The Auron MacIntyre Show - Tradition vs. Natural Rights ｜ Guest： Paul Gottfried ｜ 9⧸22⧸23

00:00:00.000 So you're hosting the family barbecue this week, but everyone knows your brother is the grill guy

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00:00:17.460 Hello everybody and how's it going? Thank you so much for joining me this afternoon. Sorry about

00:00:22.440 the delay. We're having technical issues, but finally we are here. I'm bringing you today

00:00:27.280 somebody who is an excellent political scholar, somebody that I know you guys really enjoy.

00:00:32.860 Dr. Paul Gottfried, thank you so much for coming on. Well, thank you for having me on again.

00:00:38.400 Absolutely. So Dr. Gottfried is of course the editor-in-chief over at Chronicles magazine. He's

00:00:42.520 got a number of different books that you should definitely check out. But today I'm talking to

00:00:47.160 him about a back and forth that he's been having with Michael Anton, who is himself a well-respected

00:00:52.420 political commentator in the conservative sphere, in the right-wing sphere. And they have been going

00:00:57.740 back and forth. I guess originally, you know, there was some disagreement about the idea of natural

00:01:03.340 rights versus tradition. And then Michael Anton was responding to you and then another anonymous

00:01:08.840 blogger by the name of Z-Man. And so there's been the kind of this dialogue back and forth on whether

00:01:13.980 natural rights are kind of the core foundation around which people should understand kind of their

00:01:19.200 relationship with each other or the state or whether tradition is more of the thing in which

00:01:24.360 our kind of relations and different peoples and nations are set. And so I wanted to bring you in

00:01:29.220 today to talk a little about this, because I think for a lot of people, when they hear natural rights,

00:01:33.780 they think, well, this is kind of the basis of America, right? This is the basis of the founding.

00:01:38.280 This is kind of the Lockean principles that are imported into the Declaration of Independence.

00:01:44.460 So if you're talking about natural rights, aren't we talking about the kind of thing that's

00:01:48.560 fundamental to the American understanding of governance? I think it is certainly right now.

00:01:55.840 And I think the left and the right, the official left and the official right,

00:02:01.060 are agreed that the United States was founded on the basis of natural right principle.

00:02:07.520 Lincoln invokes natural right. We find this in the Declaration of Independence, some of the state

00:02:14.480 constitutions that were created and promulgated during the American Revolution and immediately

00:02:21.520 thereafter. And of course, there's a famous work by Lewis Hartz on America being founded as a liberal

00:02:29.740 country. And Hartz defines liberalism in terms of the Lockean principles upon which the American

00:02:37.460 Republic was built. So there is, in fact, a long, entrenched belief that the United States is founded

00:02:46.040 on the basis of natural right. And that creates, one might say, sort of our shared ideology as Americans.

00:02:54.280 Do you feel like that's a more modern construction, a more current construction of the party system?

00:02:59.020 Or do you think that that would be a reasonable understanding of kind of how the fundamental

00:03:04.820 principles of the United States lined up?

00:03:07.060 Yeah, I think that that is, I think it's been, it has been intermittently understood

00:03:11.360 as a country based on natural right. That language does appear in the Declaration of Independence.

00:03:19.080 And you find it in Virginia and New Hampshire, other state constitutions. There's some reference to

00:03:25.240 natural right. And the constitutions are typically used to defend the right of property and the right

00:03:31.700 of religious conscience. These things are seen as natural right. Then the natural right language

00:03:38.500 disappears for a long period of time. And there's an invocation of the constitution, invocations of the

00:03:46.020 Bible all the time, because America is a profoundly Protestant country through most of its history. 1.00

00:03:51.920 So something like biblical morality, and even biblical precedent for the founding of the American

00:03:58.400 Republic is frequently invoked. Language about America is a commonwealth. Then certainly in the 20th

00:04:09.580 century, natural right becomes important, although it becomes transmuted into something called

00:04:15.820 human rights, which I think is in many ways sort of a logical extension of the notion of natural

00:04:22.080 right. Although the West Coast Straussians tried to distinguish between the two. And today the 0.98

00:04:29.280 conservative establishment, which probably neither one of us is a member, affirms natural right and

00:04:37.600 inborn individual rights as the basis of American politics and morality.

00:04:44.240 So I think it's interesting that you pointed out there, and Michael Anton does try to do this in

00:04:50.120 his response to you, that separation between natural rights and human rights. Obviously, that's not your

00:04:56.280 position specifically, but how do you think somebody like Anton would try to differentiate between this?

00:05:02.620 Okay, natural rights are here. They're core to the American founding. They're core to the Constitution,

00:05:06.980 Declaration, those kind of things. Human rights, this is something new. This is something that's

00:05:11.540 created by kind of modernity in our understanding of kind of the current civil rights regime. How would

00:05:18.220 they separate those two?

00:05:19.280 Yeah, I think what Anton does is say that by natural right, he means the rights that John Locke

00:05:28.620 proposed and which are found in a slightly modified version in the American Declaration of Independence.

00:05:35.660 It's basically life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or if you will, you know, life, liberty,

00:05:40.980 and property, private property. So Anton's argument would be that these inborn individual rights stop,

00:05:48.840 with the list that, you know, goes back to John Locke in the 1680s, 1617, 1680s, and those are the ones

00:05:58.620 that are affirmed by the American Republic, the early Republic, and can be found in the Declaration

00:06:05.620 of Independence, which West Coast Straussians or the Claremont School would maintain is the true

00:06:12.760 founding document of the United States, whereas most people on the traditional right would say it's the

00:06:18.000 Constitution. You know, the Declaration, they viewed the Declaration of Independence simply as a

00:06:24.860 declaration of American sovereignty in relation to the English motherland from which the early

00:06:34.460 United States was cutting, they were cutting their ties. I think traditional conservatives,

00:06:41.240 which I identify myself, obviously, may go too far in insisting that natural right has nothing to do with the

00:06:49.720 American founding. And that, you know, the Constitution is much more important than the Declaration of

00:06:55.240 Independence. And Jefferson's rhetorical flourish about natural rights was something just written by an exuberant

00:07:03.440 young man, and he didn't be taken all that seriously. My position is actually somewhere in the middle. I would say that

00:07:11.100 natural rights are a tradition in the United States, a legal political tradition, but they're certainly not the only one.

