Russell Kirk, “The Roots Of American Order,” pp. 187-189.
No question that the “enumeration of civil liberties in the Constitution” has “endangered” many civil rights belonging to many un-anticipated parties not specified in the Constitution. Hence the ever-accelerating expansion of civil rights litigation.
And no question that “political power decree of positive laws without reference to general consent has led to the evasion, defiance, and diminished respect” for statutory law resulting in the “substitution of force for justice,” –another trend in law and enforcement that continues to accelerate.
These trends do not lead to more or better justice, equity or fairness. They substitute the rule of men for the rule of law by shrinking the domain of liberty in human action, and eliminating opportunities for moral choices. While it’s all done in the name of the “public good,” ironically, people who act without making a moral choice cannot be good. Coercion and force nullify morality. Morality requires free choice. Without a moral choice, people cannot choose the good over the bad or evil. The best they can do is obey–the moral stature of a “good doggy.”
Perhaps the left tolerates Islamic submission so well because they’re both systems of obedience.
Each day the news is full of reports of what people liberated from their moral responsibility have done to other people, to the world and to themselves. People who do not experience morality are disconnected from justice or concern for mankind. All the totalitarian systems – Marxism, Islam, Fascism, Socialism, Communism, Progressivism, Gaia, and their numerous combinations and derivatives – take us toward amorality in the name of their concepts of the public good. All of them are self-defeating as they collaterally damage innocents and non-believers. All of them institutionalize corruption.
Freedom, voluntary choice, limited government, judicial equity, all of these traditions preserve moral choice and enforce moral responsibility. There will always be bad men and women. Inflexible totalitarian systems do not contain self-correction mechanisms. They insulate bad people and bad policies from their negative consequences.
Liberty is messy, but it’s still better than everything else because it allows us to evolve. The left only want evolution they can control. The right recognizes the fact that individuals know best how to direct their own evolution.