Old Socialist comments.
I am not a subscriber to ‘Real Clear Politics’ , but somehow I am on their mailing list. Today I explored the web site, and one of the essays caught my interest:
‘Philip Howard Aims To Enhance Freedom by Restoring Authority’ by Peter Berkowitz.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/04/21/philip_howard_aims_to_enhance_freedom_by_restoring_authority_150829.html
The first sentence of Berkowitz’s essay offers both ‘The New Right’ & ‘the progressive left’ : Reader first note, the upper case of ‘The New Right’ and the lower case reserved for ‘the progressive left’, as a way to minimize, to place in shadow, as opposed to the revelation of ‘The New Right’ ! ‘Largely unbeknownst to themselves’ places both ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ in the category of unconscious political actors, is more Berkowitz rhetorical chicanery?
Largely unbeknownst to themselves, influential segments of the New Right and the progressive left share a deep-seated – and delusive – belief. Both suppose that freedom – in the form of the equal individual rights promised by America’s founding principles – on the one hand, and traditional virtues and tight-knit local communities, on the other, are implacably opposed. The more you have of one, prominent figures on the right and on the left surmise, the less you have of the other.
They draw, however, opposite conclusions from their common conviction. Prizing virtue and community, national conservatives and postliberals on the right blame individual freedom for hollowing out the public good and diverting attention from citizens’ character, and they would wield government to uphold their religious convictions and the moral judgments that flow from them. Valuing autonomy, ideologues and activists of the progressive left seek to emancipate individuals from the constraints of venerable duties and inherited ways of life.
One can take too far the observation about the partisans’ strange convergence. After all, the New Right affirms the right of national self-determination and that public policy should reflect that human beings are equally created in God’s image. Meanwhile, the progressive left employs government authority to curtail free speech in the name of inclusiveness. But on the whole, both believe that one must choose: freedom and individual rights or virtue and community.
I’ve placed in italics of some of the Berkowitz’s arcane, or just dubious political vocabulary e.g. national conservatives & postliberals , as co much techo-chatter, for want of a better descriptor ! Peter Berkowitz is a ‘senior fellow at the Hoover Institution’ who understands the value of propaganda, in the guise of book review, that acts the part of literary criticism, wedded to verifiable good of the restoration of ‘Authority’! In his next paragraph Mr. Berkowitz mentions both John Locke and Aristotle as part of ‘our political/moral inheritance’, I will offer the caveat that both of these Philosophers need careful laundering.
From the perspective of America’s founding principles, that is a false choice. The founders generally shared John Locke’s view – which reflects The author of several books dealing with institutions, laws, and practices that have distorted society, eroded freedom, and misshaped morals, Howard is also a lawyer and chair of Common Good, a nonpartisan organization that endeavors to replace bureaucracy with human responsibility .and Aristotle’s understanding – that freedom, the virtues, and community are mutually dependent: freedom makes possible the exercise of virtue and the preservation of communities while individuals acquire in communities the virtues that enable them to maintain and improve free institutions.
Locke:
Abstract:
Locke owned stock in slave trading companies and was secretary of the Lords Proprietors of the Carolinas, where slavery was constitutionally permitted. He had two notions of slavery: legitimate slavery was captivity with forced labor imposed by the just winning side in a war; illegitimate slavery was an authoritarian deprivation of natural rights. Locke did not try to justify either black slavery or the oppression of Amerindians. In The Two Treatises of Government, Locke argued against the advocates of absolute monarchy. The arguments for absolute monarchy and colonial slavery turn out to be the same. So in arguing against the one, Locke could not help but argue against the other. Examining the natural rights tradition to which Locke’s work belongs confirms this. Locke could have defended colonial slavery by building on popular ideas of his colleagues and predecessors, but there is no textual evidence that he did that or that he advocated seizing Indian agricultural land.
https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/28299/chapter-abstract/214977811?redirectedFrom=fulltext
April 24, 2024: ‘Locke could have defended colonial slavery…?
Aristotle
Abstract
Aristotle’s claim that natural slaves do not possess autonomous rationality (Pol. 1.5, 1254b20-23) cannot plausibly be interpreted in an unrestricted sense, since this would conflict with what Aristotle knew about non-Greek societies. Aristotle’s argument requires only a lack of autonomous practical rationality. An impairment of the capacity for integrated practical deliberation, resulting from an environmentally induced excess or deficiency in thumos (Pol. 7.7, 1327b18-31), would be sufficient to make natural slaves incapable of eudaimonia without being obtrusively implausible relative to what Aristotle is likely to have believed about non-Greeks. Since Aristotle seems to have believed that the existence of people who can be enslaved without injustice is a hypothetical necessity, if those capable of eudaimonia are to achieve it, the existence of natural slaves has implications for our understanding of Aristotle’s natural teleology.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/33039745_Aristotle_on_Natural_Slavery
Christian teaching
This speaks for itself!
