What is liberty without wisdom and without virtue?EDMUND BURKEIt is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without restraint. Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as they are disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good in preference to the flattery of knaves.Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
I recall watching a video from the awesome Stefan Molyneux where he discusses how to advance liberty. Molyneux is an anarcho-capitalist and an atheist, but he makes the case that any advance in liberty has been due to moral claims as opposed to utilitarian/consequentialist claims. I have always rejected this idea/strategy on the basis that it rests upon natural law which atheists would want to avoid for obvious reasons. But I have come around on the idea lately and started to rethink my libertarianism. This has led me to the writings and thought of Edmund Burke. As all of this swirls around in my brain, I have reached one inevitable conclusion. There is no liberty without morality.
The trouble with libertarians is very simple. Their thinking is abstract. This is because the libertarian philosophy is an Enlightenment philosophy, and the Enlightenment was concerned with abstract principles. This is where Burke comes into the picture. Burke is considered either a friend or foe to liberty depending on when you read him and in what context. Concerning the American Revolution, Burke sounds like a Ron Paul of his day. Concerning the French Revolution, Burke starts to sound like Rush Limbaugh. The reason for this is obvious. Burke did not deal with the abstract but with the real. This reality aspect is what separates libertarians from conservatives.
Libertarians and progressives share a belief that their ideal social arrangements exist in the future. Naturally, these futures are utopian whether it is the progressive egalitarian state of the liberals or the libertopian anarchy of the libertarians. These futures do not exist except in the mind. We can envision them but realizing them is another matter completely. This is where the French Revolution educates us to reality.
I think Burke was at heart a libertarian. He may have disavowed his earlier opinions as satire, but I see Burke as a man who passionately desired liberty while having a healthy distrust of power and the state. The French Revolution sobered that outlook considerably and taught Burke and us that as bad as things are at the present, they can be made much worse in the name of the purest ideals. And what made the French Revolution and the ensuing Reign of Terror so bloody? In one word, it would be "abstraction."
Abstraction is the realm of philosophy. In philosophy, everything can be made perfect. Reality is not perfect. Reality is messy. When philosophers reign, the imperfect must die which is virtually every human being. This is why left wing people end up stacking bodies when given the power. Perfection is the justification for atrocity.
For Burke, liberty emerged as people formed social bonds and communities and lived by a common morality. Overturning this community, this morality, and the traditions and institutions that undergird and promote community and morality is a recipe for disaster. This is where conservatism comes into play. For conservatives, liberty is not found in the abstract. It is found in the present and in the past. We shouldn't look to hypothetical abstract futures like the philosophers. Instead, we should be historians and see what actually does work as opposed to what might work in theory.
One of the cornerstones of conservative thinking is the acknowledgement that society and humanity will never be perfect. Whatever system of government and social order we have will be a compromise. This may seem depressing, but it is less depressing than envisioning a utopia that you know will never exist. As they say, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Once you relinquish that utopia in your brain, having a good and decent society instead of a perfect society becomes tolerable.
What makes US and Western society so damn good relative to other regimes in history has been the Judeo-Christian ethic. Even an agnostic like Hayek could agree with this. While looking over the latest ideas from the atheist Steven Pinker, I could not help but notice how he credits everything but this Judeo-Christian ethic for the relative benign state of human society in the present day. Pinker thinks it is government and Enlightenment values, and I can agree somewhat with this. But the great civilizer is not government or philosophy but morality and religion. When you have a large body of people agreeing to respect the life, liberty, and property of their neighbors without threat of government force, the result is more life, liberty, and property. And how do you get people to voluntarily agree to this? The only answer to this is morality.
Morality comes from natural law. This law is written in the human heart. Codes such as the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule only heighten the sense of this natural law. And it is this natural law that Stefan Molyneux posits as being the way to get people to accept libertarian principles. I agree. My own consequentialist/utilitarian arguments have yielded zilch.
So, how should liberty be promoted in light of this? The answer is clear from history. The best governments in history have been republics. Whether it was pre-imperial Rome or modern day America, a republic trumps democracy, monarchy, dictatorship, and anarchy. It has been republics that have given the most liberty to their citizens, the most rights to minorities, and the most prosperity to their societies. Republics are essentially a compromise among the different elements of a society clamoring for power. They act as a brake and a constraint on the concentration of power. The most common refrain I hear about Washington is that they never get anything done in DC. This is a good thing.
