Posted on 03/17/2009 1:43:32 PM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
Those from previous generations to my own can remember America as it was before the tectonic shifts in the social and moral fiber of the nation that occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They remember a time when the streets were safe and when traditional marriage, the sanctity of innocent life, and standards of morality existed as more than just a set of pre-packaged bumper sticker slogans. Even in the relatively short span of my own life, I've seen the moral compass of this nation drift away from true northas its spiritual lodestone demagnetized – things that would have been inconceivable even in the 1980s are yawned at today.
In many circles, this state of affairs is celebrated. For many, the Judeo-Christian moral system is considered to be at best a relic of the past, and certainly as an outmoded set of rules and strictures which are an attack on personal freedom. Sadly, this view is not only held by those on the Left – the socialists and communists and fascists and whatnot. It is also held by many on the Right, those who proclaim themselves to be of libertarian persuasions, but yet who do not understand the underlying contradiction of their own belief system.
My intention here is not to aim any blueon- blue friendly fire at libertarians. Instead, I want to point out that the belief that you can have liberty without a foundation in Judeo-Christian biblical morality, or even that you cannot have liberty unless you toss this morality aside, is completely contrary to reality. I have a saying about libertarians – about 85% of the time, they're right on the money, but the other 15% of the time, they are way, way offbase. The primary reason for this is the philosophically libertarian attitude towards religion in general, and biblical morality in particular. This attitude would be summed up best by Robert Heinlein, a science fiction writer from the past century who was also an outspoken libertarian later in his life and who infused his personal attitudes towards Christianity into many of his writings,
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.
Or,
Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other sins are invented nonsense.
As a result, hard-core libertarians may be completely on target about any number of issues ranging from taxes to guns to property rights. Yet, the fact remains that authentically libertarian positions on many social issues will necessarily be based upon the atheistic worldview that views mankind as inherently good, rejects the notion of absolute moral right and wrong, and views any intrusion of morality into its self-contained factspace as an imminent imposition of theocracy upon itself. Often, it is these libertarians on the Right who are the biggest purveyors of the myths surrounding “separation of church and state” and the role of religious faith in early American history.
As such, modern libertarianism finds its origins in much the same philosophical and spiritual milieu as does the modern Left – in the rejection of any authority upon the behavior of man but man's own, personal intuitions themselves. In truth, the hard-core, philosophical libertarian is as much a disciple of Ludwig Feuerbach as any Marxist.
Yet, the problem for libertarianism – in the sense of which we've just looked at – is that the premise of its entire understanding of anthropology (the study of man) is incorrect. The philosophical libertarian sees man as inherently good – it's the government who makes him evil. Left to his own devices, unfettered from any moral or ethical constraints whatsoever, each man would naturally seek him own good, while refraining from doing evil to his neighbor. Sin – such as it is – only appears when those who want to control other people successfully manage to impose their superstitions upon them. Without religion clouding the matter, man wouldn't have these artificial guilt feelings about sex or greed or other aspects of personal behavior.
Unfortunately for hard-core libertarians, it doesn't work this way. The proposition that man is inherently good is laughable. Simply laughable. One only has to look at the news to see that. Man does not need government to incline him towards harming other people. Indeed, man needs government to STOP him from doing so. The primary issue then becomes “what sort of government.” Will man utilize self-government, or will he require outside government, imposed upon him by force?
As was pointed out a few weeks ago by Ken Martin, self-government involves the capacity of the individual to not only do what he likes, but also to be willing to bear the consequences of his actions. I would go further, and add this: selfgovernment includes the capacity to exercise foresight and to restrain oneself from behavior which will harm yourself or other people, even if the harm is not immediately apparent or observable. This, in fact, is what biblical, Judeo- Christian morality is.
In truth, there is no such thing as a “victimless crime.” This concept is a fiction. Somebody always pays the piper for our immoral actions, and most of the time, that somebody is not just we ourselves. Homosexuals, through their behavior, are responsible for introducing AIDS and other STDs into the blood supply and disease ecology of our nation. Their activities certainly have greater and more far-ranging effects than just on their own lives. The same can be said for that favorite example of a “victimless” crime – prostitution. While the harm done through these sorts of activities is often not immediately apparent, in the long run it is there, just the same.
Therefore, self-government involves much more than simply running around doing whatever comes to mind, whatever “floats your boat”, so to speak. Self-government involves limiting one's own behavior enough that one can credibly, peacefully, and responsibly participate in the mutually beneficial commonwealth of individuals envisioned by Locke.
Our Founders understood this truth about self-government, and they understood the central role that Christianity and biblical morality played in it. John Adams put it best in his oft-quoted statement,
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.
Adams knew that there were only two things capable of containing humanity's inherent sin-nature driven lust to “do unto others before they do unto you.” These were religion and morality, or else stringent government imposed from outside by force. Adams knew that our Constitutional system, set up as it was on the principles of liberty and small government, was not “armed with power capable of contending” with mankind unleashed from the strictures of objective morality. Either man self-governs through the influence of religion and morality, or else man must be governed by police, laws, judges, and dictators.
