AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
I ended my first column in this series with a quote from Edmund Burke. I begin this article by repeating it: “But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint...Men are qualified for liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.”
Without wisdom and virtue, liberty is licentiousness—the “greatest of all possible evils.” Folly, vice, and madness. “We are coming for your children...” Freedom obviously doesn’t mean people can do anything they want. But who draws the line? If drawn without wisdom and virtue, we get the Democratic Party and their modern American hedonism, with crime, sexual debauchery, and utter societal chaos. “If there is no God, then everything is permitted” (Sartre and Dostoevsky). This is the Democrats’ delight because now increasing totalitarianism becomes necessary to restrain the chaos they have unleashed.
Burke’s declaration is inherently verifiable. People who practice goodness, benevolence, trustworthiness, honor, self-control, i.e., virtue, don’t need much external government. It is essential to understand that, in the Madisonian/Burkeian vision, “self-government” is not Washington, D.C., London, or any national government entity. “Self-government” is people governing themselves, controlling themselves, and disciplining themselves in harmony with the laws of God, which He established to rule this existence.
Those who refuse such personal self-government, i.e., practice licentious and selfish behavior, will need external forces to control them from hurting themselves, but especially others. As Burke wrote in another place, “Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.”
The less people practice personal self-control, the more they will need a bigger and more powerful government—external restraints—to force conformity to civilized behavior. More government has never meant more freedom. As James Madison (see my first article in this series) said, the government cannot make you free and happy; these are only the offspring of virtue.
The problem in America today is that we have one major political party—and not a small portion of the other—which no longer accepts the laws of God as those that should govern the affairs of men. The Democratic Party does not want to cede power to God; they want it for themselves. That is typical of every Leftist (and Marxist) government. All one needs to do is look at the history of Leftist governments over the past 100 years to see that this is so. For example, Chairman Mao played “God.” Anyone who did not submit to HIS will was to be “re-educated,” or tortured or killed. The number of people who suffered in Communist China (and still do) is incalculable.
You torture/kill as many as necessary until you cower the entire population into obedience. That is where Communist China is today—a “cowered” populous, but with still a few renegades who need the prior treatment of “re-education,” torture, or death. God’s law is ignored; thus, “freedom” is only what the CCP allows, which is not freedom at all.
The Democratic Party in America has taken a different road because they do not have totalitarian power and, thus, can currently only practice oppression on a limited scale. But they have the same goal—rejecting God’s law for their own. Hence, totalitarian power. The Democratic Party is doing this by denying the place of “virtue” in freedom.
To the Democrats, freedom is defined as licentiousness, the right of individuals to do as they please, “live and let live,” as long as they “don’t harm anyone else.” But no man is an island; no one lives or dies to himself. Our actions inevitably affect others in some way. I may tell a small lie and seemingly hurt no one. But, by getting away with it, I am breaking down my personal moral resistance to evil, becoming less trustworthy, and making myself more apt to lie again and in situations where others might indeed be harmed. The consequences can genuinely be hurtful.
The mutilation of children currently promoted by the evil, godless Democratic Party is another case in point. No honorable, virtuous person would ever do such a thing or could even contemplate it. But by rejecting God’s law (as well as science) of man and woman, Democrats want people to believe that men can become women and that some children who are born male are female.
Because of licentiousness, because of the total lack of virtue in the Democratic Party, we will have to have external laws to protect children (even against despicable parents, Nikki) from those who would destroy their God-given nature, maim them for life, and thus rob them of their ability—and freedom—to have the kind of family that is the very foundation of a happy, fulfilled, and civilized life.
By destroying the family, Democrats are obliterating that upon which free societies are established and creating a greater necessity for external controls, i.e., government, i.e., less freedom. “Men are qualified for liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites” (Burke). But totalitarian political parties, like the Chinese Communist Party and the American Democratic Party, don’t want liberty for their people.
So, in China, people who rebel against the CCP laws are punished. In America, people who rebel against the new licentiousness of the Democratic Party will suffer—are suffering—the same fate. In both cases, it is an attack on virtuous freedom by godless monsters who want totalitarian control over others.
Licentiousness is not freedom. “It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters” (Burke). It is indeed slavery to lust and passion, psychological enslavement to evil.
“As free, yet not using liberty as a cloak (excuse) for vice” (I Peter 2:16). But that’s America, 2023.
