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Real Enemy, Real Freedom
Why is America eroding? Why does it seem like we can’t get “unstuck” from the inevitable cycle of decline? I believe it has to do with what we might not yet identify as the real enemy of our Republic. The truth might be uncomfortable. And what we might fail to remember is real freedom.
Os Guinness’s 2012 book, A Free People’s Suicide, takes St. Augustine’s basis for politics as the starting point for freedom. Augustine suggested “loved things held in common” are the basis of freedom. Guinness goes one step more with the saint. We may use loved things held in common to diagnose the health of our nation.
What do we hold in common? Is it enough to sustain our freedom? Or is our freedom eroding because our loved things held in common have been debased—or are vanishing?
When a free people “love things held in common,” they gain enriched, unified identity. This higher way of life spelled the doom of lesser things, like tribalism—identity politics—in which nothing is loved or held in common.
Victor Davis Hanson notes, historically “ancient tribal loyalties slowly eroded” in the face of the onset of freedom and free citizens. “City-states of stationary peoples insisted on demarcated borders. Inside them, unique laws, customs, and traditions for generations united the citizenry, made them distinct from their neighbors, and ensured civic solidarity and security.” The key, therefore, to “loved things held in common” are the customs and traditions that unite a people and empower them to live in harmony. Customs, therefore, have moral content.
American customs and the traditional morality of the West more generally has certainly eroded.
Os Guinness presents his view on three enemies that erode freedom. First, the external menace of superior military forces, of course. Invaders can alter a society overnight. (Might we add in pandemics?) His third menace is time. Guinness quotes Abraham Lincoln: “The silent artilleries of time are ruining the ramparts of the republic.” I focus on his second enemy to freedom, “the corruption of customs,” an observation by Greek historian Polybius.
Customs, tradition—those loved things held in common that give center, identity—are threatened by corruption. The corruption of custom, in turn, erodes freedom. Now, customs include a lot of things, but surely the heart of it is the moral code that does two things. First, it answers How ought we to live? Our precious traditions reveal the purpose of human life and human death and the meaning of human existence. Religion most especially gives these answers and is marginalized in the public square.
The second thing moral tradition does, based upon the first, is enable a pluralist society to live in harmony and peace. This is not trivial. I think Jordan Peterson said once that tradition keeps each individual from needing to reinvent the wheel for how one ought to live. Morality sustains a free society. This is not trivial. Only a virtuous people has the capacity to hold on to freedom.
The greatest sustainer of freedom is custom and its inherent moral guidance for how we ought to live. If freedom is eroding, then our customs have eroded. And if our customs have eroded, so has our moral compass. And if moral guidance has decayed, then we must expect deeper questions of the purpose of human existence to go unsatisfied. We expect disputes over bioethics. We expect rises in suicide, abortion, euthanasia, mental illness, and crime. These are all the surface symptoms of a dying heart. Our “loved things held in common” are vanishing or debased.
But what has caused this? What exactly has eroded freedom? The answer is the paradox of freedom itself. It is a cautionary—and uncomfortable—tale. Os Guinness points out that the greatest enemy of freedom—is freedom.
The deepest level of analysis here is on the moral and spiritual dimension. Guinness is not inventing the idea that freedom is its own enemy. This paradox has long been recognized.
Victor Davis Hanson reminds us that “Ancient authors from Plato and Aristotle to Petronius and Tacitus have suggested that affluence combined with leisure paradoxically creates a laxity that leads to the kind of societal and institutional disintegration we are currently seeing.”
Guinness explains that freedom requires not only ordering in the political sense, but the ordering of the heart, starting with self-restraint or self-discipline. Now there is self-restraint imposed by political (i.e., governmental, police, legal) forces from the outside. This is the inferior type. The superior type, moral self-restraint, is a virtue that cannot be legislated or coerced. It is won as a type of spiritual victory. It is won from within by personal effort. Speaking more deeply, self-control is gifted by divine grace in response to our effort.
These matters indeed trade in the philosophical and religious. Those are two areas that are dissolved or debased among our “loved things held in common.”
The heart of the freedom paradox is this: It is precisely moral self-restraint that becomes endangered when freedom flourishes. This is the Paradox of Freedom. This ties into “the corruption of customs” that our ancient fathers warn is the vulnerability born from prosperity, affluence, luxury, inflamed desires, and political and financial power.