00:07:19.400 And I think making this the centerpiece of the American political experience can have very, very harmful results.

00:07:28.780 Yeah, that's something you definitely go on about at length, you know, trying to understand why this might be a dangerous

00:07:36.040 precedent on which to set your entire understanding of the American experience, because, you know, one way that I've often

00:07:42.380 seen, you know, more mainstream conservatives attempt to draw this delineation is between positive and negative rights,

00:07:49.500 right? Negative rights are the things the government can't do. They're not allowed to do these certain things. Positive rights are

00:07:55.280 things that the government is compelled to do on your behalf. And so this is kind of where they attempt to draw

00:08:00.760 the line, though I think it's not even clear to me that that's really something that contemporary conservatives

00:08:05.900 would draw the line, because it does seem to me that they have bought in largely to the idea not just of natural rights,

00:08:12.540 but to human rights. I think you would run into most senators or congressmen in the GOP, and they would affirm the

00:08:19.800 existence of human rights that need to be perpetuated, not just in the United States, but globally.

00:08:26.860 Yes, no, I think it's right. Once you say that these are universal rights that inherit each individual,

00:08:33.780 independently of civil society, and civil society, you know, we supposedly call it this, we come into the world

00:08:41.420 and we develop social relations as already bearers of these rights, which I suppose are injected into us,

00:08:48.260 you know, as fetuses or something or other. I don't know exactly what process these people have in

00:08:53.180 mind. Therefore, you know, the right to bear arms is not part of a legal tradition or an historical

00:09:02.520 right. It is a right with which we come into the world. And as the conservative natural rights theorists

00:09:12.400 would argue, it's a right that comes from God. Left-wing human rights, lock-ins, and so forth,

00:09:19.540 people like John Rawls, usually develop other theories in explaining, you know, how individuals

00:09:24.800 develop these rights. But I do agree that, you know, there's no reason to stop the list with,

00:09:31.120 with, you know, three rights. We can just go on, on the basis of our superior moral consciousness,

00:09:37.600 and now include the right of sexual transitioning, for instance, to be a human, to be a human right

00:09:43.460 and a natural right with which we come into this world. So that, that, that's why it has to be a

00:09:48.500 very dangerous precedent. It also creates an imperative to give other people these rights. I mean,

00:09:55.480 what, why should we, you know, hog them all in the United States? Why are we not actively striving

00:10:03.720 to give our rights to other people, which of course is happening in Ukraine, right? I mean,

00:10:08.680 it's not enough that we give them military aid. We have to help them, you know, sexually transition, 0.98

00:10:14.000 have gay marriage, whatever we now consider to be a human or a natural right.

00:10:19.460 Yeah, it seems like the, the lack of any kind of binding mechanism, any kind of particularity

00:10:25.500 lends this to a, a Whig history that will always be growing, right? If these, if these rights were 0.85

00:10:32.440 discovered somewhere by John Locke, you know, he, he found these, these three rights that existed

00:10:38.100 throughout human history, but you know, we, we discovered them at this time. Why would not more

00:10:42.180 rights be discoverable? In fact, that's in the, in the bill of rights, right? That not all of these

00:10:46.640 rights have been enumerated. And so we will discover more of them. And so if these things are objective

00:10:51.240 and they're universal and they exist for everyone, why wouldn't we continually discover these new

00:10:57.780 rights that would then need to be spread? That's just a, like you said, kind of a,

00:11:00.680 a logical extension of the idea that we will always be progressing and discovering

00:11:05.260 these universal things that we should then apply to everyone.

00:11:09.640 Yeah. I mean, even, even if we want to take the conservative, so-called conservative position

00:11:14.160 and say they come from God, why does God limit, you know, his gift of rights to the, to the three

00:11:20.680 that, that, that John Locke provides us with in second treaties in government? Why can't these rights,

00:11:28.980 you know, these God-given rights include all kinds of other things, you know, the, the, the, the,

00:11:34.500 the right to have equal marriage with, with, with gays or with, with heterosexuals? And so what,

00:11:42.640 why isn't this a right that God has given to us? And of course they, they would probably object

00:11:46.780 to that point and say that it goes against the Bible or it goes against religious teachings or natural

00:11:52.660 law, but you know, that, that, that is to introduce something else beside natural law,

00:11:58.960 you know, in, into their, into their moral reasoning. By the way, I am not against what

00:12:05.240 Catholics call natural law. I think that's fine. I mean, if, if we, that there are things that

00:12:11.420 through natural reason, we are able to know are right and wrong and that, and that we are able,

00:12:16.880 we should be able to judge positive existing law on the basis of these moral imperatives, like,

00:12:22.640 you know, you don't, you don't murder people, you don't steal. And so I have no problem with that.

00:12:29.020 But I, I, I think that natural right is something else. It is, it is these inborn individual

00:12:35.480 permission, you know, to do certain things. And also the, that you're not,

00:12:42.080 you're supposed to limit government by, by doing this. Of course, you don't really limit government

00:12:48.240 in the end because the government can always reinterpret what you're doing and saying,

00:12:52.380 this is an extension of human rights or natural rights, right? I mean, we just discovered this.

00:12:58.260 And this is the language the left uses all the time that we have a human or a natural right,

00:13:03.420 whichever term you choose to use to have gay marriage or to have the government

00:13:07.940 help children sexually transition in schools and so forth. So, you know, my, my, my question is,

00:13:16.420 you know, how do you keep the government at, and of course the government does interpret,

00:13:20.580 even according to Locke, it does interpret what it does interpret natural right. Because when we

00:13:25.400 seek power to the government, it's on the condition that it will enforce these rights for us, but we're

00:13:31.740 also dependent on the government at that point, you know, to interpret natural right.

