I’m trying to deal with a problem I feel to be at the foundation of a body of thought which I generally admire — libertarianism of the Old Right and Rothbardian sort. On the whole, my attitude is similar to my attitude towards Jamesian pragmatism. For a discussion of that attitude, see my earlier articles which are, largely, reviews of Walter J. Freeman’s How Brains Make Up Their Minds: Is Christian Morality a Natural Morality and Pragmatism and Thomistic Existentialism. In the second of those articles, I state:
I consider myself a Thomistic existentialist and most certainly not a pragmatist, though I think that pragmatist methods are the same as the ‘first-stage’ methods of Thomistic existentialism. I’ve criticized pragmatists, even those that I admire — such as William James or the brain-scientist Gerald Edelman because of the inadequacy of a pure pragmatist approach to understanding the universe. Their bottom-up approach is the proper ‘first-stage’ to understanding Creation but they refuse to admit it works only if there is a world to meet them, a world in all its unity, coherence, and completeness.
Libertarians are not really homogeneous in their doctrines, though it would seem to me that they have a shared belief in something called ‘liberty’ which is alleged to be a metaphysical right of man. Liberty is more than just a sum of particular freedoms; it’s a general freedom from past repressions which are assumed representative of the ways in which human beings can be enslaved if only partially. Libertarian versions of liberty seem, by a naive analysis of historical timing, to be founded upon what I’d call a semi-metaphysical principle sufficient to ground their pessimistic attitude towards government, which attitude seems to be a reaction against the strange monsters which arose in early efforts of predators and idealists and realists and simple folk to develop governments suited to the needs of modern complex societies.
Obviously, I’m closer to the views of Michael Oakeshotte than to those of Ludwig von Mises. Oakeshotte was one of the very few true conservative intellectuals in the 20th century. Amongst his other peculiarities, he considered the claims of the Declaration of Independence to be mere silliness, the stuff of delusions. It wasn’t the case that Oakeshotte had no principles and no respect for rights of some substantial sort. It was the case that he grounded his beloved Englishman’s freedoms in flesh-and-blood, dirt, and history.
History is an interesting part of the puzzle. I believe that human history is a part of the story God is telling which we know as the world which I define as the universe viewed in light of God’s purposes.
I can’t take seriously many claims about human needs or rights unless they can be seen in concrete men and in human history. This is a problem to be sure since history, as Lord Acton noted sadly, seems to be greatly influenced by evil men. Some of my recent efforts are directed towards writing a human version of God’s story in which those gangsters also play a role. I’m learning, as a child-like author, to imitate my Maker as He goes about His tasks in Creation. The actions of those evil men, some of them prominent in recent American history, are mildly described as despicable, but this is God’s world, God’s story. The Almighty did what He did and we should try to understand what He did and not what we imagine He should have done.
For now, it’s most important that I claim man is an empirical being in an empirical world. Again I don’t ‘reduce’ man and his world to a simple empiricist chaos, but there is much work needed to be done before we can have a modern Christian view with the contextual explanatory power of the view St. Augustine developed 1500 years ago, a view which largely held until the early modern period and a view I’ll partly — and only partly — revive as part of my effort to contribute to a modern Christian understanding of Creation.
We can make all the claims we wish about the desirability of liberty for men but those claims will be plausible only if the human race is composed predominately of those who wish liberty and can handle it. In fact, a metaphysical grounding of liberty, such as that read into Jefferson’s claims, would require any true human being to be — at least in potential — as much a lover of liberty as that redheaded Virginian himself.
In fact, I think what I have to say wouldn’t have surprised Murray Rothbard of libertarian fame or Albert Jay Nock of the Old Right at all, though they might have differed to some extent or other with my conclusion: the typical human being doesn’t seem made for life in a libertarian society. In effect, most human beings are more concerned about safety and comfort rather than liberty for themselves or their children. There is also a small group of human beings who aren’t suited for that life of ‘radical’ liberty because they have no respect for the liberty of others. They like to accumulate wealth and power.
