Author: Douglas Knight

We are also generally aware of the ways that the culture we oppose – of mobility, deracination and placelessness – is also based upon widespread free-riding. The culture of liberalism – writ large – has always free-ridden on the health and vitality of a pre-liberal, even anti-liberal culture. Most basically it assumes the existence of, but does little to support or replenish, the culture of good families. It relies upon the virtues of children raised in those settings, even as it is suspicious of – even destructive of – what are necessarily â??paternalisticâ?? (or â??maternalisticâ??) features of those settings. It has sought to open every closed association and civil institution, ultimately emptying them of the capacity to elicit loyalty, memory and stability. It relies on the good will and sacrifice of citizens even as it assumes that we are fundamentally rational actors driven by self-interest. Tocqueville wrote of Americans that â??we do more honor to our philosophy than to ourselves,â?? meaning that although we explain all of our actions in terms of self-interest, we actually act out of a deeper wellspring of altruism and fellowship. Over time, he observed, our actions would begin to conform to our words, however, thus eviscerating the deepest and better sources of our behavior.

Similarly, over the past century and a half, liberalism has free-ridden on the millenia-long accumulation of â??resourcesâ?? that it has shown exceptional ability in accessing and utilizing, but very little capacity to spare or save. â??Drill baby drillâ?? is akin to the adolescent refrain of â??itâ??s MINE, itâ??s MINE,â?? uncognizant of the work and fortune that went into every inheritance that we may have come into. We have been free-riding on the back of mountaintops removed, all the while congratulating ourselves for our hard work and accomplishment.

Patrick Deneen Free Riding at the very promising Front Porch Republic

Here’s one close to home. Rod Dreher is asking what lessons we can draw from ‘St. Cyprian’s writings during an early age of martyrdom that Christians living in contemporary liberal democracies can use to determine when they are obligated to speak up… for their faith, and when they are permitted to keep silent without betraying their faith. He

asked a couple of smart Christian journalist friends who work in secular media why they never wrote about homosexuality, religion and public policy. I know that they’re both interested in cultural and religious matters, and both are conservative Christians. Both of them said to me that they have careers to protect, which is a big reason why they keep their views on that subject to themselves in their writing… One, a graduate student in theology at a Protestant university, told me that you’d have to be an idiot to defend traditional Church and Biblical teaching about homosexuality inside the university today. He said that’s a certain way to end your academic career before it gets started… a professor friend on faculty at a nominally church-affiliated university, who told of a Christian colleague who argued in public for privileging traditional marriage. The teacher had been warned not to do this, because it would end his teaching career at that school. But he felt he had a moral obligation to give his side of the argument. “Sure enough,” said my professor friend, “when the vote on his tenure application came up a few months later, they voted him down. He’s got a wife and small children to support.”

Rod Dreher When do you ‘martyr’ yourself?
Privileging traditional marriage, eh? The man deserves to die, and slowly. When we take his job away so he has no colleagues, no students, no access to libraries or conferences his intellectual contribution will disappear. With no income his self-respect will follow. Over the years he will become a burden to his friends, his family and himself. That ought to do it.
Christians, we have to name these sorts of anonymous processes as martyrdom, and celebrate it as such. And the Church has to teach its own people, not imagine that this can happen in universities, however ‘Christian’.

…this is not a business cycle, but a life-cycle malfunction. Your problem is that nervous retirees are making most of the decisions, rather than young families. The trouble is that America is getting grayer. People with young children are spenders rather than savers. Young people take risks, and old people buy insurance. Your country needs more children. Demographic dearth is the root cause of the economic crisis. Too many aging people tried to accumulate too many assets, and created the biggest asset bubble of all time. Lower home prices make it easier for people to start families. The housing price crash transfers wealth from old people to young people. That’s exactly what you want to happen. Rather than spend a trillion dollars to keep overpaid construction union members busy in infrastructure projects, offer enormous tax cuts and subsidies to young families. Increase the per-child deduction to $20,000, and let low-income taxpayers deduct it against payroll taxes. Subsidize mortgages for families with children.
And if you really want to send a message to America, propose a constitutional amendment to reverse Roe versus Wade. Making sex a contact sport rather than a part of life that includes marriage and babies was the beginning of the problem. It’s not enough to tinker with tax incentives, although that surely will help. Americans need to change their own outlook about life. A pro-life Democratic president with a family friendly economic recovery plan would be unbeatable.
The unbeatable Spengler