I have recently heard from more than one friend the opinion that politics is at best a necessary evil in the life of a Christian, and preferably one to be avoided. This is foolishess. I refuse to discuss whether the salvation of men's souls is more important than their political salvation--I think that answer self-evident--what interests me is whether "political salvation" is possible, and if so, desirable.
Frankly, I think it is both.
As a Christian, what are our duties?
"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."
The second commandment is the one that interests us here. Loving our neighbor is going to require learning how to live with him in peace--namely, it is going to require politics--and to carry out Christ's commandment well, we must have and study good politics. There is really no escaping it.
Freedom and law are great goods, well endorsed by the words of God and men both. It is childish and delusional to disregard an entire area of human life devoted to them and to think we are living well.
"The difference between the Republican and the Democratic parties . . . [in] this contest," he declared, "is, that the former consider ABORTION a moral, social and political wrong, while the latter do not consider it either a moral, social or political wrong. . . . The Republican party . . . hold that this government was instituted to secure the blessings of freedom, and that ABORTION is an unqualified evil to the UNBORN, to the BORN, to the soil, and to the State. Regarding it an evil, they will not molest it in the States where it exists . . . ; but they will use every constitutional method to prevent the evil from becoming larger. . . They will, if possible, place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate peaceable extinction, in Gods own good time."
I find the parallels between American slavery and American abortion quite piercing, especially in the character of the abolitionists, both then and now. It is no mere coincidence that we forget today, as the abolitionists did 170 years ago, that the question is not one of the morals of "the other side." The question is not whether those in favor of the institution are moral men--their hearts and minds are as good as ours; their institution is legal, and no long-standing institution can be simply removed without regard for the means or the consequences of doing so, no matter how much we may desire instant and universal moral purity.
The question was then, and is now, whether the victim is a human being. If the slave is a man, with all the natural rights of man, then slavery is an evil. If the unborn child, too, is equal in his rights with you and I, then abortion is an evil.
But we forget all this. The new abolitionism makes all the same tactical mistakes as the old, with all the same uncharitable moral indignation. We denounce, we impugn, we forget that whatever else it may be, the institution is legal. But we have the example of the past to teach us.
Our fathers condemned slavery, but when they saw that they were then unable to abolish it, they put it on the road to ultimate extinction. I am for doing the same with abortion. I do not blame the pro-choice for their beliefs. If I did not believe life began at conception--had I been raised differently--who is to say I would not hold the same position? It is not a thing we can undo overnight, and it is legal. We must be prudent.
The path to the ultimate extinction of abortion seems to me one of convincing the hearts and minds of the people. Mores change with religion and with education.
Statesmanship is education, but I believe what matters here is to have many children and raise them well, particularly in their first decade of life. It will not do to make abortion a national issue, as if a single presidential election or judicial appointment will reverse Roe v. Wade and by that somehow put the issue to rest.
I used to believe in the natural inequalities among men as though men had different natures. I still believe men have different aptitudes, but I have come to understand the Declaration in the same way Lincoln does:
"I think that the authors of that noble instrument intended to include all me, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say that all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments or social capacity. They defined, with tolerable distinctness, in what respects they did consider all men created equal--equal in "certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
This they said, and this meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then enjoying that equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances permit.
They meant to set up a standard maxim for a free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.
The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that, but for future use. Its authors meant it to be... a stumbling block to those who, in after times, might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism.
They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should reappear in this fair land and commence their vocation, they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack."
That fairly well sums it up.
When the Declaration comes up, many take "self-evident" to mean that all men are born knowing it. This is a mistake, for almost nothing is self-evident in that way.
Self-evident, in the usage of the time, meant available to any man who will deploy the full and proper use of his reason in seeking it. Opinion, mores and interest can all get in the way.
Men are not born knowing the ratios of octaves, but they are self-evident. Double or halve the length of your string, and you will have an octave.
"[Controversies arise,] and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities. If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the government must cease. There is no other alternative; for continuing the government is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority, in such case, will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which, in turn, will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them, whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such a minority...
A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily, with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.
Whoever rejects it, does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissable; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism is all that is left."
Plainer truth is rarely spoken. Once one accepts the equality of all men, the permanent rule of a minority (whether of one or a few) is rendered practically impossible and principally unacceptable. Government by consent follows from a social state of equality, and equality cannot be undone without removing both Christianity and modern natural science from the face and memory of the earth.
