Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Letter to the Editor
In response to this article:
Nock is my favorite author, and his philosophy has literally changed my life in very significant ways. Thank you for writing this article, and for putting it on the web. The more exposure he gets, the better for all of us.
I take issue with some of your conclusions though.
“And that is why the Right is in so much better shape than it was during Nock’s time, even as liberals are mounting a statist revival. ... Moreover, the American people are not nearly as Neolithic as Nock believed, proof of which can be found in the slow and uneven unraveling of statism since his death, as with the still-unfinished Reagan Revolution. ...Nock was content with failure, his heirs are not.”
Nock was absolutely right. He was not content with failure so much as he was accepting of the inevitable. I don’t see how you can assert that there has been a “slow and uneven unraveling of statism since his death”, when Europe has become more explicitly socialist in that time, and here at home, budgets, taxation, regulation, and government intrusiveness have all increased exponentially. When we elect a Republican president, we get expanding budgets, No Child Left Behind, and Medicare Part D. This isn’t an unraveling of statism, this is just a slightly slower march towards it. Then that very same electorate giddily elects Obama, who makes no effort whatsoever to hide his collectivist world-view. I see no evidence at all of any significant long-term movement away from statism, in fact, long-term, we’ve been sliding towards it rather rapidly, exactly as Nock predicted. From his point of view, and mine, we have no real opposition in this country anymore. There are progressive Democrats, and Republicans that are virtually forced to campaign and legislate as progressives in order to stay relevant, because that is what the people want.
I applaud your efforts and the efforts of others at NR to continue saying “stop”, but I see it as a compromised, nearly wasted effort. Real conservatives, like Nock, are selling an ideology that is old and stale, involving such passe concepts as self-reliance, hard work, manners, and the primacy of the individual over the state. The populace of this country has spent 70 years marinating in progressive ideology, and the words of a true old-school conservative sound bizarre and foreign. You folks at NR, while fighting the good fight, have to tailor your message to keep it acceptable to the populace, meaning that whether due to actual belief or sheer practicality, old-school Nockian conservatism doesn’t get much play. You are constrained to the realm of practical politics, while Nock threw politics out and entered the realm of pure ideas, appealing to what is right and what is best regardless of how it would be received.
Nock insisted on seeing things as they are, and living accordingly. Early on, he saw what would be the result of mixing democracy and progressive populism, and all events since then have proven him right. He focused his efforts on the Remnant, because he knew they and only they would stay true to what is right and good through thick and thin. Any exposure Nock gets these days is a good thing, because like echoes, his words reverberate through time, bucking up the Remnant, reminding them that they are not alone, and encouraging them to continue doing what is right even in the face of opposition. That will only become harder and harder, as yet another generation grows up with a statist status quo, and with real conservatism becoming a more and more distant cultural memory.
Sincerely,
American Farmer
Comments
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Taking liberties on being gaudy and garish here, but: trés magnifique!
A first rate response. ::Stands and applauds::
Nock’s real, old-time conservatism endures, because of people like YOU.
“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.”
--Mark TwainMrs. du Toit | 5/20/2009 08:41 AM CDT -
Bravo.
(Mr.) Kim du Toit | 5/20/2009 08:53 AM CDT -
You inspired me to write him, too:
Mr. Goldberg,
You get so much right about Nock, but miss the most important element of “Isaiah’s Job” and his writing in general: he was not a fatalist at all. He was an eternal optimistic, more so than any other person I’ve come across with Nock’s educational pedigree.
He believed, despite the fact that there was no evidence you could specifically point to, that the Remnant would endure, and the “stratum of right thinking” would endure with them. They would find him or the ideas. They would understand and take in those ideas and live them. They’d spread that message, keeping it alive.
Nock wasn’t guilty of pride. He didn’t care if someone attributed the words/ideas to him. He cared about the ideas, not the “boob pumping” of popularity. He couldn’t take credit for the ideas, as you mention, because they weren’t his to claim. There are no new ideas, just new people who learn them and pass them on.
“Meanwhile, he has quite forgotten how he came by the idea in the first instance, and even perhaps thinks he has invented it; and in those circumstances, the most interesting thing of all is that you never know what the pressure of that idea will make him do.” —Albert Jay Nock, “ISAIAH’S JOB”
His message was that you can’t change the world, but you can change yourself, “present society with one improved unit.”
That is the tiny chunk of “changing that world” that empowers each person. You don’t have to change the whole world and everyone in it to change everything… you need only improve yourself and “the world” is changed with it.
Those are not the words of a fatalist.
Having read all of Nock (many times) I can say that the first read does appear as fatalistic, and there is a kind of metamorphosis that occurs afterward, but it is gradual. At first you think that all of everything is going to go to Hell and there’s no point in doing anything about it. But then you realize, gradually, that you’re the only one who can make a difference, and it is an imperative that you adjust yourself, and improve yourself. That is all you can do, but that is everything. It is one of acceptance, as well--where we have to discard the silly notions that we can change things outside of ourselves.
