p. 14 The Conservative Foundation of the Liberal Order, Mahoney

Tocqueville's critique of his asst, Gobineau (and a fine critique of Nietsche's position), who believed in pure scientism:

No, I will not believe that this human species, which is at the head of visible creation, should become the debased flock that you tell us it is and that there is nothing more to do than to deliver it without future and without recourse to a small number of shepherds who, after all, are not better animals than we are and are often worse. You will permit me to have less confidence in you than in the bounty and justice of God.

Another way of putting this conservative foundation is this: God created man, God made man the head of all his creation, man is loved by God personally, and THEREFORE man can never be self-sovereign. Tocqueville attacks Gobineau for removing God from the picture thus allowing him to set himself up as the self-sovereign ruler of man.

Contrast this with clip below where Donahue complains that capitalism doesn't reward virtue, meaning that material rewards should follow from virtue. This is the opposite message of Christ, who foresaw not mundane rewards but earthly suffering for the virtuous. For Christ, following Him equated to virtue. There's little chance this is what Donahue meant by virtue, as evidenced by his belief that virtue should be rewarded with material gain. Tocqueville wasn't particularly Christian, but recognized the danger of material gain becoming the goal of democracy.

Friedman is brilliant in his answer to Donahue, and yet Friedman isn't as close to Tocqueville as he sounds. Donahue complains that capitalism doesn't reward virtue. Friedman rightly points out that no system or person does reward virtue, and no one should be trusted with doing so. But Tocqueville doesn't attack Gobineau just because he wants to be the entrusted ruler, but because Gobineau ignores the hierarchy of man's relationship with God. Friedman, God bless him, disregarded that hierarchy as well.

p. 13 The Conservative Foundation of the Liberal Order, Mahoney

Ha! What did Tocqueville mean by "I have not yet become enough of a German"? Note this was the 1850's. The path to National Socialism was laid well before Versailles.

p. 21 Nation of Bastards Farrow

What decision by the Ontario Supreme Court demonstrates the degree to which gay marriage also erases the definition of parenthood? What is the significance in the decision of the words "to allow"? Also, see here, and here.

pp. 134-135 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa

"It is true that during four centuries, beginning at least with Magna Carta, the organism of parliamentary democracy was slowly being formed within the womb of medieval monarchy. Yet the birth of the institutions of popular government awaited the passing of the divine right of kings and the transfer of the idea of sovereignty from kings to people. It is sufficient here to note that just as one peak of divine right monarchy is reached in the reign of Henry V, so another is reached in the reign of Elizabeth. But as the earlier peak is followed by the War of the Roses, so the second peak is followed, after Shakespeare's death, by another civil war. Cromwell's victory over Charles I appears initially to be a definitive victory of popular sovereignty over the divine right of kings. But Cromwell's republicanism ended in a military dictatorship, which in turn led to a restoration of the British monarchy. It required one more revolution, the Glorious Revolution of 1689, to end once and for all the pretensions of the Stuarts to divine right. But it required the American Revolution to identify the sovereignty of the people with the rule of law, in which the will of the majority can prevail only as it comports with the equal rights of the minority. The seemingly endless series of civil wars in England came to an end only as the divine right of kings was replaced by the God-given right of the people to rule themselves. Unfortunately, one more civil war, the greatest of them all, was required to confirm this right of the people."

Personal note: Note that without "the God-given right of the people" our rights are strictly a matter of positive law--bestowed on us by the government as by Cromwell--and therefore a strictly Hegelian system of government. Had we split into two nations and never fought the Civil War, and even if the South had outlawed slavery on its own, it would have meant a capitulation to the idea that our rights only come from the government. And it would have meant that for the North as much as the South.

Personal note II: The election of 1800 was the first to witness the peaceful effects of this system of government, and the Civil War preserved not just the Union but our God-given rights.

p. 95 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa

How did 19th c. technology corrupt/change the American notion of rights? Now, go back to p. 94 and consider Marx whose philosophy was based entirely upon technology. [Be sure to click on link below under "reciprocal relationship"]

Relevant passages:

Atheistic nihilism transforms the "bourgeois" and highly moral individualism of the American Revolution into something entirely different. That older individualism was based on the idea of unalienable rights endowed by man's Creator. Such rights were not unconditional. They were to be exercised only in accordance with the laws of nature and of nature's God, which were moral laws. Rights and duties were in a reciprocal relationship. But the nature revealed by modern science-the unconditional basis of the belief in Progress-was that of mindless matter, a source of power to be commanded, not a source of morality to be obeyed. From here on, "rights" would be understood as the unconditional empowerment of the individual to do as he pleased. Self-realization became the code word for the new morality. The human self, however, was no longer understood to be made in the image of God, since God was dead. Self-realization was in fact only the correlate of the new atheism. As there could no longer be any distinction between man and God, which distinction is as fundamental to the Declaration of Independence as to the Bible, there could be no distinction between base and noble desires. All desires were understood to be created equal, since all desires were seen as originating in that highest of all authorities, the self-creating self.

