Liberalism

What It Is

Liberalism

America is in a terminal stage of democracy. When our politicians, intellectuals, and celebrities are not embarrassing themselves, they are acting out rapacious fantasies, harbingers of future nightmares not yet realized.

Americans who are proud of their country wonder what happened. What kinds of ideas and convictions produced this great nation? Why aren’t we guided by the same ideas and convictions that guided our founding generation?

I claim that America had a good and respectable beginning. It had a philosophic foundation, justifying the actions of its founding men. In this essay I am going to describe and explain that foundation, which I take to be Liberal. In the next essay I will give the dialectical and experiential critique of Liberalism, along with a short history of the death of American Liberalism, from the Civil War to the present day.

Now, I take it as a given, long proved and many times demonstrated, that the American founding was Liberal, in the Lockean sense of that word. Conservative attempts to deny our Liberal ancestry are understandable—I understand the desire to distance our foundations from Equality; unfortunately, these attempts are misguided. The founders and the founding generation, North and South, were guided by the theory of natural rights, and John Locke is the philosophic apostle of that theory. The early public documents of our nation, the private letters and speeches of our founders, and the inner logic of the actions taken by that generation, all attest to the view that government exists to promote the natural rights of the citizens, most notably the rights to life, liberty, and property. That is, the evidence points to the view that our founders were guided by Locke and other Liberal philosophers.

What is Liberalism?

Liberalism is more than an assertion and defense of the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Lockean theory of natural rights points beyond itself.

Scholars and pop-philosophers all tend to overlook the polemical purpose of Liberalism, i.e., they tend to overlook the types of men Locke sought to overcome through his theory of natural rights.

Liberalism was, properly understood, a restraint on democracy; it was fashioned in the understanding that democracy in Europe and the Americas was inevitable. The Liberalism of our founding generation was the closest approximation to aristocracy available at that time, given the circumstances, and aristocracy is the best regime available at any given time, under any given circumstances. “What about the rule of wisdom and the philosopher in Plato’s Republic?” The rule of philosophers is merely a more radical form of aristocracy.

I say that Liberalism, “properly understood,” is an approximation to aristocracy, but the polemical situation did not permit this self-presentation. Under the duress of fanaticism, i.e., rhetorically hamstrung by the circumstances, Liberalism did not present itself as an approximation to a superior regime. In fact, it did not present itself as a regime, a choice, at all. Locke and other apostles of Liberalism presented it as the ground for all legitimate regimes. They pretended that Liberalism—the theory of natural rights—was the foundation for all “forms of government,” from monarchy to pure democracy. Government as-such was the protection and promotion of natural rights. Any so-called “king,” or so-called “government,” that violated the natural rights of the citizens to an intolerable degree was “un-kinged,” or, “as if dissolved.”

A short explanation of the “natural rights theory” is needed. Several obvious facts serve as the ground for the assertion that, without any government over them, i.e., without any “impartial judge” over them, individuals are in a “state of nature” vis-à-vis each other. The obvious facts that establish the existence of this state of nature are that men have a right to try to stay alive, that they need to have some property (at least food) to accomplish this, and that they have a right to collect, gather, and defend this property from aggressors and thieves, and that finally, if there is no government that can or will protect them, no one can blame them for taking the matters into their hands. Further: we can expect the exercise of these rights to turn ugly before too long, without some power to over-awe the individuals, a power to set their minds to respecting the needs of their fellow men; there needs be a power that can humble men and adjudicate disputes that arise. In the state of nature men have the right to take things into their own hands, and therefore the state of nature is full of injustice. It is full of injustice not because men take things into their own hands, but because few men are just enough or good enough to control themselves. Government is needed, not because it’s wrong for men to use violence to preserve their lives, but because it is practically better for the use of violence to be limited.

However, since all government is exercised by men, i.e., since government is made up of men, it cannot be “arbitrary and absolute”: men in a villainous state of nature are better off than those under a powerful tyrant, because the power disparity between a tyrant and a subject is much greater than any disparity that exists in the state of nature. Men can join a society, or make a society, with the purpose of establishing a government that will protect their rights, i.e., the basis for government is the consent of individuals, who agree to obey the laws in return for the protection of their natural rights.

How could something like this possibly be an “approximation to aristocracy”?

