On Legislating Morality

"A philosopher-people would be a people of searchers, and a people, under pain of death, must know and not search."--Louis de Bonald, Recherches Philosophiques

The usual arguments for free speech assume that the state always needs to be testing its official beliefs. In some ways, this is rather dumb. Individual people must firmly believe that many things are true, if they are to live; societies must also firmly believe that many things are true, if they are to live.

A man who believes nothing can do nothing, for all action is for the sake of what you believe to be good. Thus, modern man is characteristically vacillating and spontaneous in his action; swift to follow what appears good, and equally swift in abandoning its pursuit. He is free only to be inconstant, because his freedom consists in being unmoored from any fixed position. And so he is a man who seems to be nothing inside, because he has never dedicated himself to anything outside himself.

A society that believes nothing, similarly, can also do nothing. The United States is also vacillating in its policies, switching them from year to year with the emotional whims of the voters, the power of the lobbyists, and the events of the moment. Because it believes nothing, it will only wander aimlessly until, as do all things that follow nothing, it descends to nothing.

Modern Conservatism = Classical Liberalism = Liberalism

The idea that modern conservatism is not conservative, and that the classical liberalism that is modern conservatism leads naturally to socialist liberalism, is absolutely essential to a correct understanding of the modern world.

Their historical connection is visible in works such as J.S. Mill's On Liberty. Mill wrote this book before liberalism had split into classical liberalism and socialist liberalism, and so each can be seen inchoate in its content. Mill speaks about limiting the government's control over anyone, and sounds like a classical liberal; he also speaks of the government fighting the prejudices of the ignorant masses so that minorities are free of unwanted social pressure, and sounds like a socialist liberal. The two had not yet, inconsistently, been separated out into two opposing parties.

Dicta, no. 4

Those who rebel against one tradition in order to be themselves simply enter another tradition of which they are unaware, and to which they are therefore all the more enslaved.

Why Traditionalists Can Never Agree, and a Solution

There is a scandal of traditionalists, like the scandal of the philosophers. Philosophers say that they are the ones who really want truth, but philosophers can never agree on what this is; they disagree more than most. Similarly, traditionalists say that they are the ones following the wisdom of the past, but they can never agree on what that is; they disagree quite a lot as well. Both sets of arguments are often apparently interminable.

There are at least two reasons I can see for why this happens.

Forgotten Works: The Integration of Theory and Practice

The Integration of Theory and Practice is the sort of essay that liberals like to scream shows how the Christian Dominionists are taking over the political sector of the United States. If only. The Integration of Theory and Practice: A Program for the New Traditionalist Movement is instead a perfect example of a program conservatives do not follow, and a perfect critique of mainstream movement conservative.

It was written by a student of Paul Weyrich. Weyrich was involved in founding some extremely important (mainstream) conservative organizations in both the US and Canada, and is generally considered a very Practical Person not given to Idealistic Dreaming. This makes the advice he gives all the more interesting, because it sounds like advice a philosophy professor or Wendell Berry would be apt to give. Allow me to summarize some major points.

Dicta, no. 3

The epidemiology of liberalism is typical of all diseases; the most successful strains kill their hosts more slowly than the others, thus both allowing themselves to spread and making their eradication at first appear unnecessary.

Democracy as Acedia / Sloth

"There is undoubted danger in looking upon politics as a deeply interesting game, a never-ending cricket match between Blue and Yellow. . . . Neither experience nor probability affords any ground for thinking that there may be an infinity of legislative innovation, at once safe and beneficent. On the contrary, it would be a safer conjecture that the possibilities of reform are strictly limited. The possibilities of heat, it is said, reach 2,000 degrees of the Centigrade thermometer; the possibilities of cold extent to about 300 degrees below its zero; but all organic life in the world is only possible through the accident that temperature in its ranges between a maximum of 120 degrees and a minimum of a few degrees below zero of the Centigrade. For all we know, a similarly narrow limitation may hold of legislative changes in the structure of human society. We can no more argue that, because some past reforms have succeeded, all reforms will succeed, than we can argue that, because the human body can bear a certain amount of heat, it can bear an indefinite amount."
--Sir Henry Maine, Popular Government

And a nation that is constantly tossed between the reforms of two opposing parties, when each of these reforms are large and sweeping, must be subject to much bad legislation. The nation will thrash about like an animal with a disease, doing much but accomplishing little, until whatever innate tendencies lie within the government, ignored by both parties, ruin it.

And so one of democracy's ostensible advantages is in reality a serious flaw: democracy is interesting.  It distracts us.  And as Pascal loved to point out, diversion is what ruins life.