John Patrick Diggins (1935–2009)

In this exploration of modern American intellectual history, Diggins traces the careers of four writers whose political odyssey took them from one end of the ideological spectrum to the other. Max Eastman, John Dos Passos, Will Herberg, and James Burnham all came of age at a time when many young intellectuals expressed admiration for the principles of communism, but each became disenchanted with one-party socialist regimes as a result of the Stalinization of Eastern Europe after WWII. The show more four became outspoken adherents of American cold-war conservatism during the 1950s and 1960s, and each for a time wrote for William F. Buckley’s National Review.

Diggins explains how almost all of the theoretical issues that emerged in the 1960s and that remain at the forefront of debate today had been discussed and analyzed in the 1930s, including the emergence of corporate capitalism, bureaucracy, elitism, and the managerial state; power and morality; means and ends; the reality of liberal hegemony and the question of American exceptionalism.

Diggins gives the lie to any notion that American conservatism has no intellectual heft, while drawing attention to the dilemmas and paradoxes that plagued post-WWII conservative thought. All four of the writers under study came to disdain liberalism: “to Eastman, liberalism meant the tyranny of planning and the eclipse of freedom; to Herberg, the perils of believing in man’s rationality and goodness and the pitfalls of relativism; to Burnham, the politics of guilt and a blindness to power; to Dos Passos, the abuses of power and an itch to change that ignores the wisdom of history.” Each of the four emphasized different solutions to the problems of power and legitimate authority—free enterprise (Eastman), Jeffersonian individualism (Dos Passos), religion and ethics (Herberg), or pluralistic institutions managed by competing elites (Burnham)—but each proposed solution produced a new dilemma or paradox. The ultimate irony was that conservative intellectuals during the Cold War found themselves advocating the preservation of a social order based upon the very principles that offended them.

Diggins’ chief accomplishment is showing how the critique of conservatism came from conservative intellectuals themselves. The fetish for free-market capitalism was challenged by those who asked if capitalism (growth, change, social dislocation) was even compatible with conservatism (order, continuity, social stability). Dos Passos (following Max Weber) pointed out the tendency of all aspects of modern life, government and labor as well as business, to grow into “vast petrifying institutions”: “once the acquisitive activities of enterprise are loosed from the bonds of tradition, capitalism has no inherent limits and leads inevitably to larger and larger units of organization,” inevitably stifling individual liberty. The curse of big business means the curse of big government. Herberg argued that because capitalism cut man off from man, and communism coerced him into a false community, neither was able to develop a satisfactory moral philosophy of obligation.

What of the conservative Christian tradition? Herberg’s call for a religious awakening was seen by some conservatives as an escape from the responsibilities and uncertainties of political life. Eastman called Christianity “the opiate of conservatism.” Others noted how Christianity’s message of minimizing desire conflicted with capitalism’s drive to maximize satisfaction. Diggins points out the tension between the conservative conception of life as tragedy and the conservative conception of ethical responsibility: “man’s fallen state, the doctrine of inherited guilt, can just as easily deny both the premise of moral freedom and the goal of social harmony that are so precious to conservatives.” Burnham was appalled in his later years to find Americans using religion to identify the cause of America with the cause of God.

The Cold War laid bare the distinctions between conservatives and anti-communist liberals, writes Diggins, and muddied the debate on means and ends. Conservatives largely approved of right-wing authoritarianism in the name of defending societies against communism—supporting undemocratic means to democratic ends in Spain, Greece, Portugal, Central America, etc. McCarthyism too challenged conservatives’ principles, with many willing to support the violation of constitutional liberties while McCarthy redefined communism not as a popular mass movement but as an internal conspiracy of assassins. The “ethical void” at the core of McCarthyism made anti-communism seem less like a deep moral commitment and more like an expedient political issue, says Diggins. With cold-war conservatives unable to stand on principle, liberalism was the only stance the intellectual could take to oppose the totalitarianism of Left or Right, and National Review writers found themselves in the awkward position of advocating liberalism in the communist world while ridiculing it at home.