A Brief History of Modern Political Philosophy, from Machiavelli to Locke.

Machiavelli’s Prince could be considered a short proof for the proposition that all men have the right to self-preservation. In that book, Machiavelli says many shocking but agreeable things. The idea is to get the reader to admit the right of

men to artful contests against each other.

Coming now to the other qualities mentioned above, I say that every prince ought to desire to be considered clement and not cruel. Nevertheless he ought to take care not to misuse this clemency. Cesare Borgia was considered cruel; notwithstanding, his cruelty reconciled the Romagna, unified it, and restored it to peace and loyalty. And if this be rightly considered, he will be seen to have been much more merciful than the Florentine people, who, to avoid a reputation for cruelty, permitted Pistoia to be destroyed. (chapter 17)

Borgia’s cruelty is needed; being needed, cruelty proved more merciful than leniency or charity. Charity un-charitied itself in its saccharine kindness. There were men and institutions that asserted such things were impossible.

They claimed a natural law governed the world and forbade all sorts of aggressive, cruel, crafty, cunning, designed actions. A good man trusts to his goodness. He does not spend his time thinking about how to get the better of others, but rather trusts that such things are not necessary for a good man.

A good man, following Socrates’ advice, speaks “as at random” rather than employ deceitful, artful, cruel speeches to get his way in courtrooms and in politics.

Another example: Othello was a decent fellow who, at least in the beginning of the tragedy, followed the Socratic way and disdained taking precautions against tricksters and slanderers.

Let him do his spite;
My services, which I have done the signiory,
Shall out-tongue his complaints. (Act 1, Scene 2).

When Francis Bacon wrote Othello, he was developing the Machiavellian justification for artfulness and self-defense, while, under his own name, he developed a more respectable and far-reaching plan of enlightenment in his works developing the theory and practice of natural science, the presupposition of that science being man’s right to investigate and control his “world,” which requires him to trust his senses. (I won’t go into this more here. There is a pithy lecture by the retired St. John’s College tutor, Henry Higuera, on the connection between the moral science of Machiavelli and the natural science of modernity. I don’t believe it’s on the SJC website, but I have made it available here.)

Francis Bacon fashioned natural science over the objections of men who believed investigation into motion and matter brings the divinity of the world into question. Just as the apparent need for courtroom forensic would seem to belie the hopes and beliefs of an Othello, so too would the apparent need (or even just benefit) for attempts to control nature, or predict natural events, belie the hopes and beliefs of a people who saw, in fortunate harvests and plagues, affirmations of the importance of being good. To restate: an honest Othello would hope that his innocence has power, but is shocked to find that innocence isn’t enough (or even strictly necessary) to protect him from the artifice of others. A decent people would hope that their innocence and devotions would offer protection from chance or contingent disasters, and could be shocked to find that their neighbors, who take everything into their own hands, fare better and are like to over-awe them in the future.

Hobbes combined Machiavelli’s dash with Francis Bacon’s solidity: where Bacon had produced natural science, Hobbes produced political science, by combining the strong, factual, and compelling images of Machiavelli with the “clear demonstrations” of Bacon. Hobbes gives the reader the impression that once irrational hopes are abandoned, and one takes a hard-nosed view of human nature, one can discern indefeasible units—building blocks of human society. Human beings have passions you can really count on, and therefore you can take things in hand instead of counting on a cosmic or human recognition of your own virtue.

As every sensible reader knows, Locke does not substantially differ from the “justly decried” Hobbes. Locke writes in the tradition of men who are trying to encourage Europeans to take things in hand, to reject the dominion of those rulers too blessed to be good, namely, those rulers who need not rule to rule, seek wealth to become wealthy, and so on.[1]

Look at Locke’s Second Treatise, chapter 5. The point of that chapter is to convince men they have a right to take hold of a portion of the Earth to the exclusion of all others.

The thread I am following is this: Aristocracy is the regime where men recognize that their virtue is all that stands between them and slavery. The modern liberal project, starting in Machiavelli, could not argue that virtue prevented slavery, because virtue had come to include chastity and similar things.

When some Puritans believed their setbacks in King Philip’s War could be traced, not to military unpreparedness, but instead to the length of their hair and the earnestness of their supplications, they demonstrated quite clearly how much Europe and America needed the philosophic tradition beginning with Machiavelli.

