One of the principles I keep highlighting between left and right is asymmetry. The left and right have different values, operate in different ways, and are in different positions in society. Hence, if you are on the right, you have to remember that what worked for the left won’t work for you. You need to use different tactics. Yes, there are some techniques that are available to anyone, but it doesn’t work to simply read Saul Alinsky’s
I'm coming back late to this post because I just found out about another interesting example of conservative institutional capture: the Latvian Lutheran Church reversed a 40-year rule allowing female ordination. It happened in 2016 but I, an LCMS Lutheran, didn't know about it until now.
"they can devote all of their efforts to institutional capture and transformation. Conservatives are often bad at stopping this because they are more interested in the mission than organizational politics."
This is interesting- because I've definitely experienced this in a professional setting and it's very frustrating, feeling pulled into both small-p office and big-P public sphere politics when one is simply seeking to focus on their job, do good work, and enhance the mission of the organization.
There is a line in the book "Zero to One" something like, "in the most dysfunctional organizations, signalling that work is being done takes the place of actually doing work. If this describes your organization, you should leave immediately."
I think this is also a temptation and problem in the church context for "moderate" evangelical churches in an urban progressive context, who try to take a certain approach to missiology and evangelism along the lines of "we really believer the same thing we just understand it more fully" (what Jake Meador recently wrote about in Mere Orthodoxy). The sense in which this posture has a temptation or effect of leading the church to adopt whatever the mainstream approach is, which among other things, can lead to an "organizational" culture that is toxic and driven too much by political considerations.
EDIT: but also, in my experience unfortunately, even confessionally "orthodox", non-liberal churches can fall into this mode of trying to protect the organization, or people committed to the organization above the mission. For example, churches closely policing attendance and engagement for membership, while not emphasizing pastoring, shepherding, and getting to understand the lives of everyone in their "flock", to the extant possible (of course), seems to suggest an imbalance and an undue commitment to the church as an institution, not as a spiritual body entrusted by God to deliver the Gospel. It begs the question also of what churches view their purpose and mission as, which seems to have gotten increasingly unclear, even among those who believe the Nicene creed and have creedal/Evangelical statements on paper.
Aaron said, "The left seems to do well at burrowing into organizations, working their way into positions of authority or leverage, and then using those to transform the institution from the inside out."
A significant factor which aids the Left in taking over organizations is the synergy between feminism and our anti-discrimination laws.
Women are typically more liberal than men. We see this, for example, in their political affiliations. Consider the Squad or the Women's Political Caucus in congress. Women are also very concerned about maintaining good relations with their friends and won't contradict them if they disagree with them. Taking a strong stand to correct problems is also disfavored since it is viewed as being unkind or unfair.
As a result, as more women have entered the workplace, a strong conduit for the introduction of liberal ideas has been introduced. This wouldn't matter if people in the organization with damaging ideas could be fired, but it is very difficult to fire employees today, especially if the employee is a woman. A man might be fired for insubordination or for working counter to the organization's goals, but try that with a woman and a discrimination suit would be filed the next day. So the feminists remain on the payroll, and if they're not advanced through the organization, they will again claim discrimination to the terror of management if it hasn't already capitulated.
Thus, the two-headed monster of feminism and labor law works against the integrity of organizations.
None of this is to say that there aren't excellent conservative pragmatic women in organizations. It's just that they are in the minority. Opportunistic men, or those who benefit from liberalism due to their own pet sins, also assist in the liberal takeover of organizations, but that is not the subject of this particular post.
A conservative top-down take-over works because with the announcement of a new, conservative management philosophy, many of the bad actors will leave voluntarily or can be fired as part of a layoff.
The asymmetry thing is a big deal, and there are many examples. There's one I hesitate to mention, but I've become convinced is true: progressives are different from conservatives in that they are *liars.* In the specific cases of seminary theological statements, or organizational mission statements, or academic codes of conduct, progressives simply don't mind signing their names to things they absolutely don't believe. This allows them to burrow into organizations committed to hateful conservative ideals.
