OxBlog

# Posted 6:32 PM by Patrick Belton

ON CONSERVING FREEDOMS: Peter Berkowitz gives a good rendition in Policy Review of the arguments that liberalism contains in itself the seeds of its destruction, by abolishing the preconditions which permit and constitute it. In his summative paragraph:

Our freedom encourages us to cast aside arbitrary authority and topple unjust hierarchy, but it also undermines the just claims of political order and moral excellence. It severs onerous bonds of association, but it also separates and isolates. It is the touchstone of our equality, yet it permits and indeed encourages competition, which results in vast disparities in wealth, power, and glory. It makes us responsible for ourselves and infuses us with a sense of the humanity and rights that we share with all people on the planet while loosening the claims of duty. It is bound up with the realization of our most cherished hopes while putting awkward pressure on and destabilizing them. It eloquently exalts choice and then falls crushingly silent concerning what actions and ends are choiceworthy, leaving it perilously close to teaching that the choice is all.

The promise and the dangers of our era are indissolubly connected. The more freedom we have, the more we want. And the more we get, the more we weaken freedom’s foundations in moral and political life.

His arguments are even on his own admission half of a larger dichotomy - but Peter is always readable, and a beautiful stylist.

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