Abstract freedom breeds a very stupid god. In many progressive American cities, heroin addicts spend their days injecting drugs freely while living in squalid conditions in the homeless encampments that now line city streets. Yet only the most deranged ideologues would see this as a blessing.
Anyone who really understands human nature knows that we have an impulse to enslave ourselves in some way. Isolated individuals forced to live entirely on their own will suffer from a craving for ruin and will tend to indulge in some excess or deficiency that will bring about their ruin. This tragic understanding of the human condition led most premodern thinkers to the conclusion that while ordered freedom is an ideal, this state can be achieved only through the cultivation of virtue.
Order is a prerequisite for community, community is a prerequisite for virtue, and freedom is the rare and delicate achievement of a virtuous society.
Americans have been taught to endlessly repeat slogans about rights and freedoms, but little about the necessity of virtue, and this has created a nation hungry for the fruit of a tree that has long since withered.
The left’s errors are serious but obvious, so let’s start there.
The Progressive worldview is utopian, denies the tragic nature of human beings, and assumes that all negative outcomes are a function of a flawed system. After all, humans are born free but are bound by traditions, religions, families, and economic systems that oppress them. Individuals need a strong state capable of protecting an ever-expanding list of rights so that everyone can pursue their true, superior nature.
When individuals become miserable, without family or purpose, filling their lives with consumption and distraction, progressives fail to reexamine their beliefs. They denounce capitalism, patriarchy, Christianity, white supremacy, or other abstract enemies and demand more power to guarantee more rights and freedoms.
The error on the right is more subtle but no less serious. Right-wing conservatives and libertarians often see freedom as the ultimate goal, but they are confused about how to achieve it. They may debate the size and form of the state, but they believe that a small government bound by constitutional principles is the key. But they err in assuming that virtue flows from freedom, without recognizing that freedom can only be enjoyed by those who have first cultivated a high degree of virtue.
Niccolo Machiavelli is famous for his book The Prince, which advises future princes on how to gain and maintain power. This leads most readers to believe that the Florentine diplomat was a supporter of autocracy. However, in fact, Machiavelli defended the good qualities of a republic in his less well-known but more meaningful work, Discourses of Livy. For Machiavelli, the main factor that made a republic possible was the virtue of the people.
Under a monarchy, people did not need to exercise a high degree of self-control. The king acted as the father of the nation, settling disputes and making important decisions that required foresight and discipline. He provided order that allowed people to thrive without the need for self-governance. Humankind needs order more than freedom to thrive, and people who have always lived under the blessing of stable civilizations tend to forget this lesson.
In a republic, unlike a monarchy where the king makes all the decisions, the people are heavily involved in running the state. If the people lack the strength and seriousness, they will demand benefits from the state that they cannot obtain themselves. An ideal republic features a small government because it allows the people to be united by a common sense of morality and to develop virtue. The Founding Fathers understood this, and John Adams famously said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people; it is entirely inadequate for any other government.” Any country can establish a republic, but to remain a republic, it must be committed to both self-government and self-restraint.
Ordered freedom is not the freedom to pursue every base desire, but the ability to pursue virtue within a shared understanding of the good. Machiavelli agreed with Aristotle that virtue requires community. Individuals do not acquire virtue in isolation, but must exercise it by pursuing the good in their relationships with friends, family, religion, and business. Without order, one cannot have community or understand one’s role within it. Order is a prerequisite for community, and community is a prerequisite for virtue, and freedom is the rare and delicate achievement of a virtuous society.
Machiavelli recognized the need for virtue in a republic, but his reputation as a ruthless political realist is well-deserved. He understood that establishing order often requires that leaders commit morally questionable acts. For this reason, republics, such as ancient Rome, often emerge from monarchies that established order and allowed the community to cultivate virtue. The United States itself arose from a monarchy that established order in new lands and allowed citizens who had acquired a certain degree of virtue to gain freedom through self-government.
While the American people remain undeniably great, it would be difficult to describe the country’s current state as virtuous. Progressive activists have successfully driven Christianity out of the public sphere and replaced it with a hedonistic, secular faith.
The breakdown of public and private morality makes it difficult for people to recover a common identity based on a freedom that they can no longer maintain. Decadent societies are often subject to Caesarism, since they lose the ability to maintain order and revert to a state of children that must again be governed by a father.
I don’t think the United States is likely to make a mass return to republican self-government. Many Americans have abandoned the values and common identity that once defined our nation. Moreover, our ruling classes are deliberately importing people who are totally alien to its traditions. But to move forward, we must start with organic communities in which honest, hard-working Americans continue to cultivate virtue. Small, constitutionally limited government is not a vehicle for freedom but the hard-won prize of a community that has already learned to govern itself by virtue.
