WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - F.H. Buckley: The Roots of Liberalism

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

F.H. Buckley is a Foundation Professor at George Mason University’s Scalia School of Law. His new book is The Roots of Liberalism: What Faithful Knights and the Little Match Girl Taught Us about Civil Virtue. In it, Buckley argues that liberalism is not an ideology that stands above our practices and judges them, but a practice itself, an inheritance of virtues, institutions, customs, and longings embedded in our culture and passed on through our memories and stories of moral heroes.From 10/01/24.

This is Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. I'm Scott Bertram. We're joined by F.H. Buckley. He is Foundation Professor at George Mason University's Scalia School of Law, author of multiple books, including progressive conservatism and curiosity at its 12 Rules for Life. The new one available now, The Roots of Liberalism, what faithful knights and the Little Match Girl taught us about civic virtue. Frank, thanks so much for joining us. Scott, thanks so much for having me. I want to start with a bit of a definition on the roots of liberalism. How do you define liberalism as we will refer to it in this conversation and inside the book? As something that will be recognized by every belay American and that which is not a philosophical theory. I'm not trying to give a definition which accords with some theory espoused by John Locke or whatever. What I'm trying to do is root liberalism in a whole bunch of stories in the Western tradition. I guess my point is what is liberal is something which is intimately connected with Western culture.

And when you grow up in it, and in particular, when you're a member of the Judeo-Christian tradition, you understand that which is due to other people. And it's not derived from any grand theory. It's derived rather from a sense of things that are owed to other people. The book, The Roots of Liberalism, it's dense. I mean that in the best way in that you can pause at any number of points and consider things that you've raised. And it starts on the very first few pages because I had not read or seen the connection made between the politics and the thoughts of Carl Schmidt and sort of our current political morass we find ourselves in. For Schmidt, you say every question of politics must come down to a choice between friends and enemies.

And again, you stop and reflect and say that sounds so familiar as we look at what perhaps many of those on the left are doing. these days? You are with us or you are completely against us? Yeah, absolutely right. There's no toleration for any differences. And if you sign on to one part of the package, you sign on to every part of the package. That's really the credo of the left right now. And it's completely anti-liberal. And at the same time, there's a movement about some people on the right to reject liberalism as well. And so, what I wanted to do was to rescue liberalism from people at the extremes and say, no, that, you know, that which is noble and good in our tradition is, in fact, liberal. And our sense of that is, is that which produces the idea of liberalism, not some grand philosophy and not extremist politics, certainly. That, you know, on the left, for example, you know, free speech norms were sacrosanct back when the left, you know, on the left. thought itself in the minority.

But when it descended to the majority, then it found the pleasure in censoring people that didn't like and canceling people they didn't like. And that's distinctly illiberal. So, you know, that, for example, would be a way in which they've departed from liberalism. Another way would be racial categories. I mean, one thing that's very basic to liberalism is the idea that everybody counts as one. nobody counts as more than one. We're all equal. And any moral thought, this is Kantian, any moral claim should be universalizable. It should be the sort of thing that would be

applicable in the same way to everybody in that position. But once you start saying, no, no, it really depends on what race you belong to, you've completely denied that. And so what's liberal here is Martin Luther King's statement that you judge people based on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. And that's simply rejected by the left right now, which is a sign of how far they've departed from liberalism. And of all the people in the world, it really should be conservatives who recognize that when everybody else has given up on liberalism, we're the real liberals around here, right? You know, we're not merely, is it the case we believe in free speech, but we're the people who are threatened mostly by departures from

free speech norms, right? And all we would ask to do is to be judged by the content of our character, right, not put into some racial category and threatened as a consequence. So, you know, liberalism is something which not merely, you know, the conservative subscribe to, but they should do so, at least for their own self-protection. Frank Buckley is with us his book, The Roots of Liberalism, what Faithful Knights and the Little Match Girl taught us about civic virtue. The third chapter in the book, the poverty of philosophy essentially goes to underscore a point you made earlier, which is that philosophy can't justify the sort of liberalism you talk about in the book. It's not an ideology, but it is a practice in and of itself. And that is what the majority of the rest of the book

