Self-Government Not Possible Without Morality

HT: Fred

Dec. 28, 2024

De Tocqueville On the Difficulty of Freedom

By Mark Lewis

“Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.”  (Alexis de Tocqueville)

There have actually been people in history who have found slavery to be more comfortable than freedom, and indeed, I would argue that many such individuals exist today.  They would rather be taken care of by the government (or, socialism) than risk the “freedom of opportunity” necessary to provide for themselves.  Sadly, that just feeds the egos and lusts of power-hungry politicians who live to control other people and tell them what to do.  And when you control somebody’s finances, you definitely control them.  Congress can’t even go home for Christmas until they try to pass some kind of budget that gives them trillions of dollars to enslave the masses.  

We today don’t call such government oppression “slavery” (our Founding Fathers did), but in one sense, that is exactly what it is.  People are “enslaved” if it is only the government which allows them to have and do.  “Allowed freedom” is not freedom, it is indeed another term for slavery.

But many who do want freedom do not really understand what it is or where it comes from.  It is a gift of God, as Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, and thus is defined by that Author.  “There is no liberty without morality,” Edmund Burke wrote, and by that, he meant the morality that comes from on High.  Modern Marxist Leftism has rejected that morality for a human-defined selfishness and decadence that starts with “every man does that which is right in his own eyes.”  But this godlessness and immorality will end in tyranny, not freedom.  And Leftists know it.  

Burke explained this very nicely:  “Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within [i.e., self-control], the more there must be without [government].  It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free.  Their passions forge their fetters.”  Self-government is not Washington, D.C.  Self-government is a person governing themselves, controlling themselves in harmony with the laws of God, which provide true freedom.  Otherwise, as Burke said, a person’s “passions forge their fetters.”  They will be self-destructive, and destructive of others.