Religion plays a vital role in society as a promoter of virtue. It is no mere accident that the USA has so much religion. That religious sense goes hand in glove with liberty. Life, liberty, and property are moral values as well as political values. As Burke put it, "Liberty does not exist in the absence of morality." You can make people respect life, liberty, and property through force. But this is not freedom. Freedom comes when people respect life, liberty, and property through an internalized set of values.
Government can promote or undermine those values through its actions. If it bails out failing companies while punishing good companies, this results in moral hazard. Likewise, the welfare state discourages the work ethic and encourages theft. Aid for single mothers results in more single mothers. Easy divorce laws results in more divorce for the most trivial of reasons. We can go on and on here.
Today's heirs to Burke's legacy are libertarians and conservatives. The problem is that they are divided. Libertarians are principled but ineffective. Conservatives are effective but unprincipled. The result is that you are either a debate club moralist or a realpolitik piece of shit. The guy that seems to bridge this divide and have the best of both worlds is Ron Paul. His brand of libertarianism is influenced by his Christian faith, and he manages to hold to principle while being realistic about change.
Broadly speaking, I don't know what label you can put on the Burkean mindset. I don't see anyone today really working from that philosophical playbook. I think if Burke were around today, he would like Ron Paul but disagree with the rest of the libertarians. He would be a conservative and probably like Reagan and Thatcher. Then, there is Russell Kirk.
Kirk was the father of traditionalist conservatism and a Burke devotee. Kirk wrote, "All culture arises out of religion. When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief." The alternative to a society influenced by religion, culture, and morals is one that follows the dictates of reason. Yet, reason is what gave us the French Revolution, Communism, and Ayn Rand's infamous purges and rantings. The crazy thing about reason is that reasonable people almost never agree on anything. The schismatic nature of libertarians is no accident but a direct result of reason. This is why libertarians preach freedom but show remarkable intolerance for dissenters. It doesn't take much to imagine what they would do in positions of power.
The weakness of conservatism would be in the economic realm. So many conservatives end up in the Keynesian camp or getting some second hand Milton Friedman. Reagan appreciated Mises. The best political philosophy would be a marriage of free market economics especially the Austrians with a Burkean social approach. Could we still legalize marijuana? It was legal in Burke's day, so that isn't an issue. But I think we can take anarchy off the table once and for all. Government does play a needed role in promoting virtue. It can also play a role in undermining virtue as well.
The last institution that helps promote liberty is the family. People can howl and scream over this, but it is pretty clear that children benefit from having a mom and a dad. I don't see how single motherhood has helped anyone. Government undermines the family when it pays women to have out of wedlock births.
The Burkean philosophy explains a lot of things I have wondered about. From a libertarian perspective, I couldn't tell you why Haiti is a shithole relative to the Dominican Republic next door to it. But from the Burkean perspective, the answer is obvious. Haitians are pieces of shit. That may be harsh, but it is true. The only formative difference between Haiti and the Dominican Republican is that they speak different languages and have different cultures. Otherwise, they started on two halves of the same island in a natural laboratory. Haiti remains a cesspool even relative to harsher regimes like Cuba or North Korea. Haiti's problem isn't a lack of libertarian freedom. It is a lack of virtue. The same can be said even more so for Somalia.
You can't quantify cultural factors. For instance, Max Weber's analysis of Catholicism and Protestantism and the work ethic can't be quantified, but we can see that Protestant countries are richer than Catholic countries. Government can influence culture to some extent, but it does not create it. If anything, government is a reflection of the culture. A debased culture gets tyranny. A virtuous culture gets a republic. History shows this again and again.
My own frustrations with libertarianism gaining traction demonstrate this as well. I can't understand why people reject freedom, but it is twofold. Some don't want the responsibility that freedom brings. Others know that people are too irresponsible to be free. I think libertarianism is DOA and always will be because of this. Freedom can only be attained in a marginal way relative to the virtue of the people. Slavery is a great case in point. Government did not create slavery. It did help to end it, but there was considerable moral influence from Christian abolitionists on the issue.