Nock’s fatalist-appearing ‘cycle of life’ is that things are going to be destroyed. That is the ultimate truth. But there is a flip side to that: We’re also going to rebuild them again, and the Remnant know how to do that, as bees know how to build a new hive. It is the battle of nonacceptance that he fought against--the kind of Pollyanna nostrums that “we” can made a “collective” difference, always looking outside ourselves for proof of change, or that some other person (or group of people) has to change to make a difference. NO! “We” can’t make a “collective” difference, nor is it necessary for that to happen. That’s statist indoctrination and is unnecessary. “It is the soul of man that must revolt.” He believed that there were people who could and would do that. That’s not fatalism. That’s blind optimism.
The fatalist read is the outward layer--the obvious one, but reflection (which was Nock’s greatest asset and trademark) is that “the world” is going to do whatever it is going to do. It will repeat mistakes ad infinitum. There is tremendous comfort in that--of knowing that “there is truly nothing new under the sun.” You can count on it, as you can count on the tides. The problems facing the people of Aurelius’s Rome are the same issues we face today, and despite that, we exist and endure. There are no “new” problems:
“Nothing can be done about the liquor problem, the farm problem, problems of public ownership, and the other social problems that afflict us. I say, nothing can be done; that is, nothing except the one thing that will never be acknowledged as necessary, the self-imposed discipline of a whole people in acquiring a brand-new ethos. We have been trying to live by mechanics alone, the mechanics of pedagogy, of politics, of industry and commerce; and when we find it cannot be done and that we are making a mess of it, instead of experiencing a change of heart, we bend our wits to devise a change in mechanics, and then another change, and then another… (The) clear insistent testimony that a nation’s life consists not in the abundance of the things that it possesses; that it is the spirit and manners of a people, and not the bewildering multiplicity of its social mechanisms, that determines the quality of its civilization.” --Albert J. Nock, “NOCK’S JOURNAL”
There will be times when the world goes to the dogs, when people are “rice Christians,” and a new flavor of statism comes along that appeals to the masses… You can count on that, and in knowing that, you don’t have to panic that the world will come to an end, and goodness will go out of the world. You can still be a right-thinking person in a world of the mass-man, and you can do right, regardless of what the populists are doing or thinking.
“One wonders what idea of history is present in the minds of those who teach it; whether the goal of historical studies is to make one historically-learned or historically-minded. Properly, history shapes the mind into a tool to think with, not to remember with. One would not give a button for all the routine historical learning in the world; by comparison with the appraising power of historical-mindedness.” --Albert J. Nock, “NEW AND MODERN,” The Freeman, 1930
I do not think that Nock would have trouble accepting Gandhi’s lovely quote: “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall - think of it, always.”
“Il faut cultiver notre jardin. With these words Voltaire ends his treatise called Candide, which in its few pages assays more solid worth, more informed common sense, than the entire bulk of nineteenth-century hedonist literature can show. To my mind, those few concluding words sum up the whole social responsibility of man—The only thing that the psychically-human being can do to improve society is to present society with one improved unit. In a word, ages of experience testify that the only way society can be improved is by the individual. Its method which Jesus apparently regarded as the only one whereby the Kingdom of Heaven can be established as a going concern; that is, the method of each one doing his very best to improve one, ‘is to present society with one improved unit’.”
A reviewer ‘Superfluous Men’ on Amazon said it best:
“Be warned, though: after reading his MEMOIRS, you may find your cultural habits changed forever. You will never again be tempted to acquire an opinion of Henry Kissinger’s (or Alice Walker’s) latest book so as not to be caught short at the next round of cocktail-party Book-of-the-Moment-Club ‘conversation’. You will never again think of an Ivy League graduate or a Ph.D. on the one hand, and an educated mind on the other, as being in any way synonymous - even in theory. And you will never, even for a moment, confuse your daily NEW YORK TIMES habit with an instrument of mental cultivation - if, in fact, you retain it at all. And you may find yourself doubled over in helpless laughter the next time some Volvo-driving professional describes the programming on NPR as ‘serious intellectual radio’. And you will leave your first astonished reading of Nock with a silent question, addressed to every teacher and writer to whom you have hitherto entrusted the fertilization of your mind: ‘Where (or why) have you been hiding Albert Jay Nock all my life?’”
Nock endures, through the uncountable and unknowable Remnant, and the ideas he shared with us.
Connie du Toit
Mrs. du Toit | 5/20/2009 10:00 AM CDT -
Your letter inspired me to read Isaiah’s Job and I just started on Our Enemy, the State. The latter book has so far amazed me that it was written in the 1930’s, it could have been written today!
Why didn’t my college Philosophy professor have us read this instead of The Communist Manifesto? Well, I know the reason for that, it’s because she was a Communist.
Mark D | 5/27/2009 09:12 AM CDT -
Thanks for giving good information.braindump
braindump | 7/10/2009 01:52 AM CDT
