[Salon] The Lie of the Open Society ~ The Imaginative Conservative

[Todd Pierce <todd.e.pierce@icloud.com>]

On the subject of “placing limits on protests,” as what I assume is a Charles Koch/Atlas Network backed libertarian in Milei, as I just shared.

BLUF: "I was remiss last week in not praising Bruce Fein directly for his outstanding response to the “Conservative" Washington Free Beacon rag which attacked the Committee for the Republic for its event with Max Blumenthal and Miko Peled for their telling of the truth of what Israel is doing. Which was under the Subject Line: "Committee for the Republic Letter to Alana Goodman of the Washington Free Beacon re: January 16 CHC Event.” And would be remiss if I did not note that the Conservative WFB rag is the one “true" to Willmoore Kendall, not Bruce. To Kendall, one of the “Thought Control Conservative political theorists,” and the “worst of the worst,” Bruce would be denounced as a “Liberal,” for his eloquent defense of Free Speech, the Bill Of Rights, and of the Constitution itself. 

With that, and in the spirit of James Madison, writing after his contribution to "The Federalist,” when he’d become distrustful of Alexander Hamilton (see highlights in attached file, "James Madison’s Political Theory,”), and me believing with him that "every good citizen will be at once a centinel over the rights of the people;” I must commend Bruce Fein for being such a “Centinel” over what remains of our “rights.” 

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-14-02-0157

And do my best to “unmask” those “subversives” who would deny us our rights. Though never as eloquently as Bruce does. Relying for that as I must do, as educated in “political theory,” a legal education, and in Cognitive Warfare, by among others, the U.S. Army. So not only must I point out that the Constitution which is supposed to “guarantee” our rights,” is under constant assault. I must also identify “how” and by whom it is under assault. Which was never more so post-WWII than by the “Conservative Movement” which was founded in the 1950s. With its main “Thought Control Conservatives” now heralded as Trump’s “ideological precursors” by Rightists of today, who continue the assault. Not excluding by the Democrats who have assimilated so much of “Conservative” ideas, but even more so by the “Originating Party” of them, the Republicans, and especially by the New Right, as explained below. 

Beginning with this quote from Conservative John P. East’s panegyric to Willmoore Kendall in the article at bottom: "Mill was unequivocal that his call for “absolute freedom of opinion” included freedom of thought, speaking, and writing."

With East explaining: "Kendall rejected categorically Mill’s absolutist position on the “open society,” and he repudiated its theoretical underpinnings: Not only had no one ever before taught his doctrine concerning freedom of speech. No one had ever taught a doctrine even remotely like his. No one, indeed, had ever discussed such a doctrine even as a matter of speculative fancy.”

Kendall did in fact make such statements. In fact he made a career out of such statements, indicative of his innate “Constitutional Immorality.” Contrary to his fallacious claims of representing “Constitutional Morality.” For proof of that, see post-Federalist Papers writings of James Madison, as referenced in attached file below:

Attachment: James Madisons Political Theory.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

Sharing that not for what it says about voting, but for Madison’s "free speech theory,” coming long before J.S. Mills’ theory. 

For context, let me point out that my hostility to “American Conservatives,” (capital “C”) is due to the fact that they must admit, if they were “ideologically honest;” “We’re all Straussians Now!” Which can best be seen in how the most anti-constitutional “Thought Control Conservative,” of the quote above, as “conservative” Peter Viereck correctly described the founders of the Conservative Movement in the 1950s as, adhered ideologically to Leo Strauss so much! And Carl Schmitt, “political theory wise.” And never more so than today when no distinction remains of Straussians and Traditional Conservatives, as they came together in the Trump and DeSantis "New Right.” With the Straussian/Tradtional Conservative Claremont Institute and Hillsdale College the ideological “center” of the "New Right!” The “West Coast Straussians,” as opposed to the East Coast fascist variety of Bill Krisol and Harvey Mansfield. With the latter whom Tom Cotton and New Rightist Josh Hawley are so influenced by. 

