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.
