Postmodern Conservatives: Denying Reality, Digging Foucault

"The looniest aspects of the far left during the 1960s morphed into the looniest aspects of the far right today." So writes historian Kevin Mattson in February's American Prospect magazine. In an article called "The Book Of Liberal Virtues", he nails something that's been on my mind for a while (albeit in less lucid form): conservatives, whether they know it or not, have taken over radical postmodernism from the likes of Michel Foucault, and now they are the ones arguing that there is no such thing as objective truth, that facts don't matter and that everything is subordinate to politics. Writes Mattson:

Historically, liberals inherited the tradition of the Enlightenment, with its belief in rationality and universal values... But since the 1960s, the academic left has attacked the Enlightenment tradition. It has become fashionable to doubt that the universal claims made by liberals -- grounded in values like equality or freedom -- can stand up to scrutiny. In the fields of literary theory, philosophy of science, sociological theory, and cultural studies, the Enlightenment tradition has taken a beating.

But now it's conservatives who are the extreme relativists, as demonstrated when they argue that intelligent design is on an equal scientific footing with evolution, or that the "reality-based community" is for liberal losers. I'll never forget this passage from a now-famous New York Times Magazine article (subscription required) by Ron Suskind:

[A senior Bush aide] said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That’s not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Mattson, who teaches history at Ohio University, traces the following strands in the new movement:

There’s anti-intellectualism, mixed in with a populist distrust of professionalism and higher education as well as “objectivity,” which is seen as a smokescreen cloaking the sinister ambition of imposing a liberal worldview on unsuspecting students or media consumers.

Among other examples, Mattson cites attacks on the media's claims to professional objectivity, and conservative David Horowitz's "Academic Bill Of Rights", which argues "there is no humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to challenge" (an idea the postmodern conservatives' fundamentalist allies might have a problem with).

As Mattson argues, this path leads away from democracy, whether those treading it call themselves leftists, nihilists or George W. Bush. He acknowledges that there was some value in the earlier version of the postmodern critique of the Enlightenment: "...postmodernists were right to celebrate complexity and nuance over the danger of embracing big, bad ideas" such as the brutalities of the Soviet Union and its inhumane "science" of history. But radical postmodernism, of the left or right, attacks the "institutions that sustain democratic discussion."

We may never attain objective truth, but that doesn't mean the pursuit should be abandoned. Mattson quotes philosopher and critic of postmodernism Terry Eagleton: "Trying to be objective is an arduous, fatiguing business, which in the end only the virtuous can attain."

Mattson calls on liberals to recognize the virtues they stand for and to argue for them more effectively, without simply trying to match the anti-rational passion of today's right:

Liberals... demand both passion and constraints from citizens. Think of the greatest historical accomplishments in the history of liberalism. Constitutions and the rule of law inherently check passion. The idea that markets -- the classical arena for passion and self-interest -- should be tempered by regulation is also central to liberalism. So too the idea of objectivity, which encourages people to push aside personal prejudice for achieving something approximating truth. So too the deferral of gratification that long-term preparation for a profession requires.

Mattson believes Americans are ready for such arguments, if we will only make them:

Our hope is grounded in a faith that citizens still want something more than what the right’s culture wars offer. The right makes clear what it wants every time we hear the red-faced screaming of Bill O’Reilly, the he-man antics of Sean Hannity, the coarse and ugly bellowing of Ann Coulter (whose hero is, not surprisingly, Joe McCarthy), the calls to “political war” by David Horowitz, and the anti-intellectual steadfastness of our president, who refuses to believe that facts matter... It is a culture that ironically degrades authority. Some Americans might like this bullying, but many find it disturbing. It is the role of liberals to articulate why that’s so.