As some of you know, I went through a long phase where I was a huge fan of Ronald Reagan. I still am, to a large degree, but I no longer actively collect biographies written about him or things like that. In fact, the more I think about Reagan’s political philosophy, the more I agree with him in practice, but the less I agree with him on principle.
Reagan contended for the liberty of all people because he believed passionately in the wisdom of individual men and women to run their own lives, free of any government coercion. For a radio address given on December 22, 1976, for example, he wrote the following in praise of the high productivity of Americans:
All of this is because our system frees the individual genius of man. Released him to fly as high & as far as his own talent & energy would take him. We allocate resources not by govt. decision but by the mil’s. of decisions customers make when they go into the mkt. place to buy. If something seems too high priced we buy something else. Thus resources are steered toward those things the people want most at the price they are willing to pay. It may not be a perfect system but it’s better than any other that’s ever been tried. (Reagan: In His Own Hand, ed. Kron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson [New York: The Free Press, 2001], 13)
To this day, I find Reagan’s arguments for small government and free market capitalism persuasive, but I have realized a major flaw here: Reagan puts too much faith in the goodness and wisdom of individual men and women.
For this reason, I find the rationale of Abraham Kuyper (a 19th century Dutch Calvinist) much more persuasive. Kuyper argues for limited government control and for the freedom of the market on the basis of a distrust of people, not a trust in “the individual genius of man.” I just read his Lectures on Calvinism, and I found his overall perspective thrilling, especially his chapter on “Calvinism and Politics.”
Kuyper articulates a Calvinism that sees different “spheres of sovereignty” in life, where God has ordained different institutions to exercise dominion over the earth, per the creation mandate, and a just society would recognize all these different spheres.
So, for example, a family would have no authority over punishing criminals (which would be in the dominion of the State), but neither would the state have any authority in raising children (a function of the family). The point is that, while there is a very necessary and proper place for government (one which we may not as Christians ignore), the State is unjust if it goes beyond those bounds. In fact, Kuyper suggests that such a State would not only be unjust, but that it would be evil, lusting after power that God has not granted to it.
Kuyper names four spheres whose authority the government may not trespass: “1. In the social sphere, by personal superiority. 2. In the corporate sphere of universities, guilds, associations, etc. 3. In the domestic sphere of the family and of married life, and 4. In communal autonomy” (Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953], 96).
He writes:
Bound by its own mandate, therefore, the government may neither ignore nor modify nor disrupt the divine mandate under which these social spheres stand. The sovereignty, by the grace of God, of the government is here set aside and limited, for God’s sake, by another sovereignty, which is equally divine in origin. Neither the life of science nor of art, nor of agriculture, nor of industry, nor of commerce, nor of navigation, nor of the family, nor of human relationship may be coerced to suit itself to the grace of the government. The State may never become an octopus, which stifles the whole of life. It must occupy its own place, on its own root, among all the other trees of the forest, and thus it has to honor and maintain every form of life which grows independently in its own sacred autonomy. (Kuyper, Lectures, p. 96-97, emphasis added.)
All of this accomplishes three things:
- It gives me a theological, rather than a self-centered, basis for conservative politics.
- It makes me wonder whether I am justified in saying that the exponentially expanding role of the government under President Obama (although other Democrats and Republicans are highly complicit in this) is immoral and idolatrous, ignoring the proper sphere for which God ordained government. (I am about 85% comfortable with such a bold statement.)
- It makes me want to join the Constitution Party.
Your title sounds like the ultimate cage match.
I’m a big fan of Kuyper’s lectures on Calvinism as well. It seems like Reagan is much more indebted to J. S. Mill in his belief of the innate goodness of individual freedom and development.
Still, some questions about Kuyper’s arguments remain in my mind. How does Kuyper go about deciding which spheres are legitimately independent and which authority ought govern them? I can see a biblical case for family, church, and state, but I don’t see a biblical argument for the existence of a separate corporate sphere for guilds and universities etc. I suppose I need to read more Kuyper (and probably Dooyeweerd) to better understand his reasoning.
