DISCIPLINE FROM WITHIN OR WITHOUT:

Ordered Liberty: Remembering Russell Kirk (BreakPoint with Charles Colson, October 24, 2003)

Kirk’s social vision, like that of our founders, depends on a critical mass of virtuous citizens who govern themselves. Instead of a policeman on every corner, a society must imbue each citizen with law-abiding inner disciplines.

But government, you see, can’t do that. What can are other institutions: families, churches, synagogues, schools, and community organizations—what Kirk, quoting Edmund Burke, liked to call the “little platoons” of society.

Russell Kirk identified three pillars of conservatism: order, tradition, and religion, the moral regulator of a society. These pillars are the things we most need to strengthen today.

Ideologues on both the left and the right tell us that they can come up with great utopian schemes for poverty, terrorism, and a host of other problems. Russell Kirk, however, helps us put such foolishness in perspective.

The key here is that the regulation of behavior must be internal and must precede the State. If you, instead, seek to arrive at a kind of group definition of what's allowed and what isn't then you don't actually have moral standards, but transient political standards, dependent on the State and prey to manipulation by the power of the State. There is no right and wrong, only lawful and unlawful.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 6, 2003 8:36 AM