00:13:36.040 Well, and I think that's such a really important distinction that the, you put there between,

00:13:41.360 you know, natural law and natural rights, because I think a lot of people will conflate those

00:13:45.980 immediately. Natural law is something that I think from which all healthy traditions would spring,

00:13:51.200 right? They would, they would proceed forth from the fact that this is how society seems to naturally

00:13:56.140 order itself. These are the laws of which nature seems to follow. These are the behaviors by which

00:14:00.560 we seem to be rewarded and flourish. And so from that, we develop traditions that then take us

00:14:05.340 kind of along, along that way. But natural rights are a different assertion, right? And I think for

00:14:10.360 a lot of people, that's hard because they, and Anton kind of alludes to this, he, or he says it

00:14:15.740 directly, he doesn't allude to it. He says, basically, if you abandon natural rights, then you're just

00:14:19.360 going to moral relativism. There isn't, there can't possibly be any moral truth outside of these

00:14:25.760 rights. Because if you just go to traditions, then the only question is which tradition, and now we're just

00:14:29.820 emotivizing, we're just, you know, we're just favoring our own, our own, you know, being close

00:14:36.280 to something, our own locality, rather than any kind of actual reason or understanding. And so I think

00:14:42.240 that's weird, because the idea of natural rights, you know, comes, comes very late in the game. And I

00:14:46.980 don't think everyone prior to John Locke was a moral relativist. But that seems to be kind of the

00:14:51.400 implication, right? Without these rights, we can't possibly have any kind of real understanding of

00:14:56.060 morality. Yeah, but I think West Coast Straussians and others who buy into natural right, very often 1.00

00:15:02.020 see them as an extension of natural law, and they're not. You know, I think they're different.

00:15:08.880 I think natural rights are something developed in the 16th, 17th centuries, in response to a certain

00:15:15.460 historical situation, which is the excess of power, what it's seen as excess of power by monarchs,

00:15:25.040 and also the persecution of religious minorities. And natural right thinking develops in Catholic 0.96

00:15:30.820 and Protestant countries both about the same time, typically in response to tyrants, you know,

00:15:38.480 who are trying to take away the religious and other rights, you know, of their subjects.

00:15:43.120 And, you know, I can understand why that theory together with the state of nature and so forth

00:15:49.780 develops when it did, was very popular among the Scottish covenanters in the second half of the

00:15:55.920 16th century. But it doesn't mean that I have to believe it, or that I think it is, you know,

00:16:00.440 the best way to understand political right.

00:16:05.780 So if natural rights aren't the best way to understand that, and by the way, guys, I see some

00:16:10.680 people are putting in some super chats, I just want to let you know that due to the technical

00:16:14.120 difficulties, we might not have time to get to all those. So I appreciate any donations. But

00:16:18.440 we were already late and everything. And I don't know how long Dr. Godfrey's connection will hold

00:16:23.460 for us. So I want to focus on our conversation here. But, but kind of given the fact that, you know,

00:16:29.060 a lot of people think that natural rights are the only way to defend this, maybe it would be

00:16:33.260 worthwhile explaining to people, this is something I think that would have been obvious for most of human

00:16:37.680 history. But, but bear some explaining now, why are traditions a robust defender of these things?

00:16:45.400 Yeah, I think you have to understand that the United States is a country in flux. And now it's

00:16:50.140 going through a moral political revolution, being sponsored by public administration and the woke left,

00:16:57.540 the woke left state church. And the traditions have become weaker. I mean, I understand this,

00:17:04.680 you know, religious views, you know, religious views have become diluted traditional religious

00:17:08.960 views, belief in the Bible, and also the view that we have, you know, traditions going back to medieval

00:17:15.760 England, such as the the right to bear arms, which is possessed by every free man. We don't we don't

00:17:23.300 we don't think that way any longer. And I can I can see why people would would be attracted to

00:17:31.520 a natural right, as the French say, as a peace allee, you know, just as it just there, you just grab

00:17:37.220 on grab onto it for, for want of anything better. But, you know, I don't think it's a satisfactory

00:17:44.120 replacement for for tradition, historical rights, other things that Edmund Burke spoke about, I think,

00:17:51.540 quite correctly, in his critical response to the French Revolution. And I think I think it'll be 0.57

00:17:58.580 better, certainly in terms of, you know, a sense of community, if we talked about traditions or biblical

00:18:06.740 morality or something like that, instead of individual entitlements, which is really what

00:18:12.620 we talked about with with with with with natural right. It does not create a sense of community. It's,

00:18:19.900 you know, it creates a sense of I, you know, I have these rights. And I think the kind of mentality

00:18:26.280 you find among many libertarians in America is exactly what locking a natural right leads to,

00:18:33.260 you know, when it when it's made, you know, sort of the centerpiece of your morality,

00:18:37.020 and politics. So I mean, I don't I don't consider natural right the answer to the breakdown of our

00:18:45.480 traditions, I think rather the traditions have to be recovered. How this is going to work,

00:18:52.460 you know, I don't know. But I would think that would be the precondition for being able to reason

00:18:59.200 as a community about moral matters. I agree with Alistair McIntyre on this. I mean, there has to be

00:19:05.960 sort of a community understanding of what is right and wrong. And it's not, you know, my individual

00:19:12.880 entitlement. It's my responsibility to other people, and their responsibility to me.