With that, as stated above, I was remiss last week in not praising Bruce Fein directly for his outstanding response to the “Conservative" Washington Free Beacon rag which attacked the Committee for the Republic for its event with Max Blumenthal and Miko Peled for their telling of the truth of what Israel is doing. Which was under the Subject Line: "Committee for the Republic Letter to Alana Goodman of the Washington Free Beacon re: January 16 CHC Event.” And would be remiss if I did not note that the Conservative WFB rag is the one “true" to Kendall, not Bruce. To Kendall, one of the “Thought Control Conservative political theorists,” and the “worst of the worst,” Bruce would be denounced as a “Liberal,” for his eloquent defense of Free Speech, the Bill Of Rights, and of the Constitution itself. 

That’s notwithstanding Kendall’s Straussian, fascist (see above) “Double-Speak.” Which Kendall didn’t bother hiding, except through convoluted language. But when looked at in its “essence,” one sees fascist Franco Spain and Trujillo’s fascist D.R. looking back. Both of which Kendall admired, promoted, and even worked for, as with Trujillo (see attached file below). Making it clear why Kendall would be so popular with the New Right, and of Trump and DeSantis in particular, as he provided/provides a complete “authoritarian political and legal theory” as an ideological framework to build an Authoritarian State upon. With that today supplemented by Peter Thiel’s and Yoram Hazony’s fascist political theory, linked to Kendall, by the “essence” of each respective “political theory.” With all three directly traceable to Carl Schmitt’s variety of fascist legal and political theory. I know, I’ve read them all.

Bruce closed with this statement, speaking for the Committee for the Republic: "We are inspired by John Milton’s case against censorship in Aereopagitica: “Let her [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing.”

Not everyone connected to the Committee would agree with that unfortunately, however, as we see here with the routine promotion of two Conservative political theorists; Willmoore Kendall and Yoram Hazony. With Kendall, as he did so often, “reinterpreting” John Milton’s case against “censorship in Aereopagitica,” in his own idiosyncratic way, applied so often to texts he disagreed with:

Attachment: pdfyO2lA4wQmH.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

Attachment: American Conservatism and Right-wing Dictatorship.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

Title: The Lie of the Open Society ~ The Imaginative Conservative

With each, sharing with Peter Thiel, the extreme hostility they all have against “Enlightenment Thought.” Add in Peter Thiel, Israel’s “Intell Chief,” as the open promoter of Carl Schmitt’s variety of fascist thought, with Thiel promoted as a National Conservative,” and it’s all out in the open now. With Thiel who probably did more than anyone in getting Trump elected, with his high-level knowledge of cognitive warfare, and digital surveillance. 

But recognition by me of Straussian fascism comes from my own first in-depth exposure to "Conservative political theory.” Which came in the late 1980s when it was still being presented as “Classical Liberalism.” It was Straussians who emphasized the study of political theory in greater depth, as in Allan Bloom’s book, The Closing of the American Mind. Which came coincidentally with my exposure by way of the now much heralded, Trumpite/New Right Conservative of today, Larry Arnn, about the same time, in Minnesota. Arnn was co-founder of the Claremont Institute and today is President of the Straussian Hillsdale College. And author of Trump’s odious, propagandistic “Patriotic Education” tract, the 1776 Report. I make that as a broad statement in regard to Hillsdale notwithstanding a Conservative here who has said some of my criticism is “overbroad.” But Hillsdale “is what it is.” And it boasts that each student is required  to attend some Straussian-themed classes, such as on the Constitution. Which, having seen their “work product,” I would argue can only amount to anti-Constitutional propaganda, of the sort they invited Bill Barr to pitch to their students a few years ago. Which in fact followed the script of Willmoore Kendall’s own anti-Constitutional theory, with that indistinguishable from Leo Strauss’.

My first personal meeting with Bruce came in 2009, when I was asked to be part of a Guantanamo appellate case with implications for the First Amendment. More specifically, the “right to know,” of the American people for why al Qaeda attacked us, and the “context” that occured in. Which the USG never admits to, regardless of which of our foreign policy victims finally reciprocates. I was familiar with Bruce’s stalwart defense of the First Amendment and opposition to Guantanamo and its Military Commissions. Which was totally unique amongst self-described “conservatives,” and even more so amongst “Conservatives,” with a capital “C.” But Bruce immediately agreed to a meeting with my fellow appellate team member and I, and gave us better than an hour academic style lecture on free speech, a free press, and freedom of thought, which was superb. The exact opposite of what I since learned Willmoore Kendall propagated. And New Rightists use his books for today, to indoctrinate the current young Conservatives in “Thought Control!” 