In our own day, we have plenty of examples of this evil, and it’s not at all attached to the Christian religion, or to religion as-such, so much as it is attached to cowardice and egalitarianism. Today’s leaders evidently do not think they are responsible for whether or not things go well, so long as they do not “overstep” or become demanding, or act like an “absolutist,” i.e., so long as they are free of the injustice of imposing themselves they are good leaders no matter how poorly things go. “I know the apartment complex has become a living nightmare, but at least I’m not a racist.” That’s a fool’s armor typical of today and one I have heard with my own ears.

(https://homeofva.org/get-help/fair-housing/criminal-history/)

Story: I lived in a pleasant apt complex where the ownership changed, and they lowered required standards. Before, they would not accept applications of anyone with a misdemeanor charge. The new owners said the apt complex was “too white” and claimed the racism of the previous owner had been hurting business. All standards were dropped and the complex became a place of misery, noise, drug abuse, and general dirtiness. I think they accept govt vouchers for rent now. So, the owners are not “racist,” but they’ve ruined everything. They even had to fill in the pools!

Why “Natural Rights” instead of “Virtue”

The Enlightenment philosophers wished to overcome men whose cowardice and egalitarianism made them feckless rulers and generally noxious human beings.[2] This debate could have taken two roads.

Road 1. The philosophers could have argued that the noxious people in power were bad, that their ideals were bad, that what they claimed was virtuous was not virtuous. They could have said “the virtuous and wise should rule and you are neither of those things.” They did not choose this road.

Road 2. The philosophers decided to avoid wrangling, directly, over what virtue is. They took a roundabout way: arguing about it, while not explicitly arguing about it. This is why they developed the natural rights theory.

The enemies they were attacking, and the audience they were fighting over, were inoculated against reason in some key areas. Consider the ability of fanatical priests and their followers to burn and behead the nobility, while calling the violence, in all seriousness, “charity.” It is charity to take everything from a nobleman and eventually kill him, because you teach him humility, you divest him of the sources of pride and sin, and the flames burning his flesh are the strongest inducement to repentance before death. These sorts of things were going on and the attempts by philosophers to say “That isn’t charity. That isn’t virtue.” were impotent, however theoretically sound.

Since “virtue” was tied to virtues like charity and chastity, and these in turn were deeply perverted by egalitarian fever-dreams, the appeals to virtue were replaced with Machiavellian self-evidence: fanatics can make weird stuff “charity”; they can accuse men who do not take a stupid vaccine of “endangering the public” and claim the public has a right to “restraint and reparation”; they can do all sorts of things like this—so, to the dogs with “virtue” and “public concern.” Instead, let us get down to brass tacks, to what can’t be so easily perverted by stupidity and fever; let us unearth and explicate those eternally evident natural rights.

While aristocracy, real aristocracy, is a straightforward, believable, and actual appeal to virtue, when such appeals are not possible (i.e., when such appeals are counterproductive), philosophers fashion approximate appeals. In our case, philosophers established a hierarchy, whereby men who were most able to safeguard and promote very basic things, like “life, liberty, and property,” were called forth to be rulers and kingmakers. These men would rule over the peaceful and put down the “quarrelsome and contentious.”

Conclusion

This ends my brief description of Liberalism. I don’t claim mine is the strongest rhetorical defense of liberalism (much more would need to be written for that); but I do say my argument is made along the strongest dialectical line. Every strong defense of liberalism must show that Liberalism is an approximation of the best regime. (Every strong defense of every regime will do this.)

In my next essay I will show the inner incoherence of Locke’s natural rights theory. I will also explain why it collapsed in America after WWII.

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[1] [T]hey are sustained by the ancient ordinances of religion, which are so all-powerful, and of such a character that the principalities may be held no matter how their princes behave and live. These princes alone have states and do not defend them; and they have subjects and do not rule them; and the states, although unguarded, are not taken from them, and the subjects, although not ruled, do not care, and they have neither the desire nor the ability to alienate themselves. Such principalities only are secure and happy. (Prince, chapter 11)

[2] There is an excellent description of this type of person by Hooker, quoted in Eric Voegelin’s New Science of Politics.