The Roots of Liberalism: What Faithful Knights and the Little Match Girl Taught Us about Civic Virtue
By F. H. Buckley.
Encounter Books, 2024.
Hardcover, 296 pages, $32.99.
Reviewed by David Hein.
In his latest book, F. H. Buckley, a professor at George Mason University’s law school, employs a rather relaxed narrative style over twenty-one short chapters to uncover the roots of what he terms “liberalism.” As these contributing factors are exposed, the reader gradually gains a sense of what the author means by liberalism, especially as this set of principles operates within the American polity. Liberalism, the author believes, is grounded in such positive character traits as benevolence, kindness, humility, industry, prudence, temperance, justice, and magnanimity.
Along the way, Buckley is critical of the illiberalism of both the left and the right. He observes that our politics has been reduced to a conflict between “ideological enemies.” Self-righteous hatred of opponents is an especially salient characteristic of today’s left, “which has come to dominate our culture and finds that liberalism gets in its way.” When in dissent, leftists argued for free speech. When they rose to power, they scorned this fundamental right, and they became the censors. In a previous age, patriotic respect for the values of the Founders might have held leftists in check, but then the Founders were held to be vile racists. “In the riots and looting, something … snapped, and in place of liberalism the left adopted an explicitly illiberal ideology called Critical Race Theory,” a “regressive movement” that Buckley deems hostile to the virtues of both Christianity and the Enlightenment.
Thus today’s Democrats have moved from embracing American ideals of constitutional liberalism to finding these ideals to be past their sell-by date. Hence, Republicans, whose political forebears include such liberal conservatives as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, should enthusiastically claim these traditional rights and responsibilities as their own. Conservatives should see that, apart from some elderly Democrats, they are the only true liberals remaining in American politics: “When the left turns politics into a racial spoils system, it’s the conservative who will seek the common good without discriminating.”
In affirming their liberalism, conservatives will reject far-right integralism, some of whose proponents claim that liberalism lacks a moral code other than esteeming individual choice and satisfying personal desires. Instead, conservatives should understand that liberalism is not divorced from virtues but rooted in them. Buckley rejects the notion that, according to liberal ethics, personal autonomy trumps virtue. Liberals believe that some choices are morally wrong, and evildoers should be prosecuted: “Some choices are noble, some ignoble.” The highest end is not individual autonomy but the common welfare. A good society will both accept liberal principles that endorse a diversity of worthy goals (pluralism) and reject moral skepticism: life, love, and friendship are goods; envy, malice, and indifference to another’s pain are morally objectionable. The virtues supply the good ends that liberalism lacks; and yet we should not, Buckley cautions, suppose that liberalism and virtue reside in wholly separate spheres. In fact, liberalism arose from and therefore does not undermine the virtues:
From benevolence, we learned to promote the common good. From knightly magnanimity, we adopted the Geneva Convention’s duties to prisoners of war. By rubbing shoulders with our neighbors in the market, we cultivated a sense of republican virtue. From nationalists, we were shown the requirements of fraternity and the duty to attend to the worst-off of our fellow citizens. From the self-effacing virtues of modesty and humility, we learned to mistrust the morally arrogant and to respect the individuality of others.
We came to admire men and women of virtue, and so, Buckley says, we ourselves took on the principles and moral outlook of liberalism.
In other words, a just state does not arise from a social contract, from the rational choice of psychological egoists, from risk aversion behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance, from natural law concepts, or from utilitarian calculation: none of these is the best way to construe the origins of a liberal order. Rather, it develops from a sense of our dependence on others as we recognize that all the things of real value that we possess are gifts we have received from other human beings. A just polity grows as we acquire a moral sense, which fosters attitudes and actions of benevolence toward others. The failure to recognize our mutual dependence and the failings of the welfare state go hand in hand: “In the heartlessness of today’s North America, whose generous welfare systems coexist with private contempt for an underclass, we’ve arrived at the peak rootlessness of a rights society.” The modern political realm supports an ever-growing fund of rights and entitlements, but it has lost a sense of fraternity and social solidarity.
