My Background

Before I launch into the more substantial discussions, I thought it might be helpful to provide some biographical background on me, as a means of further clarifying my perspective on civilized practices.

I became a conservative through, I think, an unusual process. Although I had begun to experience dissatisfaction with the prevailing liberal orthodoxy in my late teens it wasn’t until I participated in the est training in 1980 that I had the ‘aha’ moment as well as a set of tools to move forward. Yup, Werner Erhard turned me into a conservative! Now before everyone goes ballistic on me, I understand, better than most, that est was deeply flawed and subscribed to many liberal nostrums, however there was a hard core to the teaching that appealed to me and that I found refreshing and fruitful. est, in contrast with its forerunner, the Esalen Institute, was considered to be extraordinarily strict, even fascistic, by its many critics. It also placed a high value on concrete success in business, which was one of the effects they claimed as a result of participation in the Training. It encouraged dressing up rather than down. Material success and its trappings, much derided elsewhere, were consider one, though only one, aspect of the ‘good life’.

The Training placed a strong emphasis on keeping one’s agreements. This is a good example of a common sense idea, which nonetheless, is not that common. And it was nowhere taught as an explicit ethical principle.

I eventually discontinued my association with est because of tensions over certain superstitious beliefs that were widely held in the organization. In the final analysis est was deeply flawed, not for the least reason that it did not privilege reason and was therefore subject to superstitions but I nonetheless benefited considerably from my sojourn. It toughened me up and put a certain kind of “fire in the belly” that I sorely needed at that juncture in my life.

I have participated in several of the Large Group Awareness Training (LGATs) all of them flawed to one degree or another but they do constitute a portion of what the Palladian Republic is or will become. I see this phenomenon, much derided by some conservatives, as a manifestation of a peculiarly American tradition, traceable back to Benjamin Franklin and de Toqueville, that one can improve oneself and prosper.

In upcoming posts I will comment on a few other LGAT systems and what we can learn from them.

On different note, please bear in mind that the purpose of this blog is to create a conversation about civilized practices. While I have a particular framework and perspective on this matter, I am certainly not trying to pose as a guru. It is my contention that fifty years of liberal dominance have left all of us fractured and partial in relation to the full body of civilized practice. Thus reader input and correction will be gratefully received.