is about. When did it occur to you? How did you put the pieces together to say that this is, this is not something that we can justify via philosophy, but it has to be learned, passed down through tradition, through customs, through virtues that we learn from generation to generation? Well, you know, there are some core ideas that are related to the founders that are sound principles and great ideas. But in general, what philosophy can, can't do is tell us that we ought to be liberal. And I use that as a starting point because so much of the literature on liberalism is really both philosophical and ideological. It's like we're going, you know, we're going to assume that liberalism is good and let's see what we can work out from that

and what we work out from that is basically, you know, the modern Democratic Party and, you know, and all its departures from liberalism. And I want to say, you know, bollocks to all of that, that's simply not the way it is. You have to begin with a sense of obligations, of duties to other people, and that can't be derived from philosophy. I mean, the closest you get would be a sense that a rational self-interest, that, you know, it's not in our interest to lie or cheat or steal because word will get out. and our reputation will be ruined and will not be able to deal with other people. And, you know, and that's a simulacrum of morality. But it's really only the morality of clever sociopaths, right?

I mean, it tells you not to have inner feelings, but just to have a regard for your own self-interest. And morality has got to transcend self-interest. It's got to demand something more than that, right? It can't explain self-interest isn't going to explain stories about, the Good Samaritan, for example. So, you know, so we need something more than that. And where does it come from?

Well, it has to come from a general sense of our duties to other people. And that's something that is learned through our religion or, to some extent, it's innate and related to ideas of empathy that are rooted in our personality. But wherever it comes from, it doesn't come from John Law. And so if it doesn't come from John Locke, you know, I then thought, well, let's, you know, play with this and let's explore what some of these ideas are. And the more I thought about it, you know, the more it seemed to me a matter of liberalism before Locke, right? I mean, so, you know, where we derive our liberalism from is a whole bunch of stories that are connected to our culture and which, which we instantly recognize, whose nobility we instantly recognize.

For example, I talked about knights in shining armor. So, you know, much of the destruction of anti-liberalism comes from the trashing of our Western culture. Frank Buckley with us, the book The Roots of Liberalism. What about these faithful knights that are mentioned in the sub-title of the book, Frank? You know, when I was a kid, there were sort of toy soldiers of knights and so on. And, you know, if you were 12 years of age, you might have read Ivanhoe, for example. Uh-huh. So you thrilled the stories about knights, and you absorb stories about all the things that made them great.

And one of those things, one of those virtues was courage, fortitude. Another was magnanimity, which was the idea that when you've defeated somebody, you don't mock him, you help him. you help him up. And there's a classic story about that involving the black prince at the Battle of Poitiers. So, you know, he's captured the French king. And after he's captured him, he serves him as a waiter at table, right? So the black prince is a guy who led the English army and the son of Edward I. And he acts like a servant for the king he just defeated and tells the king, oh, you should be so proud today. You won all the honor in the battlefield.

You were so courageous. And that sense of magnanimity is something we find all over the place in our culture. One place I founded in was the code of hockey. So, you know, there is a code of hockey in that you don't beat up on somebody smaller than you are. Right. But you also need enforcers who are going to go after the bad guys who try to take out your goalie, right? And so there's a sense of proportionality in all of that and of courage. If you want to fight, you don't just clobber somebody.

You look at the guy and you say, you want to go? And if the other guy throws down its gloves, it's on. The same sort of ideas inform the Geneva Convention. The Code of Chivalry was a proto version of the Code of Chivalry. and it's been adopted essentially by the U.S. Supreme Court, at least U.S. Supreme Court, has made Article 3 of the Geneva Convention incorporated into American law. And that's really just about all the things you should do to people you've captured, right?