Harry Jaffa. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (Kindle Locations 1589-1597). Kindle Edition.

As these doctrines were filtered through the intellectual establishment of modem liberal regimes, of which Chief Justice Rehnquist is a typical representative, the emancipation from morality was itself seen as moral progress, and the opponents of that emancipation were seen as the reactionary enemies of both freedom and morality.

Harry Jaffa. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (Kindle Locations 1598-1600). Kindle Edition.

[Also consider the following from page 50:]

This moreover is the same compact that Madison, throughout his life, declared to be "the vital principle of free government." From this account we see that a free election, properly so called, can only decide questions for a people united by the terms of such a compact. No election, however free, can rightfully decide questions "beyond the legitimate reach of sovereignty, wherever vested or however viewed." Nor can even unanimous consent rightfully authorize what is inconsistent with the "great principles of right and wrong." But suppose differences of opinion arise as to whether policies or institutions are, or are not, beyond "the legitimate reach of sovereignty,"

Harry Jaffa. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (Kindle Locations 885-889). Kindle Edition.

[PERSONAL NOTE: the necessary question is what constitutes that limit? The Declaration of Indepenence drew that line with those things that belong to God. Here it is worth referring to R.L. Bruckberger's Image of America:

pp. 103-104

"To abolish divine right in politics--and this is where Congress got it right and Jefferson got it wrong--it is not enough merely to give the people full sovereignty. It must also be recognized that men's inalienable rights, upon which their sovereignty is based, is derived from God, Creator, Providence, and Judge. It is true that the people have rights, and that those rights are imprescriptible and inalienable; but not every right is theirs. THEY HAVE NO RIGHT TO DEIFY THEMSELVES. Since their rights derive from God, they can exercise them only according to God's will. In their very sovereignty the people are subject to God. Without religion even democracy is exposed to all the perils of tyranny. The American Declaration carefully avoided making a philosophical absolute of the people; it did not give the people precedence over God in the chain of succession; it maintained the traditional chain of succession and traced back men's imprescriptible rights to God, the source of all justice and all rights.
...In this chain of political sovereignty the people are always subject and at the same time always free and sovereign. They are subject to their own laws and to God's justice. They are free because they obey only their own laws. They are sovereign because their sovereignty is part of the sovereignty of God.

--Image of America pp. 103-104]

C.S. Lewis explains here why subjectivism about values is eternally incompatible with democracy.

Also consider page 39 here.

*p. 93-94 & 98 & 433 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa

What is Calhoun's "concurrent majority"? Compare to Rousseau's "general will." How are these both related to Hegel's "cunning of history" ? (p. 94)

Relevant Passages: Calhoun's principle of the "concurrent majority"-by which certain minorities are given a veto power over actions of the government-is likewise said to transform factional strife in society into harmony and mutual advantage. As presented by Calhoun, it neutralizes and brings into unity the otherwise uncontrollable conflicts of interests, in much the same way that the abolition of private property is thought to do by Marx.

Hegel's "cunning of history," by which the rational ends of human civilization were supposedly advanced without any rational foreknowledge of those ends by the makers of the great events of history, was the tacit ground of the optimism equally of Calhoun and of Marx. Both, like Hegel, believed that they looked back upon the course of human history and were able to descry therein a rational purposefulness of which even philosophers had not hitherto been aware. They believed this was possible because, unlike their predecessors, they lived in proximity to that absolute moment when the purpose of all previous history would stand revealed. Because of this, they could be rational or scientific concerning the actions necessary to promote the completion of the historical process, and thereby the human good, as none of their predecessors could have been.

The idea of progress led Hegel, Marx, and Calhoun radically to depreciate the role of reason in all of their predecessors, whether statesmen or philosophers, to none of whom the rationality of history itself had been vouchsafed.33 Reason was truly manifest only in the absolute moment wherein history as progress was revealed. The scope and importance of reason as a means of access to truth, or of guiding human life toward human fulfillment, was thereby immeasurably degraded, except within the infinitesimal boundaries of the absolute moment. But questions were inevitably raised about that moment. By what right had the historical school exempted itself from the relativism that it attributed to everyone else?

Harry Jaffa. A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War (Kindle Locations 1572-1580). Kindle Edition.