It would be nice, in a way, to be a progressive. You’d be confident you know the direction History is moving. And you’d have faith that the direction in which History is moving is the direction in which History should be moving.
So you’d think of politics as a drive along a highway to the future. Your decisions would consist mostly of when to step on the gas or, occasionally, when to tap the brakes. You might make occasional errors of judgment as to speed. But direction would be no problem. And at the end of the day, whatever the messiness of the real world and however much some choices seemed not to be working out, you’d be confident that History had your back.
But you’d be wrong.
What, on the other hand, if you’re one of those who know there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the progressive catechism? But what if you also know that simply embracing the opposite of progressivism isn’t a sufficient guide?
You might tell yourself that you can learn from history. You say to yourself that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But of course you also know that simply remembering the past isn’t sufficient to avoid new mistakes. After all, the past is . . . the past.
So for example: You wonder if the Trump presidency is heading down a path like that of Jimmy Carter, or Richard Nixon, or Lyndon Johnson. All are helpful guides to possible outcomes. But Trump himself is sufficiently different from those predecessors, and the times and circumstances are sufficiently changed, that one suspects the Trump episode won’t play out in the same way as any of these models. The guidance provided by history is limited.
Another example: A month or so ago, there was talk among some Trump critics of signing a statement calling on President Trump to resign. Several of those approached thought this a bad idea, judging the prospect so impractical and wishful that it would seem a declaration of impotence. But what if in fact the single best thing that could happen for the country, to say nothing of the Republican party and conservatism, would be for Trump to resign? Why not think more seriously about whether such a thing could become possible and how the groundwork might be laid for such an eventuality? Is it a dereliction of duty not to work towards such an outcome? Such an outcome is, after all, what sensible people would be pushing for if we lived in a parliamentary system. Why not borrow a page from the British?
And what of conservatism? Will part of the conservative movement be driven by Trump into a revived Democratic party, as liberals who became neoconservatives found a place in the Republican party in the late 1970s? That seems highly unlikely: Today’s Democratic party is far less hospitable to anti-Trump conservatives than the Reagan Republicans were to anti-Communist and anti-New Left liberals. What about a revival of the GOP as a party of liberty and decency? This seems possible if difficult. But what if it fails? What then? The formation of a new conservative party? Or a new centrist one? Or a party of liberty that is at once conservative and libertarian? Any of these novel projects would be daunting tasks.
But what’s the alternative? To surrender to a grim future where the choice is between the politics of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders?
In December 1862, President Abraham Lincoln told Congress, “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”
Without comparing our trials in any way to those Lincoln faced, we increasingly suspect that now is a time when the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.
In a way, Donald Trump was the first to sense this. Because he is a talented demagogue, he was ahead of more decent and conventional politicians. They continued to be attached to the dogmas of the quiet past, which in some cases had served the country well. But in the new moment in which we live, other politicians were left in the dust.
As a result, we have a president who’s manifestly not up to the job, two political parties who seem very much out of touch, and an awful lot of us analysts and pundits whose thought was shaped in a different era. The world is dangerous in new ways, and our politics and culture are radically unsettled. The occasion is piled high with difficulty. We must think anew.
It would be nice if this were not the case. But it is.
