A Definitive Critique of Liberalism

Going Further and Being of a More Thorough Character than What Is on Offer – And This, in a Short Essay

In this essay, I will critique Liberalism dialectically, beginning with the “foundation” of liberalism, consent.

Consent

Most human beings are not capable of consent, but Liberalism presupposes that all human beings are so capable. Let us begin with that assertion of Liberalism then, namely, that all government is derived from the consent of the governed. Or is it that all just government is derived from the consent of the governed? “You decide!”

Of course, the question is not up for a vote—questions that admit of being dialectically determined are matters of demonstration. The matter of necessity to be demonstrated is this: Liberalism must claim that all government is derived from consent, but it must mean all just government is derived from consent. A Liberal cannot present a coherent or consistent explanation of what should be done because it requires both claims.

Observe this basic problem:

• All men are rational and therefore able to consent.

• Criminals and bad men exist, and, insofar as they are criminal and bad, they do not do what is rational.

• But it was said that all men are rational and therefore able to consent.

• Therefore, criminals and bad man are not men, because they are not rational.

In order to maintain the proposition, that we must “respect the rights of all men,” the Liberal must also be able to say that some “men” are not really men, without any rights we are bound to respect. In other words, in order to maintain that consent is the foundation of government, a Liberal must deny that criminals are men. This is why Locke calls criminals and those who violate the Law of Nature “noxious creatures,” and “lions and tygers.” (Second Treatise §§ 10 & 11)

Those men who have “quitted reason, which God hath given to be the rule betwixt man and man, and the common bond whereby human kind is united into one fellowship and society; and having renounced the way of peace which that teaches, and made use of the force of war, to compass his unjust ends upon another, where he has no right; and so revolting from his own kind to that of beasts, by making force, which is their’s, to be his rule of right, he renders himself liable to be destroyed by the injured person, and the rest of mankind, that will join with him in the execution of justice, as any other wild beast, or noxious brute… (§ 172)

It's not “all men” that have rights, but “all men who are good” that have the rights; man, when he is good, is by nature free; if a man is bad, he is, to whatever extent he is bad, to that extent fit for slavery.

In sum: if all men have equal rights, then men who are criminals or bad (whose rights rational men “disrespect”), must be less than men. If, on the other hand, it is maintained that criminals and bad men are also “men”, then it must be admitted that good men, not all men, have rights that others are bound to respect.

So much for “consent of the governed” and “all men are born free and equal.”

The Pillars, Knocked Down

Consent is the foundation of liberalism. There are then Liberal pillars that stand on this foundation. Locke made a mold, into which he cast the Pillar of Property. After seeing how well it stood on the foundation of consent, the mold was used to cast the Pillars of Religious Toleration, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Association, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom of the Press, and other similar pillars.

Each pillar represents a “limitation” that is placed on government. A government cannot take the property of its citizens without their consent. A government cannot dictate opinions to its citizens (religious toleration, freedom of speech assembly, press, etc.), and it cannot force them into any closer society than the political society, i.e., the government can make citizens treat each other like fellow citizens, but not as friends, lovers, co-religionists, club members, etc. (freedom of association).

Imagine an ideal society, where all the members respect each other’s property, while at the same time always being willing to donate what property is necessary for the maintenance of the society. Liberal men would also need no guidance or protective barriers in searching out true political and religious opinions. Their friendships, marriages, and social groups would enrich their lives without introducing faction or jealousy into the political society. – If a Liberal theorist were to start from this ideal and say “we require men to be this good, or approximately this good” he could write a sort of Liberal Plato’s Republic.

However, Liberals do not argue this way—Locke purposefully avoided such a presentation. The right to property, religious toleration, and the various freedoms are not held up as “ideals.” In the Second Treatise and American Political Theory generally, government is restrained from meddling intrusively in people’s private property; it cannot forbid or establish any opinions; it must let people choose their associations (friendships, marriages, churches, social groups, etc.). These are things it owes to the humanity of its citizens, not to their goodness. If government violates someone’s right to choose their religion, a Liberal does not ask “well, was the person capable of studying religion and seeking the truth?” Instead, the Liberal claims a fundamental and inviolable right has been violated.

Importantly: Liberals do not claim that a society of men have a right to separate themselves out from mankind because they are good or better than what “mankind” tends to produce; Locke pointedly argued that all men have the right to form societies of their own, to separate from mankind, and to equip those societies with fitting governments. All men, not the good men.

It’s not the good men that have a right to property; all men have that right. It’s not the good men that have a right to religious liberty, freedom of speech, and freedom of association; all men have that right. This language hides the regime-character of Liberalism. Regimes—monarchies, aristocracies, democracies—are made up of “good men.” In regimes, the “rulership” is designated according to various claims to “goodness.”

When “all men” have rights to property, conscience, association, etc., government must simply respect what is already everywhere, in every society, and not overstep any bounds. Locke and the Liberals deny that rulership belongs to “the good men”; they claim rulership belongs to the elected men. Since all men have rights, there are no “natural rulers,” and therefore all men are potential rulers; the only way of distinguishing out a ruler is by the election of his equals.

These pillars can be tested in the same way we tested the concept of consent; the test reveals that Liberalism is itself a regime, i.e., is itself a choice for a certain kind of man, based on a claim to “goodness,” contrary to its own self-presentation and justification.

To see the regime-character of Liberalism, ask: Do all men have the right to property, or do only the good men have the right to property? Then ask this question each time, with respect to religion, association, and so on. In each case, avoiding “government interference” is either an aim or it is a requirement. Regimes have aims; Liberal governments meet requirements.

