Silence Dogood Wire

During the first half of the 19th century one of the most perceptive minds pondered the future of democracy. After visiting the United States and examining our political institutions, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote his two volume masterpiece; Democracy in America. The first deals primarily with the particularities of American government and culture. In it, Tocqueville demonstrates that America was profoundly influenced by the religious and democratic spirit of New England townships. The second volume, published five years later, includes Tocqueville’s more sober meditations on the possible fate of democracy. Although he was a supporter of the new regime, especially in America, he also pointed out the potential dangers that come from within democratic societies.  

One of the most striking concepts that Tocqueville developed is called “soft despotism.” In the democratic age, he observed the weakening of social and familial ties coupled with a tendency towards the centralization of state power. The simultaneous impulses to become both more individualistic and more reliant on bureaucracy would lead to a new form of social control in which the government attempted to care for all of society’s needs. This new despotism “would be more expansive and milder, and it would degrade men without tormenting them” (trans. Mansfield and Winthrop). Hence the term “soft.”

Whether or not we have reached the state that Tocqueville described, many indications of soft despotism could be listed. The government, for example, can regulate the amount of food you produce, even if it is only for your personal consumption. Additionally, from 1960 to 2019 the number of pages of federal regulation increased by over 100,000 touching numerous aspects of American life. Furthermore, Mark Zuckerberg, recently revealed that the Biden Administration pressured Meta into censoring content in the name of public safety. 

Indeed, if one surveys modern leftist thought, it appears their main goal is to bring about the nanny state that Tocqueville feared. California, for example, currently coerces retailers into promoting the left-wing narrative surrounding gender. Many want the government to influence every single aspect of an individual’s life. Although they might not intend to use the harsh methods of the Soviet gulag, their actions tend towards a greater centralization and expansion of the scope of government.

This tendency was recently put on full display when the surgeon general released a “General Advisory on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Parents.” No one doubts that parenting has always been a stressful endeavor. Literature from literally any period in human history that deals with parent-child dynamics will reveal this reality (along with many others). Despite this fact, no government in human history has ever concerned itself with the “mental health” of parents. There have been efforts to improve the economy, or other aspects of society that indirectly reduce stress, but caring about an individual mother’s stress has never been the concern of the government. 

In the past, this was reserved for people like grandparents, husbands (although maybe as likely to increase stress), friends, and the like. Perhaps this expansion in governmental concerns is a result of the decay in social relations and increase in isolation (which Tocqueville also warned about). After all, 43 percent of marriages end in divorce and nearly 40 percent of children are born out of wedlock. As responsible behavior declines, people rely on government to fill the gap and government is eager to grow.

Indeed, one can see the nanny state emerge in the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris. Aside from her actual policies (which are ambiguous) her campaign has all the features that signal a penchant for paternalism. She is presented as the candidate of “joy” and is fond of telling voters how her step-children refer to her as “Mamala.” Anyone who is moderately well-socialized probably wouldn’t fall for such nonsense. People with strong friends groups and intact families don’t need “joy” or “Mamala.” They need a competent leader who can deliver effective policies. 

In order to avoid the soft-despotism that Tocqueville warned about, there must be a two-pronged approach. In addition to reducing the scope of government, individuals must also take the necessary steps to support the lives they want to lead. Social bonds need to be reawakened in order to promote a fulfilling life that the government can never deliver. It is for this reason that proponents of limited government cannot exist without the help of social conservatives who promote family values. This was recognized by the great 20th century intellectual, Frank Meyer, who promoted Fusionsims; the idea that conservatives must promote both liberty and virtue. His efforts at National Review helped unify various strands of the conservative movement, culminating in the election of Ronald Reagan eight years after his death. In a 1981 speech, Reagan touched upon the profound influence of Meyer who “reminded us that the robust individualism of the American experience was part of the deeper current of Western learning and culture.” The future success of America depends upon reawakening the wisdom of men like Tocqueville who understood that freedom depends on culture just as much as it depends upon political institutions.

