Paging Mr. Moynihan

“We can only hope that Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s approach to politics will be rediscovered. Books like American Burke should function as essential guides in this most necessary search.”

Burkean Liberalism: A Sorely Missed Strain of Political Thought

In this month’s Vice Presidential debate, Vice President Mike Pence interrupted his and Senator Kamala Harris’s train of evasions to reprimand his counterpart: “Senator Harris, you’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.” The original line Vice President Pence was consciously paraphrasing comes from the late Harvard professor, presidential counselor, U.S. ambassador to India and the United Nations, and Democratic Senator from New York Daniel Patrick Moynihan. How ironic that a variation of Moynihan’s line—“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts”—has made its way onto the 2020 campaign trail.

Why ironic? Because both the Left and the Right have strayed distressingly far from the core tenets of Moynihan’s unique brand of political thought. This is why reading Greg Weiner’s 2015 book, American Burke: The Uncommon Liberalism of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, is a simultaneously illuminating and frustrating experience. Weiner expertly introduces readers to the political thought of the late Senator. Although an unfailing believer in the capacity of the federal government “to ameliorate economic distress and … enhance civic life,” Moynihan’s was a liberalism allergic to promises of utopia and devotions to full-fledged statism. Moynihan stressed the limitations of what government could do and the importance of giving civil society space to breathe. This is how “Burkean” and “liberal” can co-exist as apt labels of the late scholar-turned-statesman’s political thought. Moynihan’s acceptance of the limitations of public policy stemmed from his commitment to empirics. Facts—even uncomfortable ones—were the guiding lights of Moynihan’s political thought. For Moynihan, abstractions were to be avoided; empirical reality comprised the grounds off of which political opinions and public policies were to be constructed.

Weiner’s ability to outline, probe, and explain the political thought of Moynihan to his readers is what makes this précis of Moynihan’s thinking so worthwhile yet frustrating. It is difficult not to feel disappointed when closing American Burke because, as Weiner himself notes, Moynihan’s unique “blend of hues associated with both liberalism (possibilities linked with governmental action) and conservatism (limitations born of respect for social complexity)” has all but faded from the public square here in the 21st century.

The political right has thrown in its lot with a shameless man (as well as his enablers and mimics), whose form of politics is not exactly geared towards the shoring up of a flourishing civil society. “I alone can fix it” are not the words of a Burkean conservative, and it is unsurprising that in 2016, President Donald Trump enjoyed his most fervent support from areas of the country where levels of social trust are low and the extent of social alienation is staggeringly high. Nor might it be hyperbolic to assert, as Bill Kristol did in The Bulwark this September, that American conservatism has died for the time being. It has devolved into “an accomplice to, an apologist for, and an enabler of Trump’s nativist, populist, unconservative, and illiberal authoritarianism,” which “is as far from Burke as from Hayek.”