Beyond the Commanding Heights
Dear Reader,
Earlier this week C.Jay Engel of Contra Mordor posted a fascinating account of how he, in his words, “justified my way out,” of Libertarianism, “never to look back.” It’s a fascinating piece, and TRC hopes you consider it.
TRC was inspired by Mr. Engel’s piece, and some of the similar stories recounted by commenters at Mr. Engel’s substack, to share his own story.
Background
When TRC was much younger, the Libertarian ideology was all around him. Indeed, the title of this post comes from a PBS documentary he watched multiple times in his youth, Commanding Heights, about the intellectual rivalry between Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes, and how that rivalry played out in 20th Century public policy, especially in the USA and UK. The documentary isn’t particularly intellectually formidable, but it was interesting enough to hold the attention of a baby bird who was interested in economics and history…
Then there was also the religious angle. TRC was surrounded by, and immersed in, the ideas promoted by entities and individuals who seek to square Libertarianism and Austrian School economics with the doctrines and teachings of the One, Holy, Universal, and Apostolic Church. Special mention should be made here of the Acton Institute, by far the most prominent of these in TRC’s life growing up.
To be fair, it still seems to TRC to this day that there is a certain degree of compatibility between some tenets espoused by the Austrian School and other Libertarian thinkers, and the magisterium of the Church. More on that later.
The Turn
At some point, maybe around the time that TRC was about 27 years old, and after many hundreds (if not thousands) of hours spent volunteering for Republican political candidates and many thousands more hours arguing for Libertarianism and conservatism with almost anyone who would listen, TRC found himself wondering more about the foundations for these philosophies, and also wondering more about the people that the Acton Institute staff, and writers like Thomas Woods, went out of their way to attack. The people who were on the receiving end of the attacks were basically dismissed as wannabe ‘social justice warriors’, ‘bleeding-heart collectivists’, ‘socialists’, and ‘LARPERs’, which—in fairness—some of them were…
When it came to the former (the foundation for liberalism, classical liberalism, Libertarianism, and Austrian or Chicago School-influenced economic and social policy), TRC came to be convinced that the foundation was the assault of the world on Christendom, by which he means the end of the period of history that flourished at times, and in various places, between 301 AD and 1918, with the high water mark perhaps being around the 10th to the 13th centuries. To this it might be asked, so what if the demolition of Christendom formed a basis for these ideologies? To TRC, it meant a great deal, because around the same time he was realizing these things, he was discovering more of the glory of Christendom, especially through papal encyclicals like Quas Primas, and scholarly works like Warren Carroll’s six-volume The History of Christendom.
Some (read: Thomas Woods and Samuel Gregg) might argue that there is no inherent tension between at least the Austrian School’s ‘scientific’ aspects of money, exchange, price signals, monopolies, and other terms that economists like to nerd out on, and the magisterial teachings of the Church. And this may be true. For his own part, although this might enrage some of TRC’s Distributist friends who seem to believe that Libertarian economists are good for nothing but to be cast out into the darkness, TRC has observed that St. Thomas Aquinas was happy to lift ideas, concepts, and work from people (such as Aristotle, Averroes, Avicenna) who had less-than-perfect religious and philosophical grounding. Likewise, it would seem to be possible, at least in theory and at least to the canary, that the Church’s magisterium—and her children—could lift things from Von Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard, even if those guys had less-than-perfect religious and philosophical grounding.
Nevertheless, all of these people from Von Mises to Hayek to Rothbard, and for good measure, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Milton Friedman, and yes, Samuel Greg and Thomas Woods, all seemed ambivalent, at best, about the glory of Christendom, and seemed utterly indifferent to what had been lost, especially since 1517. This was making it increasingly difficult for the bird to relate to them.
The more your canary read and listened to Woods and the Acton Institute, the more he got the impression—correctly or incorrectly—that to them, air conditioning, iPhones, and cheap shoes more than made up for the loss of an era where 90%+ of the population was pursuing the Beatific Vision, and people practicing usury, fraud, and exploitation of the poor would have gotten a more lion-hearted response than “oh, well…the market will sort it out!” If you, Dear Reader, are more of the Acton Institute frame of mind (or, for that matter, of the Ben Shapiro or Joe Rogan frame of mind), TRC respects you. But for him, classical liberalism was becoming less and less sufficient as a philosophical and political framework (although, admittedly, he does appreciate air conditioning during the Summer).
Then there were the foundations for the people that were the target of Thomas Woods’ and the Acton Institute’s ire. What seemed to unite them, from GK Chesterton to Fr. Vincent McNabb, to John Medaille, was a good-faith intention to conform economic and social philosophy to the Truth, especially the truth contained in the Deposit of Faith, as taught by the magisterium of the Church. For his own part, TRC found this much more attractive than trying to conform the Truth and the Deposit of Faith…to classical liberalism.
But wait! What need was there to conform either one to the other at all? Didn’t TRC have it on good authority that St. John Paul II had endorsed Libertarianism in Centesimus annus? And hadn’t Samuel Gregg assured everyone that any seeming tension between Libertarianism and the Church was fake news?
It may be helpful here to return to C.Jay Engel’s post that prompted TRC last week. In it, Mr. Engel defines the Libertarian philosophy as:
The proposition that “individuals have an absolute right to their body and the external property they have acquired by non-aggressive means (such as trade, inheritance, original appropriation, creation, etc.).”
