The good folks at NRO have asked me to try out an Ask Me Anything–style series in the Corner this week. We put up the original invitation on Monday. I’ve been grouping questions thematically and posting a long set of responses each day. I’ll try to get to the Irish-specific questions and a few more tomorrow. Sorry if I don’t get everybody.
alexaltman asks:
I’m wondering: What are some of the worst things you have to face for publicly sharing your views in what can be a pretty hostile landscape for conservatives? Does being an intellectual at a relatively highbrow publication insulate you at all?
I would be getting worse and more if I were in a broadcast format like Ben Shapiro or Michael Knowles. But, I still get the usual. Threatening phone calls. Anonymous people sending you threatening messages with pictures of the building they think you live in. Neighbors googling you and then spreading false, malicious gossip about you in the neighborhood. This behavior absolutely got worse under the Trump years and hit a crescendo in the summer of 2020. And it irrevocably changed my sense of personal security and what I do about it.
What’s interesting — from this side of it — is that the stupidest or most offensive thing I’ve ever said publicly didn’t generate the outrage. For a cheap laugh, I once basically implied, on live television, that most Ron Paul voters in Maine were on drugs. (And I love Maine and Mainers, and this is when I was pretty sympathetic to Ron Paul). Barely a peep! The outrage comes when you don’t expect it, and it subsides greatly if you just ignore it or happen to ignore it.
Yawbus asks:
What’s with the sighing during The Editors podcasts?
I apologize. I suppose I’ve used the “sigh” to give some audible indicate that I’m there, and I’m thinking through my response. And perhaps hinting at the emotion I’ll bring to it. Someone at NRHQ should pay for proper media training.
jake_dunnegan asks:
Can you name the single MOST influential conservative thinker/writer/pundit/historical figure for you?
Roger Scruton. His influence is everywhere.
arturon asks:
At Roger Scruton’s passing, you remarked that he held no belief in eternal life. Did you know him well?
Not personally no.
I don’t want to say with 100 percent certainty that he did not believe in eternal life. I don’t think he ever expressed such a faith publicity, but this is something his admirers seem to debate. His took religion very seriously, and his lecture book, The Face of God, is one I would recommend to any non-believer trying to see the world through more Christian eyes.
We interacted a handful of times. Before his death I sent him my book saying he was owed it because of his influence on my thinking about “home” as the basis for conservatism, but that I wanted to excuse him from any duty to read it given the shortness of life, and the loveliness of his wife.
Funny story though. I was a 22-year-old intern in New York City when I first met him. He was speaking to the NYU Republicans. I sat outside the room I thought the event would be in, with my proud leather satchel and my camel hair coat — a full on young fogey. An absolutely beautiful young woman from the College Republicans spotted me and welcomed me, “You must be Roger Scruton.” I really didn’t want to disabuse her of this.
Later that evening, I went out for a drink with him and some of the people who invited him. We spoke briefly, and I mentioned my attachment to the pre-Vatican II liturgy. He remarked on how much he admired the liberality of remaining Catholic universities, but also expressed that it was one of the worst things that the Catholic Church decided to join so much of Western culture’s collective suicide effort in the 1960s.
BestUsedCarSales asks:
So, probably a few basic questions, and I’ll try to give some context.
I’m an adult convert to Catholicism, I’d be curious of information about what led you to going with the TLM, and when did this shift happen. If you have older writings on this I missed, I’d be happy to read them. I have still yet to attend one, mostly because I feel strongly about sticking with my local parish and trying to improve that. But, I’m TLM curious at least.
Second one. I often enjoy seeing the concerns you bring to NR. Even when I disagree with stated solutions, I think you bring excellent context that’s outside the specific sphere in which NR largely operates. I come from a very Reason/Cato libertarian background and have in the last four years grown exhausted with these groups (Reason moreso than Cato). What books, essays, or writers most influenced you in your world view?
I was born into a Catholic family, and received a Catholic education until sixth grade. My grandmother was a believing Catholic. Judging by her own reaction to my bumptious religious journey as a teen and young adult, I think my mother did not practice the faith, but ultimately accepted it as true.
I spent my teenage years as an atheist. One of my best friends was a Lutheran, and I played bells at his church sometimes, and went on retreats I dated an Evangelical girl and at her Baptist church I was impressed with the men, the youth pastor, and her father. I soon had a religious experience- and then began devouring the Bible, and books by C. S. Lewis, and Dallas Willard. By senior year though I was reading Chesterton too, and came to think Catholicism was true.
In college, I studied theology with a progressive Anglican professor and a conservative rabbi. When I told the Anglican that one of the modernist scholars we were reading struck me as a heretic, he joked that I would be searching for a Latin Mass soon. Knowing that Buckley and others were devotees of it, I did just that in the summer. It took time to get used to the old liturgy. But once I did, I felt freer in it.
As for influences: The Meaning of Conservatism by Roger Scruton. The Politics of Human Nature by Thomas Fleming. An Essay on the Restoration of Property by Hilaire Belloc. Lots of Chesterton, Cardinal Newman, Tocqueville. And reading history.
BGS-09052 asks:
What is your next book, and when?
You and my agent ask the same thing. Lots of ideas are simmering on the back burners. I’m not sure which one will be brought to the front for the full boil.
lynne_padgett1 asks:
I’d love to hear about two areas. First, what is your day-to-day worklife like? Lots of people are writers, what distinguishes or characterizes how you work?
