Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

But by 1900 or so, these dislikes and likes became ends in themselves. The liberal was prepared to force people to associate with those they could not bear, in the name of freedom of assembly, or he was, in the name of freedom of speech, prepared to force people to listen. His anti-clericalism became an effort to prevent people from getting religion, and his antimilitarism took the form of opposing funds for legitimate defense. Most amazing, his earlier opposition to the use of private economic power to restrict individual freedoms took the form of an effort to increase the authority of the state against private economic power and wealth in themselves. Thus the liberal of 1880 and the liberal of 1940 had reversed themselves on the role and power of the state, the earlier seeking to curtail it, the latter seeking to increase it. In the process, the upholder of the former liberal idea that the power of the state should be curtailed came to be called a conservative. This simply added to the intellectual confusion of the mid-twentieth century, which arose from the Irrational Activist reluctance to define any terms, a disinclination that has now penetrated deeply into all intellectual and academic life.

In this connection we might say that the whole recent controversy , between conservatism and liberalism is utterly wrongheaded and ignorant. Since the true role of conservatism must be to conserve the tradition of our society, and since that tradition is a liberal tradition, the two should be closely allied in their aim at common goals. So long as liberals and conservatives have as their primary goals to defend interests and to belabor each other for partisan reasons, they cannot do this. When they decide to look at the realities beneath the controversies, they might begin with a little book that appeared many years ago (1902) from the hand of a member of the chief family in the English Conservative Party over the past century. The book is Conservatism by Lord Hugh Cecil. This volume defines conservatism very much as I have defined liberalism and the Outlook of the West as tentative, flexible, undogmatic, communal, and moderate. Its fundamental assumption is that men are imperfect creatures, will probably get further by working together than by blind opposition, and that, since undoubtedly each is wrong to some extent, any extreme or drastic action is inadvisable. Conservatism of this type was, indeed, closer to what I have called liberalism than the liberals of 1880 were, since the conservatives of this type were perfectly willing to use the Church or the army or the state to carry out their moderate and tentative projects, and were prepared to use the state to curtail arbitrary private economic power, which the liberals of the day were unwilling to do (since they embraced a doctrinaire belief in the limitation of state power).

All this is of significance because it is concerned with the fact that there is an age-old Western tradition, much battered and destroyed in recent generations, that has sent up new, living shoots of vigorous growth since 1945. These new shoots have appeared even in those areas where the orthodox nineteenth-century liberals looked to find only enemies—in the Church and in the armed forces. The operation of what I have called the liberal tradition of the West is evident in all religious thought of recent years, even in that of Roman Catholicism. It is almost equally evident in military life, where the practice of consulting diverse, and even outside, opinion to reach tentative decisions is increasingly obvious. Recently I attended a conference of the United States Navy Special Projects Office where a diverse group tried to reach some consensus about the form of naval weapons systems twelve years in the future. The agenda, as set up for seven weeks, provided for thirty-three successive approximations narrowing in on the desired consensus. This was listed on the agenda as “Final Approximation and Crystallization of Dissent.” The recognition that the final goal was still approximate, and the equal role provided for disagreement within this consensus, show clearly how the tradition of the West operates today within the armed forces of the West.

This return to the tradition of the West is evident in many aspects of life beyond those mentioned here. Strangely enough, the return of which we speak is much more evident in the United States than it is in Europe, and, accordingly, some of the most significant examples of it will be mentioned in the following section, which is concerned with the United States.

The reason for this, apparently, is that Europeans, after their very difficult experiences of depression and war, are now overly eager for the mundane benefits made possible by advancing technology and are, as a result, increasingly selfish and materialistic, while Americans, having tasted the fleshpots of affluence, are increasingly unselfish, community-conscious, and nonmaterial in their attitudes. A careful look, however, will show that the movement is present on both sides of the Atlantic, and appears perhaps most obviously in a growing concern with one’s fellow men, a kind of practical Christianity, and a spreading evidence of charity and love in the old Christian meaning of these terms. There seems to be, especially among the younger generation, a growing emphasis on fellowship and interpersonal relations and an increasing skepticism toward abstract power, high-blown slogans, old war cries, and authority. There is a reaching out to one another, seeking to understand, to help, to comfort. There is a growing tolerance of differences, an amused attitude of live and let live; and, above all, there is an avid discussion of values and priorities that include more spiritual items than a generation ago. There is an almost universal rejection of authority, of rigid formulas, and of final or total answers. In a word, there is a fumbling effort to rediscover the tradition of the West by a generation that has been largely cut off from that tradition.

We have said that this tradition is one of Inclusive Diversity in which one of the chief problems is how elements that seem discordant, but are recognized as real and necessary, may be fitted together. The solution to this problem, which rests in the tradition itself, is to be found in the idea of hierarchy: diverse elements are discordant only because they are out of place. Once the proper arrangement is found, discord is replaced by concord. Once, long ago, a young person said to me, “Dirt is only misplaced matter”—a typically Western attitude. Today young persons spend increasing time in argument and thought on how diverse things, all of which seem necessary, can be arranged in a hierarchy of importance or priority: military service, preparation for a vocation, love and marriage, personal development, desire to help others—all these compete for energy, time, and attention. In what order should they be arranged? This is quite different from the successful young man of yesteryear who had one clearly perceived goal—to prepare for a career in moneymaking. The road to that career was marked by materialism, selfishness, and pride, all attitudes of low favor in the outlook of the West, not because they are absolutely wrong but because they indicate a failure to see the place of things in the general structure of the universe. Even pride, either in Lucifer or in Soames Forsyte, is a failure to realize one’s own position in the whole picture. And today, especially in America, increasing numbers of people are trying to see the whole picture.

The United States and the Middle-Class Crisis

The character of any society is determined less by what it is actually like than by the picture it has of itself and of what it aspires to be. From .this point of view, American society of the 1920’s was largely middle class. Its values and aspirations were middle class, and power or influence within it was in the hands of middle-class people. On the whole, this was regarded as proper, except by iconoclastic writers who gained fortune and reputation simply by satirizing or criticizing middle-class customs.