The conservative ascent

Chambers sensed that political liberty was rooted in the self-understanding man received from the rich biblical and pre-modern heritages of the West. The fullest expression of man’s life went beyond immediate reality. Chambers beautifully noted, “It was the genius of Christianity to whisper to the lowliest man that by the action of his own soul he could burst the iron bonds of Fate…”

His worth transcending immanent reality, the ordering purposes of the state were turned towards respecting and supporting this self-understanding of man. Equality under law, the ultimate ground for the rule of law, slowly emerged as a concept with inscrutable meaning.

Chambers’ famous conversion from communism to Christianity and his witness to truth in the early Cold War period were made possible because he wrestled with the question that modern rationalism was unable to pose to itself: What can be hoped for with this life? Chambers famously argued that modern liberalism was unable to challenge either communism or the soul-sapping elements within western democracies. Modern liberalism’s god of substantive equality and its basic disloyalty to the spirit of man were unsustainable, Chambers believed. The man of late-modernity required something more if he was to forego the ongoing ideological hypnosis of his time. Even though expressly denying its existence, the communist sensed the inescapable existence of his soul and its irrepressible logic. To acknowledge this reality and its portents was the first task of an intellectual conservatism. Of this soulful movement, modern liberalism was strangely unaware.

Chambers articulated that the allure of state planning in its New Deal and communist manifestations was the effectual truth of modern rationalism. In other words, we had it coming for a long time. From its ideal of salvation by technique, the conclusion was that “man’s mind is man’s fate.” Unlike many of his conservative contemporaries, Chambers rarely attacked communism’s practical difficulties; instead his critiques centered on its immorality and deeply misguided anthropology. Chambers’ analysis of communism’s intrinsic disloyalty to man makes his contribution one of transhistorical importance. We know that total planning as an ideal of state action has receded. Unfortunately, the larger philosophical confusion from which limitless state power emerged remains too much with us. Expansive state power is a reality conservatives struggle to contain, even at the level of principle.

Liberty is no longer the heroic struggle grounded in the proposition that truth is knowable in thought and thus capable of being enacted, if only incompletely. In rejecting the transcendent ground of liberty, the denizen of late-modernity now throws himself into the endless relativism of contemporary democratic thought. Only in radical indeterminacy do we have full protection for individual rights, we are told. Man’s subjective will remains the exclusive measure of government. Chambers’ well-noted pessimism, best stated in his observation that he was “leaving the winning world for the losing world” in renouncing his communist beliefs, still haunts a hollowed West.

If the citizens of liberal democracy no longer believe in their intrinsic freedom as persons, and that freedom must be guided by conscience and truth, government inherently becomes unlimited. What precisely are the principles that would limit and guide government in this flawed philosophical framework? The weariness and cynicism of an age that believes little and risks little undermines the firm limits that our Founders insisted were the basis of republican government. These are the truths many conservatives struggle to understand, if not dismissing them outright.

President Obama’s assertion of further control over health care, among other industries, has only upped the ante in our centralized republic. The real contest with the contemporary Left is much broader and involves our firm engagement with the dimensions of liberty that Chambers articulated. To regain our republic requires our comprehension of man’s higher purposes and the beliefs and habits necessary to achieve them. Forsaking belief in the freedom of the person as a “political reading of the Bible” we remain, as one man recently stated, doomed.

Richard M. Reinsch II is a program officer at Liberty Fund, Inc., and the author of the recently released book entitled, “Whittaker Chambers: the Spirit of a Counterrevolutionary” (ISI Books, 2010).