give a rat's ass? My point is is that the tendency to argue about what liberalism is or isn't based upon what a handful of intellectuals wrote at any one time, you know? So, like there's this I bring it up on here all the time. It was a wonderful piece from National Affairs from 2019. It was called liberal practice versus liberal theory by a political scientist named Daniel Burns. And he points out that like a vast amount of the stuff that makes sense as liberal theory that the post-lberals want to argue with that Marxists want to argue with cuz remember I mean as you know better night Mark Marx was like the OG of post liberals right I mean the whole point of Marxism is to transcend liberalism and and it turns out that no actually like normal people don't know who John Lock was normal people who don't really know the first thing about John Stewart Mill but culturally Anglo So the Anglophere countries, they're sort of like, "What the hell are you talking about? Of course, this is my home. You can't come in, you know. Of course, I'm allowed to like own the fruits of my labor. Of course, I have a right to a day in court and to confront my accuser."

[00:58:56]>> Yes.

[00:58:57]>> And that stuff is much more it it it it it's the mirror of a lot of theory, but it also deviate like lock. There's nothing in lock that would allow for federalism.

[00:59:08]>> Doesn't mean like we got to get rid of federalism. It just means that like Lach was useful. I think Lock was more useful for the epistemology than he was for the political stuff. Anyway, but the the I get why intellectual historians, I'm very sympathetic to it and I find it fascinating want to argue about what these different thinkers believed, but it kind of misses the ground truth about what these cultures as a collective enterprise value and hold on to. So for me, for me the thinkers are not necessarily the people who drive the the current forward. It's more that the current pulls them along and they express it.

[00:59:48]>> So the head of our like in Canada, we have a party called the Liberal Party.

[00:59:56]>> Former head of it was a guy by the name of Justin Trudeau. like as far as I'm concerned like just like the most ills suited man to governing a a G7 country as as you could imagine but a guy who seemed to really believe in personal freedom.

[01:00:19]>> Mhm.

[01:00:20]>> Okay.

[01:00:21]I just never had the impression and I'm sure that I'm right no matter what anyone else says. I just don't think he and his ilk understand what they believe or I don't I don't I genuinely don't think that they understand what they are saying.

[01:00:38]>> Mhm.

[01:00:38]>> And there was a real like a vivid a vivid representation of this is the the so-called freedom convoy. remember that the Trump person.

[01:00:52]>> I mean, how how can it be that you have the Liberal Party with this sort of dramatic showdown with these other people who also claim to profess liberty? Something has clearly gone wrong that one one side is is definitely misunderstanding the other. They're talking past one another. How can they both claim to be representing this force which they or or or uh philosophical position which they think are so profoundly important.

[01:01:25]Um if you can't see how forcing a group of people to do something against their will is just not >> like that's just not freedom. like I just if you can't see that um I don't I just don't know how you can I I just I I don't I don't know how you can be thinking clearly. Now that that doesn't mean that I think that the the truckers were necessarily right in all regards. They had some really funny ideas as to how our constitution works and you know they they wanted I think they they wanted the king to depose the like dissolve parliament or or or I I don't know what they wanted but it was crazy whatever it was and you know within a liberal constitution we should be able to talk about things like medical treatments or vaccinations in the middle of a of a plague >> but but the liberals weren't able to do that.

[01:02:24]And I don't know how I don't know how else to explain that apart from saying that their tra the tradition that they profess has been misunderstood.

[01:02:33]>> Mhm.

[01:02:34]>> They they've they've got it they've got it wrong. They've forgotten it. And that is the answer as to why it from my perspective that's why this matters. It's not a question, you know, it's not like I would confront Justin Trudeau and say, "Well, John Lock said this and John Stewart Mill said that it's more like we have we have clearly as a society or at least the Liberal Party as a as a political body has lost the plot in some regard and has wandered from its um original uh from it from its earlier uh tradition and elites are going to have to find some way of walking that back. There no other way. It occurs to me, one, I'm abusing your time. Two, I've got a meeting coming up in about seven minutes. But, um, um, two things I didn't ask you about, which are a little bit of a nonsecator.

[01:03:34]The first one is less than the other one. Um, I have not followed closely the euthanasia stuff in Canada, >> but everything I hear creeps me out. Yeah, that's an even better example because >> when I was hearing you talk about the freedom convoy, I was like, well, isn't the euthanasia thing the the tip of the spear of this stuff now?

[01:03:57]Right.

[01:03:57]>> Well, it is because we have a document much like your Bill of Rights that is is called the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which has basically turned the turned off parliamentary supremacy.

[01:04:13]uh turned it off in 1982 and and and installed sort of put the Supreme Court over top of all of our politics and the court can now strike down laws whenever it wants and can uh in discover new rights all over the place. Okay. Very progressive clary approach to the >> Exactly. Exact. This is the ghost of John Mill. So, uh the uh okay, how did they justify it? How did they justify killing yourself or having yourself killed?

[01:04:52]The clause within the Charter Rights freedoms that's that that guarantees life, liberty, and the security of the person.

