Let me begin this post by saying that I am not particularly interested in “dialogue” between the “two camps” of conservatives and libertarians. I am interested in conservatives leaving me the hell alone. But then, that just means that I value my individual “happiness” more than the societal good, right?
Robert Bork—who, in his book Slouching Towards Gomorrah, praises communist Yugoslavia for banning rock music because it’s subversive—recently said that American individualism is so putrid that he “almost…want[s] to put the [Berlin] wall back up.” Now, Steve Dillard at Southern Appeal says that “neither Judge Bork nor the vast majority of conservatives have any desire to see the Berlin Wall back up.” Oh, of course. Hence the qualifiers in his statement, right? What a comedian Judge Bork is! Does Mr. Dillard give us any reason to believe that Bork does not mean this, however? No—the reality is that Bork is every bit as hostile to the concept of individualism as this “joke” suggests. His qualifiers only represent his recognition of how horrible it is to say such a thing.
It is certainly true that most conservatives do not follow Bork in this, but that’s only because they do not know the depths of Bork’s hostility toward the concepts of individual dignity and rights that animated the founding fathers. In fact, most people who call themselves conservatives are probably not conservatives at all, but are probably better classified as moderate libertarians, because they do believe that the individual does not owe a duty to live his life in accordance with his neighbor’s demands. When Dillard says that people should not “value their individual ‘happiness’…more than the societal good,” what he is saying is that your neighbors have the right to control your life and dictate to you the terms on which you may choose your path.
Mr. Dillard thinks I’m “over the top,” but this simply shows that Dillard is not familiar enough with Bork’s views. I’ve quoted this before, but it’s worth emphasizing: in The Tempting of America (1990), Bork writes that “no husband or wife, no father or mother, should act on the principle that a person belongs to himself and not to others. No citizen should take the view that no part of him belongs to ‘society as a whole.’” Id. at 121-122.
By contrast, Thomas Jefferson said that
If we are made in some degree for others, yet in a greater we are made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling & indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less right in himself than one of his neighbors or indeed all of them put together. This would be slavery & not...liberty.... Nothing could so completely divest us of that liberty as the establishment of the opinion that the state had a perpetual right to the services of all it’s [sic] members. This to men of certain ways of thinking would be to annihilate the blessing of existence....
Letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, May 20, 1782, in Jefferson: Writings 779 (M. Peterson, ed. 1984). In other words, Jefferson believed that the individual’s right to pursue happiness was given to him by his Creator, and that Society had no right to interfere so long as he left others alone to pursue theirs. But what about a person whose individualism causes him to do something that disrupts the neighborhood, or something his neighbors think immoral? Jefferson had an answer for this, too: “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
Now which of these two positions is embraced by Islamofascists? Not Jefferson’s. I believe that most Americans, however, believe in Jefferson’s view. True, they don’t like seeing obscenity, or things they consider immoral, and conservative demagogues often lead them into persecuting homosexuals and other groups. But in the main, I think most people agree with Jefferson, and not with Bork—which accounts for Bork’s unremitting hatred for Jefferson and his legacy.
As for “preserving certain societal mores,” I must say this is a lovely euphemism. Although Dillard seems to claim that conservatives favor “repealing anti-sodomy laws,” I have never seen him or his fellow conservatives argue at any appreciable length for such a thing. And when we keep clear that by “preserving” he means, legally prohibiting people from getting married even though it neither picks Mr. Dillard’s pocket nor breaks his leg—I think it is clear that this is an attempt, like Bork’s qualifiers in his quoted sentence, to avoid giving voice to his true meaning, lest its ugliness be revealed.
The fact is, conservatives—real conservatives, like Bork—believe that Society is a sort of God, which has the right to dictate to us how we may live our lives, in an attempt to (in another classic Dillard euphemism) use the law to “transform the heart.” If you’re a woman, and you don’t want to live your life in the kitchen, raising kids—if you’re a member of a racial minority and you want to get out of an occupation to which stereotype has relegated you—if you’re a writer with something shocking to say—if you think that you should be allowed to make your own way in life, even when Society disapproves—that is just the sort of thing real conservatives despise, including those in Tehran. If this is “over the top,” make the most of it.
Update: Some clarifications here.