It basically amounts to a codification of the idea of magnanimity. So that's, you know, that's basic to our culture. we should embrace it as, you know, as kind of who we are. There was a classic moment, by the way, Colin Powell was interviewed about the Gulf War, the first one. And somebody said roughly, well, why didn't you go after Saddam Hussein? And Powell said, well, you have to understand at this point, the Iraqi army was completely destroyed.

There was nothing left of it. You know, there was nobody to fight. To go further, he said, would have been. on American and on chivalrous. You know, the code of chivalry is incorporated into the norms of a good military force. And there's never been a replacement for the idea of chivalry in the military. It never has been, never will be. That's part of our culture.

And so you find these impulses of liberalism in, you know, in the oddest places like the battlefield or the hockey rink. and it's there. And it constrains us. And we recognize without being taught or told about how there are things you shouldn't do because they're not consistent with the idea of liberalism. So, you know, that's one example of how those stories in the past tell us how we should behave. Frank, what about religion, the Judeo-Christian traditions that are passed down to present day? how do they impact it effect the way we think about liberalism?

When, you know, when philosophic liberals today, the people on the left talk about equality, they never seem to explain where that idea comes from, right? Well, you know, if you think we all have souls, that's going to be one source of liberalism. But apart from that, I don't know where it does come from. Jacques Medellin was on the drafting committee of the UN Universal Declaration of, human rights and he reported afterwards that, you know, it was kind of surprising. Everybody agreed about the content of those rules, even though they came from every different kind of background, communist, Christian, whatever.

And he said, yeah, we all agreed, provided nobody asked why. You couldn't, you couldn't explain it. It was just there. So, you know, the idea of equality comes to us from religion. that respect. You know, religion is also the source of our ideas about individualism. Now, you know, extreme people on the right dislike the idea of individualism, you know, which is wrong if it were supposed to excuse vicious behavior, but it doesn't have to. And the idea of how we're all individuals came to us from the Judeo-Christian tradition. And in particular, what

preceded Christianity was a classic Roman religion of the family, which took choices away from women as to who they might marry. And, you know, the church came in and said, no, no, no, no, this is a sacrament. It's really a contract, right? And, and everybody, you know, both sides have to agree. So that, you know, that's core to Judeo-Christian beliefs. And it's utterly inconsistent with the classical Roman religion of the Lars and the Panata is the family-based religion. And, you know, in its early days, you know, pagans mock Christianity as a religion for women and slaves. And you know what? They were right. So, you know, Christianity was great for feminism and individualism.

That's, you know, that's where much of our norms as to individualism come from, not exclusively. but part of it. There's a chapter on benevolence and central to liberalism, you say, is this feeling of benevolence and the desire to look beyond self-interest, which requires personal sacrifice. And as you talk about individualism, I wonder if there is such a thing as too much individualism that we forget our duties to others. And we are too interested in what is said today as, you know, you know, it's my truth or those sorts of things.

Well, you know, there are perverted forms of every kind of virtue that's out there, right? I mean, that's kind of a basic Aristotelian point, but individualism as a matter of respect for individual choice for women in marriage is a good thing. But if individual means is supposed to excuse rotten behavior by any. person in the sense that he gets to define his own goodness. Well, you know, that's simply wrong. We don't get to define the good in terms of whatever it is we desire. You know, there is such a thing as the good, and it's different from the person who thinks

it's whatever I want. That's a kind of individualism or of liberalism, which is rightly castigated by sensible people of all stripes. But that's you know, but you know that's not how we understood it in the past. I mean, Dwight Eisenhower was a liberal and he was not to be confused with Hugh Hefner. Right.

Enforcing patriotism is a section in a later chapter in the book and I frequently ask guests because I've had a number of interesting conversations about whether or not patriotism in and of itself is a virtue. Why should we be encouraging this idea of patriotism across the board? Well, you know, the basic idea here is that one should feel some bonds with other people in general.