The Paradox of Freedom is that freedom undermines itself as it moves away from moral self-restraint, down to permissiveness, and finally nose dives into rank licentiousness. We may recognize rank licentiousness in the actions of others. It is easy to criticize. If we are honest, we recognize it in the tendencies and inclinations of our own hearts.
Perhaps that which we fail or refuse to identify as the real enemy of our Republic is entertainment, indulgence, luxury, and out-of-control desires. That cultural observer of early America, Alexis de Tocqueville, was afraid government dependency would result in the perpetual adolescence of its citizens. He feared adult infants would be incapable of self-reliance. Of course, he was right. If you make more money staying home on the government dole, why work? This is the weakening of moral resolve. In like fashion, perhaps we have become a nation with the moral maturity of toddlers. The entertainment-luxury version might be: If I get to binge-watch shows (or porn), eat whatever I want, and buy everything on credit, why live differently?
I said the truth might be uncomfortable.
Why live differently? Because corruption of customs erodes freedom. And this corruption is fundamentally a corruption and decay of resolve that occurs in the human heart. As an effect, corruption of the heart spells doom for collective civic freedoms in physical space. During the many unpleasant affairs of 2020-21, we have seen the rapid advancement in our physical spaces what has already necrotized in our collective hearts for decades.
We have even gotten to the point of not being able to agree on basic facts of a public event—even if the entire event is captured on video. This disagreement over facts and not just interpretations should alarm us. Our five senses are no longer in touch with reality, and that spells doom. Heraclitus observed long ago, however, that “Eyes and ears are terrible witnesses for those with a barbarian soul.” Again, decay in the heart is the issue.
All this demands that we revisit what freedom means in the first place.
I like Guinness’s definition of freedom: “Freedom is not the liberty to do what you like; freedom is the power to do what you ought.” Freedom is not the liberty to stream porn or purchase brand-name handbags or buy pricey vehicles we do not need or stay home from work on excess welfare. Those are symptoms of freedom eroding. And notice, liberty to do what you want just might be a form of slavery. Slavery to compulsive behaviors, debt masters, social image, depression, and so on.
Rather, real freedom is the power to live as a human being ought to live. Freedom is a moral way of life. It calls us to divine summits of what it means to be human. Freedom is costly first of all in the personal struggle to live rightly. Only a virtuous people has the capacity to keep the Republic.
We must reconnect with our historic customs. Our religious traditions and historic American civic responsibilities guide us into how we ought to live. It is easy to say that person on the Blue Team is the enemy of the Republic. It is easy to vilify our neighbor as the problem. But the moral decay of the heart is the deeper enemy of the Republic. And all of us are culpable. I certainly am. Every time I lie or cheat or steal or lust in thought, word, or deed, I am the enemy of freedom. My participation in the corruption of customs is the real enemy of own and my neighbor’s freedom.
And just like I can, that member of the Blue or Red Team over there can repent and take up the mantle of our customs once again. Hearts can change, thank God. That is good news. We are each of us culpable, and that means we are responsible. Responsible means we have agency. We have the innate power of choice. We can choose to change wherever we find ourselves in life. We alone oversee our speech and behavior. We alone can turn the dial of our own thoughts. We alone can labor to discipline our sinful passions.
We alone are free in the soul. Real freedom is the power to do what you ought.
You might ask, How does this translate into those who refuse to live properly? How do I change or influence those who refuse to live as they ought? Well, first things first. We must inventory our own hearts to have the capacity to deal with others rightly. Our participation in moral customs is, frankly, nothing short of a form of spiritual enlightenment. It clarifies what public or civic action to take with others. An ascetic of the Orthodox Church put the case succinctly: “Acquire the Spirit of peace, and a thousand souls around you will be saved.” (St. Seraphim of Sarov)
So let us set aside the luxuries and indulgences we know drag us down and drown us in a sea of corruption. Let us steel our resolve and renew the highest loves we must hold in common for the survival of our Republic.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
It’s fundamental. The people have lost power to the point they don’t know they have any. Term limits would further reduce the people’s voice (power). Term limits are not the answer. It’s one of those things that sounds really good, but a big step the wrong way. The need or desire for term limits is a symptom of one of two things. One is the electorate is ignorant and/or doesn’t care that they have poor representation. Two is the minority party thinks it will give them an edge or a change in a particular location. Either way, the fix is at the local level if the intent is to restore and maintain a true republic.