The problem I think is determining the proper bounds of government. We might agree that the biblical role of government is to punish the wrongdoer (Rom. 13). But wrongdoing exists in all sorts of spheres of life – economic injustice, environmental degradation – that seem beyond the bounds of where a free market capitalist would be willing to draw the line of government interference. It’s a messy process of trying to determine where and when government ought legitimately to intervene.
I should add that I used to take a libertarian view in drawing that line, i.e. the government should only intervene so far as necessary to keep people from physically harming one another. But I now realize there is no biblical mandate for narrowly drawing the line at physical harm. Romans 13 just says that the ruler bears the sword and punishes evildoing.
And I’ll add that you could have posted this post about seven or eight years ago, with the same condemnations of the then-president (though you admit that its not just the Dems).
I might be willing to discuss a role for government in protecting the environment, especially in the ways that harming the environment would have a direct effect on harming other people (e.g., poisoning water supplies, etc…).
I would be less willing, however, to agree with a role for the government in economic inequality. It isn’t that I don’t want to address economic inequality, but that I don’t think that the government can address the problem.
Obama is a great example of this. Notice carefully the way he goes about “economic stimulus”–his policies are not in the least designed to stimulate the economy. If he were really interested in doing that, he would make a stable, economically beneficial environment for investors to invest. As it is, he changes the rules on all sorts of industries every other day, with the result that investors are too scared to put any of their money anywhere. I genuinely think that if Obama wanted to end this recession, he could–that, however, would require him to give up a lot of the power that he has, and it would mean a fundamental shift in his economic policies.
His goal, then, is not so much to stimulate the economy, but to address economic inequality. He is throwing all kinds of money designed to protect the poorest of the poor; the problem with this, however, is that in doing so he is making it harder and harder for business owners (i.e., the not-so-poor) to run businesses at a profit. When this happens, the businesses that were employing people (whether poor, middle class, or rich people) can’t operate very long, and we have even more unemployment. To Obama, this would simply mean throwing more (imaginary) money at the rising groups of the poor, but it doesn’t really help the situation.
Instead, I think what Kuyper would say (and definitely what I would say) is that economic inequality falls under the sovereign sphere of the church. Not only is the church better able to address this problem, being closer to the actual people, but this is the God-given mandate of the church. Allow me to put it bluntly: every time the State accomplishes something that the church should be doing, the glory of Jesus Christ is usurped by politicians.
Still, I do recognize that this is a complicated, messy process. I am mainly excited to have a footing for exploring these issues that doesn’t deny total depravity.
And I still want to joint the Constitution Party.
I’m no economist, and I don’t doubt that Obama and congress could be spending money better, but as I understand it, the idea behind economic stimulus is simply for the government to pump more money into the economy to induce spending, which in theory will kick start the slowing economy – basic Keynesian economic theory. So it doesn’t so much matter where the money goes, as long as its getting spent within the domestic economy. (Could you call Obama’s approach trickle up economics?) Again, I’m no expert on economics, but it seems the lesson of the Great Depression was that if a government stands idly by. Large short-term government spending (in that case the New Deal and more importantly WWII) can actually turn around a dying economy. Even The Economist, which is certainly on the laissez-faire side of the spectrum, agrees in principle with the need for gov’t stimulus. So I guess I don’t really buy the argument of conservatives that the government should stand by and let the economy sort itself out. We tried that in ’29 and it didn’t work.
All of this, of course, concerns the question of “Does it work” rather than “Is it legitimate for government to do so.” I agree that the church should be doing much of what gov’t does when it comes to things like charity and welfare. But a certain amount of economic regulation and protection seems to within government’s rightful sphere. Take for instance the Jubilee year enforced in ancient Israel (a special circumstance w/o a clear distinction between church/state, I realize). I’d argue that something like trust-busting is also the role of the government, to prevent some individuals or corporations from creating economically unfair situations. The church has few mechanisms to treat such large-scale issues, while the gov’t who “bears the sword” can.