I almost wonder if progressives justify such behavior due to a belief in the leftward ratchet theory. "This mission statement I'm signing is conservative for now," they must tell themselves, "but it will drift leftward in the next 10-20 years because that's what always happens. History is on my side. What I'm signing is secretly the version that will be, not the version that is."
Of course, that leftward drift *does* happen in a lot of cases. Regarding church bodies and seminaries and universities in general, there was a moment in the 1960s where it looked like the leftward ratchet was an iron law of nature. Now, thanks to the counter-examples you've highlighted (and Calvin University looks like it's going to be another), progressives are going to experience their own crisis of faith in the leftward ratchet.
But yes, I try my best to be charitable towards people with whom I disagree, so I'm not normally the first guy to sign on to the statement, "The problem is they just plain lie more than we do." And I'm not entirely sure how true it is when we compare the secular right vs. left, but within the scope of Christianity and the church, it's absolutely, undeniably true.
Or rather, if a conservative Christian nakedly lies, it's almost invariably to cover up his personal crimes and sins. It's not to advance the cause of conservative Christianity per se (in fact, the effect is generally to undermine it for his own selfish benefit). But theological liberals will lie IN ORDER TO advance liberal theology. The difference is real.
And I don't think it's a new problem, I'm pretty sure I recall Gresham Machen noting it in "Liberalism and Christianity" -- that liberal Presbyterian clergy in the early 20th century were already signing on to statements affirming the WCF while clearly taking issue with large sections of it.
Unrelated to the church, one thought that has occurred to me is that conservatives could, for example, probably simultaneously undermine affirmative action and improve their own prospects through widespread lying about one's ancestry. Which I think is pretty easy to do, Hispanic probably being the weakest link.
I've heard that Brazil's affirmative action system is much more widely exploited than America's for the simple reason that it's a lower-trust society. I'll admit I've had this thought, for my children's benefit, but I dismiss it out of hand because I'm not a liar.
Though a more honest alternative is to look into whether one might qualify for Tribal status. Like many families, we have a rumor in ours, and it's on my agenda to dig into before my kids are applying to colleges -- to at least give them the option of ever using that arrow in their quiver.
Re Calvin U., see Paul Vander Klay's Youtube channel for more info ... although briefly, it looked like the denomination that owns it was drifting left (the CRC, I believe) but now the conservatives have won decisively there and the liberals are waking up to the fact that time is not on their side after all, because of demographics, etc. So the liberals are exiting the denomination. Over the next years the denomination will appoint increasingly conservative school presidents and the LGBT-friendly profs will be isolated and replaced. Probably.
Thanks. I agree with your refinement of the accusation against progressives.
Also, I too have a family with rumors of a Native American ancestor, and I've sometimes wondered how I could have exploited that, were I more cynical than I am.
It's also notable that DeSantis appointed Ben Sasse president of the University of Florida. Too many Republican governors of deeply red states [looking at you, Nebraska] haven't even attempted to rein in leftist state Universities.
Also keep an eye on the current big fight in the LCMS: the board of Concordia University Texas in Austin filed papers with the state declaring their independence from LCMS governance, daring their own church body to sue them, which it did. It's similar to Baylor vs. the SBC only with a much smaller and less prestigious college. The stakes are basically who gets title to the campus real estate. It goes to show that these battles never end, conservative victories are never final.
Oh wow I drive by Concordia a lot and never heard of this, I guess the school is more liberal than the LCMS? Was there a certain issue that is triggering the split?
Thank you, Aaron. As someone who used to be on the left, I see this a bit differently. During the GW Bush years, I watched with real respect the (i) alternate conservative media system, (ii) the conservative legal network, and (iii) the conservative work at the local level, say, with school boards in particular. I think this last one goes all the way back to the John Birch Society and, as a leftist, I always lamented the left's unwillingness to engage in local politics -- almost as if it were beneath us. At the time, I felt we'd lose in the long run as a result of this elitism. We wanted the federal gov't to fix things for us and so tuned out following national elections. Arguably, the Dodd ruling reversed this inclination.