00:19:19.380 Yeah, virtue has to be grounded in a in a tradition that can't exist in and of itself. Absolutely. So

00:19:25.800 I think a lot of people, you know, this, this is a huge problem for I think a lot of the mainstream

00:19:32.080 conservative, especially the libertarian crowd kind of attached to it, is there's this idea that it's a

00:19:39.700 battle between collectivism and individualism. And so they think that rights are the key, because if

00:19:45.100 they just keep demanding individual rights, then that will break the collective hold to try to

00:19:50.060 compel people's behavior. And so it's rights, rights, rights, rights, rights. However, I think,

00:19:54.960 you know, the case that seems far more powerful is, you know, a lot of the people come over from the

00:19:59.820 left to the right, kind of the I didn't leave the left, the left left me types, they harp on this,

00:20:05.060 we have to get back to rights, we have to get back to the individual. But by putting the individual

00:20:09.100 first, it feels like we are now isolating people in a way that keeps them from having

00:20:13.800 any moral force in building any actual cultural momentum that would allow the reassertion of a

00:20:20.760 different understanding of what the government's role should be, how it should be involved in

00:20:26.260 families, all of these different things. It feels like by asserting rights, we're opening the door more

00:20:31.020 to a state that would say, seize a child and force them to go through your transition than we are

00:20:35.500 creating an invaluable family unit based on a collective understanding of how children should

00:20:42.100 be raised. No, I agree with you. You know, the atomization of society is not the response to

00:20:50.260 government overreach and government's attempt to impose woke morality on us. There has to be

00:20:58.060 communal effort. Communities are much stronger than individuals, for one thing. And, you know,

00:21:05.320 the resistance has to be in the name of community. By the way, West Coast Straussians probably would 0.99

00:21:10.880 not deny most of the things that I have said, they would just insist that the centerpiece,

00:21:16.100 the moral political centerpiece should be natural, right? But most of them are very traditional.

00:21:22.340 And, you know, just about any political, cultural question. I mean, I very rarely, if ever,

00:21:28.300 disagree with them. It's just when the, Michael Anton and I are political allies, it's just when the

00:21:33.920 question turns to natural right. There weren't opposite sides.

00:21:37.700 Yeah. And I think that's really important. A lot of people, you know, I'll talk to someone like

00:21:41.680 Chris Ruffo and Chris is awesome. He's doing amazing work, you know, and, but we'll have a

00:21:47.100 disagreement about some point of, you know, strategy or some point of, you know, kind of

00:21:52.340 origination of something. And people say, oh, well, this means that you guys are just at loggerheads

00:21:56.420 who can't work together. It's like, no, that's not the case. Just like you and Anton,

00:21:59.220 you know, you're, you're political allies, you're pushing in the same direction. You know,

00:22:03.820 this is not a, this is not a knockdown drag out about, you know, everything where it comes to

00:22:08.600 political goals. This is just trying to best understand, you know, how the ball is moved

00:22:13.660 forward the best, how to ground these things so that you can be successful. So that's why I think

00:22:17.860 the discussion is so valuable. Yeah. However, I think with, with, with the conservative establishment,

00:22:23.100 my unwillingness to concede the natural right argument has made me an outcast. You know,

00:22:28.980 they'll never ask me onto programs. They'll never have me write for their anthologies or write

00:22:34.160 articles for their magazine. And I, I think it's my, my, my critical reservations about natural right

00:22:40.840 that, that have made me an outcast. Um, and have made other paleo conservatives outcasts. Um,

00:22:46.780 and, and most, you know, most paleo conservatives, I think, are united, you know, in their skepticism

00:22:52.680 about natural right. And, uh, I mean, you turn on Fox News and you think, you know, you're listening

00:22:58.380 to John Locke, uh, nonstop, you know, on the natural rights question. Uh, I, I, I find the argument

00:23:05.200 against abortion based on natural right to be ridiculous. Um, it's totally unconvincing. Uh, the, uh,

00:23:14.780 I, I, I doubt that Locke would ever have imagined that the fetus has, you know, a natural right to

00:23:20.080 life or something. Um, if you were, if you regard the fetus as a human being, destroying it as a,

00:23:26.900 as homicide. I mean, it's as simple as that. You're just taking it. It's, it's a unjust,

00:23:32.340 unlawful taking of human life. Um, why do we have to start talking about, uh, these imaginary natural

00:23:38.620 rights? Uh, that, that's, that's, that's my response to the right to life argument.

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00:24:14.800 So I think a lot of people would want to understand how a, how a traditions,

00:24:22.260 kind of a return to tradition here to, to, to pick up a meme, how that would, uh, work in this

00:24:28.320 scenario. Because I think the problem for a lot of people, one reason that so many people grab for

00:24:32.420 this, this universal rights doctrine is that the idea of a shared tradition is almost beyond them.

00:24:38.580 Now, you know, we're in this postmodern world. So many people are broken from their traditions.

00:24:42.820 They no longer participate in, you know, kind of these traditions, the, the religions of their

00:24:47.900 ancestors, uh, you know, connecting to the folk ways of, of kind of, uh, their people. This doesn't

00:24:53.560 exist for a lot of people. And so that's all that's left is kind of this vague appeal to this

00:24:58.560 universal natural right. And that's the only thing that can kind of forge the coalition. So I think the

00:25:03.780 question for a lot of people would be, okay, well, if we're going to shift the basis of this

00:25:07.860 focus, what would we connect to? And how would, how would that work? How would people who had been

00:25:12.820 so thoroughly disconnected from a tradition, find their way to something that could once again,

00:25:18.340 unite them in opposition against the left?

00:25:20.300 Yeah. I mean, they would have to consider themselves a community, um, you know, held together

00:25:25.660 by, among other things, you know, shared moral assumptions, assumptions about human nature.

00:25:30.420 Uh, this, this may be, may be tough to do. Um, at this point in time, I, I recognize it. What I'm

00:25:38.560 saying is the natural right argument just doesn't work very well. And even, you know, people who talk

00:25:44.220 about natural right are really talking at each other because they come with very different notions

00:25:49.900 of what these rights are. The, the, the people who are, who are arguing about the, you know, right to

00:25:55.840 life, um, are going to run smack dab into people who are saying, well, there's the right of the

00:26:01.720 mother, uh, to the reproductive right. And for them, that's a natural right. Right. You see, no, 1.00

00:26:09.320 there's another one, another human right here, which goes back to Locke or someone, which I don't

00:26:14.220 think even applies in this case, but, uh, you simply have, you know, I, I was it, um, there,

00:26:20.900 there, there is a, uh, uh, was a Yale professor of law of, of politics who wrote a book, um, on, uh,

00:26:27.540 too many rights, you know, but you basically have human, human rights or natural, or what people

00:26:32.800 posit as natural rights coming into conflict. And there has to be some kind of moral consensus,

00:26:39.780 uh, that, that, that exists rather than the assertions of rights. Uh, and I, I, I agree