If we wish to avoid anarchy and despotism, then, we must substitute the rule of a majority for the unanimous will of the whole people. Just government requires the consent of the governed to be ruled according to natural and eternal principles of right.
When the majority errs, or chooses wrongly, we must persuade our fellow citizens of their error and persuade them to choose rightly--and they us. It is, I grant, much harder, much more challenging, and much less convenient a task than convincing a sole ruler would be. Republicanism is difficult and prone to failure and abuse. The government of a republic requires a virtuous citizenry. Free men must be free to choose wrongly. That is the cost of republican politics.
There are two great questions in political philosophy:
Is there more to human political life than power--are there immutable principles of justice on which we ought to base our politics? Is it really possible to rule according to such principles?
If so, then statesmanship is possible, but what is it? Many Straussians see the Founding as the creation of a political perpetual motion machine, answering all the questions and eliminating all need for statesmanship--prudent maintenance and administration are all that remain for us.
But the mechanics of government cannot run forever--they are only auxiliary safeguards to our liberty. We the people must forever be the primary and permanent safeguards of our own liberties.
If we are to be a republic; if we are to have self-government, we must reconcile the two great principles of our political tradition:
Government must be based on eternal principles of justice. Government must be based on the consent of the governed.
This is the problem of republican government: the people must consent to just laws. The will and opinion of the people, then, must be guided by a love of just laws and from time to time this light must be renewed and rekindled in us by the voice of a statesman. We need a man with both a strong, clear conception of justice and the ability to persuade others of it as well.
The question is... when have we seen such men, and will one come again in our lifetime?
This post is my second in response to Matt Taylor's, here. The first, which provides background, is here. Matthew, I love you. You have conflated two wonderfully different things.
The constitutions of all nations change, but the Constitution of the United States of America is meant to resist change. It is neither a descriptive summary of the laws and mores of the nation, changing with every generation, nor the end toward which we strive. It is the vehicle by which we may have self-government. The following quote may help:
"The Constitution and the Union... are not the primary cause of our great prosperity. There is something back of these, entwining itself more closely about the human heart. That something, is the principle of "Liberty to all"--the principle that clears the path for all--gives hope to all, and, by consequence, enterprize, and industry to all.
The expression of that principle, in our Declaration of Independence, was most happy, and fortunate. Without this, as well as with it, we could have declared our independence of Great Britain; but without it, we could not, I think, have secured our free government, and consequent prosperity. No oppressed, people will fight, and endure, as our fathers did, without the promise of something better, than a mere change of masters.
The assertion of that principle, at that time, was the word, "fitly spoken" which has proved an "apple of gold" to us. The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple; but to adorn, and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple, not the apple for the picture.
So let us act, that neither picture, or apple shall ever be blurred, or bruised or broken."
My friend, it is not the restoration of strict 1787 Consitutionalism, "big-C," that we must seek--for even in that time they were not all of one mind--but rather we must seek, as in every free and republican generation, to live well, by the principles of the Declaration.
It is not the picture, but the apple of gold we must seek. Good men in our time are not willing to die for parchment barriers--but good men in all times have been willing to die for freedom.
Education in virtue from youth upwards, which makes a man eagerly pursue the ideal perfection of citizenship, and teaches him how rightly to rule and how to obey--this is the only education which, upon our view, deserves the name; that other sort of training, which aims at the acquisition of wealth or bodily strength, or mere cleverness apart from intelligence and justice, is mean and illiberal, and is not worthy to be called education at all.
This is the first of two parts responding to Matt Taylor's post here. The first post is background for several points I will make in the second.
Matthew begins with a use of the word constitution that has fallen out of favor. A consitution, small "c," is "what consitutes," or what makes up a political community. The Greek is politeia, which can be translated constitution, regime, or legal institutions. A regime is the combination of the politeia and the bios ti, the institutions and the way of life, or what Tocqueville would call the laws and the mores.
A shared way of life and shared opinion concerning the just and the unjust, the praiseworthy and the blameworthy gives rise to the institutions, offices and laws, which in their turn have some (appreciable) influence on the mores from which they first have their source.
Ancient government was not totalitarian, but comprehensive.
The nature of a thing is found in its perfection, and the complete human being lives in a city. Like an acorn into an oak tree, a man grows from infancy into his completion with good nurture and cultivation only--for body and soul.