Buckley wisely asserts that “a liberal society will defend individual rights, but rights shorn of virtuous rights-bearers can be a menace.” A liberal order flourishes when it comprises the virtues of the many. John Adams, Buckley notes, said that “public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private virtue, and public virtue is the only foundation of a republic.” A liberal order will not be preserved by the words of its Constitution or by its public institutions or by the separation of powers but only by the civic virtue of its citizens. Liberal nationalism promotes liberty and equality, as well as a healthy American patriotism. Too often, however, American history is a subject taught in our schools as “a list of events which should never have happened.” A beneficent nationalism will increase Americans’ sense of interdependence and mutual responsibility.
A liberal order will reject “dull conformism,” put in place by “the prudes on the left,” and instead revive “a willingness to accept those with whom one disagrees.” Buckley criticizes recent attacks on conservatives, targeted by activists on the left, and efforts to curtail dissent by opponents of the leftist establishment: “The Biden White House pressured the social-media giants to suppress content with which it disagreed, and when a judge ruled this [suppression] illegal it was the illiberal left that objected and wanted the censorship to continue.” This McCarthyism of the left, including the refusal of service to MAGA restaurant patrons and threats and demonstrations at the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices, should offend any citizen of the Republic who supports authentic liberalism, for liberals affirm both the right to disagree and the right to privacy. Instead, what has happened is that justice has been radically redefined, kindness toward others has been abandoned, and the woke left has jettisoned free-speech principles and turned “commonplace conservative ideas into thought crimes.”
Liberals are not crude ideologues but rather persons who are open to self-questioning and self-criticism. They will admit the possibility that they are wrong; they know they make mistakes. Therefore, they are intellectually and morally humble. They are wanderers, like the main character in a Bildungsroman. We see the sort of person Buckley has in mind when we read Ford Madox Ford’s classic tetralogy of the First World War, Parade’s End, and study its protagonist, Christopher Tietjens. Our hero has principles all along, but he must experience some harrowing events in order to become a man; the rules he accepted as a schoolboy must be transformed into a code of honor that he embraces as an adult and makes fully his own. Thus, Tietjens’s status as a gentleman is not dependent on the possession of Groby, his ancestral estate, but rather on his acquisition of the manly virtues—humility, magnanimity, courage, and generosity foremost among them.
A truly liberal polity would seek to improve intergenerational movement by removing the barriers that prevent the lower classes from getting ahead. To increase upward mobility, we would do well, Buckley asserts, to borrow from both left and right. From the right: tighten immigration restrictions, improve our public schools, roll back unnecessary regulations, and strengthen the rule of law. From the agenda of the left: make college more affordable by capping tuition costs, and provide relief from the expense of catastrophic medical conditions by improving the health-care system.
Buckley concludes that a polity that has declined and succumbed to illiberalism cannot be remade by way of more rights or improved financial incentives. Only the virtues, whence liberalism arose, can revive a weakened nation. A fallen state can be lifted up only by benevolence and fraternity. “The heartless woke republic is not healed except through humility and self-understanding. All politics is virtue politics.”
Although it’s probably the case that no one will be completely satisfied with Buckley’s take on his elusive subject—the origins and meaning of liberalism—all readers will likely find major elements in his book that they can agree with and even be inspired by. Indeed, for conservatives who are concerned with the education of the young—especially their moral formation—The Roots of Liberalism will prove insightful and thought-provoking, for this study is focused in particular on practices that shape civic virtue.
What conservative schools—whether classical Christian academies, groups of homeschooling parents, or traditional Church foundations—can add to Buckley’s presentation, which confines itself to liberal virtues as “a subset of virtues generally,” is the virtue of piety. This unfashionable virtue provides our necessary focus. As the key orienting virtue, piety inclines our hearts, minds, and wills to confront what we owe to God above all; it directs our attention to the bestower of our greatest gifts and to the foundation of our deepest loves. Piety bids us to trust in this one God as the Creator of all beings and to be loyal to this ultimate source of all value. Thus piety prompts us to acknowledge that other persons are real and possess a worth equal to our own.
David Hein is the author of Teaching the Virtues, forthcoming in December from Mecosta House, the book-publishing arm of the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal.
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