Untramelled Liberty = Community?
The Republican Response to Communitarians
Sam highlights an interesting David Brooks piece.
I bet Republicans would respond that “community” and “civic flourishing” cannot be engineered from within the Beltway.
They would probably say that successful communities emerge naturally from people unhindered by government incursion. They would argue that the healthy communities of the past were not planned by bureaucrats, but rather arose this organic fashion. And that it is hubris to imagine otherwise.
This argument might shed some light of what Brooks calls the Republican desire for moral clarity. They are sympathetic to the notion of the rugged individual, both for psychological and moral reasons. But they see no moral or empirical reason to sacrifice this image for the sake of community values. They argue that community values and successful communities emerge from such independent-minded people. In those John Ford movies where a Western town organized itself, they would point out that there was no U.S. government employee handing out spools of red tape, telling them they how to do it; it was individuals freely choosing come together harmoniously.
Whether or not, and to what extent, this works in the real world is the question for Republicans (and Democrats). And the debate over it reveals the relationship between empirical reality/rules and morality.
-Jake
Related posts:
- John Ford, philosopher
- How the West was lost
- Community first?
- The conscience clause and liberty
- CBOoya
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[...] his reply to my post on David Brooks’s New York Times column today, Jake writes: In those John Ford [...]
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