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You've come across one of the many weak spots in my knowledge. I've read "The Closing of the American Mind" though I have read Fitzgerald-Stephen and de Maistre. I've always dismissed non-religious proponents of social conservativism as head-in-the-clouds idealists.
That said, what I meant by the above is that I don't think attempts to completely separate them succeed. They seem to want people to behave according to rules that only makes sense if there is a God so that society can reap the benefits of a pious populace. They run into a similar problem as did 20th century communists -- they ignored the inherent selfishness in the heart of every man. Traditional morality has to be underwritten by God to be taken seriously, or at least by a God-Like totalitarian state, in the Bolshevik case. They were part the laughing, jeering crowd confronted by Nietzsche's Madman, and are now having second thoughts and are frantically trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
I'd be happy to be proven wrong if there are particular works that address the paragraph above. I'd be very interested in reading them since as I mentioned I am not terribly familiar with the work around this perspective.
Asia is full of nations that didn't have God underwriting their traditional morality and they're actually in many cases more traditional than the West. Amaterasu, the Dao and ancestor worship are just as capable of underwriting traditional morality, and if you go back in history it looks like Jove and Zeus can do the job too.
The communists were extremely wrong in a lot of ways and I'm sure Nietzsche would have torn them to shreds, but I don't think he has particularly nice things to say about those who are still praying to god's shadow in all the little caves and shrines that shadow is still being propped up. I personally agree with Nietzsche that god is dead, but once you admit that you have to also admit that he's not going to be able to underwrite any new morality or worldview either.
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I don't follow. Are you saying that social liberalism/progessivism is more successful with secular people because it is better at appealing to their selfishness? I.e. that it lacks a "pie in the sky when you die" incentive to be socially conservative?
Because it's not clear to me that social liberalism/progressivism have success by appealing to people's selfish wants. If they only appeal to gay people, drug dealers, or psychopaths, then sure, but they don't. The average straight white American male liberal does not stand to benefit from DEI, gay marriage, drug liberalisation etc. (Maybe a little from the latter.) You could argue that it appeals to people based on the idea that societies that are socially liberal/progressive are happier, but I doubt that you think that this is true, so the issue would be people's ignorance rather than their selfishness.
If anything, the success of social liberalism/progressivism often seems to come from (a) appealing to people's benevolence and (b) elevating benevolence to the status of the sole moral virtue. It's a kind of moral appeal, albeit one to a monomaniacal system in which universal compassion is the sole moral criterion.
I suppose that that's one way to put it. But I don't think there's much of an active appeal to selfish, it's more that very few demands are made of people at all. You can live the life of a pig and demand the same respect given to a Socrates, because who are you to judge? Ad aren't we all owed a certain level of dignity simply by being born human?
Subscribing to the dominant creed has always brought advantages. You will not be harassed by the ruling class or their lackeys, you will be allowed into polite society, you will potentially have access to good jobs, you will be thought of as an upright and morally good person. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the power and status that you stand to receive are valued highly by certain personalities.
Partially, but also a lot of fear and control of the narrative. I remember hearing people openly discussing how homosexuality was immoral and how gay marriage was an unconscionable oxymoron in the 90s and early 2000s. Now those conversations rarely ever happen, not because the anti-gay marriage side was discredited, but because the war for the feelings of America was won by the pro-gay marriage side through propaganda and shaming. Many of the people who opposed gay marriage 20 years ago still oppose it, only they now no longer dare express their opinion to anyone other than close confidants because it's unfashionable and it carries the risk of social ostracization or worse. And so, the younger generations grow up not knowing that an anti-gay marriage position exists and simply believes that the way things are now is "normal," and Social Progressivism wins another victory.
So you think that modern liberalism/progressivism isn't demanding and judgemental? It seems the opposite to me.
So even selfish people can follow moral constraints out of fear, a desire for social approval, and social incentives?
It "coerces to freedom" as Ryzard Legutko put it. You can live how you like, as long as it's not "discriminatory" and doesn't imply that some ways of living are better than others. You can choose any color of Model T you want, as long as it's black. You will not be judged for your choice of indulgence, but you will be judged harshly for questioning whether it is right to indulge.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Why would not be possible to simultaneously be selfish and do something out of fear? Can you speak more plainly?
That's one of the norms in modern liberalism/progressivism, but there are others, e.g. equity and compassion. The more someone tends towards "progressivism" in my sense, the more that these other norms dominate over liberty.
Sure, I just wanted to go step by step in constructing my argument.
If selfish people can act out of fear, including secular fear (i.e. not just the threat of divine punishment or the promise of rewards in heaven) then the secular conservative can think that a secular conservative society is possible in principle, despite people being selfish.
In practice, many of them have had a tragic vision and thought that it wasn't possible. In the case of David Stove, for instance, I think it was he thought that a society made up of people who think like him is impossible because people tend too strongly towards irrationality:
(From "What's Wrong with Our Thoughts?")
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