And that includes your family, of course. It includes your baseball team and includes your country. So, you know, in general, if the alternative to patriotism is a person who doesn't care anything about other people, except the narrowest of bounds. Well, that looks like a vice to me. Right. Anything can be taken too far, but the thing is there's something special

about American liberalism, right? Or American patriotism and its connection to liberalism. So, you know, I subscribe to the idea that that which makes us American is our fidelity to the prince's, of the founders, as restated by Lincoln. And those are liberal principles. These are the principles of the Declaration of Independence,

of the sense of restraint found in the framers of the Constitution, the reinterpretation of all of this by Abraham Lincoln. That's the sort of thing that makes you an American. And to the extent you deny them, you're being something less than American, which is why I said before, that which is not a liberalist, not really American. I say this as somebody who came here from Canada.

And so I know where I speak. Frank Buckley is with us his new book, The Roots of Liberalism, what faithful knights and the Little Match Girl taught us about civic virtue. We touched on those faithful nights a little bit ago. I want to give you the opportunity to talk about the little match girl story from Hans Christian Anderson. What do we learn from something like that?

Well, for starters, for those who are not familiar with the story, it's a story about a little girl who is penniless and is out in the cold, freezing, selling matches to make a living. And she looks through the window of the restaurant near where she is, and she sees people dining on food and having a wonderful time. And all she's got is her rags and her bit of matches

and to to warm herself up a bit, she lights a match. And it's so good, she lights another one, and she goes through all her mattress. And so she has no more matches left, and she's going to die, she's going to freeze to death. And it's one of those wonderful Hans Christian Anderson stories that operate on the basis that they, you must feel a tug of empathy to read them. He's often compared to Dickens in that respect. This is the 19th century. It's a period when kindness is being invented as a crucial liberal virtue.

And it's part of our response to the Industrial Revolution, which has created enormous wealth, but also made visible, at least, disparities of wealth that we had not thought of so clearly. So my view of all of this is that the wonderful thing about the expansion of wealth is that it permits us to take better care of those people who fall through the cracks, the little matchcrels. So there's no inconsistency between your support for, say, free markets and the like, and your support for a welfare. state, rather you might think of the welfare state as kind of the luxury that you could only afford in a wealthy country. I mean, you know, if you're on the side of the poor, you should necessarily be on the side

of the creation of wealth, which permits you to have a welfare state. So I don't see any inconsistency between the idea that, you know, more wealth is per se good and a liberalism with a welfare state, what I guess I'm rejecting, however, would be a form of libertarianism, which says, well, it's just, you know, this is Randism, it's all for me, I don't care about other people.

That's, you know, an idea associated with people like A and Rand, which is the person I had in mind when I talked about a theory of self-interested morality as simply the theory of clever sociopaths. Let me close the conversation with this question as we watch those on the left these days and their ideology of critical race theory and this idea we talked about previously of of punishing enemies. It seems like so much is revolving around the idea of sin and punishment without the ability

for forgiveness or without the ability to be restored in any way, shape, or form. how does what we know and what we practice about liberalism, the kindness, the magnanimity, allow us to escape that kind of philosophy? Well, two things. One is a sense of religion which provides for the possibility of confession and absolution. And the other thing is the kind of self-knowledge which makes one recognize oneself, one has failed oneself. right that you are each individual are in need of forgiveness so um with that in mind you have to be it seems to me a kind of moral monster of the sort you only see in the left to think that you have

all right on your side and and you're permitted to stand there like like some you know katan math or judge condemning other people to the flames um that requires requires a complete absence of self-knowledge. So the kind of self-knowledge where one's aware of one's own fault is an important part of liberalism because it repels smugness and arrogance. F.H. Buckley's new book, The Roots of Liberalism, What Faithful Nights and the Little Match Girl taught us about civic virtue. Frank, thanks so much for joining us. Scott, thank you for having me. Great talking. More of our interviews and conversations on our website, Radiofreehillsdale.com,

click on student shows and features. And I'm Scott Bertram on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM.