On Vallier, Vermeule, and straw men (Updated)

Over at hisSubstack, KevinVallier responds to my recent reviewat The Josias of his book Allthe Kingdoms of the World . Vallier claims that I “mislead the reader” vis-à-vis hischaracterization of the views of Adrian Vermeule.  In particular, says Vallier, “Feser… makesseveral claims that make it sound as if I think Vermeule endorses violence andauthoritarianism.  Feser does note at onepoint that I say Vermeule does not want coercion.  But that leaves the impression that I only saythis in passing.”  He then cites fiveremarks from his book that he says show that he clearly acknowledges thatVermeule does not endorse violence.

So, have Igiven a misleading impression of Vallier’s treatment of Vermeule?  Not in the least.  Note, first, that I explicitly said in myreview that Vallier acknowledges that Vermeule does not advocate violence.  I wrote:

Vallier tells us [that]… whether they like it or not, in orderto bring their desired regime about, integralists “must use violence in waysthat the Catholic Church rejects” (p. 137)…

Vallier admits that infact “Vermeule wants to avoid coercion” and “says little about how hard integralists should fight for the ideal”(pp. 134-35).

Most of what Vallier describes is not anything Vermeule himself actually says, but onlywhat Vallier claims would have to bedone in order to realize Vermeule’s vision .

End quote.  The problem, as I show, is that Vallier also says things that give theimpression that Vermeule advocates a radically revolutionary political programthat manifestly could not be realized without violence.  And material of this latter sort greatlyoutweighs the qualifying statements Vallier makes here and there, and which hecites in his response to me.

Hence, as Inoted in my review, we have page after harrowing page in Vallier’s bookdescribing how the political program he attributes to Vermeule “probablyrequires abolishing democracy” (p. 136) and would entail “mass surveillance… [to]suppress dissent” (p. 150), “Chinese-level tactics” (p. 148), “modern heresytrials” (p. 149), “pressure to segregate religiously diverse populations” (p.154), “ultra-loyal troops [to] subdue career military officials. (Hitler’s SSsprings to mind)” and “youth programs to increase loyalty to their leader.(Hitler Youth springs to mind)” (p. 146), “human rights violations” and “secretpolice” (pp. 151-52), and “leadership purges, replete with execution, torture,and show trials. A one-party state” (p. 147). Vallier warns that to uphold the regime Vermeule would set up,“Protestants could face heresy charges” (p. 153); that “according tointegralism, Black Protestant churches have no right to exist” and “the statemust decide whether to declare Black Protestant churches criminalorganizations” (ibid.); and that “we should not assume that an integralistregime will treat Jews well” (ibid.). 

And soon.  Vallier concludes that “Vermeule’sintegration from within requires massive violence” (p. 239).  Indeed, the political program he attributesto Vermeule is so extreme andunhinged that it is hard to see how anyone could fail to perceive that it wouldrequire massive violence.  And again,though Vallier makes a few disclaimers here and there, they are nowhere near asnumerous or prominent as the detailed descriptions he gives of the coerciveregime he says Vermeule’s views would entail. When an author briefly notes here and there that Vermeule doesn’t advocate violence, but also goes on at greatlength about how Vermeule’s extremepolitical program would manifestly require massive violence, it is hardlyunfair to judge that he has given his readers a misleading impression ofVermeule’s views.

Then thereis the fact that Vallier’s qualifying statements are hardly full-throated.  For example, as Vallier notes in his reply tome, he concedes that “Vermeule would not suppress liberalism with violence” (p.134).  But here is the longer passage inVallier’s book from which that line is taken:

Vermeule wants to protect the Churchfrom malignant states.  His method: trainstrong Christian leaders who will take power and defend the church.  When Ihave spoken with Vermeule’s defenders, often young people, they characterizehis strategy as concerned chiefly with defense rather than offense.  I do not think Vermeule’stheory of liberalism allows for any such distinction.   Vermeule would not suppressliberalism with violence.  Liberalismwill destroy itself.  But liberals andthe liberal state can still do significant damage in the meanwhile.  Further, once liberalism dies, it couldrevive.