Regarding (i) and (ii), I think this is what Hillary Clinton was pointing toward when she lamented the 'vast right wing conspiracy.' There's an incredibly tenacious decades-long effort to build infrasctructure that seeds jurists and drives conservative messaging. Here I think the conservative movement is far, far ahead of the left. In sum, I think the conservative movement has been very effective at seeding alternatives and working locally while simultaneously diminishing trust in the authority and validity of mainline institutions. I guess this is not so much institutional capture -- and so adjacent to your points -- but you could call it a VC alternatives approach to supplement your PE analogy.
Conservatives are ahead of the left in creating alternatives *because* the left controls all the mainstream institutions and therefore the right has no alternative BUT to create alternatives. All of the alternatives have an inherent crappiness to them though -- less polished, less intellectual, less refined. I don't think there's much for the left to envy conservatives for here. To me, it's like saying that in Soviet-dominated Europe, anti-Communists had a much more effective underground publishing network (the samizdats). All the Communists had was mainstream organizations like the official media, the military, and the secret police, but a sad dearth of cool underground street cred.
Shucks, Commies, that sounds lamentable -- wanna trade?
(Alright, a tad hyperbolic, but you get the point.)
Though Scott makes the point that the left's insistence on driving conservatives out of mainstream institutions actually does contribute to polarization and make society crappier for everyone, even many on the left.
You're absolutely right and I laugh to myself reading it as during the 2000s when I was on the radical left I saw the mainstream -- e.g., NY Times -- as captured by the neoliberal right :) Strange to think back to a time when Obergefell was a distant dream...
This is a simple but profound insight that explains many aspects of modern societies.
These different strategies (gradual institutional capture versus direct takeover) are analogous to strategies employed by different kinds of organisms in the natural world. Institutional capture is essentially parasitism, whereas direct takeover is more like predation.
I don't think I ever heard of this principle spelled out this way, but I HAVE lived it.
When I was an undergrad during the W. Bush admin, I interned at the US Dept. of Commerce. I would say I was already pretty cynical by that age, but I was still shocked how openly my boss' boss strategized about rivalries with other departments, and how she was pushing everyone to engage in the classic bureaucratic move (classic enough that it probably has a name) of responding to funding cuts by cutting your MOST essential services, in order to put pressure on the politicians.
My boss, who had been with Commerce for a long time, seemed to genuinely care about the mission of serving US businesses (in particular, small businesses). But as far as I could tell, his boss, who was younger than him, did nothing and cared about nothing but engaging in politicking and bureaucratic infighting.
That move is often called The Washington Monument Ploy.
When the Department of the Interior had to make some budget cuts during a temporary shutdown, they did the sensible thing: Closed a few of the least-visited national parks, like the Arches National Park in Utah. That did not stir up the public very much. Big mistake.
The next time, they closed the Washington Monument. Roped it off, furloughed the tour guide people, etc. So that every visitor to the mall in D.C. would see it. Saved a lot less money than closing Arches National Park, but much more visible. Stirred up the public a lot more to end the shutdown.
Makes sense, and the name checks out when I Google it.
In the case of Commerce, one example I recall is they maintain a presence in various different countries' embassies to assist US companies doing business there (whether exporting or investing).
The naive idealist might imagine the obvious cost-cutting move to be to shutter this presence in the least valuable place. Mali, Burundi, or something. Instead, as you can imagine, the first move is to close this presence in a place like the UK or Germany.
This also has an inter-departmental rivalry benefit: you tell everyone that due to budget cuts, if they have a problem, please ring up the State Dept. directly; now State ends up having to field all those issues (presumably at a significantly lower level of customer service) until your budget is restored.