Key issues of the 1960s—civil rights and race relations, the counterculture and the New Left—presented a further set of challenges for conservative intellectuals. Conservatives’ convictions could lead some to emphasize morality and order over practical liberty and democracy. Herberg, echoing Russell Kirk’s assertion that political problems are essentially moral and religious problems, wrote that “some doctrine of higher law beyond the sheer will of the sovereign or the folkways of the community would seem to be necessary if the right is not to be reduced simply to the power of the stronger.” Such a stance privileging Natural Law led Herberg to deny Martin Luther King Jr.’s theological presumption that unjust laws could be broken as a matter of Christian conscience (Herberg here jettisoned the American tradition of civil disobedience, as well). Herberg asserted that justice was second to order, on the grounds that without order there could be no justice and no society. Conservative conviction, notes Diggins, led paradoxically to the conclusion that “the existing social order, no matter how unjust, must be preserved at all costs, and the religious conscience, however virtuous, must be subdued.” On race relations, Herberg was willing to let traditional folkways prevail, and the stronger define the right. So much for Natural Law in action. For his part, Dos Passos could not see that the New Left was protesting, in addition to the Vietnam War, the very abuses of power that he had raged against his entire life: bureaucracy, technology, centralized government, corporate capitalism, the ‘multiversity,’ and all institutions that deny the autonomy and humanity of the individual. One can hear even now the chants at Berkeley: “2—4—6—8! Stop the War! Smash the State!” Even SDS denounced authoritarian communist regimes in Eastern Europe.

As Diggins notes, “to be a conservative means to become aware of the historical dimension of knowledge, to nurture, revere and defend those values and institutions that belong to the past.” Knowledge of the American past, however, presented another dilemma for conservatives. Among the founders of the American system, Madison, Hamilton, Marshall, Jay, and Adams aspired to create a republic in which conservative values might flourish: harmony, stability, virtue, reverence, veneration, loyalty, self-discipline, and moderation; "their thought was critical, reflective, deeply conscious of history and tradition, and aimed at elevating political society to the highest possible standards of excellence—the very meaning of philosophical conservatism,” writes Diggins. But, while man’s capacity to transcend selfishness and aspire to impartial justice makes social order possible, the founders also knew that man’s basic egotism and aggressiveness make democratic pluralism necessary (see Madison's Federalist No. 10). They established a government on the basis of pluralism precisely because they had so little faith in personalism, and here was the ironic flaw in the conservative thought of the founding fathers, according to Diggins: good government, not good men, would save the Republic; the machinery of government was to compensate for the absence of virtue among men. Cold War conservatives venerated an American system that was founded on liberal principle.

All in all, a fascinating and illuminating study in American thought. And, by taking ideas seriously, Diggins makes what passes for political discourse nowadays look silly and shallow. show less

Diggins makes a statement at the end that Mr. Reagan was a president ......"politically wise, humane, and magnanimous." My assessment from this reading is that he was politically expedient rather than wise and that, if you wish to believe that he was humane and magnanimous, ask any of the mentally sick people who cannot get the help they need anymore. Sure, the help they could get may not have been very good but it kept them warm and clean and off the streets. And Hayek has a lot to answer for.

Why the low rating? Because I really did not want to read a biography about Ronald Regan. I admit that I went into this book with a scene from The Boondocks in mine- the scene where Huey tells everyone at the dinner party that Ronald Regan is the devil. In short, I feel that this was a fairly balanced account of his life, though I do feel that to compare Regan with Lincoln is stretching it a bit. Regan came off in this book as a happy and carefree grandfather who feels as if everything is show more going to be okay. That, of course, doesn’t meld well with the culture of selfishness that his policies supported while at the same time cutting welfare off as a parasite to the economy and to America. The Regan years are very much the years of fast paced, caffeine fueled personal economic battles (just watch the movies of that time) and the chant of “Me, Me, Me.” And yes, I also know why Huey would call Regan the devil. It makes sense now. show less

The essence of Niebuhr as Niebuhr applied his thought to public policy.Sometimes Diggins' interpretations of the great theologian seem just a bit too pat or just a bit off base. The comparison of the German Nietzsche to the "American" Niebuhr is especially simplistic. Although Niebuhr was born in the American Midwest and was an Anglophile, his thought was shaped by his German-immigrant father and by the German pietistic tradition of his early education. Still, it is worthwhile to have some show more of Niebuhr's most important insights restated and to learn how the late Mr. Diggins applied them to the policies of George W. Bush. show less