His article is behind a paywall, but worth the $2. My notes from it:
1. Progressives and Conservatives both focus on individual freedom. Progressives a bit more on equal positive liberty, conservatives more on negative liberty.
2. Both theorize as if all you need are the right social mechanisms, and free individuals will flourish.
3. But in fact, if you don’t start with responsible, virtuous individuals, social mechanisms will not work. The miracle of this country is not our institutions but that we have citizens “generally capable of using their freedom well.”
4. Liberation from outside coercion is a shortcut to liberty. The “long way,” which Levin is writing about, is what he calls “moral formation.”
5. Although our theory often points to unlimited liberty, our practice often involves traditional restraints. For example, traditional marriage remains popular, along with its constraints.
6. Religious institutions “command us to a mixture of responsibility, sympathy, lawfulness, and righteousness that align our wants with our duties.”
Ultimately, the piece is difficult to summarize. Using my own words, he seems to me to be making a case that virtue is important for the individual and for the community, and politics provides a false path to virtue. Instead, it is the individual, aided by the traditional institutions of family, work, and faith, who must struggle with the issue of virtue.
And, yes, this should provide reinforcement to those who view the world along the civilization vs. barbarism axis, without resonating so well with libertarians or progressives. But everyone should be able to appreciate the clarity of thought and the quality of writing.
From a game theory perspective, that first clause reads “if true” and can be removed.
Yet the author observes that we have “we have citizens “generally capable of using their freedom well.”” anyway. Presumably the mechanism is not that each individual is responsible and virtuous with probably p unaffected by social mechanisms, then America got lucky with probability p^300000000. What is the unstated third alternative?
One of the books I’ll be going through over my vacation is “A Farewell to Alms”. The thesis as I understand it is that people aren’t fungible, and that different peoples and cultures are the result of centuries+ of selection pressures based on their environment. It may well be that Europeans and NE Asians are unequally “virtuous” as far as the virtues that make modern industrial societies rich and safe. Others, unless they go through the same process (note: takes many lifetimes and is very harsh), will not have the same virtues.
“politics provides a false path to virtue” sounds appealing to the freedom-coercion axis.
good point
Roy, I believe I am in good company in feeling like most of my countrimen are reasonably virtuous, for at least some virtues.
As a motivating example, why do people avoid cutting in front of each other in line? You can’t explain it by appeals to force, nor by appears to written laws. Proper line behavior is not written down anywhere that I know of; if it is, it’s not in any place that the a typical line waiter knows anything about. Moreover, there’s not a line guard hovering around to make sure people use the line correctly. If you want to cut in line, you can often get away with it.
The best explanation is that people are generally virtuous, at least about line-waiting protocols.
I can recognize a civilization-barbarism axis, but it seems to me that “civilization” is a mismash of valid virtues and (invalid) prejudices. In the long run, the more valid virtues are recognizes, and invalid prejudices eliminated, the more civilized.
The distinction between valid virtues and (invalid) prejudices emerges from game theory under conditions of relative liberty. In a state of coercion, the necessary experimentation can’t take place.
Ultimately, civilization cannot emerge without liberty. Organization can, but that’s a different thing.