Some Distinctions

Before I write more on my series (which I haven't had time to do since the beginning of the semester) I thought I would share an insight that we discussed in my political philosophy class that perhaps clarifies what I have been arguing.

There is a disctiontion between true political conservatism (which was and is extremely rare in the 20th and early 21st centuries) and conservative liberalism. Neo-conservatives and libertarians are NOT political conservatives, they are in fact conservative liberals. This is true of many of the "faces" that one associates with American "conservatism": Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck. They are, essentially, politically liberal but more on the conservative end. This is because they accept, whether or not they consciously understand it or not (I would wager they don't), the political liberalism of the Enlightenment. This tradition began with Locke and his social contract theory int he late 1600s which emphasized radical freedom of volition, rights, equality, and reason. It also violently opposes tradition, customs, and religion. What I have been attempting to show is that this understanding of government is utterly opposed to Christianity and my political conservatism is inherently Christian-based.

Thus liberal conservatives, while they may oppose so-called libera liberal policies such as the welfare state, Keynsian economic theory, internationalism, and cultural diversity, they core assumptions are the same as their liberal liberal foes. They believe that freedom, not justice or virtue, is the chief political value. They operate on the understanding they there is a "common good" for society that can be deduced by reason. Thus we get books such as Glenn Becks Arguing with Idiots and its counterparts on the American left. The idea is that those who disagree with us must be stupid. Why else would they disagree with us? I personally believe this is because they have fundamentally different pre-suppositions about how society should be. Thus the ultimate value for both conservative liberals and liberal liberals is the self (or perhaps the nation in the nationalism of the American right, but I believe this is just another self-justification principle; I am and American, America is great, thus I must be great). They also greatly value equality and egalitarianism and both caricature the opposition as "elitist." Both hold to social contract theory and believe the governments are legitimized by a mandate from the people. Thus both follow in the Enlightenment tradition of Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Jefferson opposed the to the tradition of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and Burke.

Why I am not a Libertarian - Part II

What is the Purpose of Governments?

Libertarianism also presents a completely different view of government than the view espoused by Scripture. It holds the to the social contract theory of government formulated by John Locke in the late seventeenth century. This political theory says that governments gain their legitimacy from the people since the first governments were formed when human beings decided to endow certain individuals with powers that would preserve their rights to life, liberty, and property. Therefore, governments are the creation of the people and can be formed or dismissed at the whim of the general will (Locke, of course, believed that the overthrow of governments should not be common, however). Libertarians have a very solid foundation for this theory in the American Declaration of Independence which is essentially an argument from social contract theory.

However, this theory of government is not the same as the one put forth by the Bible:

¹Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. ²Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. ³For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, ⁴for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. ⁵Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. ⁶For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. ⁷Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

(Romans 13:1-7)

According to this famous biblical text about governments, governments are not instituted by the people but by God. Also, the text does not say that the only point of government is to protect people’s rights (that is, freedom of indifference) and in fact rights or any precursor to rights are not even mentioned in the verses. Instead, Paul says that the government is “the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” Thus the purpose of government is not the upholding of rights but the upholding of virtue and justice. St. Paul is writing, contrary to what many libertarians teach, that the government is a benefit to society because it establishes justice. Libertarians see government as a necessary evil and believe that the government should be extremely small in scope.

Some theologians, such as Thomas Aquinas, even taught that the even if the Fall had not occurred, governments would still be a intrinsic part of human society. Even if it did not exist to restrain evil, as evil would not exist among men, it was still necessary to the ordering of society and the production of culture. This was because Aquinas believed that earth would mirror Heaven; just as God is king of Heaven, so a man would be king of society. I do not know that I would subscribe to this belief necessarily, but in contrast to modern theologies I do believe that governments exist for a positive good rather than a negative good. What I mean by this is that in libertarian thinking government is intrinsically bad, but the world would be much worse without them. Thus, governments are an evil, but are the lesser of two evils. I, however, believe in the Pauline view that governments, even ones that are not Christian, are still an integral part of God’s sovereign plan to redeem the world. They exist to propel man to excellence (redemption) not just to maintain indifference.