Mr. Berkowitz’s 1478 word essay, has been reduced to 836 words remaining. Mr. Berkowitz is a Neo-Conservative, or its cognate, whose political/moral imperative is to the muddy the rhetorical waters, just enough to make his arguments seem plausible! The Ideas, Philosophies of these paradigmatic Thinkers/Writers are tainted, as my sources make clear: if The Reader attaches herself to something like Truth or even mere plausibility. I’ll pick through the arguments remaining, and without apology, it will be self-serving, but I think revelatory of Mr. Berkowitz’s defence of a needed re-invigoration of ‘Authority’.
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…fruitful expression in cooperation is central to Philip K. Howard’s succinct new book. In “Everyday Freedom: Designing the Framework for a Flourishing Society,” Howard maintains that throughout contemporary public life, “Americans have lost the authority to do what they think is sensible.” Restoring that authority, he argues, will enhance individual freedom.
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The author of several books dealing with institutions, laws, and practices that have distorted society, eroded freedom, and misshaped morals, Howard is also a lawyer and chair of Common Good, a nonpartisan organization that endeavors to replace bureaucracy with human responsibility.
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Howard focuses on the corrosion of the culture of freedom in post-1960s America. This may sound odd since that decade is famously associated with rebellion against traditional norms and practices.
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The post-1960s assault on freedom flowed from good intentions, he asserts.
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But, Howard maintains, the technocratic mindset overreached.
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Howard identifies “three new legal mechanisms” that government and business have implemented since the 1960s to protect the American people from abusive authority.
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The purpose of comprehensively regulating conduct through elaborate rules, extensive procedures, and a vast array of rights – you could call it the juridification of public life – reflected the high-minded aspiration “to enhance freedom by reducing any wiggle room for bias, unfairness, or error.”
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The long-term consequences of the juridification of public life, argues Howard, have been pernicious. The expansion of law and regulation – notwithstanding the aspiration to fairness – suppresses spontaneity, constricts intuition and common sense, fosters conformity, promotes indiscriminate distrust of authority, discourages people from taking ownership of their actions, and erodes appreciation of the common good.
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“The cure is not mainly new policies, but new legal operating structures that re-empower Americans in their everyday choices,” Howard contends.
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Howard proposes an alternative framework. To preserve and enlarge “everyday freedom,” this new legal architecture would establish “boundaries safeguarding against unreasonable acts.”
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Since judgment on the spot is crucial to most human activities – in the family, within communities, on the job – law that empowers individuals to use their common sense would not only expand freedom but also improve outcomes.
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“Everyday freedom requires not only a zone of protected autonomy, but also trust that other people will abide by the reasonable values of society.”
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Although it cuts against the grain of contemporary legal sensibilities, argues Howard, “people with responsibility must be empowered to assert norms of what’s right and reasonable, and they must be free to make judgments about the people they work with.”
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This freedom to exercise authority allowed supervisors and workers to use their discretion, find creative solutions, and work unimpeded by bureaucratic meddling and endless demands for permits and licenses.
The last paragraphs of Mr. Berkowitz’s essay are platitudinous at best, yet he still can’t let go of the bad actors, in this dubious Political Melodrama : ‘The New Right’ , in upper case & ‘the progressive left’ in lower case, that exemplifies his political/rhetorical bad faith!
To deserve, in the name of the protection of everyday freedom, the greater authority and discretion that Howard would entrust to them, public officials and ordinary citizens must acquire a range of virtues: the imagination to put themselves in other people’s shoes; the diligence to do their homework and devise feasible undertakings, measures, and reforms; the courage to stand by correct but unpopular decisions; and the grace to admit when they are wrong and correct course.
The American political tradition teaches that the cultivation of these virtues, which are essential to the responsible exercise of everyday freedom, depends on strong families, vibrant communities, and schools dedicated to education rather than indoctrination.
Contrary, then, to influential elements within both the New Right and the progressive left, reconciling freedom, on the one hand, and virtue and community, on the other, does not call for squaring a circle but rather embracing a package deal.
Political Observer
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