Before publishing his famous and prescient attack on the French Revolution, Edmund Burke sent a letter to his friend in France criticizing the course of the Revolution. Although he was pessimistic about the prospects of liberty in France he admitted that “I certainly think that all men who desire it, deserve it.” Burke loved political liberty but feared that an inability to control oneself, would lead to personal slavery. To men who were unable to control their vices, he said that “a state of strong constraint is a sort of necessary substitute for freedom; since, bad as it is, it may deliver them in some measure from the worst of all slavery- that is, the despotism of their own blind passion.” Perhaps more than any politician of his day, Burke insisted that men must deserve liberty before they could be truly free.
According to Burke, there are two types of freedom which exist side by side. The first is political freedom which many in the democratic west are familiar with. This form of liberty consists of the security of certain rights and participation in the political process. Despite the importance of this type of freedom, it is secondary and can only be had under certain preconditions. The second type of freedom which Burke insisted upon was freedom from vice. This liberty was beautifully illustrated by Saint Augsutine who wrote that “Humans were created in the image of God. True freedom, then, is not found in moving away from that image but only in living it out.” On this view, freedom only exists when a person has the capacity to reach their potential through the practice of virtue. A person who is unable to create meaningful relationships and engage with civil society is not truly free, even if he or she has certain political privileges.
Rather than being contradictory, these two notions of freedom are intertwined because a state cannot maintain free institutions if its people do not possess a shared moral framework that demands sacrifice in pursuit of the good. In Federalist 55 James Madison wrote that, although men are flawed, “So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.” If citizens lack virtue they will be unable to maintain the free institutions that have been handed down to them. President Reagan was correct when he said that “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream.” The maintenance of freedom, however, does not merely consist of a few history lessons. Rather, it depends upon forming citizens who manifest virtue in their personal lives.
This second definition of freedom, though essential to the first, has been almost completely lost in our self-indulgent era. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s words in Planned Parenthood v. Casey adequately sums up the modern feeling about liberty; “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Every person is now viewed as a wholly autonomous agent who cannot have any restrictions placed upon them. The root of virtue, however, is self-restriction. We live in an age where people believe that self-indulgence is a divine right provided to them by their political freedom. Perhaps they don’t understand that it is virtue which makes this political freedom possible.
The two aspects of freedom which Burke acknowledged in his eloquent writings are interrelated but distinct. It is the job of a statesman to balance them with one another in order to create a flourishing state. If a society concerns itself with rights at the expense of virtue it will not enjoy its rights for long. However, if a man attempts to make people perfect he will be similarly destructive. Sin is a part of our fallen nature and an attempt to completely eradicate it would lead to totalitarianism. Nonetheless, we cannot let our obsession with a flawed notion of freedom lead to the eradication of civil society.
Sin is now a “four”letter word that is never used and not understood by our self-indulgent society!