I'm coming back late to this post because I just found out about another interesting example of conservative institutional capture: the Latvian Lutheran Church reversed a 40-year rule allowing female ordination. It happened in 2016 but I, an LCMS Lutheran, didn't know about it until now.
https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/latvian-lutheran-church-rules-women-cannot-be-ordained-priests
"they can devote all of their efforts to institutional capture and transformation. Conservatives are often bad at stopping this because they are more interested in the mission than organizational politics."
This is interesting- because I've definitely experienced this in a professional setting and it's very frustrating, feeling pulled into both small-p office and big-P public sphere politics when one is simply seeking to focus on their job, do good work, and enhance the mission of the organization.
There is a line in the book "Zero to One" something like, "in the most dysfunctional organizations, signalling that work is being done takes the place of actually doing work. If this describes your organization, you should leave immediately."
I think this is also a temptation and problem in the church context for "moderate" evangelical churches in an urban progressive context, who try to take a certain approach to missiology and evangelism along the lines of "we really believer the same thing we just understand it more fully" (what Jake Meador recently wrote about in Mere Orthodoxy). The sense in which this posture has a temptation or effect of leading the church to adopt whatever the mainstream approach is, which among other things, can lead to an "organizational" culture that is toxic and driven too much by political considerations.
EDIT: but also, in my experience unfortunately, even confessionally "orthodox", non-liberal churches can fall into this mode of trying to protect the organization, or people committed to the organization above the mission. For example, churches closely policing attendance and engagement for membership, while not emphasizing pastoring, shepherding, and getting to understand the lives of everyone in their "flock", to the extant possible (of course), seems to suggest an imbalance and an undue commitment to the church as an institution, not as a spiritual body entrusted by God to deliver the Gospel. It begs the question also of what churches view their purpose and mission as, which seems to have gotten increasingly unclear, even among those who believe the Nicene creed and have creedal/Evangelical statements on paper.
Aaron said, "The left seems to do well at burrowing into organizations, working their way into positions of authority or leverage, and then using those to transform the institution from the inside out."
A significant factor which aids the Left in taking over organizations is the synergy between feminism and our anti-discrimination laws.
Women are typically more liberal than men. We see this, for example, in their political affiliations. Consider the Squad or the Women's Political Caucus in congress. Women are also very concerned about maintaining good relations with their friends and won't contradict them if they disagree with them. Taking a strong stand to correct problems is also disfavored since it is viewed as being unkind or unfair.
As a result, as more women have entered the workplace, a strong conduit for the introduction of liberal ideas has been introduced. This wouldn't matter if people in the organization with damaging ideas could be fired, but it is very difficult to fire employees today, especially if the employee is a woman. A man might be fired for insubordination or for working counter to the organization's goals, but try that with a woman and a discrimination suit would be filed the next day. So the feminists remain on the payroll, and if they're not advanced through the organization, they will again claim discrimination to the terror of management if it hasn't already capitulated.
Thus, the two-headed monster of feminism and labor law works against the integrity of organizations.
None of this is to say that there aren't excellent conservative pragmatic women in organizations. It's just that they are in the minority. Opportunistic men, or those who benefit from liberalism due to their own pet sins, also assist in the liberal takeover of organizations, but that is not the subject of this particular post.
A conservative top-down take-over works because with the announcement of a new, conservative management philosophy, many of the bad actors will leave voluntarily or can be fired as part of a layoff.
The asymmetry thing is a big deal, and there are many examples. There's one I hesitate to mention, but I've become convinced is true: progressives are different from conservatives in that they are *liars.* In the specific cases of seminary theological statements, or organizational mission statements, or academic codes of conduct, progressives simply don't mind signing their names to things they absolutely don't believe. This allows them to burrow into organizations committed to hateful conservative ideals.
I almost wonder if progressives justify such behavior due to a belief in the leftward ratchet theory. "This mission statement I'm signing is conservative for now," they must tell themselves, "but it will drift leftward in the next 10-20 years because that's what always happens. History is on my side. What I'm signing is secretly the version that will be, not the version that is."
