HATE SOME NEIGHBORS:

Illiberal thinkers have much to say about the great goods we could gain if the wheels of government power were employed in the service of particular lofty ideals. These appealing visions are a distraction from the more fundamental question: would that use of power be just? It is widely recognized today that giving second-class status to religious minorities, the suppression and prosecution of heresy/blasphemy as a civil crime, or widespread control of dissenting public speech, is unjust. Those protections that illiberals want to weaken or qualify, however, embody what many take to be obligations of justice and charity toward our fellow man (I think rightly and in keeping with Catholic teaching). Their arguments that communal flourishing is better achieved by ignoring those obligations in certain circumstances, if there are such obligations, would be nothing more than garden-variety consequentialism dressed up in the language of the common good.

It would be naïve in the extreme to fail to recognize, once certain measures are made legally permissible, that the same can and will be used against citizens of all stripes, including integralist Catholics. Employing liberal institutions to good ends can be difficult, and the effort forces us to ponder many prudential questions. We cannot expect perfectly to achieve that peace which God alone can give within the political institutions of a fallen world, but we owe it to our compatriots both to try to make the world a better place and to abide by fair terms of cooperation and justice in doing so. These aims are compatible in light of a Christian politics that aims to make friends of our enemies.

A political view that rejects this tends to portray all differences in terms of friend/enemy distinctions, which are insurmountable except by the use of power. This vision of political life is deeply in tension with Christian principles, even when its advocates promise to build the Kingdom of God on earth. We should accordingly qualify MacIntyre's warning about modern dignity. What is needed is not the rejection of dignity, but rather its establishment on better foundations.

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