Erik Drost, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

When surveying the modern political landscape one thing stands out: the unreasonableness of so many opinions. One can find mainstream figures who believe that men can become women, Hamas protests are totally acceptable, and it is fascist to ban pornographic books in public school libraries. Indeed, the modern leftist attitude is one of skepticism towards our ability to know right from wrong and truth from falsehood. To tell a person that right and wrong exist is to deny their lived experience and foist one’s own conception of the world upon them. Hence the new phrase “my truth.” We must keep an open mind to all perspectives because they are all equally valid. Proponents of this view would do well to follow the advice of G.K. Chesterton: “Do not be so open-minded that your brain falls out.”

Unfortunately, the problem of open-mindedness leading to perverse viewpoints has also infected certain segments of the right. Whereas the left displays skepticism towards our ability to understand objective moral rules, many conservatives have adopted an abiding suspicion of “official” narratives. The regime in power is viewed as being so corrupt that one must be skeptical of everything. Thus, popular commentators like Tucker Carlson frequently claim that they are merely asking questions in order to find the truth. While there is certainly nothing wrong with asking questions, one must do so with a firm moral compass beforehand. If one asks questions without a prior set of values then they will be unable to interpret the answers they receive.

Indeed, this spirit of uncritical open-mindedness was put on full display in a recent interview between Darryl Cooper and Tucker Carlson. Cooper, who hosts a so-called history podcast, attempted to rewrite the history of WWII with Churchill as a villain on par with Hitler. Cooper told Carlson that in order to provoke his podcast partner he “told him that I think — and maybe I’m being a little hyperbolic, maybe — but I told him, maybe trying to provoke him a little bit, that I thought Churchill was the chief villain of the Second World War.” He then portrayed the Nazi death camps as unfortunate accidents that were the result of improper logistics. Despite (or perhaps because of) all this, Carlson called Cooper “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.”

In light of his other statements, Carlson’s willingness to entertain such absurd and immoral ideas is likely a result of his profound skepticism. For example, he recently said that “the fact that these lunatics have used the Churchill myth to bring our country closer to nuclear war than at any moment in history disgusts me.” Apparently he came to the conclusion that because government officials say Churchill is good, he must be bad. Such fallacious reasoning is the mark of an uncritical skeptic who has allowed his brain to fall out and is a prime example of how unbounded skepticism destroys reasoning. Skepticism does not produce affirmative belief and leaves one defenseless against the depredations of the unjust.

The only people who are fit to relentlessly question the regime and the “official” narrative are those who have a deep and abiding moral sense. Without this, the questioner cannot filter out the true from the false and the good from the bad. Skepticism must never be the driving force behind any intellectual movement. Skepticism towards moral truths led the left to embrace moral relativism. On the right, a mere skepticism of the “official” narrative will lead to similarly dark places.

Upon even a cursory glance it is clear that we live in an exceedingly tolerant society. People are free to speak their minds, vote for third-party candidates, and pursue their own unique view of happiness. Indeed, we are heirs to a classically liberal tradition stretching back to John Locke that emphasizes individual rights over unjust state intervention.

This political philosophy produced tremendous benefits, including the prevention of tyranny and the flourishing of a free-market economy that lifted millions of people out of poverty. Liberalism, properly speaking, has been a force for great social good over the last few centuries. It kept politics immune from the theological disputes that wreaked havoc on pre-liberal societies and allowed people to live without fear of tyrannical coercion. Indeed, one could say that we have a politics of tolerance. Two people can have wildly different opinions and they must be tolerated nonetheless.

As liberal societies emerged, however, morality was not similarly tolerant. While people were legally free to say what they wished, it was clear to many that there is a right thing to say and a wrong thing to say, regardless of whether or not such speech is permitted. This attitude was largely informed by a Christian and classical worldview which held that there is an eternal moral law that governs individual and state actions. Children were not blank slates who could manipulate themselves into their own self-creation, but moral agents who needed to be tutored in correct action.