[01:05:00]Like that just that does like they could have asked they could have asked a janitor down the hole in the Supreme Court building, you know, does this make sense to you?

[01:05:10]>> Right. Okay. I I I just find that I and I don't really I I don't care about the legal uh reasoning. It's absurd >> and it's and it's wildly unpopular, but it is portrayed almost with the same uh gravity as a as a civil as a civil rights issue.

[01:05:34]>> Mhm.

[01:05:34]>> And I I just don't I don't I don't think that's right. Now, curiously, because of that, you know, because we still live in we don't yet live in a post-Christian thought world, it's still justified with appeals to, you know, personal autonomy and and, you know, private uh moral judgment and and also attacked uh and criticized from exactly the same position. So it's it it actually makes it very hard to discuss.

[01:06:07]But I mean if if that's how we're discussing killing yourself, I would say it's pretty clear evidence that that uh that something is some some intellectual derangement that is going on.

[01:06:21]>> Um and then last I mean there are a bunch of things I'd love to talk to you more about, but um so your specialty at least academically was um Iran.

[01:06:33]>> Yes. Um what first of all just out of curiosity what is the conception of liberty in Islamic thought as you see it? Um but secondly just more broadly how do you think the Iran war is going?

[01:06:49]>> Oh well um I I will say that I went on record predicting that the war would happen and that the Ayatollah would you know the Ayatollah was not long for this world. So I was right about that. Um, and I'm not I've not had the gumption to try to make further predictions. You know, uh, Joe Kim of Fior, you know, I'm not really of of the same uh, uh, disposition as as he was. Uh, I I I I'm very skeptical that we have a full picture, not because I'm a conspiracy theorist, but because of just cliches like fog of war.

[01:07:30]>> Yeah. Um the Iranian regime habitually lies cannot be trusted and the situation there was so dire to begin with um back in January when the or or uh late December, January, February when the rioting was at its most intense and then there was a horrible crackdown. Um states don't undertake these these vicious savage crackdowns because they think they're in great shape.

[01:08:00]like that just like the idea that and then like we're talking about uh what what is it like B2 bombers and like like the the just the sheer amount of bombardment that is happening or that has happened uh has been inflicted on Iran. I mean the idea that that makes your country stronger I think is pathetically absurd. I I just I don't know why that's a a talking point at all. I I think that if anything the war the war may have put the Iranian regime in a kind of holding pattern uh and it may have cemented the IRGC's um position as a kind of um alternative to the mullers, >> right? But the last thing they want is the war to end and then have to face the uh economic and and social consequences. I don't give the regime much much longer in this world. But you know as as Joeim said you know the that you know no one knows the day and the hour. So we'll see.

[01:09:09]>> All right Dr. Bonard, thank you so much for doing this. Um love to have you back. The book again is the crisis of liberalism. the origin and destiny of freedom. Thanks very much for joining the remnant.

[01:09:20]>> Thanks for having me.

[01:09:22]>> Okay. Uh Michael Bonner has left the studio. Um and uh and frankly so have I.

[01:09:29]This was uh um we recorded this earlier in the week and I had to run to a meeting. So um I'm recording this closed days later wearing a different shirt if you're watching this on YouTube. Um, and I don't want to like mischaracterize anything he said because it's not fresh in my head anymore. Um, I like Bonner. He was kind of a hard guy to pin down ideologically for me, which was kind of interesting.

[01:09:56]First of all, because he's Canadian. Um, but second of all, um, um, he's a reasonable Canadian, which just is strange. But, uh, no offense, men, just take it easy. Um, but I'm inc like and and I know we kind of conversation was at times a little obscure and a little sort of 30,000 foot and all that kind of stuff. Um, but his book isn't his book is actually if you're interested in this stuff, his book is very well done and I recommend it. Um, and um, I'm increasingly really interested in the sort of pre-enlightenment history of liberalism and of liberty um, for all the obvious reasons. Um I think he's right that there is this thing that a lot of people both on the left and right for one of a better term. Um they have this sort of what what what he calls um a virgin birth theory of liberalism that it just comes out of the enlightenment and didn't exist before.

[01:10:54]And um I think that's wrong. You know it's part of part part of the argument of suicide in the west but like he he lays it out really well in terms of the intellectual and theological history of it all. Um, so anyway, uh, uh, check out the book. Also, um, thank you to everybody who's signed up to be a member so they could listen to the solo podcast. You can do it, too. All the information is in the show notes. Um, it's it's really pretty easy. Use promo code dingo. You get a subscription to the dispatch, which means, you know, only not only do you get the solo um, remnants in full, but you get all the other paywalled podcasts. You get all the other um paywalled stuff from the stuff that Nick Kgio and Kevin Williamson write to the stuff that Scott Lindum and the rest of us write. You get the full morning dispatch which I would argue is the best newsletter um that does the news in America or maybe even in the English language. I think it's better than what the New York Times sends out every morning. I think it's better than what the Washington Post sends out every morning. And that alone is worth the subscription price.

[01:12:00]Um, but you also get so much more, including my dysfunctional, deranged, um, incontinent, uh, ramblings. So, there you have it.

[01:12:11]Um, thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.