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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Restraint And Autonomy

A host of people have responded negatively to Rod’s latest column, particularly this part: Today, the greatest threats to conservative interests come not from the Soviet Union or high taxes, but from too much individual freedom. Look around you: Americans have been poor stewards of our economic liberty, owing to cultural values that celebrate unfettered […]

A host of people have responded negatively to Rod’s latest column, particularly this part:

Today, the greatest threats to conservative interests come not from the Soviet Union or high taxes, but from too much individual freedom. Look around you: Americans have been poor stewards of our economic liberty, owing to cultural values that celebrate unfettered materialism. Our families and communities have fragmented, in part because we have embraced an ethic of extreme individualism. Climate change and a peak in oil production threaten our future because we have been irresponsible caretakers of the natural world and its resources. At best, the religious right stood ineffectively against these trends. At worst, we preached them, mistaking consumerism for conservatism.

All political problems, traditional conservatism teaches, are ultimately religious problems because they result from disordered souls. In the era now dawning, Americans will learn again to live within limits — and together.

It is remarkable how vehemently some conservatives have reacted against this passage. Do any of them really disagree that “Americans have been poor stewards of our economic liberty, owing to cultural values that celebrate unfettered materialism”? Would they really deny that we have a culture that celebrates unfettered materialism? They might reasonably deny that they personally celebrate unfettered materialism, but Rod was speaking generally. Instead of taking seriously an exhortation to self-criticism and reflection, Rod’s critics have, as usual, resorted to whining.

Andrew Stuttaford recited some standard libertarian lines and observed that Tory patricians from the 19th century would have had a good laugh at this. Yes, when I want reliable advice on moral reasoning Victorian Tories are certainly among my first choices for role models. In a post dubbing the first paragraph above to be the worst of the day, Robert Stacy McCain declared that he was not to blame for any of the problems in question, so apparently there’s no problem. Our secular friends were predictably mortified and invoked Jeffrey Hart, but no doubt they will object strenuously to any suggestion that they take moral and cultural problems less seriously than their religious counterparts.

Let’s imagine for a moment that Rod did not use the word soul here, but said instead that “all political problems are ultimately ethical problems because they result from disordered wills.” As far as religious conservatives are concerned, that is what he said, because how one’s will is directed is a matter of the soul’s health and its orientation toward or away from the Good, which is to say God. Consider next that since antiquity the right-ordering of the soul was taken as essential for rightly ordering the polis, and for the entire history of Christianity it has been a fundamental spiritual teaching of the Church that a well-ordered soul keeps its passions and appetites in check. Apparently all of this is supposed to count for nothing, because it intrudes on individual autonomy. That autonomy is really what Rod is critiquing, and the freedom of this autonomy is mainly the freedom of appetite and preference, which individualists mistake for genuine freedom.

I am going to assume that Rod’s critics all believe that men should avoid excess, practice moderation and cultivate restraint–unless, of course, that is all together too “Buddhist” for McCain–and that failure to do so will lead to the formation of vicious, self-destructive habits and actions not in accordance with natural law. This will in turn have deleterious effects on social and political order, and will ultimately work to the detriment of political liberty as appetites that are not held in check from within will be restrained from without. If self-control weakens or fails and natural institutions, such as the family and community, splinter, public authority will take up the slack and increase its power. When a culture of acquisition and consumption financed by vast sums of debt begins to implode, public authority intervenes again to impose regulation (or, in many cases, over-regulation) where license previously prevailed.

We have been living in a culture that encourages the deferral of responsibility, and to one degree or another most of us have participated in it, and this is inconsistent with sustaining ordered liberty. Those who have not participated in this culture, or have done so only a little, should be the least offended by what Rod is saying, because his words are not directed at them. To the extent that we are all paying the price for an era of profligacy, what he says is relevant for all of us.

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