I fight with Will Wilkinson, Freddie fights with George F. Will, and James Poulos fights with himself.

I always knew that there existed somewhere in the universe the perfect response to James's searching post on suffering and politics, which began with this challenge from Freddie de l'Hôte:

What men like Will never seem to understand, of course, is that people want change-- and not just gradual change but great, earth-shaking change, revolution and revolt--because they are suffering, and only change can end their suffering. For some people the status quo just can't continue. Only radical, life-altering change can end their suffering.

Now that doesn't mean we should always try to give it to them. Far from it. It doesn't mean that the plight of the suffering is society's only concern, though, yes, I find the elimination of suffering an absolute moral responsibility of a free and just society. There are always countervailing forces and other people with their own desires and needs.

But I grow increasingly tired of men like George Will pretending that some of us call for change just for change's sake. I am weary of the conservative principle of denying the suffering of the poor, or the oppressed. Advocate for limited change if that's what your conscience and your intellect tell you is appropriate. But stop ignoring the fact that the desire for change comes from genuine emotional and physical distress.

James, then:

. . . the George Wills of the world persist in coming along and reminding us, as did Jesus and Nietzsche, that there is no earthly elimination of suffering, there is no way even to come close; that the best of us, the highest, may indeed be the ones who suffer most of all -- God or no God. This is the repugnant paradox that so outrages enemies of suffering and enthusiasts of proactive, coercive change toward solidarity. Freddie's first paragraph is absolutely spot-on. His third paragraph, almost so: Freddie may be right that some conservatives deny the suffering of the poor--who, the argument runs, suffer for no meaningful other reason than that they are the poor--but really he has to do battle against conservatives who openly acknowledge suffering but deny that they face any kind of moral obligation, much less an absolute one, to take proactive, especially coercive, action to do whatever it takes to eliminate it wherever it is found. This is about much more than D'Souza's allegation of loserdom. A certain strain of suffering-tolerant, suffering-accepting (paleo)conservatives are more than happy to be 'losers' in the capitalist-darwinian sense, and this is why they drive Wilkinsonian libertarians to distraction.

I will pass over his astute remarks on friendship and Machiavelli elsewhere in the post, and say that, in the paragraph quoted above, James elides the differences among the various conservative responses to suffering, which have very little in common except a tendency to drive Will Wilkinson batty.

One is simply Burkeanism served neat: Yes, people are suffering, but change (or at least revolutionary change) is certain to produce more suffering through disruption, unfamiliarity, and unintended consequences. Another, which could be called domestic isolationism, says that people are suffering but it would be presumptuous to assume responsibility for its alleviation; ought implies can.

There is a third that I like far better, which is to say at all; this is where the mythical Perfect Response comes in, courtesy of the man himself:

One fascinating study as yet unwritten would compare, in the tradition of Western political philosophy, those whose new political sciences created political creeds through the idealized vehicle of the suffering sovereign -- the earthly cognate of Christ as suffering servant -- with those who saw political creeds as needless because the purpose of politics was to reveal and institutionalize the needlessness of human suffering.

Suffering is either meaningful or not, either redemptive or simply unpleasant. Either Virginia Postrel is right that "the only sort of character suffering builds is the ability to suffer" or Isaiah is right that by His stripes we are healed. If James and Freddie's back-and-forth proves anything, it's that every political theory has to come down on one side of this question or the other.

The second Poulos quote comes from a post about Lincoln, the upshot of which is that Lincoln put a face on the suffering sovereign who, like Machiavelli's prince, bears second-hand griefs for the sake of the greater good; he suffers so his people don't have to. I can think of three immediate responses to this theory. First, I'm not sure that a nation's suffering can be so cleanly delegated. Second, there are probably interesting things to be said about the way suffering sovereignty works in a democracy, at least one of which would be to explain the way that leadership and democracy can become compatible when the people bear suffering, which is properly the burden of leadership. Third, the whole idea of the suffering sovereign depends upon a belief that pain has its benefits and the correct response to suffering is not always to lunge immediately for the means to alleviate it (WWALD?). In other words, once we accept that happiness is not the highest good for our leaders, it would be weird to declare it the highest good for everybody else.

"To reveal and institutionalize the needlessness of human suffering" is a nice nutshell insofar as it makes obvious the point that surely we can think of a better way to define politics than that. Are we sure that suffering is needless? Never mind whether we believe in a tragic universe; do we believe in tragedy? Sublimity? At all, ever?

Let me put it in more concrete terms. Alleviating poverty is a kind of anti-suffering policy I can get on board with; not all suffering is sacrificial/redemptive/awesome. An example of one I like far less would be social security and other kinds of government care (i.e. for the disabled). Taking care of one's parents in their old age or a disabled child in his infirmity is a tough gig that demands sacrifice, but one that many people have been happy to bear because they loved who they were caring for. For government to convince people that such care is burdensome under the cover of instituting programs to alleviate that burden is for government to negate the idea that sacrifice is ever necessary. Decades of this kind of politics has yielded a generation of Americans who believe just that (see, once again, Will Wilkinson). (I may have been drinking from the keg of hatred earlier...)

To end, appropriately enough, with Lincoln:

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether'.

If we take this passage to heart, we may come to realize that the problem with changeniks is not that they want change for change's sake (Freddie's right about that, at least), but that the only way they can think to respond to suffering is to want it stopped as soon as possible. If Freddie can't realize that there are more ways to reject that attitude than simply "You're suffering and I don't care," then I'm not sure what's left to say.