As Vermeule so evocativelyclaims, we must “sear the liberal faith with hot irons.”  It must not rise again.  Only a strong state combined with a strongchurch can complete this urgent task. Vermeulean protectors must become conquerors.  They must then rule with an iron rod.  And so, however much Vermeulewants to avoid coercion, he is stuck with it. Integralists must exercise hard power. (p. 134)

Endquote.  The impression given here is thatwhile Vermeule does not endorse violence and even eschews it, he does endorse a radical political programthat would clearly requireviolence.  But as I showed in my review,the problem is not just that Vermeule does not endorse violence itself.  The problem is that Vermeule does not in the first place actually endorse the extremepolitical program Vallier attributes to him.

Hence, in “Integrationfrom Within” (from which the “hot irons” remark is quoted), Vermeuleis not talking about Catholicintegralism, but “nonliberal” politics more generally.  Indeed, he explicitly says that “there can be no return to the integratedregime of the thirteenth century, whatever its attractions.”  Nor does he advocate any positive concretepolitical program of any other kind for replacing liberalism, and indeedexplicitly says that the “postliberal future [is] of uncertain shape.”  Vermeule says that “for the foreseeablefuture, the problem will be to mitigate the spasmodic, but compulsive andrepetitive, aggression of the decaying liberal state” rather than promote analternative.  Indeed, he says thatnonliberals who follow his advice will:

mainly attempt to ensure the survivalof their faith communities in an interim age of exile and dispossession.  They donot evangelize or preach with a view to bringing about the birth of an entirelynew regime, from within the old.  They mitigate the long defeat for thosewho become targets of the regime in liberalism’s twilight era, and this will surely have to be the main aimfor some time to come.

Endquote.  Similarly, in “AChristian Strategy,” far from endorsing the “party capture” approach thatVallier attributes to him, Vermeule says that “the Church… must stand detached from all subsidiary political commitments, willingto enter into flexible alliances of convenience with any of the parties.”  Rather than calling for going on offense witha revolutionary political program, he says that “the main proximate short-rungoal must be largely one of survival.” Rather than pushing some doctrinaire integralist vision, he emphasizesflexibility: “Christians will always have many different options for politicalengagement.  In some or othercircumstances, one or another of them will prove best in the light ofprudential judgment; none has any logical or theological priority.”

In short, Vallieris saying, “I didn’t accuse Vermeule of advocating B!  I accused him ofadvocating A, which will inevitably lead to B!”  And the problem is that Vermeule not onlydoes not advocate B, he doesn’t advocate A either.

Or consider Vallier’sremark that “Vermeule has publicly declaimed all such [violent] tactics.”  Here is the passage in Valler’s book in whichthat remark appears:

Vermeule has publicly declaimed allsuch tactics.  Indeed, even in“Integration from Within” he indicates hesitancy about coercion, though what hesays is curious: “It would be wrong to conclude that integration from within isa matter of coercion, as opposed to persuasion and conversion, for thedistinction is so fragile as to be nearly useless.”  On the one hand, integration from within isnot “a matter of coercion.”  But thedistinction between coercion and noncoercion is “nearly useless” – which leavesone to wonder which tactics Vermeule has in mind. (p. 147)

End quote.  One problem here is that Vallier is misusingthe word “declaim,” which literally means “to speak in an eloquent orimpassioned way.”  So, the literalmeaning of what Vallier says in the first line here is “Vermeule has publicly spokenin an eloquent way of all such [violent] tactics”!  Obviously, that is not what Vallier means,which is why I didn’t bother quoting this particular line. 

The moreimportant point here, though, is this.  Onthe one hand, Vallier here acknowledges that Vermeule shows “hesitancy aboutcoercion.”  But on the other hand,Vallier says that it is “curious” that Vermeule says that the distinction betweencoercion and persuasion is “nearly useless,” so that one “wonder[s] whichtactics Vermeule has in mind.”  Since thelarger context is a discussion of the violent means Vermeule’s program wouldallegedly require, some readers might get the impression that Vermeule mightnot be entirely committed to eschewing violence after all.