Second, I LOVE hearing about your family adventures. What are some family rules that might be surprising or seem funny to others. (e.g., I am not a person with a strong sense of time, but my husband characterized my approach to my kids’ bedtime as “Attila the Hun”
My work and home life are utterly intertwined as I work from home. So it’s hard to describe one without describing the whole day. I usually do one drop off in the morning — to school or summer camp. Then, I come in and read around the web or try to finish a few chapters of whatever book I’m reading. I stand at a standing desk that I’ve built into a closet. And I play records while I’m reading news and commentary, if it’s not disturbing anyone else. I start writing in the afternoon. But then around 4 o’clock, the babysitter leaves, and I usually am getting a few kids through dinner and their bedtime routines, between 4:30 and 8:30. I return to my column after the boys fall asleep, and file late at night. If I do an afternoon errand, I put on a podcast in the car. My order of preference is usually Commentary‘s daily podcast, The Goodfellows (from Claremont), and then various Spectator or history podcasts.
Ideally, I’d like to shift things around and write in a blitz of early morning energy and spend my afternoons reading. I want to limit the amount of news I consume in order to increase the amount of history I read. I’m sure my editors would prefer that as well.
Can’t think of any zany rules. If the kids are being rowdy, I start making fantastical threats to change their energy. Stuff like, “If you don’t stop, I will yell so loud, every rock in the county will start levitating, your heads will pop off your necks, and a giant poop dragon will be summoned from the basement.” I’ll say anything to break up a bad dynamic in the back seat of the car.
ifpt999 asks:
Thoughts on Andrew Tate and the particular hold he has over the minds of young aimless men?
I honestly haven’t consumed any Andrew Tate content. I saw a tweet where he denounced reading books.
Men lack positive role models in their lives. The advice on offer just about everywhere is pretty bad. It’s quite easy to show that some “Toxic Males” get huge financial rewards and the attention of some beautiful women — which makes it easy to denigrate more pro-social traits.
The truth is that “alpha” and “beta” qualities are not entirely exclusive of one another. And it’s important for men to have some of each and in healthy proportions. They are in tension. The capacity for initiative and growth is in tension with stability. The capacity for patience and long-suffering is in tension with proper assertiveness.
Lubonski asks:
You’ve warned that the current Pope and his friends in Europe may be brewing up a schism in the Church. You’ve also occasionally exhibited some positive appetite for that outcome. Is that on purpose? Or are you just (understandably) angry about the Church’s magisterium being abused by its custodians, without schismatic intent? I want to know, so I can stop reading if you’re going full Schiz on us.
I have no appetite for further division in the Church. Pope Francis and his friends should stop it. He literally has appointed someone to head the doctrinal office who has openly repudiated everything my conscience, my Catechism, my understanding of St Paul, and my parish required me to teach my daughter ahead of her first Holy Communion.
Having read the history of the Western schism, saints took sides against other saints in it. I’m sure the future could be just as confusing and turbulent as the past. I would almost like to stop writing about the controversies in the church because it’s clear that the pope’s anglophone sycophants print out our work, wave it in his face, and hope to inspire him to send more papal thunderbolts our way.
Arthman Fargo asks:
I’d like to ask you about your views on the relationship between the liberal intellectual tradition and liberal political institutions. At times, you seem to embrace Patrick Deneen’s view that the liberal intellectual tradition is irredeemably flawed, and that this flaw traces itself back to John Locke himself who, Deneen thinks, fully anticipated and desired to see the tradition’s implications bear fruit. At other times, you are selectively critical of the failure of certain societies — particularly of Ukraine — for their “illiberalism,” particularly in matters of religion. How do you explain your criticism/selective embrace of “liberalism?”
This is a good and fair question. It’s true that I use the word liberal positively sometimes and negatively others. I think in one essay I wrote that I can accept being called “liberal” as an adjective, but not as a noun. I think the closest description of my views is probably in Daniel E. Burns’s essay “Liberal Practice vs Liberal Theory.” He writes:
Many good-faith misunderstandings within these debates can be traced to an ambiguity in the term “liberalism.” It refers, on the one hand, to a set of political practices, and on the other hand, to a political theory that purports to explain those practices. Defenders of liberalism are thinking first and foremost about liberal political practice, which they (almost all) defend by drawing selectively on liberal theory. Critics of liberalism are thinking first and foremost about liberal political theory, which they (almost all) attack by pointing selectively to liberal practice.
I don’t think there are good substitute words that could be used. And I depend on the context to help people understand. I usually use “illiberal” as an insult, to mean ungenerous, mean, intolerant. But if I’m talking about liberal “premises,” I’m probably demeaning them, connected to the philosophy. If I’m talking about liberal institutions, I’m probably praising them. But I’ll keep it in mind to try to make it easier to understand.
But it can get confusing fast, especially when other people use words in a different way. Viktor Orbán claims to be building an “illiberal democracy.” But I would insist that political conditions in Hungary are still fundamentally “liberal” — that is, they still practice voting with a generous franchise, have open debate, have room for civil society, etc. But his view is that “liberal democrats” in Brussels believe that democracy must empower progressive institutions and ideas only.
robertfcicero asks:
Have you read the Bhagavad Gita and if so, any thoughts?
I haven’t. Someday I must.
james_m asks:
Are you a populist at a time when populism resonates somewhat with conservatism, or a conservative at a time when conservatism resonates somewhat with populism?
I feel more populist when among staunch conservatives. And I feel very conservative when among rowdy populists.