Western Civilization's Immunodeficiency Disease

Philosopher Edward Feser examines liberalism on the analogy of an immunodeficiency virus which not only compromises the health of the social body, but leads to its own death as well.

I.

In his classic Suicide of the West, James Burnham famously characterized liberalism as “the ideology of Western suicide.”  What is often overlooked is exactly what he meant by this.  Burnham clarified as follows:

I do not mean that liberalism is – or will have been – responsible for the contraction and possible disappearance of Western civilization, that liberalism is “the cause” of the contraction… I mean, rather, in part, that liberalism has come to be the typical verbal systematization of the process of Western contraction and withdrawal; that liberalism motivates and justifies the contraction, and reconciles us to it. (p. 26)

Philosophers often distinguish between causes and conditions.  For example, when considering what brought about a certain forest fire, we might note that the local foliage had been very dry and that lightning struck a particular tree.  Both factors were relevant, but we would identify the lightning as the cause of the fire and the dryness of the foliage as a background condition that made it likely that the cause would generate an effect of that magnitude.

Burnham was saying that liberalism is best thought of not so much as the direct cause of the West’s decline and possible destruction, but rather as a condition that has made it possible for certain causes to bring about those effects.

I will leave aside, for present purposes, Burnham’s own way of developing this theme.  What I want to suggest here is that one way of understanding it is on the analogy of immunodeficiency disorders that weaken the body’s immune system in such a way that it cannot effectively fight off infections.  Liberalism is like AIDS or other immunodeficiency conditions in that it opens the social order to lethal threats that a healthy body politic would be able to fight off.

II.

But what do I mean by “liberalism”?  The term is somewhat protean, but let’s begin with what political philosophers of diverse stripes tend to agree are notes common to the different varieties of liberal theory.  There is, first and foremost, an emphasis on concern for the rights and liberties of the individual as the core of a just social and political order.  A second theme, corollary to the first, is an emphasis on the consent of individuals to governing institutions as the touchstone of their legitimacy.  Third, and a natural concomitant of the second theme, is a commitment to social and political toleration of moral and religious differences, since individuals would not consent to abide by moral and religious strictures they do not agree with.  Fourth, in turn, is a commitment to limitation on the powers of government to enforce such strictures.  A fifth theme is that principles like the ones just adumbrated have a universal application, since they apply to all human beings qua individuals.  

It is important to underline that it is not belief in individual freedom, consent, toleration, limited government, or their universal applicability as such that makes someone a liberal.  A non-liberal can, with qualifications, acknowledge the value of these things.  What is distinctive of liberalism is the emphasis it puts on such themes – the way it makes them foundational to its understanding of society and politics, and the extremes to which it pushes them.

To see what is distinctive about the liberal understanding of these themes, contrast it with the natural law conception of society and politics associated with thinkers like Thomas Aquinas (a conception once dominant in the West, but which liberalism supplanted).  On this conception, we are by nature social animals rather than atomized individuals, and it is the family rather than the individual that is the fundamental unit of society.  We have obligations to others to which we did not consent.  This includes obligations to political authority, which is analogous to paternal authority in being natural rather than artificial.  It includes obligations to one’s country, to which, like one’s family, we owe loyalty despite not having chosen to be born into it.  And it includes obligations to God as creator and sustainer of the world, of which the social order is a part.  If we add distinctively Christian claims to these natural law themes, we have the further consideration that the effects of original sin have left us unable to fulfill the requirements even of natural law (let alone what is necessary for salvation).  Hence the influence of the Church on the social order is necessary for its proper functioning.

For the natural law theorist, then, while the individual requires a certain measure of freedom in order to thrive, that freedom can never be so great that it might threaten to undermine the social order (the stability of the family, a sense of patriotic duty, and so on).  While the consent of the governed is an ideal that a wise governing authority will aim for, it cannot be fetishized to the point that all obligations one would not have chosen come to be regarded as per se oppressive, or that all institutions other than democratic ones are judged to be per se unjust.  Toleration of some deep disagreements among the citizenry over matters of morality and religion is just basic political common sense, but it cannot be dogmatized to the point that ideas and practices that are inherently subversive of the social order are given free rein.  Nor can it justify pushing the Church out of the public square. Government should not have more power than is necessary, but shoring up the moral order on which the stability of the family and society in general rests are among its necessary functions.  While there are indeed certain moral and political principles that are universal (given their foundation in human nature itself), by no means are they incompatible with more local national and cultural loyalties or with a diversity of possible just political systems.

Liberalism is at odds with these commitments at every point.  The rhetoric of individual freedom has so thoroughly molded liberal societies that it is routinely deployed across the political spectrum.  Any new freedom that achieves near universal support tends to be regarded by all sides as ipso facto legitimate and indeed good.  Consent is so emphasized that it is typically regarded as essential to the legitimacy, not only of particular policies and officeholders, but of the very social order itself.  (Hence Locke’s social contract theory, Rawls’s original position, Nozick’s modeling of the state on a business corporation whose services citizens have retained, and so on.)  The separation of Church and state is considered paradigmatic of toleration and limited government.  The universal spread of liberal democracy and the freedoms that have come to be associated with it are seen as imperative.  Cultural and other local differences between societies are judged to be of comparatively minor importance, and as unworthy of the degree of allegiance we owe liberal democracy and its freedoms.