Unfortunately, as religiosity and philosophical literacy have declined the idea of tolerance has also seeped into the realm of morality. To criticize someone’s lifestyle is tantamount to denying their personhood. To tell a child that they cannot choose their own gender is to engage in harmful bigotry that forces some states to intervene.

In our day, moral discourse is almost nonexistent. The only time that moral statements are made is when someone tells another person “Don’t be judgemental!” The fundamental fact about morality, however, is that it is judgemental. Moral rules tell us that there is a right way to live and a wrong way to live. In order to determine what was moral, the Greek philosopher Aristotle examined the natural function of man. He found that because man has reason, it was good for him to perform rational actions in accordance with virtue. To stray from this demand was not to pursue an alternative lifestyle but to violate certain moral principles. 

The recognition of these moral principles is not just important for individuals it is also necessary for the common good. If citizens are not virtuous enough to rule themselves, then how can they rule the commonwealth? A passage from the Federalist is worth quoting at length:

 As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, 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. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be, that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another. 

To be a self-governing citizen requires the virtues that have been handed down by our classical and Christian tradition. When tolerant liberal politics becomes tolerant liberal morality it corrodes the social order and paradoxically destroys liberal politics. 

Individual morality allows people to live justly and teaches citizens the correct uses of state power. Liberalism has had many political benefits but it is not a sufficient moral doctrine. In order to return to a saner politics we must recover classical and Christian virtues that inform individual life and reinforce the political order.

After three weeks of honest coverage, the mainstream media is finally reverting back to its normal state of sycophancy towards the Democratic party. When the debate with former President Donald Trump illustrated their coverup of President Joe Biden’s mental decline, news networks began calling on him to step down, stating that he was incapable of serving for another term. Now that he has backed out of the race, President Biden has regained his old status as the patriotic old defender of democracy willing to put his country over personal ambition. While such flattery is clearly dishonest it pales in comparison to the media’s newfound obsession with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Indeed, their coverage of her resembles that given to a man named Barack Obama who ascended to the presidency in 2009. Despite clear evidence of his radicalism, the media presented former President Obama as the new hope of his country, ready to usher in an age of prosperity and tolerance. All but forgotten was the fact that his longtime pastor Jeremiah Wright had blamed America for the 9/11 terrorist attacks and said “God damn America.” Then Senator Obama deflected from these comments by stating that he didn’t think his church was controversial and that Wright “is like an old uncle who says things I don’t always agree with.” The difference between an uncle and a pastor, however, is that one does not choose their own uncle. You do choose the person who marries you and baptizes your children. 

There are other instances in former President Obama’s past that point to his sympathy towards radical positions. During a 1991 demonstration at Harvard, he encouraged his listeners to “open up your hearts and your minds to the words of Professor Derrick Bell.” Bell was the founder of critical race theory, a legal framework holding that the United States is fundamentally racist. Not only does CRT hold that America had racist laws in the past (a contention which nobody would dispute) but that our current legal framework and Constitution need to be dismantled. As early CRT scholars Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic have written, CRT “builds on the insights of two previous movements, critical legal studies and radical feminism, to both of which it owes a large debt.” (from Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, 2012 NYU Press). Both of these intellectual disciplines were heavily influenced by Marxist doctrines seeking to overthrow social norms through radical action.

Like all politicians, however, former President Obama was also an actor who was able to distance himself from his earlier radicalism in his race for the presidency. There can be no doubt that he was helped by a complicit media who lauded him as a hero.

The same phenomenon is happening today with the ascension of Vice President Kamala Harris. Like former President Obama, she has an exceedingly radical past. In 2019 an organization called GovTrack rated her as the most liberal senator at a time when Bernie Sanders was also a member of the senate. Since then, they have deleted the webpage in an attempt to boost Harris’ electoral prospects.

Similarly, the mainstream media has insisted that Harris should not be called the “border czar,” despite repeatedly insisting that she was tasked with stemming the flow of immigration in 2021. Now is a particularly strange time for the media to realize their alleged mistake. Perhaps they all simultaneously realized that their reporting was wrong. Even if one were to agree with the sycophantic talking heads, however, her past statements are still on record. She has said that she wants to decriminalize illegal border crossings and force taxpayers to fund healthcare for illegal immigrants.

