Mark Me Down For Team Liberty
No.125: September 16, 2022
Welcome to The Square Inch, a Friday newsletter on Christianity, culture, and all of the many-varied “square inches” of God’s domain. This publication is free for now, but please consider clicking on the link at the bottom to become a paid subscriber to enjoy this along with Monday’s “Off The Shelf” feature about books and Wednesday’s “The Quarter Inch,” a quick(er) commentary on current events.
Dear Friends,
Like the railroad workers who were supposed to go on strike today, I considered taking a sick day. Actually, they wanted 15 additional sick days or else they would grind the U.S. economy to a screeching halt, but I’m not quite that entitled. I’ve been delivering this newsletter every Friday for the past two and a half years and it’s a little late to be taking a sick day now.
I did come down with some kind of nasty head cold and I can’t hear out of my left ear and I’m all congested. Then I exhausted myself working on replacing (again) the throttle body on the old BMW, which was a woefully frustrating endeavor. Did you know that the BMW 330xi uses a slightly different sized throttle body than every other vehicle in the E46 class? Neither did I, and I have researched and studied the matter of BMW throttle bodies at great length. So, yeah, several hours of trying to bolt the thing in a very tight space, only to discover that the holes won’t line up by about a quarter inch. Hmm. Where is God in that “Quarter Inch”? Teaching me lessons of some kind, I suppose. How to control my temper and not throw a throttle body through a windshield.
Anyway, let me write a few thoughts for you this week.
Senator Maize Hirono (D-HI), on the floor of the United State Senate yesterday said that opposing Pro-Lifers is—and I quote: “Literally, a call to arms in our country.”
Hmm. Literally? She is telling her supporters to literally rack a round in their AR-15s to go “Pro-Lifer” hunting? I am not too terribly worried about it because surely none of her supporters own or much less have ever held an AR-15. They’re far too scary.
But this kind of rhetoric serves as a useful entry point into a much larger philosophical debate about societal organization, and it is going to be the debate of the next generation. For over two centuries America has been a beneficiary of a unique political and social structure known as “classical liberalism.” That “thing,” which is surprisingly quite difficult to define and is actually a combination of a lot of different ideas—rule of and equality before the law; limited, layered, and representative government; freedom of markets and civil society; freedom of conscience, speech, press, and assembly, etc.—is the way we have decided to handle civic and political differences and controversies without killing each other.
And it so happens that nowadays almost everyone is tired of not killing each other. I wish that was a joke, but it really isn’t. The far Left is long-since done with this classical liberalism stuff. The Constitution, along with the great thicket of laws and rules and roadblocks and barriers and balances of power sprawling throughout our land are impediments to progress! It’s just too hard to get anything done. We’ve got to pack the Supreme Court! Get rid of the filibuster! Let felons and illegal immigrants vote for us! Pull out the Executive Pen!
As for freedom of conscience and religion and speech? That means “those people”—the “basket of deplorables,” the great unwashed masses, the ones who “cling to their God, their guns, and their religion,” the bigots and homophobes and transphobes and theocrats, the people we hate will be able to exist and propagate their ideas in our society! Absolutely unacceptable! They must be canceled! Hounded out of polite society! Be treated like the scum they are! No more jobs or businesses or Twitter accounts for you.
Ah, but they are not the only ones who are done with classical liberalism. There is a cottage industry on the Right—well, it isn’t so much a cottage industry anymore. It is the beating heart of MAGA world. The best thing I can say here is that at least the Right is having a debate about the merits of classical liberalism. But don’t get too encouraged; I think the good side appears to be losing in the court of popular opinion. The lust for power, to vanquish the enemy once and for all, to “drain the swamp,” to rid ourselves of all constraints, to finally impose our vision of the “common good,” is awfully enticing, as it always has been (see: French Revolution). I know, I know: the “Christian Nationalists” (or at least some of them who claim the name) pinky-promise that we are only going to suspend the rules and exercise some raw power just long enough to restore some order around here, and then we’ll give it back up. Promise. That’s what Robespierre said, too. And I have a hard time seeing how all this “post-liberalism” stuff isn’t simply the mirror-image of the progressive version.
Two sides hate each other and everything the other stands for. Both sides want to throw off the socio-political architectural constraints that hinder their aims of cultural and political hegemony. Both sides are tired of the thing that keeps us from killing each other.
What could possibly go wrong?