Just my wild ideas by the way. I feel fairly strong in this particular one, but I am somewhat short of omniscient.
I appreciate you interacting with my argument. I agree about our laws doing the yoeman’s work when not enough of us have attained virtue such that we are reliable by dint of our virtue. I might suggest law is a form of moral guidance as well as deterrence.
Thank you for your thoughtful remarks.
Explain the naturalist fallacy. :-)
As does much of our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Great article. There is one thing that needs emphasis. The top of the culture, political system, economy is not democratic unless rooted in and controlled by the bottom. The original system had a tiny top, created because the world is dangerous and aggressive so we needed national defense, border control and a few minor items that can only be common to all and run by the top. The rest was rooted in the bottom, politics, business, religion, culture, nationality, language. Even alien hostile cultures could work matters out when necessary with time because they lived mostly apart and ran their own matters independently of each other because government was not at the center of their lives. Citizens ran their own schools, policed their own neighborhoods, ran their own business and lived their own lives independently of government. Even giant business began locally then grew but remained rooted and didn’t need the government to compete, and had to compete to survive. It gradually changed but the key was the power of the center. Not the elected representatives who were mostly self interested, diverse, inefficient often corrupt, but had to pay attention to voters. That changed as the bureaucracy grew and gradually became their own economy and political system, divorced from citizens in thousands of communities who they needed only to pay taxes and fund whatever they choose to do to promote their own interests. Is there any way to return to bottom up? We could leave the Federal bureaucracy but would still be stuck with the State’s and local bureaucracy that are not under control either. Their ineptitude was why we moved matters to the center. Trump seemed to understand this and is why he was seen as such a fundamental threat. We may have to just split off but would have to eliminate most of state and local government as well.
For me, an extension of the discussion here will be potentially helpful since I am not agreeing with the way the word “natural” is being used by either of you, I think. My thinking is that the “natural man”, particularly of the male variety, is subject to being driven by “sinful passions, inordinate desires, and so on”. The unique human capacity to think rationally then and coupled with a religious inclination to belief in a supreme being mitigates man’s animalistic behaviors.
I agree that men are naturally promiscuous but I’m not familiar with the naturalist fallacy term.
@henrycastaigne @tikhonolmstead
Not sure how you are looking at this. Without the Constitution and Bill of Rights, there would be no rights of the people or states. It would be might makes right and might alone.
I think most of the disagreement with that 2nd statement would come from conservatives or Natural Rights types, but for the sake of the current argument I don’t think that matters.
But the Constitution protects rights by limiting the power of the people to choose. It doesn’t let us pass ex post facto laws or bills of attainder. It doesn’t let us vote for non-natives as President. It doesn’t let us impose cruel and arbitrary punishments. It doesn’t allow us to elect teenagers to Congress. Because it restricts the power of the people to choose, it kept our revolution from ending up like the French Revolution. It restricts our power to elect Members of Congress for life, or make offices hereditary. The whole system of checks and balances limits the power of the people to choose.
Additional term limits for Congress beyond those we already have are just a minor extension of the usurpations of our power that are already baked into the Constitution.
Kinda sorta. Some of the rights limiting also protect other rights. If we pause and think about it, every elected official has a term limit. Why cannot the people decide when to impose it? Why add more laws or regulations when we have one that gives us the right to do as we please in regard to representative terms. Imposing an automatic one is a lazy temporary fix that has the potential to do more harm than good.
This can be done with an Amendment to the Constitution just as the changes to the voting process in the states proposed by Democrats in HR1 can. I would rather repeal the 16th and 17th Amendments.
This part made me giggle. (See: tax increase, retroactive)
According to Wikipedia, I made the appeal to nature argument. Sorry for the confusion.
Humans are weird because while they do possess a nature, their reason and morality deeply inform its expression.
Why add more laws or regulation? To limit the power of our government to do us harm. That’s what more stringent Congressional term limits would do. Right now I have no ability to vote Nancy Pelosi out, yet she uses the power of long-term incumbency to wield outsized influence over other members of Congress and do us great harm. She has been in office since 1987. If we limited members of Congress to, say, a maximum of 20 years of service, that would give somewhat more equal representation to all congressional districts in the United States, and limit the power of one “safe” Democratic district to rule us all.