Furthermore, the media routinely portrays Harris as a tough-on-crime prosecutor despite her fundraising efforts for the Minnesota Freedom Fund in order to bail out BLM rioters. Indeed, CBS recently denied this fact in what can only be described as an attempt to further her presidential prospects.

The efforts of liberals in the media to cover up Harris’ radical past represents a pattern that is consistent with their general treatment of the Democratic party. Rather than reporting on radicalism or condemning it, they attempt to polish the record of the candidate they are currently supporting. 

In addition to their outright denial of facts, mainstream news networks have also used frivolous puff pieces to make their preferred candidates seem more relatable. In 2008, for example, MSNBC ran an article with the headline “Barack Obama’s ‘Fist Bump’ With Wife Becomes Internet Hit.” The story was thinly sourced and was apparently an attempt to bolster Obama’s status as nothing more than a regular guy. A CNN story recently took a similar tack when describing Harris’ consolidation of the Democratic party. The piece described her as“wearing a hoodie from her alma mater, Howard University, workout sweats and sneakers” and claimed that “she also called her pastor.” These seemingly unnecessary descriptions are meant to give readers the impression that Kamala Harris is an everyday American rather than a radical professional politician. 

Fortunately, Harris is twelve years older than former President Obama was when he sought the presidency. This means that she has twelve more years of radical statements on record. Hopefully these statements will be viewed by the American people thereby thwarting the media’s attempt to rebrand her radicalism.

Last week viewers watched as the waves of Democratic misgovernment crashed against the shoals of reality. The CNN Presidential Debate featured an elderly President Biden attempting to justify his record on the economy and immigration. His occasionally spirited attempts to present President Trump as a threat to democracy and abortion access all but failed. Early in the campaign Trump made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t want the federal government to become involved in the issue of abortion. Additionally, he skillfully deflected from January 6 to focus on the issues that voters care about most: the economy, immigration, and national security. Even many liberals were forced to admit that President Biden was trounced by his opponent. As Biden struggled to articulate and defend his policies or a vision of the future, viewers were shown how untethered Democratic policies are from both philosophy and patriotism.

Much of American history has been guided by natural law philosophy; the idea that there are certain immutable laws governing our actions. These eternal laws are derived from the nature of man and his relation to his fellow creatures. Although religious people contend that these laws were laid down by God, they can be discovered by the exercise of our reason and then confirmed by Revelation. Cicero, the great Roman statesman, expressed this view of law beautifully in one of his philosophical dialogues. He stated that “according to the opinion of the best authorities law was not thought up by the intelligence of human beings, nor is it some kind of resolutions passed by communities but rather an eternal force which rules the world by the wisdom of its commands and prohibitions. In their judgment, that original and final law is the intelligence of God who ordains or forbids everything by reason” (trans. Niall Rudd). Through our participation in Divine reason, humans can discover laws that govern our actions. Proponents of natural law believe that the laws of a state must conform to a standard of justice that exists independent of and prior to the formation of any political community.

The Founding Fathers were profoundly impacted by the view that a government’s actions must conform to the standard laid down by “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.” In an 1825 letter Thomas Jefferson wrote that the Declaration’s authority rests on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, & c.” Although they were sometimes modified, the expressions of philosophers like Cicero served as a basis for the American experiment.

As succeeding generations marched across the continent and the pressures of slavery began to mount, natural law philosophy continued to play an essential role in the flourishing of our Republic. Abraham Lincoln was perhaps the most eloquent exponent of natural law because he understood that it was wrong, by nature, for one man to rule over another without that man’s consent. He frequently made appeals to the Declaration of Independence with its invocation of certain inalienable rights. Ultimately Lincoln understood that “[w]henever this question [of slavery] shall be settled, it must be settled on some philosophical basis. No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.” Either slavery was to be considered a moral evil or it was not. If it was a moral evil then it must be abolished and if it was not then the government had no right to prohibit it. Lincoln knew that half-measures and vascillations could only continue for so long. By defending natural law he contributed to a tradition that has raised mankind from the depths of barbarism and allowed civilization to prosper.