Don’t mistake me for a socialist. I think Obama would like to go too far in “spreading the wealth around.” I’m just not as convinced by the libertarian arguments as I used to be. And I agree with you that thinking about legitimate spheres is a much better starting point than assuming certain inalienable rights of the individual.
What say you? A thought-provoking post, BTW.
Good thoughts, and the first thing that I would say in response (I’ll completely leave aside the issue of how late is in on your side of the pond, and that you should probably be in bed!) is that debate over “what works” is a legitimate debate among Christians. I think that you draw a good distinction here.
I do have issues with your take on economics, and I might post something short to that effect tomorrow, backed by UCLA economists no less! So, stay tuned on that…
I would also be willing to discuss certain issues on economic protection. For example, I think that the government should regulate against monopolies (although this really means, by definition, that the government should never set up a monopoly–Microsoft does not fit the definition of a monopoly, IMHO) and other situations where large corporations use their wealth to harm others. No argument here.
But “unfair situations”? That seems like a pretty shifty line to draw, and I would be pretty upset if I spent my entire life building a company only to have the government tell me that my hard work means that I am “too successful,” and that they are going to intervene. Again, this would be a legitimate conversation, and one that would probably have to be on a case-by-case basis.
I’m going to try to read more Kuyper, and perhaps post one such things as time goes on. Please continue to comment and to post as you can–I like and need your counter-balance on this. Some people say that I am prone to extremes… 🙂
I’ll look forward to your post on economics. It’s an area on which I’m woefully ignorant but have enjoyed learning more about since our own crash last year.
I’m largely playing devil’s advocate because these are live issues in my own mind, and trying to examine it from all sides seems the best way to get clarity.
And yes it’s late here. We went on a walking tour of Berlin today, and seeing the remains of the Berlin wall and learning more about the history of East Germany drives home privileges of living in a free democracy and the utter failures of socialism, even in its “really existing” forms.
Have you read much about distributism as advocated by Chesterton and others? I’ve not read much on it (I’d like to learn more) but it seems like an attractive alternative to capitalism and socialism.
I have not read anything other than a little bit of that Wikipedia article, but it sounds interesting. I wonder, though, whether that model is antiquated now that we have moved beyond the early 19th century, where economic ownership necessarily involved factories, production, etc…, which all required a lot of start-up capital.
In other words, I think that with the proliferation of technologies like the internet, anyone can open a business without needing to use that much money. And I did think of this before I got to this sentence in the article: “Some have seen it more as an aspiration, which has been successfully realised in the short term by commitment to the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity (these being built into financially independent local co-operatives and family owned, small businesses), though proponents also cite such periods as the Middle Ages as examples of the historical long-term viability of distributism.”
I would, however, very much like to read more Chesterton. Kuyper intrigues me to read more by top-notch theologians who tried to apply their theology to politics, culture, etc…
Hey kids, good discussion. Just wanted to jump in and offer a starting point for reading up on Distributism. Mr. John MĂ©daille over at The Distributist Review blog is writing a book on the subject and publishing each chapter on the blog. You can find it here: http://distributism.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Political%20Economy%20of%20Distributism
I’ve read a great deal on this subject so I hope you will take my recommendation to heart. My own views are very close those of Medaille but far from “vulgar” Distributist who are essentially just run of the mill socialists with poor economic reasoning skills. Unfortunately these later types are easily found on the internet – so beware.
Thanks Trevor! I just read the first chapter, and I am looking forward to working through it. I also find his book-writing model fascinating, and I wonder if more people will write books “in conversation” with others through blogs in the future. It might lead to better books!
Thanks Trevor. I’m working through it as well. Seems like a very good primer on distributism