00:26:47.580 with that argument. Um, and of course my, but you know, the, the problem is for a long time,

00:26:52.580 the real basis of American morality was biblical morality. And, uh, now, you know, that this has

00:26:58.960 sort of gone out the window and natural right has become sort of, uh, or, uh, people into,

00:27:03.740 or human rights by now become a substitute for that. But then people define human rights

00:27:08.720 differently and they're not going to, you know, they're not going to stop with the, uh, the three

00:27:13.600 big rights in John Locke. They have a much longer laundry list of rights, which they want. And they

00:27:18.880 have also new rights. Um, uh, I'm saying, I don't have the answer to all these problems. I mean,

00:27:25.700 I'd like to go back to the way things were when I was a kid in the 1950s. It's not going to happen,

00:27:30.380 but I, I think the natural rights argument is a dead end. And, uh, I'm simply calling attention

00:27:38.100 to this. Um, I, I'm always telling people when I was in college, we were given John Locke's second

00:27:44.480 treatise to read and then Burke's reflections on the revolution in France. And I found Burke much more

00:27:51.060 convincing. It's just, you know, it's a description of man's corporate nature, uh, our social nature,

00:27:56.620 you know, which we've been finding Karl Marx. I mean, uh, where, where's Locke's sort of atomized

00:28:02.420 men with a constructivist society sounded highly implausible to me. I mean, I couldn't even,

00:28:08.260 I couldn't wrap my brain around it. I still can't. Um, whereas I, you know, I have no, I have no,

00:28:13.720 understand, no problem understanding, uh, Burke's understanding, Burke's view of human nature,

00:28:19.280 of the social bond, of the continuity of generations. All this stuff makes sense to me

00:28:25.000 and seems necessary for a sound society.

00:28:29.500 Interestingly, I ran into a, you know, I got some backlash myself from many mainstream

00:28:34.240 conservatives because I was trying to explain the state of exception when it came to the,

00:28:38.800 the New Mexico gun ban and, and, you know, kind of how that worked. And a lot of people got really

00:28:43.680 riled up when I explained that, look, whether you hold the right to own a firearm as, uh,

00:28:49.280 you know, as a natural right or not, it doesn't matter if you don't have a tradition that rounds

00:28:54.160 that if you don't have people who will step up and defend that, if that is not basically held

00:28:58.880 sacred, if it's not seen as part of your moral vision and held sacred by the people, then the

00:29:03.480 fact that you've asserted is a right somewhere, the fact that it happens to be occupying a piece

00:29:07.320 of paper won't protect it from the state of exception. The only thing that is going to prevent

00:29:12.180 a, you know, a sovereign from stepping in and violating that is a shared belief across,

00:29:18.400 you know, the, the, the culture and the tradition that that is a, you know, a bound too far, you

00:29:23.640 know, think of, you know, the, the Romans and the dictator, right? Dictator, you know, it's,

00:29:28.240 it's a temporary office until there's no longer kind of the, the, the traditional will to hold

00:29:33.520 that back. And then it becomes something that's far, that's far more expansive. And I just feel like

00:29:38.240 that's so hard for people to understand, like, even if you want to hold to this natural rights

00:29:42.660 idea, unless there's some kind of, you know, just mechanically, if there's not that tradition,

00:29:46.740 that deep grounding of sacredness and understanding that right, then it's, it's not useful just to

00:29:51.620 quote it at people. Yeah. I think, I think since we're referring to Carl Schmitt, I think Schmitt also

00:29:56.860 makes an important distinction between legality and legitimacy and, you know, legality is what you

00:30:02.940 have in a sort of a, a Republic, sort of a legislative Republic based on a document, a shared document

00:30:11.360 and obeying the law be, you know, is legality and sort of by provides legitimacy. But it is not a

00:30:20.580 kind that one could really bank on, Schmitt would say, whereas the, the deeper source of legitimacy

00:30:27.100 is different. And that is, you know, uh, being part of a, a nature with a, a nation with a shared

00:30:32.480 culture, um, a, a form of government going back centuries and so forth. Um, and even there, if you

00:30:39.760 have, uh, a dictatorship, a provisional dictator, uh, that person can rely on a certain kind of moral

00:30:47.580 political consensus until he's able to address the, the political crisis that has necessitated the

00:30:54.800 dictatorship. So you mentioned, uh, Alistair McIntyre there. And I thought that was interesting

00:31:02.660 because, you know, one, one of McIntyre's points in after virtue is that, uh, you have basically this

00:31:09.860 loss of a shared language to even have moral discussions. Like that, that's kind of the,

00:31:14.520 the, the big opening point that he has that we've lost any, any ability to even, uh, have a shared

00:31:19.200 reference point for discussions to have the language to even, even investigate moral questions.

00:31:23.480 And, you know, he kind of says that we, one of the issues that moral philosophy ran into when it hit

00:31:30.060 the liberal tradition is it kind of, it eventually just abandoned this idea to find a completely

00:31:34.400 rational basis for morality. And so it just kind of embraced the efficiency of managerialism. You

00:31:41.240 know, it was kind of this Weberian, uh, you know, something is right because it's efficient and because

00:31:46.640 it produces regularly and, and, and, and it can be kind of quantified and those kinds of things.

00:31:50.580 And I wonder what you think about the relationship between the expansion of human rights and the

00:31:55.540 expansion of managerialism. Do those go hand in hand? Do they do the, does the reliance on that,

00:32:01.600 uh, have to do with the way in which we've ordered society around these managerial apparatuses?

00:32:06.840 Yeah, I think they go together. You know, I think one is the, uh, uh, the, the proliferation of human

00:32:12.980 rights is the natural consequence of living under an administrative regime that really has no moral

00:32:19.140 legitimacy of any kind, uh, other than providing services and somehow making everyone equal.