The reasoning behind my stance lays in a simple question: What is the first command that God gives to mankind? Many will no doubt answer that it was “do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Yet this is incorrect. This command does not come until Adam and Eve are placed in Eden in Genesis chapter two. The first words, recorded in the Bible anyway, that God speaks to his creation man is "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." (Genesis 1:24). God’s primary mission is to be stewards of the earth for God and rule over it. Many have seen in this, and I would agree with them, a cultural mandate. Human beings are mandated to create culture, to “fill the earth and subdue it.” The command is, in short, the pursuit of excellence. Now rule and dominion implies government of some sort or another and, interestingly, despite human sin we are never told in Scriptures that the command is removed. In fact, God reiterates a command similar to this one to Noah after the Flood subsides in Genesis 11. It would seem that, even in human sinfulness, we are commanded to pursue excellence in culture knowing that one day the world will be redeemed and made new by God.

Thus I believe that governments can have a hand in God’s redemptive plan even when they are un-Christian. First they restrain human willfulness and ensure that justice is upheld in society that enables the members of society to safely pursue the activities of their lives. Among these activities is economic, cultural, and intellectual production which aids in the fulfillment of the cultural mandate. This restraining of willfulness also extends internationally where a nation or group of nations can stand against oppressive and evil regimes across the world, whose citizens lack the ability to enact change from within. However, more on this subject will be discussed in part three.

Governments can also create infrastructure to support these activities. They can create a centralized system of roads, highways, ports, waterways, etc. In essence, governments support infrastructure. While it is true that private companies or even states/provinces can also do these things, they will not be centralized, ordered, or uniform. One only needs to look at the difference between state and federal highways to understand this. Before the Eisenhower Highway System built during the 1950s it took far longer to travel across the United States because highways lacked any coherent, uniform order. Libertarians also do not acknowledge that, historically, governments were the first institutions to provide these components of infrastructure. Governments also have the resources to create many public places and spaces. Many of the greatest edifices and parks in the world were the creations of governments. While it is true that private institutions can do this as well they are not available to the public since they rely on profits in order to function. Public museums, parks, and concert halls all help humanity continue to fulfill the cultural mandate by making cultural activities publically accessible. Governments can also create uniform environmental policies. What has completely bewildered me is the hostility that many Christians have toward environmental movements. Part of the cultural mandate is that we are stewards of the earth and that we are to rule the world wisely. This certainly implies conservation of biological diversity, resources, and scenic places. We forget that world is God’s handiwork and that our rule, while pursuing cultural excellence, should not destroy that handiwork. As one GCC college professor has put it, he would hate to have to stand before God one day and have to admit to killing God’s last bear cub. As a caveat, I admit that this must be done according to reason. Many environmentalist groups (e.g. PETA) go too far. We must balance conservation with dominion. There is also ever present dilemma of how to balance economic growth and people’s livelihoods with environmental protection.

Finally, governments can counteract the effects of sin. Libertarians offer an extremely inaccurate picture of the historic development of welfare. They preach that welfare last a late-nineteenth/early twentieth century development that was directly related to Marxism/democratic socialism. In reality, social welfare programs go back centuries to the Middle Ages. It was not uncommon for kings or lords to subsidize poor houses or economic relief for common folk. The great reformer, John Calvin, encouraged the introduction of a welfare system during his time in Geneva. Again, I must offer a caveat. I am by no means advocating the welfare state as it exists in Europe and is beginning to exist in the United States. Such programs are offer cumbersome, hinder economic growth, and make people reliant on the state. However, I think that programs that give people temporary relief and help them develop skills and seek unemployment. Therefore, I do not seek that destruction of American welfare but its reform and limitation that will temporarily aid people and help them regain their feet. I do not believe that any handouts should be long term and should be more in the form of education and career development.