Perhaps we human beings aren’t made of just a producer class and a predator class as Thomas Jefferson taught. Maybe there is another vaguer class of truly sheep-like creatures who might be predatory in a cowardly way or productive in a submissive way but aren’t about to show any initiative in pursuing good or evil goals. And maybe we’re all partly made of predator and partly of producer and partly of sheep-like creatures. Maybe many of the producers and even many of the predators wish to live in political communities which provide them with certain sorts of structures for their good or bad activities.
In any case, producers are only a part of the human race or — more plausibly — part of each of us. I’ll assume the simple case for now, that each of us is predominately of one type: producer or predator or sheep and there is likely a good amount of truth in that assumption at least with respect to our particular concrete beings as they develop in specific contexts. At the end of this article, I’ll point towards some work I’m trying to do, work which might give some understanding of human nature in light of all of our best knowledge in all the various fields of human thought and practice. I’ll return to the ultimately inadequate but interesting suggestion of Jefferson that we are producers or predators. (I’m sure he knew he was oversimplifying and knew well that was often a mistake to usefully make on the way to a greater truth.)
We have to realize it likely that only a part of the producer class is made of those who wish liberty. Much productive work can be done, if less efficiently, under conditions of political authoritarianism of some sort and that’s good enough for some tradesmen and doctors and even ambitious entrepreneurs. In any case, there are highly productive individuals, those who can take some initiative, who seem comfortable compromising their liberty and that of their fellow-citizens so long as they can do their work in a well-ordered society.
There’s much uncertainty in all of this. We don’t know if those who act the roles of predators are truly different from us or whether they might be strictly us responding to different opportunities, to different environmental conditions in general. This is to say, I don’t know if we can better understand men by thinking in terms of well-differentiated classes or in terms of a line drawn through the soul of each of us. Let’s slide by that problem for now. After all, this is a preliminary work directed towards the long-term goal of understanding men in the context of politics.
What about the sheep? Recent research have shown, at least for mice, lack of proper nurturing by the mother will leave her youngsters as anxiety-ridden. Likely it would be that we are similar — lack of proper nurturing by a mother would leave her children to grow into cowardly, anxiety-ridden adults who would consequently be passive, sheep to some lesser or greater degree. There are undoubtedly other ways a fearful human being could be produced even if his genetic code allowed for better character traits.
Speculations upon speculations upon…
In any case, I don’t present this argument as one who believes in liberty as a plausible goal for human beings. I’m not complaining that men don’t value liberty however much they might claim such when they wish to gain a particular freedom, such as that of watching trashy movies. I present this argument as one who believes human beings are what they are and that can only be determined by empirical evidence, not all of it of the sort to be tested in the laboratory. In fact, much of what I’m discussing has to be evaluated on the historical record as well as by observations of behavior in town government, at the church picnic, in the malls and the stands of professional sports stadiums, on the battlefield, in the various workplaces, and on the playground.
What I can say for sure is that there is plenty of strong but not absolutely convincing evidence that only a minority of human beings have the character attributes suited to the dangerous life of liberty, if such a life were possible as more than an idiosyncratic existence on the edge of structured human communities, including one or more political communities. More frighteningly, most men seem to have little concern for any of the specific freedoms necessary for any sort of republican form of government. This is almost a commonplace observation, as we could learn from two serious observers of Americans during the same period early in the life of the American Republic:
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Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote an introduction for the first edition of The Scarlett Letter in which he confessed to feeling unmanned when working as a government employee in the customs house in Salem, circa 1850. Hawthorne also stated a belief that Americans, in those days when we imagine such creatures as rugged individualists, wished to sell back their liberty in return for promises of financial security — a government job was often sufficient in those days before modern welfare systems. Hawthorne was forced to believe the United States had become a republic advocating personal liberty only because of a small group of brave and dedicated men.
[According to Gore Vidal, see his historical novel Burr, Aaron Burr admitted that the Founding Fathers, some at least, were lawyers trying to create a country in which lawyers would prosper. I believe the best interpretation of history usually lies between idealistic and cynical understandings. In the period 1770-1800, there might well have a been a period when the idealists were closer to the truth — the plutocratic families which had dominated colonial times had been at least partially pushed aside and men who were at least courageous and energetic came into power and held it for a generation against the growing numbers of opportunistic scoundrels.]