Even after the defeat of slavery, blacks still languished under the injustices of Jim Crow. In his attempt to further civil rights Martin Luther King Jr. did not have recourse to self-interest or violence but by following the same philosophy that had guided previous statesman and sages. His “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is one of the most beautiful philosophical expressions in history and sought to ground governmental policies in natural law teaching. Claiming that Americans had a responsibility to disobey unjust laws, MLK followed Thomas Aquinas in stating that “[a]n unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.” By contrast, just laws are rooted in certain immutable principles of right and wrong.

The greatest triumphs in our national history were brought about by men and women with a firm conviction in the philosophical principles found in the natural law tradition and guided by faith.

The debate last night demonstrates that Democrats have essentially abandoned the idea of natural law. While they may occasionally invoke “rights” their use of the word is detached from the philosophical tradition that gave birth to it. This was illustrated during a particularly shocking moment when President Biden argued that leaving abortion access up to the states was akin to leaving Civil Rights up to the states. Although his claims likely won’t receive a second thought, his statement should have provoked outrage. He compared the ability to kill one’s unborn child in the womb to the freedom to live under laws that don’t discriminate based on race. One is the outgrowth of unlimited self-expression and the other is derived from natural law. One is based in self interest and the other is based in philosophy. A more apt comparison would have been the attempt to leave slavery up to the states. Like slavery, abortion is a violation of natural law. Not only does it sever the most basic natural bond in existence (that between a mother and her child) it sacrifices another human being to the whims of personal convenience. President  Biden’s statement demonstrates a full scale rejection of natural law that is closely related to his embrace of transgenderism. In his mind, there is no objective external reality. Bureaucrats and scientists can remake the world in their image without restraint. These ideas are in contradiction to those of the Founding which sought to create a state that respected a real nature law existing outside of the state. In short, democratic policy has become unmoored from philosophy.

A second traditional wellspring of policymaking is patriotism. By patriotism I mean a desire to improve the well-being of one’s fellow citizens. When this impulse becomes unmoored from  natural law it can become harmful. For example, Stephen Douglas wanted to ignore slavery in order to expand the Union and secure new benefits for white citizens. By detaching patriotism from philosophy he did not serve the interest of his fellow citizens. Oftentimes, however, patriotism and philosophy are closely linked. After all, those who have set American affairs on a philosophical basis (i.e. Washingotn and Lincoln) have contributed the most to the well-being of their fellow citizens. 

As Trump hammered President Biden on immigration it became abundantly clear how unpatriotic his party has become. While he may have made a few patriotic statements one can see that he is clearly not motivated by a desire to improve the lives of his fellow citizens. He cares just as much (if not more) about the foreigners flooding into this country. There has been practically no attempt to stem the flow of illegal immigrants who often strain social services which further disadvantages the poor. Indeed the Democratic party has an aversion to preferring citizens over foreigners. Doing so would be xenophobic and unwelcoming. As the late Henry Kissinger said “[t]he civic patriotism that once lent prestige to public service appears to have been outflanked by an identity-based factionalism and a competing cosmopolitanism. In America, a growing number of college graduates aspire to become globe-trotting corporate executives and professional activism.” At best, expressions of patriotism are now seen as quaint and outdated. We might aspire to defeat global challenges such as climate change but securing our sovereign border is unworthy of a citizen of the world.

Going into last week’s debate, anyone paying attention was already well-aware of President Biden’s personal struggles. The real revelation was the extent to which Democratic policy making has become untethered from the philosophy of natural right and a due regard for one’s fellow citizens. Their policies are now motivated by a cosmopolitan desire to remake the world in the name of liberating humanity while amassing power for themselves. This liberation will come at the cost of enslaving us to the barbarism that has characterized so much of human history.