Of course, that leftward drift *does* happen in a lot of cases. Regarding church bodies and seminaries and universities in general, there was a moment in the 1960s where it looked like the leftward ratchet was an iron law of nature. Now, thanks to the counter-examples you've highlighted (and Calvin University looks like it's going to be another), progressives are going to experience their own crisis of faith in the leftward ratchet.
What's the news RE: Calvin?
But yes, I try my best to be charitable towards people with whom I disagree, so I'm not normally the first guy to sign on to the statement, "The problem is they just plain lie more than we do." And I'm not entirely sure how true it is when we compare the secular right vs. left, but within the scope of Christianity and the church, it's absolutely, undeniably true.
Or rather, if a conservative Christian nakedly lies, it's almost invariably to cover up his personal crimes and sins. It's not to advance the cause of conservative Christianity per se (in fact, the effect is generally to undermine it for his own selfish benefit). But theological liberals will lie IN ORDER TO advance liberal theology. The difference is real.
And I don't think it's a new problem, I'm pretty sure I recall Gresham Machen noting it in "Liberalism and Christianity" -- that liberal Presbyterian clergy in the early 20th century were already signing on to statements affirming the WCF while clearly taking issue with large sections of it.
Unrelated to the church, one thought that has occurred to me is that conservatives could, for example, probably simultaneously undermine affirmative action and improve their own prospects through widespread lying about one's ancestry. Which I think is pretty easy to do, Hispanic probably being the weakest link.
I've heard that Brazil's affirmative action system is much more widely exploited than America's for the simple reason that it's a lower-trust society. I'll admit I've had this thought, for my children's benefit, but I dismiss it out of hand because I'm not a liar.
Though a more honest alternative is to look into whether one might qualify for Tribal status. Like many families, we have a rumor in ours, and it's on my agenda to dig into before my kids are applying to colleges -- to at least give them the option of ever using that arrow in their quiver.
Re Calvin U., see Paul Vander Klay's Youtube channel for more info ... although briefly, it looked like the denomination that owns it was drifting left (the CRC, I believe) but now the conservatives have won decisively there and the liberals are waking up to the fact that time is not on their side after all, because of demographics, etc. So the liberals are exiting the denomination. Over the next years the denomination will appoint increasingly conservative school presidents and the LGBT-friendly profs will be isolated and replaced. Probably.
Thanks. I agree with your refinement of the accusation against progressives.
Also, I too have a family with rumors of a Native American ancestor, and I've sometimes wondered how I could have exploited that, were I more cynical than I am.
As the old dissident right slogan has it, "SJWs always lie."
Yeah, come to think of it, that's what probably emboldened me to say it.
It's also notable that DeSantis appointed Ben Sasse president of the University of Florida. Too many Republican governors of deeply red states [looking at you, Nebraska] haven't even attempted to rein in leftist state Universities.
Also keep an eye on the current big fight in the LCMS: the board of Concordia University Texas in Austin filed papers with the state declaring their independence from LCMS governance, daring their own church body to sue them, which it did. It's similar to Baylor vs. the SBC only with a much smaller and less prestigious college. The stakes are basically who gets title to the campus real estate. It goes to show that these battles never end, conservative victories are never final.
Oh wow I drive by Concordia a lot and never heard of this, I guess the school is more liberal than the LCMS? Was there a certain issue that is triggering the split?
This happened in the 1970s
Thank you, Aaron. As someone who used to be on the left, I see this a bit differently. During the GW Bush years, I watched with real respect the (i) alternate conservative media system, (ii) the conservative legal network, and (iii) the conservative work at the local level, say, with school boards in particular. I think this last one goes all the way back to the John Birch Society and, as a leftist, I always lamented the left's unwillingness to engage in local politics -- almost as if it were beneath us. At the time, I felt we'd lose in the long run as a result of this elitism. We wanted the federal gov't to fix things for us and so tuned out following national elections. Arguably, the Dodd ruling reversed this inclination.