Consider the contemporary issue of Free Speech. If the freedom of speech is an aim, the government can distinguish between citizens who are capable of free speech and those who are incapable of free speech; it could exclude or subdue those incapable, so that the capable could debate and discuss freely without fear of harm to the political society. If, on the other hand, Freedom of Speech becomes a requirement, the government must then resolutely refuse to concern itself with the speech of its citizens. It must think of all men as equally capable of freedom of speech and, if some men prove incapable, or work to abolish freedom of speech, the government must then either abandon its view that freedom of speech is a requirement, or it must decide that those men incapable of freedom of speech must be treated as non-men or less-than-men. In other words, a government that sees freedom of speech as a requirement rather than an aim must not be willing to defend freedom of speech or it must treat men who threaten freedom of speech as non-men. A government treating freedom of speech as an aim will lose its ability to say that “all government exists only by the consent of the governed,” but it can also defend freedom of speech without having to declare all those men unfit to exercise the privilege as non-men, noxious beasts.

So much for Liberalism.

Conclusion

I conclude with a harangue against the most hateful passage in Locke’s Second Treatise.

As you all reading these essays can tell, I enjoy reading Locke and approve of most of what he did. There are, however, a few things that rub me wrong the way, and none more so than his doctrine regarding Conquest, found in the 16th chapter of his Second Treatise.

In that chapter, Locke imagines a scenario where one nation unjustly attacks another and is in turn conquered by it. The conqueror in this scenario is in the right, and the men who attacked his nation are in the wrong. Locke then wonders what justice requires of the conqueror. He makes a great many demands on the conqueror, the most galling of which is that a fine distinction must be made between the unjust attackers and their families. A conqueror can hold the attackers responsible, but he must respect all the natural rights of the families and other citizens who weren’t involved in the unjust attack.

Here then is the case: the conqueror has a title to reparation for damages received, and yet the children [of the conquered] have a title to their father’s estate for their subsistence: for as to the wife’s share, whether her own labour, or compact, gave her a title to it, it is plain, her husband could not forfeit what was her’s. What must be done in the case? I answer; the fundamental law of nature being, that all, as much as may be, should be preserved, it follows, that if there be not enough fully to satisfy both, viz, for the conqueror’s losses, and children’s maintenance, he that hath, and to spare, must remit something of his full satisfaction, and give way to the pressing and preferable title of those who are in danger to perish without it. (183)

This is how Liberalism ruins gratitude. It is of course the case that a successful conqueror should show as much leniency as he can, especially to the children of the defeated. The evil I abhor is in the way Locke sets it out, as a requirement—he robs the conqueror of the right and ability to be generous. Under Locke’s telling, a conqueror who doesn’t respect the property of the conquered families is in the wrong, even if respecting their property were to be a loss to him. If he does respect it—which would indeed be a great feat—he has done nothing more than bare justice required.

The wives and children are due their property, even to the detriment of the conqueror, such that, if the conqueror were to grant the defeated families a large share of their original property, even to the point of magnanimously suffering some loss in order to provide for them, these families owe him nothing for that action, they are merely being given what is theirs by right. No one should even be impressed with him. Being impressed with a conqueror who respects the property and general natural rights of the conquered, even to his own detriment, would be like being impressed with a guy who doesn’t murder someone in his power. This gross abuse of man’s good nature is unbecoming a truly liberal man.

In our day, a good example of this is how the American government responded to 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. America was attacked by Islamic Arabs, and then our leaders spent all their energy praising the virtues of Islamic Arabs, many times outright lying about their religion, civilization, and culture, because they felt compelled by justice to draw a great big distinction between the attackers and their families. Normal Americans, who didn’t believe Islam was really “a religion of peace,” whose nation had just been attacked by Islamic Arabs, were demonized for not loving people they had never before met. Americans were attacked and then browbeaten into loving the images, the culture, the whole aura, of their attackers. What a deal! I believe millions of Americans came to see something “deeper,” “more profound,” and “infinitely more meaningful” in the Arabic Aesthetic.

Locke makes it hard for good men to admit the obvious truth, that the children and especially the wives of conquered men will hate the conqueror, that they are not completely “innocent” of the feelings and hopes of the conquered combatants. I am sure Iraqis that have nothing to do with terrorism and war are not, as a result of the conflict between American and Iraq, very well disposed to Americans. Why should they be? And yet our government believes it is wise and moral to allow the importation of these people into America en masse, because we must make a distinction between the people we were fighting and their fellow countrymen not engaged in fighting, or not engaged in any way we could prove.

The final Lockean indignity is for him to say that a conqueror should do act this way “because the law of nature requires as many be preserved as possible” … this facetious argument—I promise it is not meant seriously by Locke—lays on the shoulders of every serious man a duty to increase the children of “mankind”, even if that increase comes at the expense of his own countrymen.

With this teaching (and it is a teaching that has spread all over and seeped into everything), gratitude is everywhere destroyed, ingratitude everywhere encouraged. Every conquered and formerly underclass people of the world seethes at not being given what they believe is their due, and they are constantly told the whole world is their due. Furthermore, whenever anything is given to them, it merely serves to rankle preexisting discontent. Locke should have never taken aim at gratitude in this way. Chapter 16 should be taken out of the Second Treatise!

Postscript

I have spoken in the past about an “Imperial Liberalism.” My next essay will either go into the possibility of throwing out much of the Lockean-ness of Liberalism, including his doctrine on conquest, and embracing imperial Liberalism. Maybe You Want Imperial Liberalism? Liberalism as a Regime? If I don’t write this essay, I might choose to discuss two defenses of Liberalism given by Leo Strauss and C.S. Lewis. The two men discuss their respective monotheisms in light of liberal politics. Strauss did so in Why We Remain Jews, which I have written about once here. And Lewis did so in Membership.