Identity Politics Torpedoes Yamamoto
In a First Things article of January 2019, Yoram Hazony has again written on the topic of contemporary Western liberalism and whether the nations under its auspices are thriving or deteriorating. Hazony sides with those analysts seeing primarily deterioration. Beyond his cited evidence, one notes that the hypothesis of disintegrating nation-states finds support in the existence of an opioid epidemic, homelessness, and declining longevity in the U.S.; in the existence of the originally rural “yellow vest” protests against higher, allegedly pro-environmental fuel taxes in France; and in the Brexit resistance to a loss of British national sovereignty to Brussels. (As of January 2019, Brexit seems doomed to failure in its execution, but the resistance is genuine.)
Hazony sides with those analysts seeing primarily deterioration. Beyond his cited evidence, one notes that the hypothesis of disintegrating nation-states finds support in the existence of an opioid epidemic, homelessness, and declining longevity in the U.S.; in the existence of the originally rural “yellow vest” protests against higher, allegedly pro-environmental fuel taxes in France; and in the Brexit resistance to a loss of British national sovereignty to Brussels. (As of January 2019, Brexit seems doomed to failure in its execution, but the resistance is genuine.)
What type of government presides over this deterioration? Humpty Dumpty held that words meant whatever he chose; and, after hearing his interlocutor, Alice, doubt that words could have such an arbitrarily large elasticity, maintained that the only question in the usage of words is “Who is to be master?” In the case of contemporary Western politics, given the allotment of one adjective and one noun to characterize government, which terminology generates the greatest rhetorical advantage - - “liberal republicanism,” liberal democracy,” “conservative republicanism,” “conservative democracy,” “compassionate capitalism,” “progressive socialism,” or something else? Hazony finds that the terminology of “republican government” predominated through the 1960’s (Benjamin Franklin thought, after all, that the Constitutional Convention had approved a Republic), whereas “democratic government” has predominated since the 1960’s (“one man, one vote” seems like political nirvana).
Hazony contrasts the American and British ideas of liberal democracy (in the style of the Enlightenment) and conservative democracy (in the style of Edmund Burke and others). Enlightenment liberalism is a type of rationalism based on the sufficiency of reason, the existence of perfectly free and equal individuals, and political obligation by individual choice alone. In contrast, conservative democracy is based on individual freedom, limited executive power in the government, and tradition in the form of historical experience, nationalism, and religion. One observes that both conservative democracy and liberal democracy emphasize the high status of “free individuals”; but that the idea of freedom varies radically between liberalism (featuring pure reason as the basis for each individual freely to choose his own group for the purpose of identity politics) and conservatism (featuring tradition and history as the basis for each individual freely to recognize his own group for the purpose of national politics).
Jason Willick has examined an example of identity politics in a Wall Street Journal article of 12/29/18. Identity politics as a type of trench warfare is today embittering Silicon Valley: Fred Yamamoto was born in Palo Alto, California in 1918; was interned after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941; enlisted nevertheless in the U.S. Army in 1943; was killed in battle in France in 1944; and was chosen to provide a name for a Palo Alto middle school in 2018 on the centenary of his birth. Regrettably for Fred’s memory, however, there was another individual, Isoroku Yamamoto, who both shared a last name with Fred and was the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack. (Fred was not related to Isoroku except in the theoretical sense that all human individuals have descended from a common ancestor.) Moreover, Isoroku’s homeland invaded Manchuria in 1937 and perpetrated many atrocities in East Asia, starting when Fred was 19 years old and thousands of miles removed. Today, pro-Fred and anti-Fred identity politics have enraged the Palo Alto community and left the school board back-pedaling, looking for an alternative school name. “The objection to the Yamamoto name seems sadly characteristic of America’s balkanized culture. Complaints of insensitivity and trauma have become distinctive marks of American-ness … [but] Fred Yamamoto’s name lives on as an aspiration to something greater.” One surmises that a traditional nationalist would say that Fred’s life continues to be an inspiration for an American culture, now sadly interned.