More from John P. East here, a panegyric to the other half of “Kendall/Strauss”: 

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/04/leo-strauss-escaping-the-stifling-clutches-of-historicism.html

Quote: "William F. Buckley, Jr. observed that Strauss “is unquestionably one of the most influential teachers of his age,” while the always exacting Willmoore Kendall referred to Strauss as “the great teacher of political philosophy, not of our time alone, but of any time since Machiavelli.”[7] Among Strauss’ books, these having the greatest impact upon American conservative thought would include The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (1936), Natural Right and History (1953), Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958), and What Is Political Philosophy? (1959). Concerning the latter two works, Kendall exclaimed, “Both of these should be not required reading but scripture for everyone who likes to think of himself as a conservative.”[8]

What was the essence of this powerful spell that Leo Strauss cast over his students—nay, his disciples?" 

I read all this first in Carl Schmitt’s works! And Schmitt’s and Kendall’s friend, Leo Strauss’.  

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/06/lie-of-the-open-society.html

The Lie of the Open Society

John P. East

II

The related problems of “the public orthodoxy” and “the open society” were major concerns of  Willmoore Kendall throughout his professional career. In his reappraisal of John Locke in 1941, Kendall’s Locke emerged as an exponent of the public orthodoxy as expressed through the majority. As Kendall sees it, in Lockean thought, “In consenting to be a member of a commonwealth, therefore, he [the individual] consents beforehand to the acceptance of obligations which he does not approve, and it is right that he should do so because such an obligation is implicit in the nature of community life.”[31] Throughout John Locke and the Doctrine of Majority-Rule, the reader can discern Kendall’s deep skepticism about constructing an on-going political system on the foundations of abstract-natural-rights individualism; that to attempt to do so would be unnatural, and contrary to the realities of human nature and the human condition.In Kendall’s political science, the public orthodoxy is a “way of life,” and is identical to the Greek politeia, which refers to “the ‘character’ or tone of a community.”[32] More particularly, the public orthodoxy is:

[T]hat matrix of convictions, usually enshrined in custom and ‘folkways,’ often articulated formally and solemnly in charter and constitution, occasionally summed up in the creed of a church or the testament of a philosopher, that makes a society The Thing it is and that divides it from other societies as, in human thought, one thing is divided always from another.

That is why we may (and do) speak intelligibly of a Greek, a Roman, or an American ‘way of life.'[33]

From Kendall’s perspective, “the existence of the politeia [i.e., the public orthodoxy] is the unquestioned point of departure for political philosophy,” for it is the primordial fact of social and political existence.[34] The public orthodoxy is antecedent to all other political matters:

Not only can society not avoid having a public orthodoxy; even when it rejects an old orthodoxy in the name of ‘enlightenment,’ ‘progress,’ ‘the pluralist society,’ ‘the open society,’ and the like, it invents, however subtly, a new orthodoxy with which to replace the old one. As Aristotle is always at hand to remind us, only gods and beasts can live alone—man, by nature, is a political animal—whose very political life demands a politeia that involves an at least implicit code of manners and a tacit agreement on the meaning of man within the total economy of existence. Without this political orthodoxy…the state withers; contracts lose their efficacy; the moral bond between citizens is loosened; the State opens itself to enemies from abroad; and the politeia sheds the sacral character without which it cannot long endure.

As the state is founded upon the public orthodoxy, if the orthodoxy decays and disintegrates, the state itself will inevitably falter. It is an unyielding reality: The good order and health of the political state are dependent upon the vitality and character of the public orthodoxy. In Kendall’s political theory, not only is the public orthodoxy inescapably rooted in the order of being, but it is a positive good, for without it there is no society, no state, and civilized man, as we have traditionally known him, is destroyed.

Kendall was strongly at odds with the dogmatic proponents of the “open society,” who seemed to be contending that all public orthodoxies are evil—except, of course, the public orthodoxy that there are no public orthodoxies. One of Kendall’s principal bete noires was John Stuart Mill, who was, as Kendall saw it, leading the attack of the open society proponents upon the concept of the public orthodoxy.[36] In his textual analysis of On Liberty, Kendall concluded that Mill was, in fact, an absolutist on the matter of freedom of _expression_. It is true that Mill made certain concessions on such matters as libel and slander, situations where children were involved, and incitement to crime; however, once these peripheral matters were conceded, Mill assumed an absolutist and dogmatic posture on the question of freedom of _expression_. Kendall considered the following representative quotations from On Liberty as dispelling any possible doubt on the matter:

Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them. [In short, the prevailing public orthodoxy is by definition “tyranny” and must be displaced.]