Gr. physis, "nature"< phuw, grow
It is not natural for a man to live alone; that is for the beasts and the gods. A man is not self-sufficient, nor is a family, and so for marriage, defense and other reasons, family joins family in a tribe, tribes join in villages and villages into a city, a polis. Just as a family is greater than the sum of its members because it encompasses their individual ends as human beings within its own end, the polis is that sum of partnerships which make possible a complete human life--its end is the highest and most complete of all human communities. And so, of necessity, its laws must encompass everything--from conception to burial.
This is because men are psychosomatic, neither purely instinctual nor purely intellectual. What is natural is what is right, but for humans, it must be chosen rather than simply the product of instinct--thus the need for education and good rearing for a man, if he is to be virtuous. The best part of him must rule the lesser parts, and so too with a city. Nature requires the aid of nurture to come to its fruition, and so it is natural to men to live in cities and have conventions. The great change to all this is wrought by Christianity.
Christianity is monotheistic and universal. It severs the link of "nature" which connects the citizen to the city with divine force, and it renders him equal to all men in the most important of matters. It is the acorn of self-government, and of Tocqueville's "principle of equality." It introduces into Western history what Manent calls "the theological-political problem." With the advent of mdoern natural science and the horror of the religious civil wars which wrack post-Reformation Europe, Christianity brings about the modern era.
Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke all give new accounts of man's nature, based in his origins, not in his perfection. The telological worldview falls. Modern liberalism teaches that FREEDOM is the paramount thing now--it is for men to be virtuous themselves now, not through the rearing and guidance of the city. Self-government requires (and makes possible) limits on political power. A new reflection on the nature of man requires that just government not teach him what to think and worship, but is must secure his right to do so. Government must now confine its power to the actions and not the souls of men. Disestablishment allows for an avoidance of religious civil war, and men of different religions may be fellow-citizens---and citizens of different nations may be fellow believers.
The danger of modern liberal government is that it may extinguish extraordinary virtue along with extraordinary vice and religious war under the suffocating blanket of soft despotism . The safeguards against this cannot be constiutional as they were for the ancients, whose mores and laws were more often the written and unwritten versions of the same thing.
I have never known a better man, nor one whose word is more his bond. My father taught me right from wrong. He taught me to love the Word of God. He taught me to love regardless of what we receive in return. God gave him a child, and I am the man he raised. Despite all his faults, his constancy, his integrity, his selflessness, his servant’s heart, the value of his word, and the examples of his self-discipline, his tireless work ethic, and his servant leadership, never lacking in humility, have made him my hero.
A few days ago I heard a young friend of mine utter the phrase "I don't believe in natural rights. There are no such things." Hearing my own self from a year ago, I began a conversation with him about what exactly he meant by it. Having come to hold the ideas of natural rights and equality to be inseparable from liberty in our time myself, the irony of this is not lost on me.
I wrote a letter on the subject to a friend of mine on the subject of my own journey out of that position. I post the text of it below with his permission. Apologies for the copy errors, as I originally wrote it by hand.
Dear Thomas,
My friend, you asked me how I came, from a firm opposition to the very idea of natural rights, to hold true and precious that very doctrine as the last, best hope for freedom.
I laugh to say it that way, but it is true. I feel no need to reacquaint you with the reasons by which aristocracy can commend itself, nor to remind you of the beautiful, serene harmony that a hierarchical view of the world provides.
My journey began when I told Arnn that I did not believe in natural rights, though at times I would like to—I simply could find no argument for the existence of these magical primary substances by whose possession we are entitled to X and Y and Z.
He stopped me and said, “Jody, of course you believe in natural rights.” He said it gently, paternally, and with more than a little amusement, as one speaks to a child or an adolescent who has discovered one of the fundamental problems of adult life and consequently lost all perspective.
“You are not a dog,” he continued, “and so you ought not to be treated like a dog.You are not a horse and so you ought not to be treated like a horse. You are a man, and so you ought to be treated like a man. This is the essence of natural rights: that there are certain ways it is right for men to treat each other, because it is according to their nature.”
A slightly longer explanation can be taken from the middle of Alexander Hamilton’s editorial, “The Farmer Refuted”:
“Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed, that the deity, from the relations, we stand in, to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is, indispensibly, obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever.
This is what is called the law of nature, [he now quotes Blackstone] "which, being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid, derive all their authority, mediately, or immediately, from this original" [Hamilton then continues].