Needless to say, liberalism, thus characterized, is nearly as common on the modern political right as on the left.  Indeed, the difference between most modern American “conservatives” and “liberals” is really just a difference between more moderate liberals and more extreme liberals.  And this is why the “conservatives,” despite occasional electoral and policy victories, tend in the long run to lose.  They are mostly operating from premises owned by the other side, and are just slower in drawing out the conclusions.  Postliberal conservatives are those who reject not only the conclusions, but the premises that lead to them.

III.

How does all of this make liberalism comparable to an immunodeficiency disorder in the social organism?  The answer is in part that liberalism prevents governments from shoring up the moral and religious orders that in turn uphold the social order – and in part that, even worse, it positively fosters skepticism about the moral and religious orders.  

To be sure, liberals often reject the suggestion that their position entails skepticism, relativism, subjectivism, and related ideas.  And they certainly are not skeptics, relativists, or the like full stop.  For one thing, they typically take their own liberal moral and political principles to be objectively true and knowable.  They also take us to have much in the way of knowledge, or at least rationally justifiable belief, of a scientific kind, including a social scientific kind.  More to the present point, they are not, they would insist, committed to denying that traditional moral and religious claims are true and knowable.  They are committed only to preventing or at least severely limiting the influence of these claims on public policy, which, they maintain, should be neutral about such things.

This is indeed true at least in principle.  The trouble is that it cannot work in practice, consistent with the realization of liberal outcomes.  Consider that even liberal statesmen routinely have to appeal to fallible and controversial knowledge claims, and could hardly do otherwise without making government utterly unworkable.  For example, in formulating and implementing policy, they have to make use of current scientific theory, economic data, social scientific analysis, and the like, and even moral judgments (about fairness, for example).  They regard this, quite rightly, as perfectly legitimate despite the fact that there exists a plurality of reasonable views about these matters.  They don’t think that the fact that free individuals disagree about the scientific, social scientific, and moral ideas in question entails that governing authorities who make use of such ideas are ipso facto threatening individual freedom.

But then, why couldn’t governing authorities also appeal to (say) Christian theological claims, or natural law arguments about sexual morality, in formulating and implementing governmental policy?  The answer can’t be that those ideas are uncertain and controversial, because as we’ve just noted, liberal governing authorities make use of uncertain and controversial information all the time.  The only justification for refusing to make use of such moral and theological ideas is that they are somehow even more doubtful and unworthy of the label “knowledge” than the uncertain and controversial ideas liberal authorities are happy to make use of.

Or consider the foundational arguments claimed to establish the correctness of liberal political philosophy.  Suppose, for example, that one agreed with Locke that in the state of nature there is no governmental authority, yet individuals governed by reason and who respect the law of nature would agree to leave the state of nature and establish a state.  But suppose also that one argued that these individuals would have rational grounds for establishing a Catholic integralist state that looked to the Church for guidance on policy.  Naturally, no Lockean would regard this as an acceptable outcome of Locke’s social contract scenario.

Or suppose one agreed with Rawls that a just society would be one chosen by individuals in the original position bargaining behind a “veil of ignorance.”  Rawls allows, as he has to in order for the thought experiment to work at all, that these individuals have at least some general knowledge of the human condition (matters of psychology, economics, and so on).  But suppose one argued that these individuals could also make use of moral knowledge derived from natural law theory. And suppose that one judged that individuals in the original position would, accordingly, choose to live in a society whose governmental institutions respected and upheld natural law views about sexual morality, abortion, and the like.  Naturally, no Rawlsian would regard this as an acceptable outcome of Rawls’s thought experiment.

But there is no way to justify these judgments unless the liberal regards the claims of Catholic theology, natural law theory, and the like as somehow more doubtful and unworthy of the label “knowledge” than the information individuals in Locke’s state of nature or Rawls’s original position are allowed to make use of in deciding what sort of political order to establish.

Thus, and to repeat, in practice, liberalism has to treat the moral and religious ideas it wants to prevent from having influence on public policy as if they were unknowable, subjective, or otherwise epistemically second-rate.  Hence, and again to repeat, liberal societies not only refuse to use the power of the state to shore up these ideas, but tend positively to undermine them.  And in doing so, they destroy the immune system that protects the social order from forces that work to undermine it.

IV.

If one looks at social and political questions through the lens of natural law theory, the specific ways in which liberalism has in fact now largely destroyed this immune system should be obvious.  For example, it’s not just that liberalism is loath to use the law to discourage abortion, divorce, pornography, contraception, etc. It’s that liberalism’s fixation on the freedom of individuals to live as they like tends positively to promote the attitude that concern about these things reflects an irrational prejudice rather than sound moral thinking.  The way is thereby opened for ideas and ways of living inherently subversive of the family to flood into the social order like a virus.  