I must offer one final caveat for this entire section. I have said that governments are instituted by God and serve his purpose in the plan of redemption by upholding justice and virtue in society in the forms of law, economics, and education. What I do not mean is that governments are, in and of themselves, redemptive. They may be a tool of redemption but they are not the sources of redemption. This has been a problem throughout the twentieth century; the state plays of the role of God and acts as a redeemer. This has been the case in Nazi, Germany, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia. What happened was that governments and states ceased to see themselves as under God and elevated themselves to the position of God and thereby became idols. The government must always be limited by some higher law so that people understand that governments only have a restrictive role, a role assigned to them by God who is their institutor. What breeds tyrannical governments is when a leader or group of leaders see the state as the mechanism of salvation and not just an aid to it according to the mysteries of God. All the great totalitarian governments did not set out to do evil but rather believed that they were achieving good. However, they became horribly twisted when they made their institutions an absolute and suddenly the end justified the means. Thus government cannot become an idol and when it does the results will be horrifying. Thus two things are important for governments. The first is recognition that there is a higher being and a higher reality above the government so that citizens and politicians realize that the government does not cover the whole of human existence but only part of it. Secondly, which is a practical application of the first, governments need constitutions that limit them to their own sphere of influence so that they do not cross into other spheres (such as the Church of family) and thus become tyrannical. More of this will be said in the next section.

What I am Not a Libertarian - Part I

Introduction

One of the biggest shocks that I had coming to Grove City College (and besides the lack of social skills there is little about GCC that is shocking) was the proliferation of libertarianism on the campus. One of the first classes I took for my first semester was Foundations of Economics, which I like to refer to as “Libertarianism 101.” In it my professor taught that libertarianism was, at the very least, the logical economic/political system per Scripture. He bordered on saying that anything other than laissez faire capitalism and libertarian politics was unbiblical and for about a year I struggled with this point of view. Yet in the fall of my sophomore year I took another class, Early Modern Europe, which would equally shock my economic and political thinking. Although the professor of that class was not the most endearing teacher I have had during my college experience, I found the lectures very interesting. Often we in the twenty-first century view the past through our contemporary worldviews which leads to anachronisms in our historical knowledge. What Early Modern Europe did for me was to understand that the past was “another country.” What I mean is that their ways of thinking, pre-French Revolution, were completely antithetical to our modern sensibilities.

It also gave me a large magazine of ammunition against libertarianism. The pre-modern era was fundamentally a far more Christian era that the modern one. Being a historian, and a Christian, I was quite prepared to accept that people in the past actually had something sensible to say about the way human affairs should be ordered. One of the ironies of libertarianism is that this political philosophy that proclaims to be antithetical to Marxism in fact embraces a Marxist view of history; contempt for elites and a belief that power is the chief motivator in history. By the time I took Mirco Economics in Spring 2009, “Libertarianism 102,” I had developed a vehemently anti-libertarian political philosophy. The reason was that I understood that the chief axioms of libertarianism (hyper-free markets, individual rights, and limited government) were completely foreign to anyone living pre-1776. They were, in fact, creations of the Enlightenment, which was notoriously secular and rationalistic. Therefore, the second great irony is that while Christian libertarians preach libertarianism as a logical conclusion of Christian theology, what they are in fact preaching is a system of thought that was in actuality produced by the anti-Christian European Enlightenment. Below I was specifically record why I reject libertarianism in favor of classical conservatism.

What is Freedom?

Freedom seems to be a word that is thrown around flippantly, especially at Grove City, without any real definition given. What exactly is freedom? When I questioned my political science professor on this last semester I did not get a clear answer. Where I did get an answer was in George Wiegel’s book The Cube and the Cathedral for my political science book review. Weigel, an American Catholic theologian, argues that in Western history there have been two understandings of history. The first “freedom for excellence” had its origins in Classical Greek philosophy and was formally born in the writings of Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages. “Freedom for excellence” argues that freedom is foundational to human nature and the fulfillment of the human life because it is one of the chief components of the imago dei (image of God). As human beings are made in God’s image, and God is a free Being, humans have some degree of freedom. Freedom was inherent in the Garden of Eden where God gave Man the ability to choose to serve Him willingly by not eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil or to rebel against Him by eating of the fruit and indulging in the service of the self. Man, unfortunately, chose the latter. Yet freedom still important to human being because, though the imago dei was corrupted by the Fall it was not destroyed. Moreover, Christ promises us Christian freedom whereby we will be free of the slavery of sin and once again freely chose God as a result of the grace of the cross.

