The Politics of Despair: An Interview with John Derbyshire
BC: You argue “if you want to get a handle on human nature, listen to the people who know nature.” Moreover, Chapter 7, “Ask Your Aunt,” is devoted to this topic. Would you agree that in 2009 we have progressed to the point in which we’ve forgotten the accumulated wisdom of the past?
John Derbyshire: Hard to generalize it. We have selectively forgotten — forgotten those things that make us feel uncomfortable, like innate individual differences in personality and aptitude. We all pretend to believe that anybody, properly conditioned, could play golf like Tiger Woods, the violin like Jascha Heifetz, or the ladies like Casanova. Before about 1965, practically nobody believed this. Homosexuality is a whorl point here, a singularity. Prior to the aforementioned date, practically every system of jurisprudence in the world took it (or at any rate the male manifestation of it) to be a social negative (and yes, this includes the ancient Greeks — see Dover), and punished it as something people did. The modern conception — that it’s something people are — was always around, though, as I illustrate. So what was the accumulated wisdom here: the personal or the jurisprudential? Beats me.
BC: Along the same lines, do you agree that acknowledging such a thing as human nature is an important delineator of whether you’re on the right or left politically?
John Derbyshire: Oh yes. Though conservatism is now so corrupted, most conservatives have signed on to liberal no-such-thing-as-human-nature doctrine, just for the sake of a quiet life, or a job in Washington. But a person with a firm belief in human nature is always a conservative. Which seer was it, I honestly forget, who said “human nature has no history”? It was a conservative, anyway. The most emphatic assertion that there is no such thing as human nature, on the other hand, came from Mao Tse-tung.
BC: Absimilation is a very interesting concept. How does it explain what we’re seeing, at the moment, with immigration in America?
John Derbyshire: I didn’t intend it to be explanatory, just descriptive. Take in 100,000 people from culture C, which is considerably, or radically, different from traditional Anglo-Celtic-Protestant American culture. Some number X will assimilate to American culture. Some number Y will encyst themselves in a little home-from-home. (And this will, of course, be much easier for them to do if lots of C-culture people are settled here in ghettos. My novel Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream offers some examples.) Some number Z will react strongly against American culture — absimilate. The first immigrant generation will be almost entirely Xs and Ys, with none or very few Zs. In the second generation, though, you get lots of Zs. Every young person of spirit wants to vex his parents, and absimilating from both the dominant culture and the parental accommodations to it is a splendid way to do that.
BC: You argue that women are outperforming men and that they will soon reduce us to the status of a historical irrelevancy. Yet isn’t the transcendence of women largely a product of government intervention? In my mind, victory via legal imposition — such as with affirmative action, sexual harassment law, and the gargantuan transference of resources produced by divorce — is no real victory at all.
John Derbyshire: Hey, they’ll take it. But the constrained bourgeois societies of pre-post-industrial Europe, the societies of Juliet and The Vicar of Wakefield, of Madame Bovary and Effi Briest, were in some ways an aberration. Plenty of human societies have gone along for millennia with women doing most of the work and men goofing off — fighting and playing status games. Sub-Saharan African societies are mostly like that. That’s why African women give the impression of not liking their men very much. Some Southeast Asian and Polynesian ones, too, I am told. They still needed men for breeding and sexual satisfaction, of course … but technology can take care of that. Then who needs us? I say we’re toast.
BC: If you had to write this book about England, your homeland, what would your title be? You’re Already Doomed? The Past Is … All?
John Derbyshire: Conservatism in England has been pretty much wiped out. The current leader of the Conservative Party is left-liberal. You practically never hear a conservative sentiment from anyone under the age of fifty. The year 1945 did the trick, with the break-up of the old class-deference system, the welfarization of the working classes, and post-imperial guilt as contributing factors. Lesser factors were the established church, which was once “the Tory Party at prayer,” but which turned sharp left in the 1930s for fear of losing its market share among the depression-stricken working and middle classes (but which lost it anyway), and the trahison des clercs, mid-20th-century intellectuals flocking to continental cults in dismay at the mess England’s ruling classes seemed to be making. And to vex their parents. The desire to vex one’s parents has been a huge factor in shaping the modern world. In partial defense of the English, though, welfare socialism can be made to work reasonably well in a country that size if immigration is tightly restricted, which alas it hasn’t been. I don’t believe it can be made to work in the U.S. under any circumstances. We are too big, with too much demographic variety present from our very creation. Even the mild north-European form of socialism is not for us. It would destroy us. Would, will, because that’s where we’re headed. We are doomed!
BC: Thanks for your time and good cheer, Mr. Derbyshire.
More intellectual confusion from the right. The belief in the fallibility of man was always the justification of the strong state. Otherwise people would do things like destroy the economy with credit default swaps or allow Arabs into the country to take flying (but not landing) lessions. The influence of Rousseau and others led to the craze for small government in the belief that people were naturally good. People who believed this were called liberals. Today people who believe this are neo-liberals not conservatives. Their so called conservatism is really a desire to return to the more pure liberalism of the 19th century. As for modern liberals they have embraced the welfare state but retain Roussian beliefs about criminals, Third World dictators and the benevolence of government bureaucrats.
Mr. Derbyshire states his case very well. Let’s hope, anyway, that he is wrong, and that the eternal human nature will turn to the eternal consevative values, not just in America but globally.
Good on Squire Derb “Derb” Derbyshire. The man understands, if not All, then certainly Much.
His money quote here is “A person with a firm belief in human nature is always a conservative”
As the novelist Elizabeth Bowen observed, “Trying to change what you basically are like is like walking north on a deck of a south-bound ship.”
