Embracing New Things

When does "progress" represent progress?

The perennial challenge for a traditionalist is to hold onto the things that matter while allowing space to adapt to changing circumstances. Two weeks ago, I made the case for some “old things” that I think are worth keeping. This week I’ll look at some new things that I think should be embraced.

Naturally, there are some provisos and qualifications. New things are generally disruptive, and need to be interpreted and sometimes held in check by established structures and older wisdom. This week’s major essays will both begin with the question: What is the new thing? In what sense is it genuinely new? They’ll end with some cautions about possible perversions, mistakes, or unintended consequences that might follow from the relevant form of Progress.

None of this mincing or throat-clearing will change the fact that ultimately, I am “in” for these two things. They represent real, positive developments. We reject them at our peril.

This week’s essays are on free markets and feminism.

Markets certainly are not new! Even “free” markets are not clearly a new thing, because in some respects trade in the ancient and medieval worlds was quite a bit “freer” than modern markets are ever likely to be. Still, the movement to enshrine free enterprise as a desired feature of the modern world is in some respects fairly novel, and religious traditionalists are struggling with it somewhat (along with many other groups). I’ll say something about that tomorrow.

Feminism is widely agreed to be new, though there is far less agreement about what it actually is. Ask ten different people, get ten different answers. Moreover, some of those answers make almost everyone into a feminist (“someone who believes that men and women are morally equal”) and others make the whole thing sound idiotic (“… and thinks they should be treated exactly the same in all contexts”).

Given those difficulties, my usual policy has been to decline to say whether or not I qualify as a “feminist.” I simply tell people to read me and decide for themselves. I won’t argue the point either way.

Here though, I’m going make a qualified argument in favor of feminism, because I think it is possible to identify a real shift in modern attitudes with respect to women that is (I will argue) in fact good. Truer and more just. Perhaps it will seem banal when I explain it. But I think, in these tumultuous times, it’s often worth taking the trouble to say “the obvious things.” It doesn’t usually take very long to find someone who denies that they are “obvious” or even true.

If there is any subject that creates that maddening dynamic of “no one thinks that and oh, by the way, that’s actually my view,” it is feminism. So we’ll go there. This coming Thursday. I’ll be glad to hear what Christendom Reborn readers think in the comments.

It feels fitting to transition from America Week to “Rerum Novarum” week, because America is in fact fairly “new,” evaluated against the backdrop of all of Christendom. Think of the United States as the first of our salutary “New Things.” Now we’re going to talk about a few more.