Progressivism, Reaction and Symmetry Reactionary Notes #1

Richard Brookes 12 September 2013

Progressivism as Religion

Reactionaries claim that the ideals of the culturally dominant section of modern Western society constitute a religion, albeit a godless one, and that this religion is as hostile to departures from its doctrine as other dominant religions have been. In other words, the pluralism and tolerance that liberalism claims for itself are a lie. The liberals claim otherwise. They say they are tolerant of everything except intolerance (and obvious crimes, which are not what the central disagreement is about), and that conservatives who complain they are losing freedoms are in fact only losing the freedom to exclude or oppress others.

Tolerance as Progressivisms Essence

There is a good deal of truth in the liberals response. Most of the things that conservatives complain about not being allowed to do are things that involve excluding others, whether its having a scout groups that requires a profession of religious belief, or a company that doesnt do business with gays. That doesnt prove that liberals position is superior a libertarian can claim that the right to choose who to associate with is more important than a right to force others to associate with you, and a conservative can claim that some things just ought not to be tolerated but it does answer the allegation of equivalence between the liberal religion and the more exclusive dominant faiths of the past. There is a catch, though. The claim to tolerate anything but intolerance breaks down in a few places, and these exceptions undermine the liberal defense. 1

Exceptions to Tolerance

The rst weak spot is the pseudoscientic liberal dogma. If you suggest that the intelligence of Africans is not the same as that of Europeans, then, no matter how eminent you are or how much evidence there is on your side, you will be excluded from any position of inuence, even if no accusation of actual intolerance is made. The second is the concept of the hostile environment. If you were to put a calendar on your desk, of the sort that used to be widespread, in which the days of each month are accompanied by a photograph of a young adult woman in a state of partial undress, then in most workplaces you would be out of the door in about twenty minutes. The exceptions are perfectly understandable in practice. Intolerance can be expressed by simply making your environment unpleasant for the people you dont want; that works almost as well as directly keeping them out. If you permit hostile environments, you permit intolerance. If someone can maintain a false theory about a particular group, then they can similarly practice their intolerance implicitly simply by following their theory. The progressives got themselves in a bit of a knot over the science; when they started pushing the egalitarian science they believed it in good faith, but, having prohibited certain propositions on moral grounds, they are trapped by the need not to contradict themselves now that the evidence that those propositions are false is overwhelming.

Symmetry

So, leaving aside the scientic mess, these small intolerances of liberalism make a certain amount of sense. All the same, the exceptions do restore the symmetry between liberalism and religion. Any of the unacceptable intolerances of the traditionalists could, in principle, be equally well defended as providing false justication for other intolerances, or as creating a hostile environment towards some group. Open displays of deviant sexual orientation create a hostile environment for the chaste. Evolutionary theory justies intolerance of orthodox Christians. The circle is complete. It might seem that the liberals could clean up their act, and eliminate these little episodes of backsliding into intolerance, but they really cant. The reason for the exceptions for justications and hostile environments is that they are absolutely necessary. Without them, a strong group can still impose their cultural preferences while being strictly tolerant in every respect. In other words, the theory that you can build a system on tolerance is false. 2

There is such as thing as culture, and any society is going to have a single dominant culture, not a buet of available cultural elements to pick and choose from. The progressive project is not one of opening up more choice, but of replacing the old dominant culture with a dierent one. That is why topless calendars create an illegal hostile environment for women, but Gay Pride accessories dont create an illegal hostile environment for Christians. The areas where alternative cultures clash with each other are the strongest demonstrations of the incoherence of the liberal position. Feminists and Moslems make hostile environments for each other, or homosexuals and Africans, and observers are treated to the spectacle of victimhood poker as liberals try to adjudicate which side is entitled to make an environment hostile to the other.

Real Essence of Liberalism

Is, then, the goal of liberalism to impose a particular new culture, or to acheive an impossible balance, where any culture is allowed until it looks like becoming too strong? The rhetoric of liberty tends towards the latter, but there is a strong thread of a particular subculture in there. Ultimately, it isnt really a meaningful question. The progressive movement is big enough and old enough that it has become an agglomeration of dierent ideas, associated by history or by temporary strategic alliances. Tolerance is one central idea of liberalism. Equality is another, and opposition to traditional Western social structures a third. Trying to identify the essence of our ruling ideology is doomed, because there isnt one.