Aluminum Deniers

A couple of posts ago, I said that limited government was absolutely dependent upon public virtue. Here’s why.

It all goes back to Burke’s “little platoons.” Raw individualism is not the opposite of the collective. It is what makes the collective possible. The collective likes it. The Hive can handle a pothead bee. The collective cultivates individualism because the collective knows how to take genuine rivals out of commission.

The atomistic individual has no ability to mount a principled and structured stand against the state. Whatever the romantic appeal of “going Galt” might be, to the extent it might work it would have to work in concert with others. And to the extent that it doesn’t work in concert with others, it will not work. But how can atoms work in concert with others? They must form molecules, and there must be a molecular bond. In order for atoms to connect with one another with that kind of bond, they must do it the way the Creator designed. You can’t put two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen together and get Congress to call it aluminum. And it doesn’t matter that Nancy Pelosi tells us that “aluminum deniers” are on the “wrong side of history.”

A society full of atomistic individuals will have the structural integrity of a sack full of greased BBs. The state can push in however it likes, anywhere it likes, throwing bribes left and right in order to keep the BBs greased. A society full of atomistic individuals will have all the substantial integrity of a beanbag chair.

A free society is a molecular society. In a free society, families have a structural integrity — but families cannot have that structural integrity unless people know how to keep their vows, unless they know how to honor their fathers and mothers, and so on. Radical individualism sees no need to honor father and mother in a biblical fashion, and so the promise that life will be long for us on the earth (Eph. 6:3) is not a promise we can hold on to. The molecules have to form the way God designed molecules to form.

In times of suffocating statism, the libertarian impulse can initially seem like real oxygen, but there is really no future in it. It seems defiant of the tyrannies that afflict us, but it is actually more naughty than defiant. The pothead mentality begins by demanding that the state stop regulating what we can smoke or not smoke — live free or die! — and will end by demanding pot subsidies.

Those who are principled libertarians, as distinct from let’s-make-it-easier-for-us-to-sin libertarians, will initially have a great deal of common ground with principled conservatives. I don’t want the NSA hacking my family plan any more than he wants the NSA hacking his individual plan. And, of course, in the conservative scheme, there is an important place for individual rights. But the conservative remembers that individuals were created to form families, neighborhoods, service organizations, churches, and more. In this sense, if I may speak directly, the freedom of association is a fundamental right. Atoms that are not free to form molecules are not free to be atoms.

I mentioned the molecular bond earlier. What is that? It means promising to function within God’s design, and then keeping those promises. And promises cannot be kept without virtue. And virtue is not possible without a reason. And that reason, and the grace to love that reason, is not possible without Jesus.