This, then, is the appropriate region of human liberty. It comprises, first, the inward domain of consciousness, demanding liberty of conscience in the most comprehensive sense, liberty of thought and feeling, absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological… No society… is completely free in which [these liberties] do not exist absolute and unqualified. (TP-all of which Kendall opposed, virulently!) 

[T]here ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.

If the teachers of mankind are to be cognizant of all that they ought to know, everything must be free to be written and published without restraint.

[H]uman beings should be free to form opinions and to express their opinions without reserve.[37]

Mill was unequivocal that his call for “absolute freedom of opinion” included freedom of thought, speaking, and writing.[38] (TP-oh, my!)  Moreover, in his blistering attack upon the public orthodoxy, Mill argued that the existence of any orthodoxy impaired human happiness and impeded progress: “Where not the person’s own character but the traditions or customs of other people are the rule of conduct, there is wanting one of the principal ingredients of human happiness, and quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress.”[39] Finally, Mill lamented, “In politics it is almost a triviality to say that public opinion now rules the world.“[40] It was Mill’s unrelenting disdain for the public orthodoxy or, as he called it, “the despotism of custom” that led him to make his best-known remark: “If all mankind were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing all mankind.”[41]

Kendall rejected categorically Mill’s absolutist position on the “open society,” and he repudiated its theoretical underpinnings:

Not only had no one ever before taught his doctrine concerning freedom of speech. No one had ever taught a doctrine even remotely like his. No one, indeed, had ever discussed such a doctrine even as a matter of speculative fancy. Hardly less than Machiavelli, and more than Hobbes, Mill is in full rebellion against both religion and philosophy, and so in full rebellion also against the traditional society that embodies them…. To reverse a famous phrase, Mill thinks of himself as standing not upon the shoulders of giants but of pygmies. He appeals to no earlier teacher, identifies himself with nothing out of the past; and his doctrine of freedom of speech is, as I have intimated already, the unavoidable logical consequence of the denials from which his thought moves. [42] (TP-oh my, again!)

Kendall charged that Mill’s position is at odds with elementary facts of the human condition. It is unnatural and perverse to ask mortal men to accept a posture of absolute relativism, for in fact men do have values, in fact, they do think some questions are settled, and they do not accept the position that all points of view are relative and equal in value. Kendall contended Mill erred in proposing that any society should and would make absolute freedom of _expression_ its supreme and only value:

Mill’s proposals have, as one of their tacit premises a false conception of the nature of society, and are, therefore, unrealistic on their face. They assume that society is, so to speak, a debating club devoted above all to the pursuit of truth, and capable therefore of subordinating itself—and all other considerations, goods, and goals—to that pursuit…. But we know only too well that society is not a debating club—all our experience of society drives the point home—and that, even if it were one…the chances of its adopting the pursuit of truth as its supreme good are negligible. Societies…cherish a whole series of goods—among others, their own self-preservation, the living of the truth they believe themselves to embody already, and the communication of that truth (pretty much intact, moreover) to future generations, their religion, etc.—which they are not only likely to value as much as or more than the pursuit of truth, but ought to value as much as or more than the pursuit of truth, because these are preconditions of the pursuit of truth.[43]

As Kendall viewed it, Mill failed to understand that the politeia is the condition precedent to society, and that it is only within the frame of reference or consensus established by the politeia that debate, or discussion as Kendall would prefer to call it, can take place. To deny the politeia, and to ask for unlimited debate in the abstract as Mill does, is to request that which is not only impossible of achievement—human nature and the human condition dictate otherwise—but indeed, even if attainable, would be undesirable. It would be undesirable:

For the essence of Mill’s freedom of speech is the divorce of the right to speak from the duties correlative to the right; the right to speak is a right to speak ad nauseam, and with impunity. It is shot through and through with the egalitarian overtones of the French Revolution, which are as different from the measured aristocratic overtones of the pursuit of truth by discussion, as understood by the tradition Mill was attacking, as philosophy is different from phosphorus.[44]

