James Stoner on Thomas West's New Book

See here. A taste:

West’s failure to distinguish political philosophy from political theory makes it too easy for him to dismiss competing interpretations of the Founders’ work and its vulnerabilities. We who teach in the field often elide the terms when we describe what we do to our colleagues in political science, on the one hand, and to those in the departments of philosophy on the other. But in speaking of the political theory of the Founding, West dodges the question of its relation to the account of natural rights and natural law in political philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.

He uses Locke from time to time to clarify and elaborate the Founders’ theory, as I say, but he backs away from him whenever the Founders did not agree with his conclusions. This prompts one to wonder, did the Founders pull back from logical implications they did not want to face, or did they find Locke’s theory philosophically inadequate?

West can only refute the amalgam theory—the view that the Founders drew on philosophically distinct and therefore philosophically incompatible political philosophies or fundamental traditions—if he can show that the Founders dismissed Locke for theoretical reasons, not just to avoid facing the practical consequences his principles demanded (for example, permitting divorce). The argument of Leo Strauss in the first place, and his successors such as Harvey Mansfield and Thomas Pangle, is that there are aspects of Locke’s political philosophy, not least its deep indebtedness to Hobbes’ philosophy, that lead eventually but inexorably to the materialist individualism and anomie of our current predicament—in other words, toward a crisis of liberalism—and that insofar as the Founders invited Locke into their homes and made his theoretical framework their own, they risked undermining their handiwork.

In short, if the Founding is Lockean, it is no amalgam, but it is unstable, carrying with it untoward Lockean consequences. If it is only partially Lockean, it might avoid the bad consequences, but would do so by being less pure (by being amalgamated). To be less abstract: The weakening of the family, enormous economic inequality, and maybe even eventual recourse to executive predominance arguably follow from Lockean political philosophy even if none of this is what the Founders had in mind.

See also this comment which links to how West has responded to a similar criticism. A taste, quoting West:

“In regard to the decline of our current world… our world is the way it is not because of the Founding, but something else that happened in the last two hundred and some years… if you look at the history of western countries in the 1960s, all of them went through the exact same metamorphosis, almost at the same moment. And so, countries for example like Germany and Britain, that have long had establishment of religion, official churches and all the things that the Americans didn’t do all had that exact same thing. There was immediate institution of no-fault divorce throughout the world in the 1970s in almost every country, immediate institution of barriers on employers in terms of their freedom of contract with their employees. There was a complete collapse of sexual mores throughout the Western world all at once, whether it was New Zealand, Australia, Germany, England America.

This is not due to the Founding Fathers, I can assure you of that… Nietzsche’s diagnosis of what’s wrong with us- that’s where you need to go to understand our current situation. It’s a psychological malady that is a profound indication of a deep dissatisfaction in the Western soul now that it has gotten rid of God, now that it has gotten rid of nature, and reason- it has gotten rid of all meaning in human life. It has put us exactly in the situation.. Tocqueville worried about, where we’re living in the present moment. That’s where we are, and that is not something that the Founding Fathers can be blamed for, and I also agree to some degree that is something the Founding Fathers can’t help us solve, that’s something we’re going to have to solve ourselves.”

I think it's absolutely true that this was an international phenomenon that affected Western culture in general, not just America in particular. Certain folks might operate with blinders and assume since America isn't Europe, let's look for particular American villains to blame -- Alfred Kinsey, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Abbie Hoffman, etc. -- and ignore Europe. The Straussians by the way don't do this and for good reason. They understand the ideas came from continental Europe and migrated their way to America.

I like their analysis much more than that of those who fulminate against "cultural Marxism." But at least they too understand that the "Frankfurt school" whom they blame for cultural Marxism are Europeans whose thought (as well as some of their people) came to America.

I don't think however, what's quoted above from West adequately answers the claim he tries to refute. Here's why: America was founded as a liberal democracy, arguably the first modern one. Lockean ideas began in Great Britain; but GB still was no modern liberal democracy if for no other reason than they still had a throne (monarchy) and altar (state established church), things liberal democracy were meant to if not abolish, defang.

By the 1960s all of the nations in Western Europe were, like America and France, liberal democracies. Indeed, America and France influenced them in becoming such. So yes, these nations are Lockean, because they followed America and France. Yes, many of those nations, like Great Britain still had both monarchies and state established churches as they do to this day. But they are "defanged"; they are titular. As liberal democracies, they have to be.

But before these nations became liberal democracies, those institutions were not titular. There is only one area where Western state established churches and monarchies still have power, and that's that they have money. And money is power.