00:32:26.160 Uh, uh, managerial governments don't even, are not really, uh, bound up with any kind of nation

00:32:33.120 state. Um, I, I think what, what, one of the problems that I keep running into with, uh, you know,

00:32:39.680 people writing on, on, on this history of the state is they imagine the present managerial state

00:32:45.580 is an extension of, you know, government set up by, by the new monarchies back in the 16th or 17th

00:32:52.160 century. They're not, you know, they are, they're a form of government that I, as I argue in my book

00:32:57.240 after liberalism, they come into existence in the 20th century and they just keep expanding. Uh, and

00:33:03.500 they're not, they're not really, um, tied to particular nations or peoples and they can become

00:33:09.360 universal. I mean, like the administrative state here has decided to become universal. So it just opened up the

00:33:14.680 borders, let everybody come in. Right. You don't have to be an, even pretend to be a nation state any

00:33:19.900 longer. Uh, but what, one of the justifications for power, uh, used by the administrative state

00:33:27.420 is that it is, uh, addressing the problem of human rights, right? Prejudice, discrimination,

00:33:36.000 uh, treating people differently because, you know, in an ideal society, we'd have homogenization.

00:33:41.700 Everybody would be treated the same. The, the German word Gleichschaltung applies here. You

00:33:47.260 know, it's like everything is sort of put under the control, you know, of, of the same forces

00:33:52.300 and, and made, and in the, in the end, just homogenized. Uh, so I, I, I think the human

00:33:58.420 rights ideology and managerialism go together.

00:34:02.600 Yeah. And this results that we talked about this last time you were on with, where you, uh,

00:34:06.340 where you talk about the therapeutic state and how this becomes the reason that the state

00:34:10.640 can enter into and, and interfere with all of these, what were, you know, originally

00:34:14.960 naturally sovereign areas, you know, other, other, other areas like the family, like the

00:34:20.220 church, all of a sudden, because of this need to ameliorate all these different evils that

00:34:25.280 violate human rights, uh, the state now has this ability to put everybody through these

00:34:30.440 processes to make sure that they comply and are, are, uh, you know, uh, respecting those

00:34:35.960 universal notions of human rights.

00:34:38.680 Yeah, that, that's, that's, that's sort of the nature of the right. By the way, the October

00:34:42.820 issue of Chronicles has two essays by me, one on, uh, precisely we're talking about the

00:34:49.180 way the, the managerial state, uh, digest, absorbs everything into its maw. I think comes

00:34:56.200 out the same. And the other is a long essay, a long sketch in Carl Schmitt. So, you know,

00:35:01.480 I think some of your listeners may find the, this reading to, to be of interest. Um, but

00:35:07.820 I, you know, I, I, I, I think when the managerial regime was sort of created in the 20th century,

00:35:13.140 it did not necessarily have to go in the direction in which it went, you know? And I, I think this

00:35:18.040 is something which you find, uh, foreshadowed in James Burnham's writing. I mean, the managerial

00:35:24.400 state could serve a communist regime, a fascist regime, all kinds of regimes. Yet for some

00:35:30.300 reason, the managerialism now has, uh, uh, seems to go hand in hand with, with, with

00:35:35.540 the woke left, uh, with the woke left state church and with enforcing the dogmas of the,

00:35:40.780 of this church. Um, I don't think that there's any kind of historical inevitability about this,

00:35:46.200 but, um, the, uh, the managerial state is going to adopt an ideology that is consistent

00:35:52.720 with its expansion.

00:35:54.640 Yeah. See that's, yeah, that's what I've been exploring. Cause I feel like Sam Francis was a

00:35:59.120 particularly very, very hit this a lot in Leviathan and his enemies, uh, on, on kind of

00:36:04.360 what proto wokeness, how it would be essential to the advance of managerialism, how those things

00:36:10.900 would, would, you know, the cosmopolitan hedonistic nature of that was going to be necessary for

00:36:15.980 the advancement. So it feels, you know, and, and, and I've also been speaking with someone

00:36:20.220 who I haven't read enough Jacques Ellul myself that, uh, to have a firm grasp on it, but it sounds

00:36:24.840 like that's also something that he felt about kind of the managerial state and technique that

00:36:29.040 the, that kind of the way that it operates almost demands that we would actually move

00:36:34.520 into this kind of a hyper-progressivism, this universal brokenness, because that would be

00:36:40.820 what allowed those managerial structures to universalize in the widest possible sense.

00:36:46.580 Yeah, that, that, that's absolutely true. But, you know, I think it's burning points out

00:36:50.600 that the managerialism, uh, also, uh, uh, was able to, uh, become associated with, uh, with,

00:36:58.620 with Nazism, fascism, communism, which are also universalist ideologies, right?

00:37:03.800 So, uh, and they plan to take over the world and have these, uh, administrative state control

00:37:09.360 them. Uh, the, the, the one, the ones who want, win out are sort of the social Democrats

00:37:14.880 or the welfare state Democrats represented by the United States and England. Um,

00:37:20.200 but it could, it could have developed differently. I, where Sam Francis and I obviously parted ways,

00:37:26.440 and I don't think he ever forgave me for this deviation, um, is that, uh, I believe that those

00:37:33.340 who run the managerial therapeutic state believe what they're saying. I don't think it's just a,

00:37:39.840 a, they're giving us sort of a tool for dominating people. It's that too, but I, I think they're also

00:37:45.520 saturated in the doctrines of, of wokeness or whatever they're supposed to believe.

00:37:50.640 And to the extent that they have any system of belief, it's, it's what they're now imposing on us.

00:37:56.020 Yeah. Nima Parvini, uh, academic agent and I have a similar disagreement. He, we've got a few

00:38:01.260 cigars writing on, uh, on a bet on whether the, uh, the managerial elite will be, uh, able to put the

00:38:06.360 woke away as he says it, or whether they are true believers. And, uh, I'm, I'm feeling pretty good

00:38:11.060 about my, uh, my chance of, uh, getting that box of cigars, but we'll see. We'll see.

00:38:16.220 Yeah. I noticed Nima wrote about this book in which Sam Francis and I both figure prominently,

00:38:21.480 but, uh, I, I think he leans, he leans towards Sam's side, you know, in this debate. Uh, I think

00:38:26.920 it's pretty obvious.

