Tyranny, Religion, and the Fight for Freedom | James Kalb | Catholic World Report
A winning argument for religious freedom cannot be based on anti-Christian premises.
Last month I suggested that if society rejects transcendent standards and natural law, then political and moral order become what those in power make of them.
Fascism and communism show one way that can work out: the will of the charismatic and powerful becomes the highest law. That view of political life is exciting and dramatic, so it sometimes gets traction, but it soon runs into problems. Photos of Europe in 1945 show how big those problems can be.
Liberalism—the outlook on public life now dominant in the West—is much more sober. It appeals to utility rather than charisma, and prefers the rationality of a system to the excitement of battle. For the liberal, getting rid of transcendent standards means deciding questions based on this-worldly practicalities, and rejecting the idea of a natural moral order means affirming our ability to define for ourselves what things are and what they mean to us. Such views are thought to provide a safe, tolerant, and commonsensical solution to the dangers posed by modern skepticism: not the fascist Triumph of the Will, but the liberal Triumph of Choice.
The devil, though, is in the details. Choices conflict, so the Triumph of Choice means nothing unless we know which choices triumph. Liberalism tries to be principled, and its moral skepticism means it can’t give the nod to the choices that are simply better. It wants a neutral solution, so it ends up appealing to technical effectiveness and the “do your own thing” attitude implicit in the triumph of individual choice over collective will.
What it tries to do, then, is set up a system in which individuals get as much as possible of whatever they want within the limits imposed by the coherence and effective functioning of the system itself. The nature and needs of the system then provide a standard for deciding conflicts.
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