Upon this law, depend the natural rights of mankind, the supreme being gave existence to man, together with the means of preserving and beatifying that existence. He endowed him with rational faculties, by the help of which, to discern and pursue such things, as were consistent with his duty and interest, and invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty, and personal safety.”
The first thing I must say is that Hamilton’s understanding of the self-evident law of nature causes as many problems for a systematic treatment of justice and for the realization of justice in human affairs as does free will itself.
Men disagree about the law of nature and they fall victim to the temptation to claim their own part and interest as nature and justice. This diminishes neither its reality nor its beauty. Virtue and justice are easily missed and fallen short of, but no glorious thing comes with the guarantee that we may obtain it.
It is a common argument made that there are no rights but only authority and responsibilities—at least; it is common at Hillsdale, usually among those who believe the American Revolution illegal and unbiblical. This argument, I think, is not the serious stumbling block it seems, but merely a combination of a poor understanding of the theory of natural rights and a desire to feel intellectually superior. It has, at least, been the case in my own life and most of those I have seen. I will let your experience of Hillsdale students—particularly Stewart students—argue for me on this point.
To my own thought, rights are shorthand for the way we ought to live and be treated which is in accordance with our nature. dikaiosyne is a right ordering of all things, is it not—whether in the soul, in relations between two men or in a political body?
Rights bring with them inseparable duties. God has given us life and faculties, and our responsibility is to use them well—how absurd it would be to say that we lack the authority to do so! A right is not a mere entitlement—for it can be violated—and those who think they should be rejected seem to me to be throwing out the Declaration because the progressives perverted it. To the Protestant who claims there is no natural law but only divine revelation and the laws of man, I ask the following questions:
Say that your government orders you not to worship God, or to worship false gods. You will disobey, and rightly so. But is this simply because it is against the Scriptures? Even had it not been explicitly revealed in them, would you not still rebel against such manifest wrongness? This, then, is the law of nature, written on the hearts of men. This is why evil laws are an affront not only to the Divine Legislator but to mortal men, you and I, as well.
So I have come to agree with Arnn that all well educated men in our day believe in natural rights, whether they acknowledge it or no. But I owe you more of an explanation: I have not told you why I have accepted equality and democracy.
The short answer is that I read Democracy in America, which was written to persuade aristocrats that such times are over and we must learn to live in the new world. The long answer is in the following quotes:
“After the general idea of virtue I know of none more beautiful than that of rights, or rather these two ideas are intermingled. The idea of rights is nothing other than the idea of virtue introduced into the political world. It is with the idea of rights that men have defined what license and tyranny are. Enlightened by it, each could show himself independent without arrogance and submissive without baseness. The man who obeys violence bows and demeans himself; but when he submits to the right to command that he recognizes in someone like him, he raises himself in a way above the very one who commands him. There are no great men without virtue; without respect for rights, there is no great people: one can almost say there is no society; for what is a union of rational and intelligent beings among whom force is the sole bond?”[1]
I think Tocqueville is right that all societies have had some notion of rights—not “equal for all” certainly—but the point I wish to make is that there are such things, though they are not any more primary substances than legal rights are.
My metaphysical misgiving put to rest, I came finally across the passage which I think is—of all of them—most responsible for the change in my own views.
Tocqueville is writing about the differences between artistocracy—inequality, not the Aristotelian regime—and democracy, or a social state of equality like ours today.
“In this century [viz. the early 19th], when the destinies of the Christian world appear to be unresolved, some hasten to attack democracy as an enemy power, while it is still getting larger; others already adore it as a new god that issues from nothingness; but both know the object of their hatred or their desire only imperfectly; they do combat in the shadows and strike only haphazardly.
What do you ask of society and its government? We must understand each other.
Do you want to give a certain loftiness to the human spirit, a generous way of viewing the things of this world? Do you want to inspire in men a sort of contempt for material goods? Do you desire to give birth to or to maintain profound convictions and to prepare for great devotions? Is it a question, for you, of polishing mores, of elevating manners, of making the arts shine? Do you want poetry, renown, glory? Do you intend to organize a people in such a manner as to act strongly on all others? Do you destine it to attempt great undertakings and, whatever may be the result of its efforts, to leave an immense mark on history?
If this is, according to you, the principal object that men ought to propose for themselves in society, do not take the government of democracy; it would surely not lead you to your goal.”
