November 5, 2003
AN HONORARY JUDDIST:
Crooked Timber on Janice Rogers Brown (Professor Bainbridge, 11/4/2003)
[T]he nanny state is a poor substitute, at best, for the virtue inculcating power of faith and voluntary community. We may fear the faceless bureaucrat, but he does not inspire us to virtue. Conduct that rises above the lowest common moral denominator thus cannot be created by state action. But while the state cannot make its citizens virtuous, it can destroy the intermediary institutions that do inculcate virtue: “Communities can be destroyed from without; but they cannot be created from without; they must be built from within.” Richard A. Epstein, Simple Rules for a Complex World 324 (1995).Conservatives therefore argue that the rich set of mediating institutions famously praised by Tocqueville is caught, like the Romans at Cannae, between the nanny state on one side and judicial hijacking of the state’s monopoly on the use of coercive force to advance a hyper-legalistic cult of the autonomous individual on the other. We therefore reject both prongs of modern liberalism in favor of achieving communitarian goals through private ordering. Our pessimism about human nature thus does not lead us to statism, but to promoting intermediating institutions that raise up citizens who can regulate themselves from within according to a shared language of good and evil, to paraphrase George Weigel.
In the course of a defense of Justice Janice Rogers Brown, Stephen Bainbridge, one of my favorite bloggers, offers this admirable statement of conservative principles.
Posted by Paul Jaminet at November 5, 2003 8:31 PM
Conduct sanctioned by the state cannot rise above the lowest common denominator?
Go to Arlington and say that, professor.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 6, 2003 1:04 AMHarry:
Although I agree with you on that one point, I believe that when considered across the entire culture and population, the statement is true.
After all, gov't must hold all who meet a certain minimum standard, i.e., are law abiding, to be equal. Private associations, such as religious groups, can hold higher standards.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at November 6, 2003 7:41 AMHarry - As Victor Davis Hanson has repeatedly argued, free democracies win wars because free citizens are far better, braver soldiers than subjects of tyrannies. State action may have helped train the soldiers of Arlington, but a free society raised them above the lowest common moral denominator.
Mr. Judd;
This concept is a key plank for us minarchist libertarians. We wish to restrict the state not for libertinism but because the best ordering of society comes from the free interactions of the citizens, not through government mandate. That's what I mean by "self-ordered", which is not quite the same as "free" and why I prefer a self-ordered society. It is not that we don't value the conservative virtues, but that we believe that they can never be created by the State, only indirectly encouraged.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at November 6, 2003 10:45 AMAOG - I am also a minarchist libertarian as well as a conservative. But I left the Libertarian Party because I felt there were too many people hostile to religion and moral virtue, and seemingly in love with being hostile to the Republican and Democratic parties. It seemed to attract persons who willfully isolate themselves. Conservatives are more willingly to compromise in order to cooperate, and I think that's worthy of support.
Posted by: pj at November 6, 2003 11:21 AMHanson is wrong. Free democracies don't always win wars. God remains on the side of the big battalions.
Britain, as close to a free democracy as the world gets, lost to Germany in 1918 and again in 1941.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 6, 2003 12:31 PMpj:
I agree completely about the Libertarian Party. I agree with most of the Party's planks, but the organization itself is a kook-magnet.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at November 6, 2003 1:03 PM