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Tocqueville, circa 1838, published Democracy in America in which he tried hard to be optimistic about what might be called the ‘American experiment’ but was forced to admit Americans held their mainstream opinions to an extent that they could ignore facts in conflict with those opinions, not even seeming to realize their views were contradicted by the real world around them. He predicted Americans would eventually create a new type of country for which he had no words but we might call it a benevolent totalitarian country, one formed by the herd itself and not by those “great men on horseback” who are so influential in history when the circumstances are right. In 1950, Ray Bradbury published Fahrenheit 451 which explored the possibility that television would provide the technology for completing this process, allowing the herd and maybe most leaders to make a still greater effort to ignore reality, an effort which would lead to a true disaster — the large-scale destruction of much of Western Civilization capped by a nuclear war in his particular tale.
There is much truth in libertarian criticisms of the modern state, particularly in the words of those such as Nock and Rothbard who honestly describe the events and structures of our modern states in terms that at least implicitly admit that many men, probably most, seek security and companionship of the sort not much consistent with radical principles of individualism or even of more modest forms of political freedoms based upon intermediary institutions. In fact, there will always be those who are willing to betray family or church, perhaps for reasons we should sympathize with, and cooperate with the central powers who offer short-term relief in return for our allegiance.
Is this lack of respect for our own liberty a matter of bad formation? That would raise the question as to the better formation of masses of men and such a question would then lead to the sorts of political solutions denied by many, probably most, libertarians. That is, they might be tempted — against their better natures — to argue, essentially, for the formation of a new people to replace the inadequate people formed by nature. In my opinion, we should be heading towards an understanding of political institutions in which power is properly distributed. In fact, power should be jealously held at the highest level at which it can be morally and safely exercised, and no higher. And that level is determined by human nature and by the level of development of their political understanding and skills in at that time.
I often quote the historian Carroll Quigley: “Truth unfolds in time through a communal processes.” What’s important is to see the communal nature of even our better understandings of Creation, including we human beings who are part of it. In fact, this emerging truth isn’t merely abstract knowledge to be recorded in the works of philosophers and historians and chemists. It’s a truth in the fullest sense. Things are true and truth is thing-like. That is, truth is manifested in things and their relationships, including our political and economic and social and spiritual relationships with other human beings.
We can coherently describe human beings only as organisms, biological entities — living things, whose higher attributes and desires are potential rather than in their DNA or their abstract principles. In Thomistic terms, we should intend to a better state of being. It’s hard to imagine how this process could even proceed in a true individual given the vast amount of formation necessary. Again: “The truth unfolds in time through communal processes.” We are, in truth, members of communities and all of those communities have political aspects. Our own human beings are true but reach a level of higher truth when we cooperate with that unfolding of truth which is a communal process, one form of which is a political process.
There are most certainly political aspects to the processes by which all human beings form themselves. We see these political aspects even as early as those playground days when one energetic or charismatic fellow decides if it’ll be baseball or soccer today. This might give us a hint about the nature of the political process — politically inclined men might have a calling of sorts to draw us out of our tendencies to retreat to too small a life or too passive a life. In Thomistic terms, some of us need leaders to help us respond actively and properly to God’s world. Having written that, I’ll point to the problem Lord Acton saw so clearly — when political power becomes too great and too concentrated, it draws men with the moral character of gangsters.
Acton had a vast and deep knowledge of history and seemingly of human nature and, like me, considered governments to be something greater, perhaps far greater, than necessary evils. He was right and so am I. The goal shouldn’t be to eliminate government but rather to realize the political life as a natural part of human life. We have to be modest in the short-run, not letting the ambitions of even the better sort of men, certainly not the ambitions of men with the moral character of gangsters, to impose upon us political systems which are inherently bad or even systems for which we aren’t yet prepared. From one angle, we can say we shouldn’t let political systems or the underlying political communities grow too large or too complex until we’re prepared for that greater system and the greater community. Eventually, says some muse of history, we’ll learn how to govern something as large and complex and powerful as the United States. But we won’t learn it in the positivistic way of the Enlightenment intellectuals, including the Founding Fathers of the United States. We’ll learn it when several relatively large and complex human political communities come together to share many of their political duties and responsibilities, come together to form a greater political community. This greater political community will be associated with a body of knowledge, including speculations in the tradition of Plato’s Republic and Voegelin’s Order and History but also including the most concrete of practices and the entirety of that body of knowledge won’t really be known even to the best political thinkers at the time it develops. In fact, it’s probable a greater understanding of the nature of this political beast will mature only by the time the human race has moved on to a different, richer, and more complex state of being.