If the regnant doctrine of Mill is the right to speak ad nauseam, without any correlative duties or obligations, we are installing the cult of individual eccentricity as our supreme value; if this is followed to its logical and final conclusion, society will be brought to the brink of disintegration. Mill was an advocate of the cult of individual eccentricity. He wrote,

In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.[45]

In Mill’s “open society,” the individual with his absolute right of _expression_ is then instructed that eccentricity is a positive good, and there is a duty to pursue it. That is, there emerges a public orthodoxy of eccentricity, and in Kendall’s critique, this will drive individuals to the making of exorbitant and impossible demands upon society. This, in turn, will lead to confrontation and the disintegration of society, for there is no center that can hold; more importantly, there is no obligation or duty on anybody to hold, for all things political are conceived wholly in terms of individual rights and demands. Into the vacuum created by disintegration will move force and coercion—in a word, tyranny. As Kendall succinctly put it,

I next contend that such a society as Mill prescribed will descend inevitably into ever-deepening differences of opinion, into progressive breakdown of those common premises upon which alone a society can conduct its affairs by discussion, and so into the abandonment of the discussion process and the arbitrament of public questions by violence and civil war.[46] 

Kendall queried, “[I]s there any surer prescription for arriving, willy nilly, in spite of ourselves, at the closed society, than is involved in current pleas for the open society?”[47] He answered, “By asking for all, even assuming that all to be desirable, we imperil our chances of getting that little we might have got had we asked only for that little.”[48]

Inexorably then, Kendall argued, Mill’s position of dogmatic relativism leads to the emergence of the coercive state. Kendall reasoned, “The proposition that all opinions are equally—and hence infinitely—valuable, said to be the unavoidable inference from the proposition that all opinions are equal, is only—and perhaps the less likely of two possible inferences, the other being: all opinions are equally—and hence infinitely—without value, so what difference does it make if one, particularly one not our own, gets suppressed?”[49] Kendall concluded with this admonition: “We have no experience of unlimited freedom of speech as Mill defines it, of the open society as [Karl] Popper defines it, unless, after a fashion and for a brief moment, in Weimer Germany—an experience no organized society will be eager to repeat!”[50]

Kendall accused the “open society” proponents, such as John Stuart Mill and Karl Popper, of presenting us with false choices. That is, they force us to choose between the “closed” or the “open” society. As Karl Popper stated it, “We can return to the beasts [meaning the closed society]. But if we wish to remain human, then there is only one way, the way into the open society.”[51] Kendall challenged that assumption:

Mill would have us choose between never silencing and declaring ourselves infallible, as Popper would have us believe that a society cannot be a little bit closed, any more than a woman can be a little bit pregnant. All our knowledge of politics bids us not to fall into that trap. Nobody wants all out thought control or the closed society; and nobody has any business pretending that somebody else wants them. For the real question is, how open can a society be and still remain open at all?[52]

To Kendall, the “open society” versus “closed society” choices are false choices, for, in fact, they are not our only alternatives. In the real world of being, there is “an infinite range of possibilities.” Indeed, the great irony is that by offering these false choices, the open society proponents actually nudge us closer to the closed society. As the attaining of a completely open society is impossible, and undesirable to boot, the advocates of the open society, by their own process of elimination, leave us with no other alternative than that of the closed society, which unfortunately is attainable. It was Kendall’s contention that political philosophers should be seeking realistic and moderate solutions in that “infinite range of possibilities” lying between those purist concepts of the open and closed societies, which political ideologists have been wrongly informing us are our only options.

