Modernising the two ideas of liberty part 3: the idea of freedom we need

For in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on New York and Washington, there was a remarkable resurgence of simple, indeed robust, moral clarity in a country that had long been told, by everyone from Alan Wolfe to Jerry Falwell, that it was awash in moral relativism. That moral clarity and the resolve that accompanies it seem to have retained their vigor among the vast majority of our people. Among certain parts of the intellectual class, however, they lasted, by my count, approximately 96 hours.

This seems to be the statute of limitations in the commentariat on radical moral relativism and its "real world" political offspring—appeasement strategies, moral-equivalence theories, "root cause" analyses of terrorism, nonsense about "violence begetting violence" (as if a justly conducted war were the same thing as turning a 767 into a weapon of mass destruction), self-loathing anti-Americanism of the most vulgar sort.

Thus far, these intellectual and moral aberrations have been reasonably well confined to the farther fringes of the chattering classes in the United States. But they are well advanced among intellectuals and commentators in western Europe, where I spent five weeks in October and early November. And this fact has everything to do, I suggest, with four things we have pondered this evening: the deterioration of the idea of freedom into willfulness, the detachment of freedom from moral truth, an obsession with "choice," and the consequent inability to draw the most elementary moral conclusions about the imperative to resist evil—or to recognize evil as such, rather than to deny its reality by an appeal to psychiatric or quasi-Marxist political categories.

The response to September 11 has demonstrated the essential moral common sense of the American people. At the same time, the national recommitment to civil tolerance and the basic human decencies in a religiously diverse society has demonstrated the enduring power of the Judeo-Christian tradition to ground those commitments, which are not being sustained today by ACLU-style theories of liberty or by alternative religious traditions. So let us gratefully take note of the fact that, at a moment of national emergency unprecedented in two generations, the American people are acquitting themselves with the dignity, decency, and determination that come from deeply rooted moral convictions.

What, however, will sustain us over the long haul? There has been a remarkable resurgence of uncomplicated, unapologetic patriotism over the past three months: flags, not yellow ribbons, are the icons of the day. But can this welcome recovery of patriotism be sustained unless it becomes, once again, the expression of a nobler concept of freedom than mere willfulness? Is happy hedonism that for which we are pre-pared to make the sacrifices that will be required of us? Or is it more likely that the acids of the relativism that accompanies a merely negative concept of freedom as "noninterference" will eventually erode today’s resurgent patriotism, too—to the point where appeasement will once again become a respectable word in the national political vocabulary?

A society without "oughts" tethered to truths cannot defend itself against aggressors motivated by distorted "oughts." That is the truth of which we should have been reminded when reading those chilling letters from the hijackers the week after September 11. The answer to a distorted concept of the good cannot be a radical relativism about the good. It must be a nobler concept of the good.

And that brings us back, at the end of the day, to our tale of two monks.

Freedom for excellence is the freedom that will satisfy the deepest yearnings of the human heart to be free. It is more than that, though. The idea of freedom for excellence and the disciplines of self-command it implies are essential for democracy and for the defense of freedom. Homo voluntatis, willful man, cannot exploit the new genetic knowledge so that it serves the ends of freedom and avoids the slippery slope to the brave new world. Why? Because Homo voluntatis cannot explain why some things that can be done should not be done.

Homo voluntatis cannot defend himself or the institutions of democracy against the new dangers to national security and world order. Why?

Because Homo voluntatis cannot give an account of a freedom worth sacrificing, even dying, for.

There are, indeed, two ideas of freedom. Both ideas have consequences. One of them is worthy of this nation. One of them will see us through to a future worthy of a free people.