November 14, 2009
FREEDOM IS A SOLVENT; LIBERTY A BOND:
The Religion of Liberalism, Or Why Freedom and Equality Aren't Ultimate Goals: An Interview with James Kalb, author of The Tyranny of Liberalism (Ignatius Insight, November 12, 2009)
James Kalb, who holds degrees from Dartmouth College and Yale University, is a lawyer and independent scholar who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His book, The Tyranny of Liberalism: Understanding and Overcoming Administered Freedom, Inquisitorial Tolerance, and Equality by Command, was published by ISI Books last year. He spoke recently with Carl E. Olson, editor of Ignatius Insight, about conversion, liberalism, conservatism, and Catholicism. [...]Ignatius Insight: You spend quite a bit of time, understandably, in the book defining liberalism and variations thereof. For the sake of clarity, what is a relatively concise definition of the liberalism you critique? What are its core principles and beliefs?
James Kalb: By liberalism I mean the view that equal freedom is the highest political, social, and moral principle. The big goal is to be able to do and get what we want, as much and as equally as possible.
That view comes from the view that transcendent standards don't exist--or what amounts to the same thing, that they aren't publicly knowable. That leaves desire as the standard for action, along with logic and knowledge of how to get what we want.
Desires are all equally desires, so they all equally deserve satisfaction. Nothing is exempt from the system, so everything becomes a resource to be used for our purposes. The end result is an overall project of reconstructing social life to make it a rational system for maximum equal preference satisfaction.
That's what liberalism is now, and everything else has to give way to it. For example, traditional ties like family and inherited culture aren't egalitarian or hedonistic or technologically rational. They have their own concerns. So they have to be done away with or turned into private hobbies that people can take or leave as they like. Anything else would violate freedom and equality.
In his excellent new book on Moses and America's enduring relationship with the Jewish founder, Bruce Feiler talks about how the image of the liberator must be paired with that of the lawgiver. Moses doesn't lead his people to freedom but to a new form of "bondage," to the laws of God. He also includes a lengthy discussion of the iconography of the Liberty Bell. So it was especially amusing to note the juxtaposition of a colonial stock across the way from a replica of the bell in Disney's Liberty Square.
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