Therefore, freedom for excellence is freedom of conscience. Each individual should be free to pursue the “good life” – which is the excellent or righteous life. The caveat is that this freedom is not boundless. It is fenced in by morality. The individual is not free to indulge in actions that pervert society and hinder other people’s pursuit of the good life. Freedom is by necessity not simply about individual about society as well. The good life involves helping society by striving to make it better. This is because man is, according to Aristotle, “a political animal” – i.e. finding human fulfillment in human society. Society and culture are creations of God, I believe. Thus, the individual is free so long as his or her actions are for the benefit of society. I am free to do what I wish and believe what I will per my conscience as long as it is pursuing the “good life.”

The other type of freedom that Weigel identifies is “freedom of indifference.” This concept of freedom has its origins in another Christian thinker, William of Ockham. While Ockham by no means subscribed to such a concept about freedom, his philosophical movement, nominalism, would greatly influence its conception later on. Ockham outright rejected universal absolutes and claimed that only particulars of the human mind existed. Therefore, things such as the pursuit of the good, life were not universal to man by particular to each individual and his relationship to God. What this thinking did was to shift an emphasis away from God and his universal laws and toward the genius of the individual. While Ockham and his followers by no means moved away Christianity, they shifted the focus of Christianity from beginning first with God and moving down to individuals to individuals first moving up toward God. Essentially, it would emphasize the genius of the individual, an increasingly theme in Western thought from the Renaissance on. The individual would become especially important in the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The culmination of this thinking would be Nietzsche, Sartre, and the post-moderns. Freidrich Nietzsche was a late nineteenth German philosophy who has been called the harbinger of both nihilism and post-modernism. He taught that the death of God brought the death of absolutes, such as truth and morality. Humans were thus radically free. The expression of humanity was thus not found in the pursuit of excellence but in human volition. Human beings find fulfillment through free action and creating their own truths and meaning. Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre writing in the mid-twentieth century would also highlight radical volition as the defining characteristic of human beings. The way to human meaning lay in the exercising of human freedom. Likewise, the ultra-democratic post-moderns also teach that the chief concern of humanity is the construction of individual narratives and the deconstruction of established power narratives. If there is one unifying theme of modern philosophy, therefore, it was radical freedom. Thus we have freedom of indifference; individuals having a veritable right to pursue their own meaning, their own truth, and their own happiness regardless of what anyone (especially the damnable elites) have to say. Freedom is no longer seen as a means to an end but an end in itself.

Of the two version of freedom, libertarians undoubtedly adhere to the second. What I constantly hear is that elites, especially government, have absolutely no business in bounded human freedom, so long as the freedom of other individuals is not interfered with (say, by the taking of life or property). The chief virtue in libertarian thought is that the individual is free to find his own way in life regardless of whether it is self-destructive (say, narcotic) or culturally corruptive (say, pornographic). This is completely and utterly antithetical to the Christian believe that the chief end of man is not the exercise of volition but the enjoyment and pursuit of God.

If You are Putting Your Faith in the New Year, You May Want to Think Again

As the ball dropped in New York City at 12:00 AM on New Year’s Day, a rather plastic-looking Dick Clark wished everyone a Happy New Year and assured us that 2010 will be a good new year. Although 2009 hadn’t been the greatest of years with a declining economy and a string of terrorist attacks near the year’s end, Dick Clark assured us of a brighter 365 days ahead. Similar calls were proclaim elsewhere on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Optimists pointed what they saw as rising national economy, some even predicting a “mini-boom” with growth rates of 4-5%. Even President Obama’s slow but steadily declining approval rating shot back up to almost 50%. As we said good-bye to 2009 and welcomed 2010 we blindly have placed our hope in the future. Americans have bought the ma