My whole heart cried yes to those questions. I want glory, execellence, nobility. But I want it for me, for my thymos, not because I think it best for those around me. When I think, I can make arguments that the average peasant was happier than bourgeois man, and I believe them.
There is a tranquility that comes with being ruled, and with having one’s place in a great hierarchy that cannot be found in democracy. The community that aristocracy provides tells a man who he is, what his duties are, and even his destiny.
Democracy provides nothing which does not come from within the man himself. Equality renders us more naturally separate and alone. But the barrenness of it is a wilderness in which men may ennoble themselves in greater numbers than ever before. Still, my preference was for the heights of glory, not a higher average. Tocqueville goes on:
“But if it seems to you useful to turn the intellectual and moral activity of man to the necessities of life and to employ it in producing well-being; if reason appears to you more profitable to men than genius; if your object is not to create heroic virtues but peaceful habits; if you would rather see vices than crimes, and if you prefer to find fewer great actions on the condition that you find enormities [of evil]; if instead of acting within a brilliant society it is enough for you to live in the midst of a prosperous society; if, finally, the principal object of government, according to you, is not to give the most force or the most glory possible to the entire body of the nation, but to procure the most well-being for each of the individuals who compose it and to have each avoid the most misery, then equalize conditions and constitute the government of democracy.”
I doubt my feelings on this choice need any elucidation. I have never been partial to being limited or ignored while the floor is raised. But what Tocqueville wrote next cut me to the quick, and it was this, I think, that impelled me to change my beliefs and whatever in my way of life depends on them accordingly.
“If,” he writes, “there is no longer time to make a choice and if a force superior to man already carries you along toward one of the two governments without consulting your desires, seek at least to derive from it all the good it can do; and knowing its good instincts as well as its evil penchants, strive to restrict the effects of the latter and develop the former.”[2]
It is good that we accept equality, if we wish to be of any use to those outside the scope of our own families. Would even our own friends permit an aristocracy among themselves? I think not.
Though we recognize the existence of natural aristoi, even Hillsdale students who love the past would not permit a legal or inherited inequality to be founded among them. How much less so our fellow citizens?
No, I had to let go my love of old stories of kingship as the best regime, to moderate myself and say with Tocqueville: “all those in the centuries we are now entering who try to base freedom on privilege and aristocracy will fail… nor is there a legislator so wise and so powerful as to be in a position to maintain free institutions if he does not take equality for his first principle and creed.”[3]
It is not, however, a question of learning to live weak, separate and alone. “When plain citizens associate, they constitute very opulent, very influential, very strong beings—in a word, aristocratic ‘persons’.” Political and private associations must take the place of lords.
The answer to the weakness of individuals is to unite them. The press was a great engine of this in his day; the Internet is even more enabling in our own.
The dangers of democracy you have, of course, heard a thousand times. Soft despotism. [The link is actually two good quotes] There are two “fatal ideas” we must avoid (we lovers of the old way). The first is that equality must, of necessity lead to anarchy. The second is that it must end in soft despotism.
I know many a Christian who, “[having] discovered the path that seems to lead men invincibly toward servitude, they bend their souls in advance to the necessary servitude; and despairing of remaining free, at the bottom of their hearts they already adore the master who will soon come.
The first [equality รจ anarchy] abandon freedom because they deem it dangerous; the second because they judge it impossible.
If I [Tocqueville] had this latter belief, I would not have written the work you just read; I would have limited myself to groaning in secret about the destiny of those like me.”
One last quote:
“It is no longer a question of retaining the particular advantages that inequality of conditions procures for men, but of securing the new goods that equality can offer them. We ought not strain to make ourselves like our fathers, but strive to attain the kind of greatness and happiness that is proper to us.”
That is, in so many [11] pages as it took weeks, the story of how I came to embrace democracy.
The means by which equality and liberty can be combined (religions, associations and local gov’t) I will not include in this letter, although I would be glad to do so in the next.
Democracy is not without its problems, and some of the solutions—especially the idea of “self-interest well understood,” which teaches men that their interest is to be virtuous, rather than proclaiming the beauty of virtue—feel alien and even shallow, but I am convinced that it is not my place to reject them, for they are what must keep us free.
We must not make the perfect the enemy of the good.
There is still a need for statesmanship—perhaps greater than ever before in history. But this letter is long enough and I am done for now.
The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.
