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‘Suicide of the West’ Review
I just finished Jonah Goldberg’s Suicide of the West last night. Overall, I think it’s a very good book and one that people on both the Left and Right will benefit from reading. The book is not full of pop-culture references and humorous or snarky asides, which may disappoint regular readers of his G-File newsletter. It’s definitely a serious book, more in the style of his first title, Liberal Fascism, than his second, The Tyranny of Cliches. While I generally agree with the overall premise and conclusions, I do have a few quibbles about some of his writing decisions. Before I get into those, here’s a quick summary.
The basic premise is that we have reached a pinnacle when it comes to finding a way for humanity to prosper, and that if we aren’t careful we will throw it all away. He starts by observing that for most of human existence, life has been pretty miserable. We first appeared about 250,000 years ago, and for 99 percent of that time nothing changed. He points to about 300 years ago, when what he refers to as “the Miracle” happened, that life really started to improve drastically. The values of the Enlightenment combined with the economic benefits of capitalism combined in a place where they were allowed to develop (England) and then were given a true home here in America where they have flourished and changed the world. But the “Miracle” goes against human nature. We didn’t evolve in such a way to ensure the “Miracle” happened and if we let human nature take its course, we’ll lose what we have gained.
In fact, Goldberg makes a good case that we’ve already dropped below the pinnacle. The progressive movement of the early 20th century damaged the balanced structure that the Founders designed by letting an administrative state transform into a shadow government unchecked by the formal system defined in our Constitution. In that sense, I found the book to be kind of depressing. At this point, it would take a new revolution to free ourselves from the bureaucracy that we’ve allowed to take over so much of our formal government, and there’s no sign that people have the slightest interest in doing anything of the sort. Unfulfillable promises to “drain the swamp” aside, the administrative state is here to stay.
This biggest critique I have with Suicide of the West is the way Goldberg chose to start it. He explicitly states “There is no God in this book.” He makes his case without arguing that rights are “God given” or that the “Miracle” was predestined. I can understand why he wants to avoid the fallacy of appeal to authority, but that sentence is not true. God definitely is in the book. He admits as much in the conclusion, pointing out that without the societal changes wrought by Judaism and even more so by Christianity, the “Miracle” would not have been possible. Given that, the decision to start the book with a statement that will rub many evangelical Christians the wrong way seems an odd one.
Goldberg goes into great depth to support his arguments, and backs up his conclusions with considerable research. Some of it, such as the analysis of the positions of Burnham and Schumpter, can get a little dry. Like Sahara-Desert dry. And there is the point where Goldberg says that the “list [of Human Universals] is too long to reprint here,” followed by two solid pages of the list. Those missteps aside, the book is well done. Overall, the tone is a scholarly one. This is not a fiery tome that lends itself to sound bites and memes.
The second half of the book focuses on the fact that the “Miracle” isn’t self-sustaining. Just like capitalism has creative destruction, the “Miracle” allows ideas to flourish that are detrimental to the success it brings. It doesn’t change human nature, and if we lose our sense of gratitude for all the factors that led to the “Miracle” we’ll go back to our natural states of tribalism and authoritarianism. The identity politics of the left are incompatible with the “Miracle,” as is the authoritarian nationalism showing up in Europe and already exists in most of the non-western world. No one will even accuse Goldberg of being a MAGA-hat-wearing Trump supporter but the book isn’t an attack on Trump. (He started writing it before Trump even announced he was running for president.) He’s pretty clear in saying that he doesn’t see Trump as being a positive factor in all this but he does point out that Trump isn’t causing the problems. He’s just symptomatic of them.
I’m going to have to read the book again to clarify some of the ideas and where those lead. For example, it struck me early on that there is a tension between the idea that the “Miracle” increased freedom by allowing us to have profitable interactions with strangers, to not put friends and family first or give them special favors, and the conservative idea that the disintegration of the nuclear family has been bad for society. Goldberg does spend time talking about the importance of the family and other moderating institutions. There’s clearly a balance that needs to be established and better maintained. One interesting omission (in my mind anyway) is Federalism. He makes no mention of any level of government outside the Federal one. I think that might be part of the balance we need to restore to help keep the effects of tribalism at bay.
As I said at the beginning, I recommend this book for people across the political spectrum who are interested in serious discussion of the big picture issues today. I’m looking forward to hearing what other Ricochet members have to say.
Published in General
First: yes that’s what I’ve been saying. These things are outside of the tribe, resulting in violence, then there;s a winner and the tribe is either now expanded or the combatant has been eliminated. Unity through conquest.
Second: Catholics may have enjoyed some success, but I don’t think it’s quite as clear that Indians and slaves were gradually brought in. We specifically removed Indians from the broader community and put them on reservations, often brutally so, often dishonestly so. Indians weren’t so much brought in as they were conquered. Ex slaves not so much either. From Jim Crow to forced segregation; one could make the case that they weren’t so much brought in as we simply stopped abusing them. The result is that they feel not part of things as evidenced by several trends including voting.
