No man or woman is an island, and no one should aspire to be one, either. That, at the core, is the claim of illiberalism, post-liberalism, or any of the other names given to the movement that pushes back against individualism as an ideal. The liberalism of Locke, deeply woven into American culture and political philosophy, takes the individual as the basic unit of society, while an illiberal view looks to traditions, family, and other institutions whose demands define who we are.
It always confuses me that illiberalism is taken as a belligerent ideology – both by its detractors and some of its proponents – as though it were rooted in strength and prepared to wield that power against others. It is contemporary liberalism that begins from an anthropology of independence, and presumes a strength and self-ownership we do not in fact possess.
The best corrective the growing illiberal enthusiasm can offer is not a rival strength – no fist clenched around a flagpole of any standard. Instead it must offer a re-appreciation of weakness – the kind I see in the chubby, fumbling fingers of my daughter, reaching out to her parents.
Leah Libresco Sargeant, “Dependence: Toward an Illiberalism of the Weak” in Plough No. 26, page 55.
Excerpt #12
“Once, at an ecumenical reception, I remarked that perhaps much of our ecumenical reconciliation within Christianity has to do with the fact that we were deprived of our power. No longer are we seventeenth-century Protestant and Catholic states that went to war with each other, nor does the pope rule over an ecclesiastical state that wages wars. We live in secular countries. As far as issues of power are concerned, we are marginalized, which is probably also a blessing.
We must remember that Christians have often been persecuted, and still are today. It’s interesting that historically our opponents made no distinctions among the various confessions. Christians helped one another in the concentration camps and the gulag; they were all simply Christians. We had to become powerless to surrender ourselves to Christ’s power and put our trust in him – not in weaponry, not in political power, but “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,” as Paul says (1 Cor 2). The lovely thing is that we recognize one another anew, not from the standpoint of our confessions, but with a view to Christ, Whenever I encounter a brother or sister and I see that they really love the Lord, then there is an immediate basis for communication.
Of course, there are still enormous differences between confessions – in how we worship, for instance – but we know that the center is the same, the center is Christ. As Pope Benedict XVI told us, “What is meant by ecumenicism? Simply this: that we listen to one another and learn from one another what it means to be a Christian today.”
Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, OP, interviewed by Kim Comer in “Why Inheritance Matters” in Plough, No. 26, pages 46-47.
Excerpt #11
[Donald Trump] is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot. A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best. A nationalist, “although endlessly brooding on power, victory defeat, revenge,” wrote Orwell, tends to be “uninterested in what happens in the real world.” Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism “has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.”
A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well – and wishing it would do better.
Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century, pages 113-114.
Justin DaMetz 