Regarding (i) and (ii), I think this is what Hillary Clinton was pointing toward when she lamented the 'vast right wing conspiracy.' There's an incredibly tenacious decades-long effort to build infrasctructure that seeds jurists and drives conservative messaging. Here I think the conservative movement is far, far ahead of the left. In sum, I think the conservative movement has been very effective at seeding alternatives and working locally while simultaneously diminishing trust in the authority and validity of mainline institutions. I guess this is not so much institutional capture -- and so adjacent to your points -- but you could call it a VC alternatives approach to supplement your PE analogy.
Scott Alexander's article from a few years back is interesting on this topic (from, I guess you could call his a "heterodox center-left" position):
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservative-the-eternal-struggle/
Conservatives are ahead of the left in creating alternatives *because* the left controls all the mainstream institutions and therefore the right has no alternative BUT to create alternatives. All of the alternatives have an inherent crappiness to them though -- less polished, less intellectual, less refined. I don't think there's much for the left to envy conservatives for here. To me, it's like saying that in Soviet-dominated Europe, anti-Communists had a much more effective underground publishing network (the samizdats). All the Communists had was mainstream organizations like the official media, the military, and the secret police, but a sad dearth of cool underground street cred.
Shucks, Commies, that sounds lamentable -- wanna trade?
(Alright, a tad hyperbolic, but you get the point.)
Though Scott makes the point that the left's insistence on driving conservatives out of mainstream institutions actually does contribute to polarization and make society crappier for everyone, even many on the left.
You're absolutely right and I laugh to myself reading it as during the 2000s when I was on the radical left I saw the mainstream -- e.g., NY Times -- as captured by the neoliberal right :) Strange to think back to a time when Obergefell was a distant dream...
You've essentially restated Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy, which is laid out here:
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
This is a simple but profound insight that explains many aspects of modern societies.
These different strategies (gradual institutional capture versus direct takeover) are analogous to strategies employed by different kinds of organisms in the natural world. Institutional capture is essentially parasitism, whereas direct takeover is more like predation.
I don't think I ever heard of this principle spelled out this way, but I HAVE lived it.
When I was an undergrad during the W. Bush admin, I interned at the US Dept. of Commerce. I would say I was already pretty cynical by that age, but I was still shocked how openly my boss' boss strategized about rivalries with other departments, and how she was pushing everyone to engage in the classic bureaucratic move (classic enough that it probably has a name) of responding to funding cuts by cutting your MOST essential services, in order to put pressure on the politicians.
My boss, who had been with Commerce for a long time, seemed to genuinely care about the mission of serving US businesses (in particular, small businesses). But as far as I could tell, his boss, who was younger than him, did nothing and cared about nothing but engaging in politicking and bureaucratic infighting.
That move is often called The Washington Monument Ploy.
When the Department of the Interior had to make some budget cuts during a temporary shutdown, they did the sensible thing: Closed a few of the least-visited national parks, like the Arches National Park in Utah. That did not stir up the public very much. Big mistake.
The next time, they closed the Washington Monument. Roped it off, furloughed the tour guide people, etc. So that every visitor to the mall in D.C. would see it. Saved a lot less money than closing Arches National Park, but much more visible. Stirred up the public a lot more to end the shutdown.
Makes sense, and the name checks out when I Google it.
In the case of Commerce, one example I recall is they maintain a presence in various different countries' embassies to assist US companies doing business there (whether exporting or investing).
The naive idealist might imagine the obvious cost-cutting move to be to shutter this presence in the least valuable place. Mali, Burundi, or something. Instead, as you can imagine, the first move is to close this presence in a place like the UK or Germany.
This also has an inter-departmental rivalry benefit: you tell everyone that due to budget cuts, if they have a problem, please ring up the State Dept. directly; now State ends up having to field all those issues (presumably at a significantly lower level of customer service) until your budget is restored.