As political philosopher, Kendall was always pushing to deeper levels of meaning and understanding. One of the most impressive illustrations of this is his carefully honed and brilliantly argued article, “The  People Versus Socrates Revisited.”[53] Kendall contended that the advocates of the open society had converted Socrates-before-the-Assembly into their fundamental symbol. For example, in On Liberty Mill wrote:

Mankind can hardly be too often reminded, that there was once a man named Socrates, between whom and the legal authorities and public opinion of his time there took place a memorable collision…. This acknowledged master of all the eminent thinkers who have since lived—whose fame, still growing after more  than two thousand years….[54]

Similarly, throughout The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper spoke glowingly of Socrates, and he concluded, “The new faith of the open society, the faith in man, in equalitarian justice, and in human reason, was…beginning to take shape….The greatest contribution to this faith was to be made by Socrates, who died for it.”[55]

Regarding the Mill-Popper symbol of Socrates-arrayed-against-the-Assembly, Kendall wrote:

What symbol? The symbol, of course, of Socrates the Bearer of the Word standing with unbowed head in the presence of his accusers and judges, who hold the Word in contempt of the Servant of Truth being punished, murdered rather, for the truth that is in him; that of the Wise Man being sacrificed by fools who, had they but listened to him, would have been rescued from their folly. That symbol, I contend, lies at the root of the simon-pure doctrine [of the open society]…of the Mill-Popper position.[56]

It was Kendall’s position that a close reading of the Apology and the Crito will reveal this to be a spurious symbol. The political theory of the Crito does not yield up a limitless open society of the Mill-Popper version; rather, argued Kendall, it offers a society in which the individual is accorded a reasonable opportunity to convince society of the failings and errors of its public orthodoxy. When that reasonable opportunity has been exhausted, and society chooses not to alter its values or orthodoxy, the individual is expected to desist or emigrate. Furthermore, after his hearing the dissenter may encounter punishment for ideas or methods found by society to be utterly repugnant to those things it treasures as fundamental. In short, the teaching of the Crito is not that offered by the open society advocates, for it does not propose a society in which the individual has the absolute and unlimited right to talk ad nauseam until society converts itself to the preachments of the dissenter. According to Kendall, this latter theory is, as has been previously noted, unworkable, unattainable, and undesirable; it is a political theory which has its roots in On Liberty, not in the Crito.

In addition, Kendall charged the open society advocates with misunderstanding the political lessons of the  Apology. The lesson is not that Socrates has been denied the opportunity for a reasonable hearing as required by the Crito. Indeed, the Athenians had been listening to Socrates for several decades. Nor was the major issue raised between Socrates and the Assembly a demand by Socrates that the Athenians keep all questions open questions and modify the public orthodoxy here or enlarge it there. The heart of the matter was that Socrates wished the Athenians to upend and reorder their entire public orthodoxy and to bring it into conformity with his own. Moreover, this radical demand from Socrates resulted not from the partial truths learned in the marketplace of ideas of the open society proponents; rather, it is rooted in an ultimate religious Truth. It is to be remembered, warned Kendall, that Socrates spoke of “the greatest improvement of the soul” (to which Socrates has the key, of course), of “the command of God,” and Socrates informed the Athenians that “I shall obey God rather than you.”[57] In pressing his case, Socrates is instructing the Athenians that their present way of life is “not worth living.” Not only is their way of life foolish and frivolous; it is base and immoral, and Socrates will settle for nothing less than a total rejection of the Athenian public orthodoxy, and its replacement by the religious Truth, as perceived and expounded by Socrates. As Kendall summed it up, “There is the model…the situation of every society over against every revolutionary agitator; nor could there be better evidence of the poverty of post-Platonic political theory than the fact that it has received so little attention.”[58]

It was Kendall’s contention that students of political philosophy in their understanding of the forces inherent in human society will recognize the unyielding realities which leave the Athenians and the Assembly no choice:

The Athenians are running a society, which is the embodiment of a way of life, which in turn is the embodiment of the goods they cherish and the beliefs to which they stand committed…. The most we can possibly ask of them…is that they shall keep their minds a little open to proposals for this or that improvement, this or that refinement… To ask of them, by contrast, that they jettison their way of life, that they carry out the revolution, demanded of them by the revolutionary agitator, is to demand that they shall deliberately do that which they can only regard as irresponsible and immoral—something, moreover, that they will seriously consider doing only to the extent that their society has ceased, or is about to cease, to be a society.[59]