In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (a 1992 case that upheld Roe v. Wade) Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that “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.” His flowery language was absurd and had no place in a legal setting. The laws against murder clearly demonstrate that defining “one’s own concept of existence” is not a fundamental right. Three decades later, the Supreme Court has finally overturned this decision, and determined that abortion is not a right guaranteed by our Constitution. But the reasoning in Justice Kennedy’s opinion still carries great weight with the American public.

Voters have consistently rejected attempts to restrict abortion and Republicans have suffered repeated electoral defeats over the issue. Although former President Trump won Ohio by eight percentage points in 2020, 56.6 percent of voters passed a state constitutional amendment to protect abortion access. Even in red states, outlawing abortion is an unpopular position.

This development would probably have been unsurprising to Alexis de Tocqueville. In the 1830s, the Frenchman came to the United States and observed the manners, habits and institutions of the American people. His work, Democracy in America, is widely regarded as one of the best books ever written on America. At the beginning of the second volume of the book, he noted that “of all the countries in the world, America is the one in which the precepts of Descartes are least studied and best followed…Americans never read Descartes’s works because their state of society distracts them from speculative inquiries” (trans. Lawrence ed. Mayer). Descartes was a French philosopher who subjected himself to radical doubt in order to determine what was true through the use of his reason. Tocqueville, meant that each American considered him or herself to be the sole standard of truth in the world.

For Tocqueville, however, there was a powerful force that prevented Americans from descending into moral anarchy; Christianity. During the Revolution, Tocqueville believed that Americans were able to change their existing laws without throwing society into chaos because “It was religion that gave birth to the English colonies in America. One must never forget that” (trans. Lawrence ed. Meyer). According to Tocqueville, in the America of the 1830s “Christianity itself is an established and irresistible fact which no one seeks to attack or to defend” (trans. Lawrence ed. Meyer). It was through habit that Americans accepted Christian doctrine and this preserved “a great number of moral truths derived therefrom” (trans. Lawrence ed. Meyer).

But we are no longer living in the America of the 1830s. In 2020, church membership fell below 50 percent for the first time in U.S. history. We live in an age that has become increasingly hostile to traditional religious belief and many major cultural institutions are anti-Christian. Thus, we no longer have a way of transmitting settled moral truths from one generation to the next.

In such circumstances the reasoning of Justice Kennedy is perfectly reflective of the American spirit. It is the philosophy of Descartes without the Christianity that Alexis de Tocqueville saw in early America. Indeed, Justice Kennedy’s statement that everyone has a “right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” is merely a way of saying that each person is his or her own standard of right and wrong. Given Tocqueville’s observation it should not be surprising that the United States is one of only six countries (along with China and North Korea) that allows abortion up to birth. If each person is their own standard of right and wrong, then it is unjust to impose any restrictions upon them.

It is important to point out that Tocqueville was not merely a critic of American society. He profoundly admired our democratic institutions and system of government. However, he understood that our society was undergirded by a rich religious tradition that created an environment of productive individualism rather than destructive moral anarchism. Conservatives who wish to preserve the best of America must realize that their success depends upon the ability of one generation to transmit moral truths to the next. Without guidance, individualism is corrosive of morality, responsibility, and family life. But when guided by a spirit of benevolence, it is the greatest possible force for good.

Your Humble Servant,

Silence Dogood

In our increasingly confused era, classic stories have continued to come under fire for their lack of political correctness. The claim that Snow White is not feminist enough, The Jungle Book is racist, and warrior stories are too masculine are a few common critiques. In the name of shaping a more tolerant culture, leftists have created new storylines that reflect an alternative set of values. For example, an animated show called Cocomelon features a boy whose dads encourage him to express himself by wearing a dress and dancing. Another animated show on Amazon stars the princess of Hell. Satan is called a “rebellious dreamer” and the show features a number of scenes that are disturbing, even by Hollywood standards. Although it is labeled as eighteen plus, the show is clearly directed towards younger audiences. 

The individuals who create these new narratives are following the advice of the Italian communist, Antonio Gramsci who died in 1937. Upon seeing the failure of socialism to capture the minds of the people, he wrote that “In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.” Gramsci understood that culture is a much more powerful tool for altering a society than outright political action. It is for this reason that the destruction of stories is the single greatest threat to American life. 

