Education and the Free Society; L. Raeder

THEFREEMAN IDEAS ON,LIBERTY Educationand the Free Society by Linda C. Raeder T' he classicalliberal philosophy of limited government and the rule of law is in danger of being consigned to oblivion. Ene mies of the free society have successfully appropriated the time-honored "liberal" name and transformed it into the pseudo liberalism of contemporary statism. Part of the responsibility for that transfor mation undoubtedly belongs to the defenders of liberal constitutionalism. We have obvi ously failed to "make the case," either ratio nally or imaginatively, for the free society as traditionally understood in the West. Hence we are in danger of losing not only our under standing of the relationship between limited government and human flourishing,but also of the verymeaning of constitutional government. Nor havewe sufficientlyattended to the forma tive role of culture in the maintenance of the constitutional ethos. It is imperative, however, that the classicalunderstanding of liberal order remain a living understanding, particularly within the academy. Yet it is well known that many academics are hostile not only to the classical-liberalorder but also to the moral and philosophical heritage of Western civilization which produced that order. Those of us who would preseIVethe free societymust not aban don the scholarlyforum.

The abandonment of the modern univer sity to the enemies of the free society is, moreover, bound up with the transformation of the meaning not only of "liberalism" but of all the major concepts through which we articulate our political, social, and moral self-understanding. The notions of freedom, Linda C. Raeder is a doctoral candidate in political theory at the Catholic University of America and associate editor of Humanitas. law, rights, democracy, constitutionalism, and morality have all been distorted in service of limitless government. Even well-meaning people, for instance, no longer seem to un derstand that the American framers did not establish a "democracy," but rather a consti tutional government, one characterized by limited power and the rule of law. Today, however, "democracy" is often touted as if it were equivalent to liberal constitutionalism and the free society; any distinction has been largely lost. In a similar manner, the traditional notion of right has undergone a pernicious transformation. A right, as historically conceived in the West, did not refer to a positive entitlement to govern ment services but toa largely "negative"

protection against arbitrary governmental in terference with one's beliefs and activities. Moral standards have also been signifi cantly redefined. Traditional Western moral ity was concerned with personal motives and actions, not with social outcomes, emotional pleas for collective "compassion," or commit ment to a chimerical "social justice" to be achieved through organized political coer cion, as it often is today. The ongoing destruction of the free society has long been abetted by those who bear responsibility for the transmission of our cultural heritage-university professors and others involved in higher education. To pre serve the traditional Western understanding of freedom-under-Iaw, we must redress that imbalance, first, by restoring the classical liberal philosophy of limited government as a focus of scholarship, and, second, by becom ing exemplars of its ethos. Moreover, and perhaps even more importantly, we must 620 counter the prevailing trend toward the po liticization of the academy.

Perhaps it is not coincidental that both the free society and higher education stand at present in such a precarious state. From Aristotle to modernity, liberal education has been one of the chief foundations of civilized order in the West. Such an education, or "drawing forth," aims to cultivate a mind disposed to the pursuit of truth, a process that depends upon the active assimilation of cul ture, conceived as an integrated body of knowledge unified by reference to the com prehensive whole of reality. Professional spe cialization was conceived to be an outgrowth of, not a replacement for, such an assimila tion. Moreover, liberal education was sharply contrasted with mere technical or practical training in service of utilitarian ends; the per sonal comprehension,character, and existential orientation produced by a truly liberal educa tion was long regarded as its own reward. A liberally educated person is more than superficially familiar with the great contribu tions in various fields. He is especially well acquainted with history, a knowledge which supplements his own necessarily limited ex perience of human events and widens his necessarily limited cultural perspective. Re lease from the parochialism of the present, however, is not the only beneficent effect of a traditional liberal education. Such an educa tion is intimately bound up with the transmis sion of the culture and thus with the mainte nance and advancement of civilization.

Ignorance of our heritage returns us to the level of primitives ceaselessly reinventing the wheel, particularly in political and moral matters. Or else it fosters the emergence of that quintessentially modern character, the arrogant rationalist proudly proclaiming the sovereignty of his fictitious "autonomous" reason. As both Burke and Hayek so elo quently warned, however, the rationalistic hubris of such persons, which leads them cavalierlyto dismissthe "wisdom of the ages," is a grave threat to the preservation of civili zation, which crucially depends upon the preservation of the suprarational knowledge embodied in tradition. The political order of any society is a 621 reflection of the values, beliefs, and character of the persons who compose it; modern Western society, no less than the polis, is man writ large. The constitutional order that is the free society aims to permit its members free dom to pursue their self-chosen ends, in the belief that such freedom is indispensable to the realization of human potential. No society can endure, let alone flourish, without a certain degree of order. Since a free society seeks to minimize governmental coercion, and thus the external imposition of order, its order must come from within. A free society thus places special demands on its members: they must be both internally self-governing and willing to observe those moral and polit ical rules that alone permit the common good to prevail over partisan and special interest.

Moreover, since a free society encourages people to pursue their own ends, the quality and tone of such a society are utterly depen dent upon the quality of its members' aims. All of these factors point toward the crucial significance of education to both the preser vation and tenor of a free society. Freedom has proved so fragile historically because the demands it makes on human beings are so severe. Freedom requires a large measure of self-restraint: freedom demands that we do not violate our neighbors, either individually or through the collective process that is pol itics. Without the willingness to pursue our ends within moral and legal bounds, to defer to the higher moral and political lawthat is the substance of constitutionalism, freedom under-law degenerates into license, politics into the war of all-against-all.Although it goes against the grain of the prevailing "modern liberal" ideology, one cannot escape the fact that the formation of character through moral education, a process in which family, religion, formal study, imitation, practice, and mystery all play significant roles, is the sine qua non of the free society.

In conclusion, those of us who are con cerned with preserving the hard-won fruit of individualfreedom face a formidablechallenge. We must make that tradition come aliveagain. And the onlywayto do so is through persuasion and personalwitness,the onlymeans suitableto the education of a free people. D THEFREEMAN IDEAS ON LIBERTY The Proper AttitudeTowardthe ProperRole of the State by Joseph S. Fulda T hat the proper attitude toward the over reaching state is, depending on the size and scope of the Behemoth, anxiety, fear, fright, or terror is a given among classical liberals. What is not alwaysunderstood is the danger that the State poses even in its nec essary and proper functions: protection against private coercion from within, protec tion against state coercion from without, and the orderly adjudication of disputes. It is the first of these functions of government whose danger is least understood, it being generally acknowledged by true liberals that the re maining functions have often been used as justifications for the expansion of the welfare warfare state and a redistributionist judiciary, respectively, both of which pose obvious and considerable threats to individual liberty.1 We must start by acknowledging, with Thomas Paine, that "Society is produced by our wants and government by our wicked ness.... The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state," writes Paine, "is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil. ... Government, like dress," he continues, "is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise.,,2 Chasing down criminals and incapacitating them is an unfortunate necessity, but there can be no Joseph S. Fulda, a contributing editor of The Free man, has been published frequently in scientific journals, philosophical journals, mathematics jour nals, law reviews, and journals of opinion.