“Ah,” one might counter, “what about atheists who lead good, and even moral lives?” “What of them?” , I would respond. To a man, their morality and ethics are simply cherry-picked from the Judeo-Christian morality that underlies our Western sense of the dignity of the individual. Even in their rejection of biblicism, they still implicitly accept it, if they lead lives that they feel can credibly be called “moral” or “ethical” in the eyes of society at large. The reason they understand that harming others if bad and respecting the rights of others is good, is because that is the ethos in which they were raised and absorbed, even if they explicitly reject the religion which gave rise to the ethos.
The truth of Adams' proposition is seen all around us. Earlier, I wrote about the great seachanges in morality that took place in our nation several decades ago. It is unsurprising that, concomitant with the Sexual Revolution and the rejection of traditional Christianity in America by many of our people, a whole host of social ills came into prominence. If you look at the graphs of things like crime rates, illegitimacy, welfare recipiency, and so forth, every time, they are basically flatlined until the late 1960s, when they spike sharply and stay high. All of these social ills are the result of a lack of self-control in some form or fashion – a freedom from the restraints of traditional morality.
So where has that brought us now? Well, another thing that has attended to the increasing rejection of traditional morality in America is the loss of individual liberties. One cannot blame big government alone for the loss of individual liberties and personal freedom. After all, the 1930s saw one of the most drastic increases in the scope and size of government in American history – a scope and size that continued all throughout the following decades, I might add. Yet, one cannot really say that most Americans were fundamentally any less free in their ability to speak, think, read, write, worship, or protect themselves freely than they had been in the 1920s or the 1890s or the 1860s.
It wasn't until the collapse of a uniform sense of necessity for Judeo-Christian morality in America that our personal freedoms began to restrict and disappear. Why? Because a significant percentage of our population abandoned any sense of self-government, and therefore needed to be restrained externally through an increasingly ennervating set of laws, regulations, rules, and stipulations on their lives – which unfortunately are applied to those who don't need them as well. For example, when large numbers of people don't allow the moral sense of respecting innocent life to overrule their passions, then murder and other violent crimes go up, which then have to be dealt with.
As such, it's not surprising that the government has become so much more blatant in the past few decades in overreaching from its constitutional boundaries. In some sense, it has had to, just to keep some semblance of order in America. As Adams said, when men won't selfgovern, then they'll be governed by an external force which cannot be provided under a strictly constitutional system. These same people, then become dependant upon that government to give them everything else, just as it has given them the “capacity” to not make complete abjects out of themselves. In some sense, then, the fault for the unconstitutionality of so much of what our government does lies squarely at the feet of the “lifestyle libertarians” out there – those who have done so much to encourage among the gullible underclasses in our nation an end to real, practicable self-government in favour of a perverted sort of “self-government” which really amounts to little more than “if it feels good, do it.”
Hence, we need to understand once again that if we as a people are to have liberty, then we have to regulate ourselves. You cannot have true liberty and at the same time have the reckless abandon that comes with the celebration of the homosexual lifestyle or the irresponsibility that characterizes the “need” for abortion. Conservatives need to begin making the case for WHY traditional morality is important. We need to understand that appeals to “tradition” alone, the argument that we need traditional morals because “we've always had them” won't wash.
Liberty and morality – self-government and self-control according to the positive ethical system embodied in Judeo-Christian biblicism – go hand in hand. You cannot have the former without having the latter. Lose morality, and you will sooner or later lose liberty. Without morality, we become less than men, we become herd animals who are controlled, directed, and exploited by the dictatorial governing caste that we accept as our overlords to keep us from destroying ourselves, and to give us the necessities that we become dependent upon them for. Moral fiber and independence go hand-in-hand. So also does enslavement to the passions with enslavement to the government. America is at a cusp right now – we have to choose which way we will go, and soon. Let us, as conservatives, stand up for the truths of conservative, Judeo-Christian morality in our government and in our society. This is not “theocracy”, indeed it is just the opposite – it is liberty.
Ping!
Ping
“Ah,” one might counter, “what about atheists who lead good, and even moral lives?” “What of them?”
I’d accept that premise if they weren’t so strongly in favor of abortion.
BOOKMARKED! THANKS.
bookmark
Great article. It’s very popular among folks today to say “I’m an economic conservative but a social liberal.” However, that idea never pans out in reality. The social liberals always become economic liberals/socialists. Perfect example, the Governator of California. Makes me wonder why they ever bothered to get rid of Gray Davis in the 1st place. Gray Davis may be gone but his policies lived on through his “Republican” successor.
Excellent.
Without an objective, unappealable source for morality, ie, ethics,
it invariably becomes situational, because it is self-defined.
You can’t be fiscally conservative and socially liberal,
because in order to allow social liberalism,
you have to alleviate the consequences for liberal immoral choices,
which requires confiscation from people who make moral choices in order to pay for the alleviation of those consequences.
Take away the alleviation of consequences, and reality will show that people start living moral lives by default, because to live otherwise becomes very painful.
ping!
So how do you restore that in a nation, once it’s gone?
Bookmark.
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