Stories provide guidance for our actions and teach us the virtues that we must emulate. It is by capturing the imagination of a people that stories can bring about profound societal change. In the American colonies, for example, one of the most famous stories was Cato: A Tragedy. First performed in 1713, this play recounted the life of Cato the Younger, who opposed Caesar’s dictatorship. Not only did this play entertain large audiences, it also inspired real life acts of heroism. Revolutionary spy Nathan Hale’s famous statement that “My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country” was directly inspired by this play. Additionally, Patrick Henry’s famous pronouncement, “Give me liberty or give me death!” can also be found in the play. Indeed, Cato was so powerful that George Washington had it performed for American troops at Valley Forge. It is not just children who learn through stories. 

The great Greek biographer Plutarch understood the importance of stories for illuminating the good character traits that people should aspire to. In his twenty four Parallel Lives, he chronicled the lives of famous Greeks and Romans. Not only did he show what they did in their remarkable lives, he also demonstrated the virtues that allowed them to succeed and the vices that held them back. Since it was written nearly two thousand years ago, these Lives have exercised a huge influence on Western society. Today, however, fewer and fewer people are reading Plutarch. Public schools are certainly not assigning his readings.

Nowadays, stories about self-sacrifice have been replaced by stories about self-indulgence. Rather than calling people to be heroic, stories rejoice in mediocrity. This is not a trivial development, but one that affects the very foundations of our civilization. The great French political theorist, Montesquieu, claimed that virtue- personal sacrifice for the common good- is the spring of republican government. Without virtue people will not demonstrate the character traits that are necessary to maintain a republic. If a person can not govern himself then he cannot possibly have self-government. America will not live or die by the politicians in Washington. It will live or die by the stories that we choose to tell.

By any metric, Americans today live in one of the most free societies that has ever existed. Property rights are secure, freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution, and we have the right to bear arms. For better or worse, we can live our lives in the manner we see fit. While government regulation might cripple some innovation it is nothing compared to the tyranny that billions of people currently live under. 

In the midst of all this freedom, however, Americans are apt to forget what is good. When someone says something objectionable we frequently shrug and say “well it’s a free country and they have a right to say what they want to.” Such a reaction, while often correct, can obscure the fact that we should have standards. The existence of freedom does not in any way diminish the existence of an objective good. And it is towards this objective good that we should orient ourselves. It is typically conservatives who recognize this fact and act accordingly. 

Governor Ron Desantis, for example, banned LGTBQ books that included pornographic content from schools. Perhaps the creators of these books should be allowed to publish what they want, but a good society protects its children and recognizes that those who create such content should be shamed. They might have a right to say what they want, but they have no right to be given an audience.

Mainstream liberals, by contrast, typically react with fury towards any attempt to enforce standards. Despite the fact that every book Desantis has “banned” can be purchased by anyone in the country, the press has slandered his initiative as a so-called “book ban.” They see Desantis as an enemy of freedom. In reality, he is an opponent of moral relativism.

Indeed, the dangers of moral relativism were put on full display when the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and UPenn repeatedly refused to condemn calls for the genocide of Jews. If I had to guess, I would say that these three women are not actually rabid anti-semites. Rather, their embrace of tolerance made them unable to distinguish between right and wrong. 

Of course, when it comes to protecting conservative speech they have no problem with suppression. But they suppress conservative speech in the name of tolerance. Because conservatives have standards (such as the idea that men cannot be women) elite liberals are eager to silence them in the name of inclusion. Thus, suppressing conservatives is not an aberration from their ideology but a fulfillment of it.

Yesterday, Iowa also experienced a case of destructive moral relativism when a judge blocked a law keeping sexually explicit books out of classrooms from kindergarten to sixth grade. Judge Stephen Locher referred to the law as “puritanical.” Again, I doubt that Judge Locher is an actual pervert who distributes sexually explicit content to twelve year olds. But his liberal ideology prevents him from acknowledging that such an action is evil. Because he has made tolerance his religion, he does not have the intellectual capacity to condemn evil.