As laudable as the thought might seem in certain situations, to ask a society to condemn and repudiate itself is unnatural and contrary to what political philosophy has learned about the politeia, that condition antecedent to society and government. In fine, a being, be it an individual or a society, cannot be asked to repudiate itself and to declare its nothingness, for that is unnatural, perverse, and contrary to elementary first principles on the nature of being which we have culled out of our accumulated experience and wisdom. It was Kendall’s lesson that we had best understand those unrelenting realities, and thereby be better able to develop the realistic open society, the society of the Crito. To ignore those realities, and to attempt to construct the perfected, limitless, and utopian open society of the Mill-Popper school, is to build on infirm foundations and to court society’s disintegration with the resulting potential of the closed societies of the authoritarian or totalitarian stripe. In their fervor to obtain everything, the exponents of the open society will end up getting nothing. It is that disastrous end which Kendall wished to avoid. As Kendall viewed it, the Mill-Popper school has read its own de novo theories, spun out of wholly new cloth, into the works of the ancients—such as the Crito and the Apology, and they deceive themselves in contending that they are extracting their theories out of a proper reading of these classics.

This essay is the second of a four-part series; the first may be found here.

Republished with gracious permission from Political Science Reviewer (Fall 1973).

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

Notes:

[31] Willmoore Kendall; John Locke and the Doctrine of Majority-Rule, p.118. Italics added. For the earliest _expression_ of Kendall’s interest in the public orthodoxy, see Nellie D. Kendall, ed., op. cit., pp.103-117.

[32] Frederick D. Wilhelmsen and Willmoore  Kendall, “Cicero and The Politics of The Public Orthodoxy,” The Intercollegiate Review, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Winter, 1968-69), p.85.

[33] Ibid., pp.85-86.

[34] Ibid., p.86.

[35] Ibid., p. 88.

[36] Kendall’s classic work on this matter is “The ‘Open Society’ and Its Fallacies,” American Political Science Review, Vol. LIV (1960), pp.972-979. (It is Kendall’s position that a careful reading of John Milton’s Areopagitica reveals a Milton not in support of the unlimited open society. See Nellie D. Kendall, ed., op. cit., pp.168-201.)

[37] John S. Mill, On Liberty, ed. Currin V. Shields (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1956), pp.7, 16, 20, 47, 67. Italics added.

[38] Ibid., p.18.

[39] Ibid., p.68.

[40] Ibid., p.80.

[41] Ibid., p.21. Kendall found Karl Popper the best contemporary _expression_ of Mill’s philosophy as reflected in On Liberty. See Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 5th ed. rev., 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966). It is Popper who repudiates the “closed society” based upon “the claims of tribalism” and offers the “open society” as the only “enlightened” and “progressive” alternative.

[42] Willmoore Kendall, “The ‘Open Society’ and Its Fallacies,” p.976.

[43] Ibid., p.977.

[44] Ibid., p.979.

[45] Mill, op. cit., pp.81-82.

[46] Willmoore Kendall, “The ‘Open Society’ and Its Fallacies,” p.978.

[47]  Ibid., p.976.

[48]  Ibid., p.977.

[49] Ibid., p.978. On this point, Kendall expressly cited with approval Bertrand de Jouvenel. See Ibid., p.978, n.31.

[50] Ibid., p.977.

[51] Popper, op. cit., vol. 1, p.201. Italics added.

[52] Willmoore Kendall, “The ‘Open Society’ and Its Fallacies,” p.976.

[53] Nellie D. Kendall, ed., op. cit., pp.149-167.

[54] Mill, op. cit., pp.29-30.

[55] Popper, op. cit., vol. 1, p.189.

[56] Nellie D. Kendall, ed., op. cit., p.150.

[57] Ibid., p.161. Kendall noted the parallel between the position of Socrates and the story related in the Gospels; however, Kendall added, “Plato, who cannot know that the chasm between teacher and neighbor can be bridged by the Atonement, must—unlike the narrators of the Gospels—leave it at that.” Ibid., p.163. That is, the latter-day advocates of the open society are not claiming the divinity of Socrates. They are only offering him as the secular saint of perennial dissent, while the Christian is on wholly different grounds, for in fact he is claiming his symbol is divine; consequently, it deserves obeisance from all orthodoxies. In sum, the Christian political philosopher may consistently argue that Socrates is “wrong,” and Christ is “right,” because the latter is divine; therefore, this one time on this one point all orthodoxies must yield. Of course, the secular defender of the Socratic symbol has no such firm foundation on which to build the faith in the open society.

[58] Ibid., p.164.

[59] Ibid., pp.165-166. As Publius stated it, “Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.” From Federalist 55.