On the surface, this may sound compatible with Christian doctrine. But then, consider this from paragraph 2280 of the Church’s catechism, which in TRC’s opinion bears some relevance to the discussion:
Everyone is responsible for his life before God who has given it to him. It is God who remains the sovereign Master of life. We are obliged to accept life gratefully and preserve it for His honor and the salvation of our souls. We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us.
Or, in even more explicit contrast, St. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20:
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price.
Our bodies (to say nothing of our property) belong to God, “the sovereign Master of life.” Not ourselves. As innocuous as Libertarian “doctrine” might sound, it is (at least as expressed by Mr. Engel, which is about as good an expression of it as TRC believes you are likely to find), incompatible with the notion that we are stewards—not owners—of the life and the bodies God has entrusted to us. From suicide to recreational drug use, and numerous other issues, this forms a massive difference.
“Alright, TRC. So there’s a difference. So, don’t use recreational drugs, and don’t commit suicide. If that’s your truth (as informed by your Church), cool. But certainly, you could agree, TRC, that government is a necessary evil, and it should be limited to just protecting people from aggression, and enforcing contract agreements, right?”
Here again, the canary was discovering things about the Christian tradition—if not binding teaching—that just didn’t fit the Libertarian ideology. For example, in the Summa Theologiae (I-II.Q96.A2), St. Thomas Aquinas—in answering the contention that law should punish all vices (St. Thomas did not agree with this contention)—drops a bombshell (emphasized in the following quote) regarding this very question of human government and the proper role of human law:
The purpose of human law is to lead men to virtue, not suddenly, but gradually. Wherefore it does not lay upon the multitude of imperfect men the burdens of those who are already virtuous, viz. that they should abstain from all evil. Otherwise these imperfect ones, being unable to bear such precepts, would break out into yet greater evils
Law (and government!)’s proper purpose is to direct people to virtue! It is not a ‘necessary evil’ just to protect people from aggressors and to enforce contract agreements so that a constant supply of iPhones and cheap shoes continues to run.
Dear Reader, please do not suppose that your canary has any confidence that our current regime has the competence, let alone the moral wherewithal, to reliably craft laws leading the citizens it ought to be serving…to virtue. But in the abstract, this is—according to St. Thomas—the proper role of government and law.
Admittedly, St. Thomas Aquinas was not, himself, the magisterium of the Church, nor was he infallible. In preparing to post this, TRC tried to find somewhere in the magisterium that St. Thomas’ contention (in ST I-II.Q96.A2) had been lifted by a Pope, council, or authoritative Church body such as the DDF. As of posting time, he has not been able to find this, so he will go ahead and say, if you disagree with your loyal pet (and for that matter, if you disagree with St. Thomas on this), you are not necessarily transgressing ‘the teachings of the Church’ at least as far as TRC can see. But then, this post was never about convincing you to change your mind, so much as for the bird to chime in with his own story, inspired by C.Jay Engel. And this is it…the canary just found the tradition of St. Thomas more compelling, to say nothing of more attractive, than the tradition of Robert Nozick and Joe Rogan…
Plot Twist
But here, TRC will bring this entire account to a screeching halt, and spring a twist in the story on you, Dear Reader. Since developing an appreciation for the legacy and glory of Christendom, TRC has found himself becoming more Libertarian-ish, (if not a borderline-anarchist) than he ever was in his Ron Paul-Bro Libertarian days…
For example, Libertarians might say that the actions of the state should be limited to physical protection and contract-enforcement, but would they join TRC in saying the state should cease to exist altogether? Or, they might say that a non-interventionist foreign policy should be pursued by our leaders, but would they join TRC in calling for the total disbandment of the entire standing/professional/central-government-controlled military (which has pretty much happened before in American history, btw, in 1784)?
Nota bene: there is nothing in the Deposit of Faith (at least that TRC is aware of) that explicitly teaches or endorses these ideas; even if you share TRC’s faith, you are under no obligation on the basis of that faith to agree with him on these things. These are simply examples of opinions of his that he’s formed since broadening his horizons beyond Libertarianism. He also recognizes that by floating these—admittedly outlandish—ideas on the state and military without developing them, he’s unpinning and rolling a grenade into this post, and then casually strolling off as it detonates, but it is what it is; his intention here is not to argue these positions, it is to illustrate how embracing a tradition that transcended the limits placed by classical liberalism opened his mind (small though a bird’s mind may be) to more exciting and radical ideas.
Conclusion
Reflecting on all of this, your loyal canary realizes that he didn’t so much “leave” or “reject” Libertarianism as much as he escaped from its limitations. For example:
Escaping the concept of scarcity as the ultimate key to understanding human action, for the principle of the bounteousness of God’s providence (with instances of scarcity an outcome of sin and the fall, rather than a first principle)
Escaping the empty “freedom” of John Stuart Mill, for an ordered, rational, life-giving freedom as articulated by Pope Leo XIII in Libertas.
Escaping the historical dubiousness of ‘capitalism has brought more people out of poverty than any other system’ for the historical context that the same immoral, post-Christendom social order that gave birth to “capitalism” created much of the poverty that capitalism has allegedly brought people out of.
Of course, TRC recognizes that this post could have been one sentence of sixteen words: he began to discover the glory of Christendom, and classical liberalism would never again be adequate. But then, brevity is something that your loyal bird is still working on.
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Very insightful!