But here isthe longer passage from Vermeule’s article “Integration from Within” where hemakes the remark in question:

It would be wrong to conclude thatintegration from within is a matter of coercion, as opposed to persuasion andconversion, for the distinction is so fragile as to be nearly useless.  As J. F. Stephen noted, there is a type ofintellectual and rhetorical “warfare” in which “the weaker opinion – the lessrobust and deeply seated feeling – is rooted out to the last fiber, the placewhere it grew being seared as with a hot iron.”  In a more recent register, we have learnedfrom behavioral economics that agents with administrative control over defaultrules may nudge whole populations in desirable directions, in an exercise of“soft paternalism.”  It is a uselessexercise to debate whether or not this shaping from above is best understood ascoercive, or rather as an appeal to the “true” underlying preferences of thegoverned.

Endquote.  Seen in this context, there isnothing at all “curious” about Vermeule’s remark, or remotely suggestive ofviolence.  On the contrary, as I noted inmy review of Vallier’s book, it is clear from this passage that when Vermeule speaksof cases where the distinction between coercion and persuasion is unclear, whathe actually had in mind were soft incentives of the kind liberals like RichardThaler and Cass Sunstein describe in their book Nudge:Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

Here is anotherexample where Vallier’s reading of Vermeule is careless to such an extent thathe ends up attributing to Vermeule the opposite of what he actually said.  As I noted my review, Vallier comparesVermeule’s program to that of a Marxist revolutionary party.  Hence, in his book, Vallier writes: “Vermeuleanalogizes his view [of liberalism] with Karl Marx’s claims about capitalism: ‘Liberalismis inherently unstable and is structurally disposed to generate the very forcesthat destroy it’” (p. 127).  The remarkfrom Vermeule is quoted from “A Christian Strategy.”  But here is the larger passage in thatarticle in which it appears:

There are two ways of understanding[the liberal] dynamic.  One is that inthe long run, liberalism undermines itself by transforming tolerance intoincreasingly radical intolerance of the “intolerant” – meaning those who holdilliberal views.  On this view, militantprogressivism is distinct from liberalism, indeed a betrayal of it.  Such anaccount would make liberalism analogous to Marx’s claim about capitalism:Liberalism is inherently unstable and is structurally disposed to generate thevery forces that destroy it.

A different view, andmy own, is that liberal intolerance represents not the self-undermining ofliberalism, but a fulfillment of its essential nature.  When a chrysalis shelters aninsect that later bursts forth from it and leaves it shattered, the chrysalishas in fact fulfilled its true and predetermined end.  Liberalism of the purportedly tolerant sort isto militant progressivism as the chrysalis is to the hideous insect.

End quote.  As the reader can clearly see, in the lineVallier quotes, Vermeule is notstating his own view, but on the contrary, a view he explicitly says is “different [from his] own.”

More couldbe said, but that suffices to make the point. Vallier is for the most part admirably fair-minded, and I don’t thinkfor a moment that he intentionallymisrepresents Vermeule.  But that he doesin fact give a misleading characterization of Vermeule’s views, however inadvertently,there can be no doubt.  (Vallieraddresses some other issues too, and says that he will address yet others in a futurepost.  I may return to those in a futurereply.)

UPDATE 12/15:Vallier responds overat Substack.  Here’s the reply Iposted atTwitter:

Sorry, but thecase remains unmade. When @Vermeullarmine offers us specific models for a Christianpolitics to look to, he gives biblical examples like Joseph in Egypt, Esther andMordecai, and St. Paul. Are these models of the integralist “state capture”envisaged by @kvallier? No, they involve using state power defensively, toprotect a faithful minority (in the first two cases) and seeding the ground fora centuries-long change in the culture (in the case of Paul). Any “statecapture” that such models could lead to are so very far down the line (perhaps centuries) that the relevant concretecultural circumstances are impossible to predict, giving Vallier’s imagined Catholicintegralist state capture scenarios no purchase. And as I keep saying, Vermeule himself does not, in any event,actually propose any such scenario. In order to attribute it to him, Vallier’slatest response has to rely in part on what otherpeople have said, and on extrapolationfrom a tweet from Vermeule (despite conceding, at p. 123 of his book, thattweets and other off-the-cuff social media ephemera are not a good basis onwhich reconstruct someone’s considered views).