Angelico Press
The part about traditional Christian polities seems all right. What about the contrast with the American experiment, given at the beginning?
Today, the principles of the “moderate” Enlightenment are what pass for a conservative inheritance to be opposed to the excesses of liberalism, an inheritance “We the People” were supposed to have “secured to ourselves and our posterity” following the American Revolution. These principles include:
• A hypothetical “social compact” or contract as the foundation of the State.
• The origin of political sovereignty in the “consent” of the governed (invariably presumed to have been given by those who happen to be wielding power).
• “Government by the people” according to the “sovereignty of the people,” meaning strict majority rule on all questions, including the most profound moral ones.
• Church-State separation and the non-“interference” of religion in politics.
• The confinement of religion, above all the revealed truths of Christianity, to the realm of “private” opinions and practices one is free to adopt (or to denounce) if it pleases him, but which are to have no controlling effect on law or public policy.
• The unlimited pursuit of gain, including the freedom to buy, sell and advertise anything whatsoever the majority deems permissible by law.
• Total liberty of thought and action, both private and public, within the limits of a merely external “public peace” essentially reduced to the protection of persons and property from invasion by others—in sum, a “free-market society.”
• The dissolubility of marriage, and thus the family, as a mere civil contract founded on a revocable consent.
1. Is the social compact theory applied by those who drafted and ratified the Constitution to each of the states? Or to the federal union of those states? It seems proper and valid to apply it to the latter.
2. Does sovereignty originate in the consent of the ruled? Or does it merely require their consent? (In so far as they desire to live with that group, then their consent is given. But what if they wish to separate themselves from the group?)
3. It is not clear to me if he is referring to democracy or "representative government." Government by the people at what level? And who is qualified to represent the people? What if those who are to be chosen must be qualified to serve in office on some other basis other than the fact of being chosen. How can a decision be made by a group of [relative] equals except by some sort of majority rule?
4. Under the Constitution, Church-State separation applies only at the Federal level.
5. This next point only follows if the previous point applies absolutely.
6. Is this a problem of the Constitution (or the Articles of Confederation) or a problem of American culture, coupled with a certain understanding of the right to property?
7. and 8. Are these formulated or advocated by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?
One could make the argument that the American political order has been warped by liberalism. (Or by the few pursuing their private interest, while pretending to be supporters of liberalism, or using liberalism to preserve their power.) Mr. Ferrara equates American conservatism with the upholding of "moderate" Enlightenment principles, but is this really the case? Others, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, have claimed that we are all liberals, and to a point this is undoubtedly true for most of us - our thought processes have been formed within liberalism. But has the Anglo-American political tradition always been 100% liberal?
An opposing view: A Revolution Not Made But Prevented by Russell Kirk
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