The terrible people who want to introduce pornographic content to children, destroy Israel, and take away free speech are undoubtedly a minority in this country. The real danger comes from self-avowed liberals who allow these people a platform in the name of tolerance. While it may be unAmerican to take away certain freedoms, imposing standards is essential to the maintenance of a free and virtuous life. Those who forget this risk falling into the evils of moral relativism.

In 1925, the great poet T.S. Eliot wrote one of his most famous poems. Filled with dark imagery and somber scenes, The Hollow Men, ended with the lines “This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper.” Eliot’s words are an apt description of how a great civilization dies. Often, a slow process of internal decay precedes a final death-blow. The French, for example, lost World War II before it even began. After losing millions of men in the Great War, pacifism had become a dominant force that enervated the minds of the public. In such a state of despair, resistance to the Nazi war machine was impossible. Similarly, when writing of the Roman Empire, the great historian Edward Gibbon claimed that even if hostile barbarian nations had been wiped off the face of the earth, Rome still would have fallen due to its internal corruption. In every age, the task of a statesman is to identify the greatest internal threats to a society, in order to prevent them from destroying a nation’s resolve.

In the wake of the attacks on Israel, many Americans believe that the greatest threats facing our society are the individuals who support violence on college campuses and in cities throughout the country. While people are correct to fear these massive gatherings of malicious individuals, I would argue that this fear is largely unjustified. Unstable people can be whipped into a frenzy for nearly any cause, and while it is true that an increasing number of people in our society lack sanity, there is a much greater lack of conviction. Indeed, our society has always had groups of people that will take to the streets in favor of immoral causes. The real danger occurs when good people stand by and do nothing.

It is an unfortunate fact that America has been succumbing to indifference since at least the middle of the 20th century. The German-Jewish emigre Leo Strauss told an audience in 1953 that although the United States had  defeated Germany in World War II, they had succumbed to what he called characterized as the German “historical sense.” He believed that while Americans had once vigorously defended natural rights as embodying eternal truths, many now viewed our nation’s values in purely historical terms. These rights were now seen as historical amalgamations with no permanent value. One can certainly see this phenomenon on full display when politicians and judges claim that the Constitution can change over time and has no fixed meaning. 

Coupled with this historical relativism is a widespread pseudo-tolerance that is indistinguishable from indifference. Standards which were once commonplace have been thrown by the wayside in the name of greater autonomy. Strauss foresaw this development as well, writing that many liberals believe that our “inability to acquire any genuine knowledge of what is intrinsically good or right compels us to be tolerant of every opinion about good or right or to recognize all preferences of all ‘civilizations’ as equally respectable.” When we have lost faith in unchanging natural right, we are no longer able to judge the worth of different goals, and must accept all values as equally rational. Hence the prevalence of the phrase “my truth” which is nothing more than an implicit assertion that there is no objective truth. And just as individuals have “their truth” so do different societies. Thus, many people cannot make a rational distinction between the aims of a civilization like Israel and those of a group like Hamas. Without natural right we must bow before the altar of pseudo-tolerance and proclaim that all lifestyles are equal.

Any society that is so indifferent that it cannot distinguish right from wrong is doomed to succumb to cultural insanity and ultimately fail. It is true that America is a relatively tolerant country. But we did not become tolerant because we were indifferent to questions of right and wrong. Rather, our society’s tolerance emerged from a deep-seated conviction that some degree of tolerance is a good thing. Tolerance resulting from indifference and tolerance resulting from conviction should not be confused with one another.

Indifference breeds insanity and moral catastrophe. The Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton once remarked that it is foolish for one philosopher to burn another for his heresy; “but there is one thing that is infinitely more unpractical and absurd than burning another man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter.” Relativism inevitably leads to indifference, which leads to civilizational collapse. In order to perpetuate our society, Americans must reclaim their conviction in the existence of natural right. This starts by refraining from whataboutism and stating a simple fact: “terrorists are evil.”

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.