You’re in good company as I’ve heard some very intelligent people voice approval of term limits across the board and perhaps you are one of them. As much as I disagree with the voters of California’s 12th District I would rather they simply disagree with me than join together and take away the choice I now have. I’m sure her opponents have used her tenure as best they can against her and yet she still gets ELECTED. Here’s a question. If any politician is for term limits, what’s the catch? If term limits work, why not have term limits all over the place and stop all these successful people from getting ahead? Or why should anyone have to flip burgers for more than a year, so let’s add a time limit on that too? Okay, that last one might be a stretch, but is it? Is anything a stretch anymore? Maybe we should start a term limit discussion and we can wander further down the road.
Of course. I’ve seen newspaper editors write, “Sure, Congressman X votes the wrong way on every issue we care about, but he brings home the bacon to our district. So we endorse Congressman X.”
It’s the power of incumbency that makes it work that way.
This ignores/discounts the enormous structural advantage the incumbents in the House and Senate congressional parties have created for their own benefit, protecting their incumbency against the voters of each congressional district (House) and state (Senate).
These neither are an argument for implementing a cure when prevention would do a better job. Not to mention, the big what if. What if two highly intelligent and useful, do the right thing every time people like @thereticulator and @cliffordbrown are voted into their respective districts or states and they REPRESENT in fine fashion?
Term limits would be fine if the people were casting ballots on every issue and the representative was merely a button pusher. But we need intelligent people that can understand the people they represent and act accordingly. Being fortunate enough to find one of these rare and elusive creatures, only to have them booted by a term limit is not very republic-like.
Those intelligent people who understand they people they represent and act accordingly are precisely the problem. They take unwarranted advantage of the rest of us who don’t live in their districts.
I might write an entire post on this issue. The natural and unnatural free will distinction is not an appeal to nature exactly, more like a distinction between a will that is working and a will that is in some state of disrepair.
If I take my Toyota Corolla on the 1/4 mile track and run it into the ground trying to race it against gassers, and it needs repairs, I’ve misused the car according to its design or purpose—-or nature. If this is an appeal to nature, I can’t see it as a fallacious appeal any more than it’s a fallacy to say my Corolla is not a 1/4 mile gasser.
Good points though. It merits more consideration maybe in a dedicated post. There is an issue of starting points and worldview embedded in the perspectives on it. Thanks for interacting with my argument.
Thank you for saying my article was great. I agree the top and bottom of every hierarchy is connected and reciprocal.
There’s a problem with the ambiguity in the word “freedom,” I think. One meaning is freedom from external constraint. Another meaning, the Christian meaning, is freedom from the desire to sin. These are very, very different things. It is an unfortunate poverty of language.
The language might be sufficient – I don’t know. The problem might be our conflation to the point all the words we have for it are indistinguishable.
Liberty vs Freedom vs Libertine. Liberty and Libertine might be the proper words for permissiveness (free to do whatever you want, boundary-less).
Freedom may be more about the opposite of enslavement. As a slave to sin, the proper law feels burdensome and restrictive. But free from sin (freedom in Christ), I don’t see the law as so restrictive. I am not restricted by the laws around sexual morality because my desire or mind recognize the wisdom in them. Whatever it is, monogamy is not burdensome to me.
On the other hand, speeding laws are incredibly burdensome to me because I have not been convinced of the wisdom in them in most cases. My lack of a transformed mind makes speeding laws difficult to abide by and I feel trapped.
@DougKimball
Doug, you said, “I don’t buy the idea that we have collectively gone wicked. But it isn’t likely that we’ve become more virtuous either. There are just more of us around.”
I agree with you.
I do not claim we have collectively gone wicked. Or that we are more wicked now than at any previous time. I personally do not believe that. It is a tempting idea as an explanation out of simplicity, but I think it ultimately has no basis.
What I am claiming—rather, I am standing on the shoulders of better men to advance their claim in my own humble attempt—is that our moral customs have been corrupted and affects our ability to retain freedom, both personal and civic. That is a different and distinct claim than we’ve collectively gone wicked.