Or, (and more pertinently to us, in these parlous times of historical amnesia), as the historian and author Walter A. McDougall put it, “American history is a tale of human nature set free.”
Good on Squire Derb “Derb” Derbyshire. The man knows, if not actually All, then certainly Much.
His money quote here is: “A person with a firm belief in human nature is always a conservative.”
The essence of Leftism is first, to try to deny that there is even such a thing as human nature, and, failing that, to try – inevitably unsuccessfully, to change it.
As the novelist Elizabeth Bowen observed “Trying to change what you basically are is like walking north on the deck of a south-bound ship.”
And as, (more pertinently to our current parlous state of apparent historical amnesia), the historian and author Walter A. McDougall put it, “American history is a tale of human nature set free.”
The influence of Rousseau and others led to the craze for small government in the belief that people were naturally good.
Hmmm, Rousseau’s belief that people are naturally good leads to a desire for Utopia. If evil is simply a matter of bad social systems,the thing to do is sweep the old system aside (see: French Revolution, Russian Revolution). Throw in Rousseau’s belief on the superiority of emotion to reason and his idealization of primitive socities, and you’ll understand why Rousseau is considered one of the founders of the modern Left. This is the first time I’ve ever seen anybody advance the idea that Rousseau furthered the cause of small government.
Edmund Burke supported the American Revolution and backed the French one until it spiraled into terror. His book, “Reflections on the Revolution in France” is one of the founding documents of modern conservatism.
Thomas Sowell, a great contemporary conservative, once noted that there is a thin crust of civilization seperating humans from savage behavior and that the Left is constantly picking away at that crust. Thank Rousseau for that.
That said, my church teaches that despair is a sin. If I were as pessimistic as Derbyshire, I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning.
Love that title. The world is not for sissies, despite the best efforts of two generations of feckless policitans’ and bureaucrats’ best efforts to make it so.
Sorry, RAP. That’s the way it is. Watch a couple of John Wayne flicks and put yourself on the road to recovery.
As long as the ignoble name of J-J Rousseau is being bandied about, here’s another apt quote, this one from J-JR in 1778, as he was approaching death:
“I think I know man, but as for men, I know them not.” – JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
It rather nicely illustrates the law that posits: The Left loves “humanity”, but doesn’t actually like, or have much time for, individual human beings.
Thank you for the intelligent, thoughtful posts.
To me, it all comes down to this: the individual or the collective.
Conservatives choose the former …. Progressives/Liberals/Leftists, the latter.
Whichever the philosophical underpinnings, the love and quest for money and power is overriding. Hence the sad fact that our Congress and the Executive have become little more than crimial enterprises.
RAP: The belief in the fallibility of man was always the justification of the strong state.
Huh? That belief undermined royalty being “divinely inspired”. It led to checks and balances in the American system. Our constitution anticipated the tyrannical quest for power in some, and so enumerated only the powers granted. It is the basis of R. Reagan’s “trust but verify”.
The left harbors the utopian view that everyone who is poor could be successful if only they had a hand up. But the unintended consequences of their nannying has made it increasingly difficult to earn a living. Two acres used to be enough to survive before liquor-making was seized from the poor. Today, you need a license to cut hair.
We are not doomed! The odds are actually on our side. John Derbyshire is a very bright man. Unfortunately, he represents a “sophisticated” conservative mindset of passive surrender to the so-called inevitable forces of history. Derbyshire finds it comforting to sit on the sidelines drinking a glass of wine while the word comes to an inglorious end. He is simply not a leader. Thank goodness there are heroes like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, and countless others.
The Left loves “humanity”, but doesn’t actually like, or have much time for, individual human beings.
I once heard a good illustration of this as “Everybody wants to save the world; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”
Derbyshire’s “We are doomed!” gusto is perverse.
“Derbyshire’s “We are doomed!” gusto is perverse.”
John Derbyshire is also a pro-abortion secularist. In back of his mind, he may not really want a successful conservative revolution. Derbyshire rightfully senses that Sarah Palin and her allies will be calling the shots. “Moderate” Republicans will have to ask themselves this awkward and uneasy question: how much do I truly value a growing economy and a strong national defense?
Well said, especially, the bit about human nature and a belief in it being the splitting point for liberals and conservatives.
Sure would be nice to have more academic discussions like this on PJ Media
I wish Mr. Derbyshire had utilized his mathematical skill to delineate his theories. Otherwise he amounts to no better than talking out of turn.
Naseem Taleeb in “The Black Swan” does a convincing job mathematically of showing why Socialist solutions are so quintessentially irrational. Mind you, he is not a conservative. He is a polymath who shows what is possible and what is not – ever. Predicting the future, even while acting to produce a specific outcome, is a hopeless task. In this regard, I am certain that lawyer Obama never predicted the difficulties he would face in turning America into a place he could be proud of.
I held a subscription to National Review from the time I was 18 until I was 53. There are several reasons I no longer subscribe, but Derbyshire was the proverbial camel’s back-breaking straw.
Despair, of course, is where his view of human nature naturally leads — if you don’t believe in Christ. If we’re the ones who are in charge, despair is a natural reaction, since humanity is dead in sin (Paul).
Derbyshire’s conservatism is a godless conservatism. Unlike religious conservatives, he doesn’t believe in the Lord’s eschaton, and unlike liberals, he has deduced that man cannot create his own.
It’s a sterile, harsh, and joyless world view.
“The Left loves “humanity”, but doesn’t actually like, or have much time for, individual human beings.”
Indeed so. Invoking an abstracted ‘Humanity’ in the course of pointing up their own tacit moral perfection by decrying the shortcomings of others seems to me a tactic for a form of stealthy competition in a hyper-individualistic milieu, one whose cunning and evil is such that it dare not speak its name.