Yet, we should be capable of recognizing a truly bad situation. The United States is a failed experiment and it’s likely the case that the best and most peaceful solution is a voluntary breakup into a number of more coherent entities which can then start learning how to form a better version of a greater republic. As a Christian, I also believe, and have stated in the past, that God might well pulverize the United States and then rebuild this country to be what it should have been. This would be a painful and degrading process and I believe it’s likely to happen because the United States remains the most plausible realm for the revival of Western Civilization, a civilization which might yet have a lot of ruin left in it, maybe even some good in it.
Do I believe all I’m claiming in this essay which has grown beyond my original plans? Mostly, though there is much uncertainty due to both an inadequate understanding of human beings and an inadequate understanding of this world, indeed an inadequate understanding of all of Creation. When we look at our race and speak of ‘predators’ and ‘producers’, we engage in a simplification which is useful but only so far as we don’t take it as literal truth. The same is true when we speak of nearly any aspect or attribute of a human being, even the most sharply defined of virtues. I could make similar comments about our understanding of this universe seen as a coherent narrative. Much of the problems in this area come from our Spinozean tendency to fragment our knowledge into sorts of knowledge to be handled by specialists. Those realms of knowledge have become representative of realms of being in the thoughts of modern men. Humpty-Dumpty has fallen off his wall and we look on as various specialists examine the remains. What chance have we of also making sense of the world in a single coherent narrative, even with the help of Plato and Augustine and Wordsworth?
A man is an organism which develops within certain inherited constraints and he develops properly when he actively responds to his environment and more. A man’s environment includes his human communities, starting with his mother but certainly he doesn’t emerge from his childhood as a freestanding individual but rather a dependent rational animal, in the words of Alasdair MacIntyre. Dependent. Dependent creatures forming complex communities need political structures, even government.
Man is a creature of flesh-and-blood, a creature of a particular type. Man is intertwined with his environment, most especially human communities. Man is an empirical creature and he is not to be truly understood by way of metaphysical principles as thought many in the past few centuries including Jefferson and perhaps some other prominent Founding Fathers. Nor is man to be understood by theological principles as too many of my fellow-Christians believe, explicitly or implicitly.
Man is also not best understood as an individual who is ideally free from all forms of government. We can’t even say man is best served by a minimal government. We can only say that we need to pay attention to the best research of anthropologists and historians as to man’s behavior and apparent nature in past years as well as to the best research of neuroscientists and others with something to add to the understanding of our racial nature. Then we Christians, in particular, should engage in intense study of the books of the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah knowing they were well-educated men who were knowledgeable about the political situation of the rulers of Israel and also the situations of the rulers of the surrounding pagan empires. We would benefit greatly from such a reading of the political world of creatures shaped at the racial level by Darwinian processes and at the individual and community level by processes described by modern brain-scientists and historians and evolutionary biologists. In the context of this essay, there will be little support for theories of minimal government, let alone anarchy and much support for the ideal of a humble and modest cooperation with God’s story as it develops. Rather than setting the goal of tearing down, we should aim to build slowly and with modest aims, working along with natural processes of development.
The world itself develops and often in unexpected ways. Our understanding of the world develops in a still more unexpected way since we’re always catching up to what we didn’t understand in the past as well as struggling with the emerging aspects of God’s story.
That God is a clever Fellow. Awfully creative as well. And always surprising. And it is God’s thoughts which we should be trying to understand rather than making assumptions drawn from our preferences. This is true when we try to understand human nature or human history or spacetime or matter. It’s God’s thoughts, manifested as created being which are the proper study of mankind.