00:38:28.000 No, he does. Absolutely. So given, I guess, this understanding of natural rights being so central

00:38:36.580 to kind of the modern conservative understanding of, of kind of where they are and how to push

00:38:43.720 back and how to form a coalition, I guess the question, like, and you've said, you know,

00:38:47.760 you don't have all the answers, so it's okay. This is a hard question, you know, but I just

00:38:51.300 wanted to pick your brain about it. What would, if particularism over universality, the, the

00:38:57.620 understanding of the tradition is kind of the key to this. Can there be, I guess, the international,

00:39:05.140 uh, meeting of nationalists or, you know, like the universal understanding of the need

00:39:10.700 for tradition? Cause I see a lot of like the, the natural conservatism conference and things

00:39:15.380 like Yoram Hozoni, they're looking, I think for a way to create, to forward that would create

00:39:21.020 the ability for, uh, you know, nationalism or traditions to reemerge and be particular, but

00:39:27.160 it feels like there needs to be a wider coalition outside of any individual tradition or nation

00:39:33.420 to establish that because the current order is already universalist.

00:39:37.560 Yeah. You know, Hegel believed that the nation state was sort of the ultimate form taken by the

00:39:43.720 world spirit, the ultimate political form. Uh, but the nation states would remain in conflict.

00:39:49.020 There'd be wars between them and so forth. Um, I think many modern Hegelians have gone,

00:39:54.320 taken the view that the nation state is sort of the highest political form or the one that is the

00:39:59.960 most fulfilling for us. Um, but at the same time, nation states can, can survive, um, while

00:40:08.100 cooperating, you know, the, I think was the goal spoke about a Europe of nations or of nation states

00:40:13.420 rather than this, uh, uh, glob, you know, woke glob that the, uh, European union has now become.

00:40:20.440 Um, um, and you know, I, I, I think, I think that is entirely possible. I think the national

00:40:25.940 conservatives may be correct, although I don't see the United States as a nation. I mean, that's one

00:40:30.960 of my, it was a nation at one time. Um, it has become, you know, it's sort of a, sort of a collection

00:40:37.000 of minorities, you know, controlled by a managerial state and, uh, subject to the market. Um, but you

00:40:43.900 know, certainly Lithuanians, Poles, uh, Germans, if they weren't so crazy, you know, and, uh, stop 1.00

00:40:50.560 hating themselves, they could be a nation, Italians, all kinds of other people, Israelis. Uh, uh, I mean,

00:40:57.640 you know, there's nations all over the Scots are a nation, even if they're the Irish. Uh, so there,

00:41:02.500 there are, there are nations, but I, I think that nations do, particularly in the West where they

00:41:07.380 have a common Judeo-Christian tradition, I think they can cooperate, you know, and, uh,

00:41:13.660 their traditionalism, uh, obviously their traditionalisms overlap, you know, and, uh,

00:41:19.600 I think there's certainly possible for cooperation, even if there's economic competition, which,

00:41:23.820 which will go on. Uh, so I, I said, I have hope for nation states, although, as I said, I,

00:41:29.900 I don't think nationalism is the answer in the United States. You know, I think we're well

00:41:34.820 beyond that point. Uh, in the United States, I'd like to see regionalism if it's still possible,

00:41:39.900 but the, the, the centralized state and the conservative movement, you know, is certainly

00:41:45.020 complicit in this, have pretty much destroyed regionalism. Uh, yeah, they're no friend to it

00:41:50.320 either. Yeah. I mean, you cannot go on beating up on the white South all the time and say you're in 0.55

00:41:54.680 favor of regionalism. Uh, you know, the only regionalism they seem to, to accept is Martin Luther

00:42:00.700 King or something that, you know, as our common savior, um, or Lincoln, you know,

00:42:06.600 it's nice appeal to Lincoln. And it's always, you know, what's held, what holds America together

00:42:10.780 is human is natural right or human rights or something like that. Um, but I, I, I think,

00:42:17.580 I think regionalism is a, uh, uh, a, a much more feasible, you know, alternative to what we have

00:42:24.840 right now. Um, if regions can assume some kind of identity, uh, in the United States, uh, and in the

00:42:32.060 case of smaller countries that have existed for them, I'm, I'm all in favor of, I'm all in favor

00:42:37.120 of, you know, Baltic countries being nationalist. Um, I'm not terribly happy with Russian nationalism,

00:42:42.360 I have to tell you, because the, the Russians seem to have a part of their nationalism and involves

00:42:47.320 an appetite for, uh, border countries that border them. They, they try to occupy and take over, 0.79

00:42:53.480 uh, so I, I, I think we have to be on guard against, uh, national aggression, which I think

00:42:59.540 is still a problem in some places. Um, but I'd be very happy to see, you know, nation states

00:43:05.320 reasserting their identity and in the United States, I, you know, I believe in a, in a strong,

00:43:10.360 healthy regionalism. So you mentioned Russia there, and that's kind of interesting because

00:43:15.400 I was about to ask you about Alexander Dugan. So in his fourth political theory and then other

00:43:21.120 places, Dugan speaks, uh, quite a bit about how he feels that nations are basically, uh, unable,

00:43:28.280 unable to push back against kind of a global empire. And so that basically you'll need a

00:43:33.460 civilizational, like basically, basically multi-polarity through large empires. It seems,

00:43:39.720 you know, I think the part of Dugan I don't like is his hatred for the West, you know, and his, uh,

00:43:46.760 Russian nationalism, uh, pan, it pumps a kind of pan-slavic nationalism that he asserts. And I

00:43:52.800 have read a lot of Dugan, uh, and I'm not terribly sympathetic to him, although people very often

00:43:57.980 identify others in terms of our thoughts, but, uh, you know, I do not, I do not like the form that

00:44:03.480 Russian nationalism takes, um, and his rejection of the West, you know, as being, uh, somehow perpetually,

00:44:10.500 um, uh, perpetually materialistic going back to the middle ages or something I think is very

00:44:16.680 simplistic. Yeah, I tend to agree. I, I find some valuable things in Dugan. I think he has a,

00:44:23.780 a, a decent grasp of, of some, uh, important ideas, but the fact that, like you said, he just

00:44:29.400 had, he, it's very clear his hatred is his, he's dripping with hatred for the West. It seems,

00:44:33.680 seems, seems to want total Anglo death on a pretty regular basis. And so I always tell people there, 1.00

00:44:39.120 there's value in Dugan, but he's not your friend. This is not a guy.

00:44:41.880 Yeah, no. And, and, and he seems to prefer Muslims, you know, and, and the Chinese communist to the

00:44:47.500 West. Um, it's, uh, he does have a very low opinion of Western civilization, uh, even though he did

00:44:54.300 write a very good book on Martin Heidegger, uh, which I helped him to translate. Well, I, uh, I hope

00:45:00.300 in the translation of the Greek terms, uh, my Russian isn't that good. Um, so, uh, before we start,

00:45:07.720 uh, going, I wanted to ask you one more thing. Uh, you, you spoke about regionalism in the United

00:45:12.540 States. Uh, this is something that I have also, uh, pointed to a decent amount whenever people

00:45:17.060 ask me how I think things are going to go, you know, obviously a lot of people, a very spicy term

00:45:22.020 that people like to throw around, even, even some of the mainstream conservatives is a national

00:45:26.260 divorce. You know, they talk about national divorce and, and, uh, how we need a national divorce

00:45:30.680 and whether this could happen. A lot of people get angry about that. They say that's unrealistic.

00:45:35.220 That's silly. Other people say, look, it's absolutely necessary. I always explained it

00:45:39.160 this way. And it just kind of gets your idea of what you think about. I always say, look,

00:45:42.720 I don't think there's ever going to be a actual declaration of kind of formal secession between

00:45:48.960 any of these places anytime soon. I don't, I don't think that's going to be a thing that

00:45:52.840 people need to focus on, but as the federal government becomes more inept and it becomes clear

00:45:57.480 that regional governments are more capable in many ways and, and can create better standards

00:46:02.860 of living and, and, and, uh, you know, have better shared moral visions than a unified

00:46:06.740 federal government. You're just going to see people like say maybe Ron DeSantis or, you know,

00:46:11.240 other governors just say, yeah, we're, we're just not going to do that. You know, it's nice

00:46:15.160 that you made your ruling, but now enforce it. And, and kind of, as that goes, you'll start

00:46:19.000 to see regional identities emerge more in that way, rather than some kind of formal national

00:46:24.500 divorce along any, any kind of a real breakup, the United States.

00:46:28.200 I agree with you. Uh, the real breakup, the, the kind of, uh, apocalyptic breakup that they

00:46:34.100 are hoping for, um, is not going to go very well for our side because the other side has all the 1.00

00:46:40.020 armed might that it needs to crush it very easily. Um, and of course the media will side with the

00:46:46.300 central state, which is carrying out its woke leftist agenda. Um, and the people who will be

00:46:52.160 succeeding will necessarily be on the right. So, you know, you have to be very subtle and I agree

00:46:57.500 that DeSantis is doing whatever is possible, uh, given the existing political circumstances,

00:47:04.060 but it will have to be done very cleverly over a long period of time. Um, uh, I, I do think people

00:47:11.440 are sort of sorting themselves out that way, right? I mean, there's some areas, red states in which

00:47:17.360 people are moving and the people like living in blue areas, like my kids, you know, who do not

00:47:24.020 share my, my political views at all. And, uh, you know, they've opt for a lot for blue states. And,

00:47:29.480 um, I'm, I'm living in a, uh, uh, a right-wing enclave in a very, very blue state, which is

00:47:35.380 Pennsylvania, which I don't think is purple anymore. I think it's turned blue. Yeah. Um, but you know,

00:47:40.120 the area in which I live is very conservative. Um, so I, I, I think we'll not, it will also be

00:47:46.400 enclaves within other regions that try to assert their identity. It's, it's not going to be as

00:47:51.500 simple in terms of large blocks as it was in 1861, even though the South got creamed in that war,

00:47:58.200 but, you know, they did, they did have a unified block on their side and we're probably, we might

00:48:04.000 have, you know, some of these, uh, flyover states, you know, which, which act for us. But, um, uh, I

00:48:10.860 think we're going to have a lot of these enclaves that try to survive within, within blue states.

00:48:16.640 No, I think that's right. Yeah. I don't think the cohesive geography exists at this point. And so

00:48:22.040 I think that does change things. All right. Well, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up guys.

00:48:26.740 Let me go to our super chats real quick. I don't think there's any questions, but just some,

00:48:30.160 some nice things said, I'll run those down real quick. Uh, just a super chat for $10 or 10 pounds

00:48:35.800 rather. Thank you very much, sir. Oh, now he has a question here or he has a statement. Uh,

00:48:40.640 I cannot, uh, stay, but we'll look forward to this podcast in the tractor tomorrow. Excellent,

00:48:44.860 sir. Glad you're listening as you work. One of my favorite things to do as well when it comes to

00:48:48.960 podcasts, I enjoy. And then enlightened desperate here for 10 Canadian. Thank you for keeping the

00:48:53.340 discussion going on natural law issues. People don't like it, but it is key. Absolutely. All right,

00:48:59.300 guys. Well, we are going to go ahead and wrap this up, but thank you once again, Dr. Godfrey for

00:49:04.260 coming on everybody. Please make sure you're checking out Chronicles magazine. Sounds like

00:49:08.100 there are some excellent articles that you should be reading from Dr. Godfrey there this month.

00:49:13.300 Thank you very much for having me. No, thank you. And of course, guys, if it's your first time

00:49:17.980 on the channel, please make sure that you go ahead and subscribe. And if you'd like to get these

00:49:22.000 broadcasts as podcasts, you can subscribe to the Oren McIntyre show on your favorite podcast platform.

00:49:26.720 All right. Thank you, everybody, for coming by. And as always, I'll talk to you next time.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - September 22, 2023

Tradition vs. Natural Rights ｜ Guest： Paul Gottfried ｜ 9⧸22⧸23

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