Thus, throughout the last decade Americans aggressively consumed in a vain attempt to define themselves and bring themselves happiness. This caused Americans to borrow increasing amounts of credit in other to fuel their spiraling consumption. This includes federal and state governments that sought to bring political salvation to Americans through entitlement programs. In both private and public cases, there was a sense that we could spend our way to salvation. If only we threw enough money at our problems (poverty, ignorance, unhappiness) they would all go away. However, this over-consumption fueled a credit crisis. This first became evident when the housing bubble burst in 2007. The Feds had reduced interest rates for banks encouraging the banks to lend out loans to people who couldn’t afford them. Cheap loans fueled over-production in the housing industry. However, when it became apparent that people could not meet the payment on their loans, people stopped buying up houses and the housing market crashed. This caused a downturn in the economy which revealed serious over-extension in credit and caused the collapse of several business scams, notably Bernard Madoff’s billion-dollar Ponzi scheme. This caused a full-on market failure in which stocks and economic growth dropped precipitously and unemployment rose. Yet, rather than being chastened by our greedy-consumption and over-spending, our government, in bipartisan action, decided to throw more money at the problem (at the tune of about $700,000,000,000 by Bush and Obama each).

In further evidence that Americans have not taken serious the lessons learned from 2009, wall-street and government economists proclaimed economic recovery because Americans were spending more again. So Americans re-engaging in the same self-destructive behavior that caused this depression and this is seen as a positive turn of events? It is for this reason that I put no faith in free markets beyond their pragmatic value. The free market is just a tool and, like all tools, it must be used wisely. Our consumption must be chastened by commitment to a set of values beyond ourselves (I believe religious values to be the best solution, namely because I believe they are on the only legitimate values that exist. But that is another matter entirely). Yet Americans in general have not learned with lesson and perhaps are not likely to learn it. That is why I put not hope in 2010; Americans will merely resort back to the same behavior as they did last decade. The stimulus has “saved” our economy by keep it artificially afloat but at the expense of a massive expansion in the federal deficit. Unfortunately, the government does not procure its funds out of thin air; it gets funds through taxation. Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration are suggesting that we need new taxes to curb the federal deficit. They blame the deficit, in part, on tax cuts during the Bush administration. But wait they fail to realize (perhaps it has only dawned on you a year into his presidency that Obama lacks any semblance of economic sense) is that tax cuts ensure national prosperity which leads to higher revenues in the future. However, tax cuts are meant to coincide with temporary spending cuts in order to avoid an increasing deficit. The Bush administration cut taxes but without reducing spending and thus increased the deficit. High spending, not high tax cuts, is responsible for our nation’s mounting debt.

What Obama fails to understand is that raising taxes on an economic that is still on shaky ground will breed disaster. All of bailout money that was given out by the government in 2009 will simply be re-collected by the government in 2010. To make matters worse, much of this tax money will be exacted from businesses that remained sound during the financial crisis. Essentially, it will be the honest and stable businesses that will end up footing the bailout for the dishonest and poorly run companies that nearly collapsed during the economic downturn. Thus all the bailouts will really have done is delayed the inevitable. New taxes will hamper the growth of our economy which is in the process of recovery, which will be much higher than the $1.4 trillion given out in bailouts in the last year of Bush and the first year of Obama due to entitlement programs that are spiraling out of fiscal control (social security, Medicare, Medicaid) and an entitlement program that will spiral out of fiscal control (ObamaCare). If you really believe that the government is going to run ObamaCare in a fiscally responsible manner, please remember “Cash for Clunkers” and social security which were likewise suppose to be fiscally sound. If Obama and the Democrats get their way with Health Care “reform” and tax hikes, you will most definitely want to revise your hopeful stance on 2010.

ntra that 2010 will see a reversal of American fortunes. Yeah, don’t bet on it.

One Year of Obama Foreign Policy

Very good piece. While I disagree with the overall neo-conservative tone of this article (i.e. that America should spread democracy all around the world) I agree with Kagan that America needs to be a pillar of justice in the world, opposed to tyrants and evil. Obama simply isn't doing this by making nice with people like Hugo Chavez, Hu Jintao, and Vladimir Putin.

In other notes, since I got Windows 7 Enterprise I have been unable to paste stuff from Word documents or OneNote. Since I typically write my blog posts in either of these formats first, I haven't posted a blog since before finals last semester as they won't copy. Hopefully with some help (Jason?) I can get back to posting more blogs.

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2010%20-%20JanFeb/full-Kagan-JF-2010.html