Similarly, it’s not just that liberals are loath to regulate immigration, or to mold the educational curriculum, for the purpose of maintaining cultural cohesion.  It’s that liberalism tends to promote the attitude that concern with maintaining cultural cohesion reflects an irrational and even bigoted attachment to local and contingent social orders, one that is at odds with liberal universalism.  The way is thereby opened to ideas that are subversive of a shared allegiance to a common homeland, and that foster the replacement of this allegiance by a conflict of ethnic, religious, and cultural factions.

Nor is it just that liberals want to keep Church and state formally separated.  It’s that liberalism tends to promote the attitude that theological opinions are more like matters of subjective personal taste – comparable to tastes in food, fashion, or music – than they are like scientific or philosophical theses that have respectable arguments in their favor.  The way is thereby opened to the widespread collapse of religious practice and conviction, along with the disappearance of the conception of the moral life that such practice and conviction once shored up.  For such practice and conviction cannot effectively compete with the world, the flesh, and the devil when they are no longer seen as reflecting objective reality or minimal standards of rationality.

Again, liberalism does not just happen to have led to these corrosive attitudes.  It must foster them in order to preserve itself.  If liberals were to treat traditional moral and theological convictions as being no less rational or well-founded than the principles and knowledge that they already allow to have an influence on public policy, then they would have no reason to prevent those traditional convictions from also informing public policy.  And the result would be a social and political order that is no longer recognizably liberal.

For this reason, liberals tend to frame debate in a manner rigged so that it rules out from the get go the very possibility of a reasonable challenge to liberalism.  For example, Rawls holds that liberalism is neutral between competing “comprehensive doctrines” (religions, moral philosophies, and so on) as long as they are “reasonable” ones.  But the “reasonable” ones, it turns out, are precisely those willing to submit to liberal constraints.

Nor is this “heads I win, tails you lose” treatment of its rivals some novel contemporary development within liberalism.  It was baked in from the beginning, even when liberals happened as a matter of contingent historical fact to be more religious and morally conservative than they are now.  In the Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke writes:

I esteem… toleration to be the chief characteristical mark of the true church. For whatsoever some people boast of the antiquity of places and names, or of the pomp of their outward worship; others, of the reformation of their discipline; all, of the orthodoxy of their faith, for everyone is orthodox to himself: these things, and all others of this nature, are much rather marks of men’s striving for power and empire over one another, than of the church of Christ.

“Everyone is orthodox to himself,” with claims to orthodoxy really just a “mark of men’s striving for power” – here we see a surprisingly early expression of the idea that religious convictions are essentially subjective.  And toleration, Locke says, is not only something the religious should accept, but is indeed itself “the chief characteristical mark of the true church”!  Acceptance of liberalism is thus made not only a mark of reasonableness, but the one thing that does turn out to be a non-negotiable demand of Christian orthodoxy!  Locke is, if anything, here even more shameless in rigging the game in a liberal direction than were successors like Mill and Rawls.  

V.

Naturally, liberals of a more secular bent will be untroubled by the examples I’ve given of the weakening of the social order’s immune system.  But that is precisely because the logic of liberalism is to “define deviancy down” (to borrow Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous phrase).  What past generations would have judged a reductio ad absurdum of liberal principles, the current generation takes to be a more consistent application of them.  What past generations would have admitted to be unacceptable social costs, the current generation decides not to count as a cost at all, but somehow a benefit.  If it really does follow from liberalism, they think, it must be progress, not decay.  This does not protect liberalism from falsification, but it does protect the liberal from perceiving it.

But increasing disconnect from moral and social reality is not the only problem with this attitude.  There is also the fact that the universal acid of liberalism is bound eventually to eat away at liberal principles themselves.

This is inevitable when the mere fact of pluralism, of deep moral and theological disagreement among citizens, is claimed to show the need for a liberal political order.  For liberalism itself is, of course, hardly less open to criticism and reasonable disagreement than Christian theology, natural law theory, and the other moral, metaphysical, and religious views the liberal wants to keep from having any influence on the political order.  Those who do not consent to liberalism are bound to regard it as no less oppressive, as no less arbitrary an imposition on them, than the moral and religious ideas that the liberal regards as oppressive.

Thus do we see today the rapid spread of ideologies like Critical Race Theory, which regard liberalism itself as something from which we need liberation, and liberal ideals of free speech, due process, neutrality, and the like as masks of an oppressive power.  Thus do we see in Western countries the rise of large populations of immigrants who understandably see no reason why their communities should not be governed by their own ancient religious law, whether or not it conforms to the demands of liberalism.  

Liberalism itself has fostered the conditions in which these threats to its survival have arisen.  It is in that way the facilitator, not only of the West’s suicide, but of its own.  What remains in question is not whether the future of the West will be postliberal, but exactly what sort of postliberal future awaits us.