I don't know where I stand on libertarianism anymore, but I think I am in that narrow crack between libertarians and conservatives. I will have to think about it more, but I firmly believe that there is no freedom without morality. I will have to write more on this at some later date.
Government can promote or undermine those values through its actions. If it bails out failing companies while punishing good companies, this results in moral hazard. Likewise, the welfare state discourages the work ethic and encourages theft. Aid for single mothers results in more single mothers. Easy divorce laws results in more divorce for the most trivial of reasons. We can go on and on here.
Today's heirs to Burke's legacy are libertarians and conservatives. The problem is that they are divided. Libertarians are principled but ineffective. Conservatives are effective but unprincipled. The result is that you are either a debate club moralist or a realpolitik piece of shit. The guy that seems to bridge this divide and have the best of both worlds is Ron Paul. His brand of libertarianism is influenced by his Christian faith, and he manages to hold to principle while being realistic about change.
Broadly speaking, I don't know what label you can put on the Burkean mindset. I don't see anyone today really working from that philosophical playbook. I think if Burke were around today, he would like Ron Paul but disagree with the rest of the libertarians. He would be a conservative and probably like Reagan and Thatcher. Then, there is Russell Kirk.
Kirk was the father of traditionalist conservatism and a Burke devotee. Kirk wrote, "All culture arises out of religion. When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief." The alternative to a society influenced by religion, culture, and morals is one that follows the dictates of reason. Yet, reason is what gave us the French Revolution, Communism, and Ayn Rand's infamous purges and rantings. The crazy thing about reason is that reasonable people almost never agree on anything. The schismatic nature of libertarians is no accident but a direct result of reason. This is why libertarians preach freedom but show remarkable intolerance for dissenters. It doesn't take much to imagine what they would do in positions of power.
The weakness of conservatism would be in the economic realm. So many conservatives end up in the Keynesian camp or getting some second hand Milton Friedman. Reagan appreciated Mises. The best political philosophy would be a marriage of free market economics especially the Austrians with a Burkean social approach. Could we still legalize marijuana? It was legal in Burke's day, so that isn't an issue. But I think we can take anarchy off the table once and for all. Government does play a needed role in promoting virtue. It can also play a role in undermining virtue as well.
The last institution that helps promote liberty is the family. People can howl and scream over this, but it is pretty clear that children benefit from having a mom and a dad. I don't see how single motherhood has helped anyone. Government undermines the family when it pays women to have out of wedlock births.
The Burkean philosophy explains a lot of things I have wondered about. From a libertarian perspective, I couldn't tell you why Haiti is a shithole relative to the Dominican Republic next door to it. But from the Burkean perspective, the answer is obvious. Haitians are pieces of shit. That may be harsh, but it is true. The only formative difference between Haiti and the Dominican Republican is that they speak different languages and have different cultures. Otherwise, they started on two halves of the same island in a natural laboratory. Haiti remains a cesspool even relative to harsher regimes like Cuba or North Korea. Haiti's problem isn't a lack of libertarian freedom. It is a lack of virtue. The same can be said even more so for Somalia.
You can't quantify cultural factors. For instance, Max Weber's analysis of Catholicism and Protestantism and the work ethic can't be quantified, but we can see that Protestant countries are richer than Catholic countries. Government can influence culture to some extent, but it does not create it. If anything, government is a reflection of the culture. A debased culture gets tyranny. A virtuous culture gets a republic. History shows this again and again.
My own frustrations with libertarianism gaining traction demonstrate this as well. I can't understand why people reject freedom, but it is twofold. Some don't want the responsibility that freedom brings. Others know that people are too irresponsible to be free. I think libertarianism is DOA and always will be because of this. Freedom can only be attained in a marginal way relative to the virtue of the people. Slavery is a great case in point. Government did not create slavery. It did help to end it, but there was considerable moral influence from Christian abolitionists on the issue.
I don't know where I stand on libertarianism anymore, but I think I am in that narrow crack between libertarians and conservatives. I will have to think about it more, but I firmly believe that there is no freedom without morality. I will have to write more on this at some later date.
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