Look, I said this was going to be the philosophical (Lord-willing, only “philosophical”) debate for a generation, and I meant it. That means I’m not going to sort it all out for you in this edition of The Square Inch. But I will say a couple of things.
First, classical liberalism is not a hindrance to the common good. It is itself a common good. A very important common good. As a matter of fact, I might even argue it is the greatest fruit of God’s “common grace” the world has yet seen. That’s what J. Gresham Machen thought:
To those lovers of civil and religious liberty I confess that I belong; in fact, civil and religious liberty seems to me to be more valuable than any other earthly thing—than any other thing short of the truer and profounder liberty which only God can give.
You don’t agree? Well, just consider all that coercive political power that you want for your side—whatever comes after the thought, “if we could only …” Now just engage in a little thought experiment and imagine all that power in the hands of somebody who hates you and wishes you were dead.
Second, we are not the first society to wrestle with the question of how a nation with a variety of divergent views could coexist without killing each other. In 19th century Holland the great Abraham Kuyper wrestled with this very question. And he adamantly resisted the siren-call of authoritarian power-seeking. His political party was called the Anti-Revolutionary Party. That is, the anti-French Revolution Party. For him, it was a matter of theological conviction that the political order—particularly the coercive power of the State—must allow the “rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” Equal treatment that reflects God’s equal treatment. Not just liberty for our side, but liberty for all sides.
The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest.’ (Matt.13:27-30)
There will not be a pure, unmixed society until the end of time. For Kuyper, God’s will—the mandate of King Jesus himself—is a polity of freedom, tolerance, and forbearance; an open public square where antagonists could build their own institutions and seek to persuade one another; equality under the law; freedom of religion, conscience, speech, and assembly. For Kuyper, what we call “classical liberalism” is what King Jesus requires of the institution who bears the sword.
Oh, he heard all the objections we hear on the lips of the post-liberals today. But what about those people? Don’t you know how evil they are? They are abusing the rules! Whose side are you on? He knew that this commitment to a pluralistic society would be unpopular. And he also knew the dangers. But he didn’t think the dangers were any worse—no, he thought them far less worse—than the dangers of totalitarianism and authoritarianism. Matthew Kaemingk summarizes, quoting Kuyper:
In addition to recognizing the cost, the pluralists [read: classical liberals] admitted that they were opening their country up to a real political risk. They acknowledged that wild, outlandish, and even irresponsible religions and ideologies could take root in the free soil of pluralism. Acknowledging this risk, they ultimately concluded that the best way to protect the liberty and security of their nation was to allow these wild faiths to show their fruits and compete openly in a pluralistic marketplace of ideas and institutions, for whatever ‘shoots up and is able to grow must be allowed to grow.’ The danger of instability and insecurity involved in pluralism ‘cannot detain us, for the obvious reason that this possibility exists just as much with [hegemony] but then in a more hideous, offensive, loathsome manner.’
Kuyper was more afraid of an unrestrained, coercive State than he was kooky ideas. He thought kooky ideas like, let’s just say, that men can get pregnant, could be dealt with by way of free and unfettered public debate. Let the tares and the wheat show themselves and let the truth win out. Was he wrong? If he was wrong, it certainly doesn’t appear obvious to me. Kaemingk continues:
It was indeed a possibility that a terrible ideology could abuse the freedoms of pluralism to gain national power and inflict violence and destroy pluralism itself. What would the Christian pluralists do then? How would they respond? One Christian pluralist at the time replied with a rather curious declaration. He stated that if an ideological tyranny ever arose, ‘Leave it to Christian believers, if need be Christian martyrs, to have the honor of demonstrating the intrinsic emptiness of that non-Christian spiritual life.’
Now, that last response strikes me as far too pacifist, ignoring a number of different and important factors I need not mention right now. But I still find it pretty refreshing, mainly for how starkly it contrasts with how the political right in America has responded to that very same possibility. If you insist on freedom and liberty, Dr. Kuyper, “they” will abuse it. And better we grab hold of coercive State power before they do!
What could go wrong? The answer is that a lot could go wrong. Pretty soon people might stop translating “literally” to “figuratively” in their heads when they hear reckless people like Senator Hirono say, “Literally, a call to arms.” Getting rid of the thing that keeps us from killing each other will mean, at some point, killing each other.
However this debate ultimately shakes out, mark me down for Team Liberty.
Outstanding.