Catholic Bishop Robert Barron last week described the problem of our modern understanding of freedom as a “society of petty tyrants.” Patrick DeneenProfessor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame.
In an interview that aired Friday on Word on Fire’s “Bishop Barron Presents,” Barron and Deneen contrasted their idea of freedom that seeks to eliminate all constraints on the individual with what they call an ancient, Platonic, and more Christian understanding of freedom.
“We have all become our own little tyrants,” Barron said. “Now there is no one tyrant. We are all tyrants. Because, look, this is my will, this is my desire. And as long as I don’t hurt you, I am free to do whatever I want. And so we have a society of little tyrants with no sense of solidarity, no real common interest.”
Bishop Barron stands at the podium during a lecture at Word on Fire Studios. (Word on Fire Ministries)
Baron said ancient Greek philosophers and Christian tradition show that “the purpose of government is to make us good, which has to do with virtue. And freedom is not, as you say, simply doing what you want. … It’s actually a kind of discipline of your desires to enable the achievement of virtue.”
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Deneen is the author of “Why Liberalism Failed,” a book that former President Barack Obama praised in 2018. While Obama did not agree with many of the book’s conclusions, he said it offered “compelling insights into the loss of meaning and community felt by many in the West.”
The book argues that liberalism failed because it succeeded, and that its understanding of freedom as freedom from disability led to the breakdown of society at all levels, including family and social institutions.
Elsewhere in the interview, Deneen spoke of elite Americans who have more political and economic power than most of the country. general citizen.
Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester interviewed political philosopher Patrick Deneen. (Fox News)
“I think the modern elites who come out of institutions like mine have very little interaction with ordinary people,” Deneen said.
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This disconnect is partly about a political divide that populists denounce as a conflict between elites and “deplorables,” but “there’s also a kind of open-minded form of just not having contact at all,” Deneen said.
That means “moving from upper middle class to upper class suburbia, going to a great school, Notre Dame, living with alumni friends in Brooklyn, then living in the wealthy suburbs and retiring in Florida,” and never mixing with “regular people.”
Deneen said that at some point structural change may be needed to address inequality and the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of a few.
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In his 2023 book, “Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future,” Deneen argued that America was headed for a fundamental transformation: “the peaceful and forceful overthrow of a corrupt and corrupting liberal ruling class and the creation of a postliberal order that can preserve the existing form of government, so long as a fundamentally different ethos permeates the institutions and officials who occupy key offices and positions.”