Right. There’s lots of tribalism during the period in which tribalism is being reduced. The miracle is, to an extent, that reduction.
Just to irk the Jonah haters
I asked Jonah if my tribalism paraphrase of “Rule of Man” was reasonable (he responded that it would need to be fleshed out a bit and that there were problems, but that it wasn’t a terrible shorthand). I’ve also read the book and listened to maybe a dozen podcasts, but it’s being at the Ricochet conference that I’m feeling smug about.
I think that the Declaration claims to be advocacy for the enforcement and implementation of neutral principles. I’m not sure where I seem to you to be claiming the opposite.
Is the rule of law/ rule of man/ respecter of persons distinction helpful here?
The change over those centuries was, in part, a reduction in tribalism. Just as child mortality reductions existed concurrently with child mortality, the reduction in tribalism came concurrently with tribalism. It’s not quite as polarised; the miracle is not purely about the reduction in tribalism (also, again, some tribalism is good and healthy, whereas there’s not a lot of upside to dead kids). The 17th century development of Lockean principles of general application is one of the key things that helps this happen, along with qualifiers from Burke and such.
Do you think that Irish assimilation was achieved violently? Did Irish Americans conquer the rest of America or were they conquered? Like Jewish Americans and Polish Americans, it seems to me like they mostly got wealthier, had more American born and English speaking members, and benefitted from the diminishing impact of machine politics (not diminished to zero). The Poles neither murdered anyone nor got murdered.
I spend a fair amount of time with Native Americans who are highly assimilated. Vice President Charles Curtis, back when he was the first Senate Majority Leader, made them citizens and helped in other ways. He was Native himself, and a great man. Native integration mostly came during a peaceful period.
Democrats are Americans, too. African Americans, as with many demographics, have different trends in their population, but they’re a lot more like Americans than they are like anyone else. It’s also worth noting that there’s not a lot of distinctive demographic features that are true now, and were true in the 1950s. That they have new problems doesn’t mean that they didn’t overcome the old problems.
You know, he answered that, right?
When you said: “My reading of the Declaration is that it overstates the degree to which it is a declaration in favor of the enforcement of neutral principles of justice” I took that to mean that by overstating the reality was less about neutral principles of justtice. I stand corrected.
So then the slow metamophosis option. Glacial progress.
I have more questions and responses, but I have to go. Probably will be gone the rest of the weekend. Thanks for discussing.
Just popping back in between events. I forgot a followup to Nick’s point above: agreed, but a people will form a government to secure these rights for themselves – and not for all of humanity. By forming a government for themselves and ignoring/excluding the rest is that tribalist? Such a thing isn’t denying the rights of others or even punishing others. Seems like a broad principles based government might get us to something like the UN or EU whereas a narrow people based government might get us closer to the Baltics. Both are unappealing extremes – seems obvious to me that an appealing system will be a blend of all elements.
Sorry; I see how that would be a natural reading. I think that the Declaration was made by people who had both tribal/ demographic identity motivations and principled/ ideological identity motivations, but pretends to have only the latter.
I don’t know if they were pretending or we are. I think we are.
I probably agree mostly, but my point there was that the Declaration didn’t just talk about individual principles but they specifically referred to the relationship of one people to another. Perhaps I read more into that than the words allow on the face of it, but I think you’re here agreeing with my reading as both rather than one or the other .
Sorry, I missed this. Could you expand on how he answered this? I think we agree that the tribe was expanded, but I think that it happened through increased prosperity, education, and general civilization. Ed appears to believe that it was chiefly accomplished through violent contest. I was wondering if the violent contests saw the Irish winning and expanding the Irish American tribe to include all others, or if there was a particular moment of violent defeat that saw the Irish beaten into literacy. Ironically, I do think that one of the final nails in the coffin of seriously problematic Irish nationalism in America was violent; 9/11 dramatically reduced the romance of terrorism. Still, I don’t think that that’s what Ed meant.
He said it is an either/or.
the tribe is either now expanded or the combatant has been eliminated.
He is not saying it expanded through violence. He’s saying it EITHER expanded (he doesn’t specify how) OR the combatant has been eliminated.
He does mention that the process of expansion can come with violence, but not necessarily war.
Consider the violence between American blacks and Hispanics- eventually, their tribes expand or they drive them off, but regardless, violence currently is a part of the process.
Native Americans vs Europeans, Boers vs S. Afrikaans, Welsh vs Norman, Vikings vs Anglo-Saxons. In all of these, violence has existed. Not all of these have a defeated and extinct combatant.
Edited to add: where the tribe expands is usually when it starts doing what you describe. It starts with miscegenation and, once that is common-place, things begin to settle with a new tribe. I think external threats solidify it, but I haven’t really thought that deeply on that aspect.