The Economics and Political Science Room
"The extreme of liberty (which is its abstract perfection, but its real fault) obtains nowhere, nor ought to obtain anywhere. Because extremes, as we all know, in every point which relates either to our duties or satisfactions in life are destructive both to virtue and enjoyment. Liberty, too, must be limited in order to be possessed. The degree of restraint it is impossible in any case to settle precisely. But it ought to be the constant aim of every wise public council to find out by cautious experiments and rational cool endeavours with how little, not how much, of this restraint the community can subsist. For liberty is a good to be improved, and not an evil to be lessened. It is not only a private blessing of the first order, but the vital spring and energy of the state itself, which has just so much life and vigour as there is liberty in it." --Edmund Burke
Saving Democracy From Its Own Contradictions
Every government shares two aims: to be legitimate and to be good. The problem is that these goals are increasingly at odds.
In our present era, the only route to legitimacy is through democracy. Yet good government is impossible without limiting democracy in some way. Conservatives once stood staunchly in favor of these limits, but a small revolution has occurred. Conservatives who once regarded human nature as flawed and sought to restrain it have transformed into populists who fully embrace the anger and desire of the American id.
This outcome is natural under the logic of democratic legitimacy, which breeds greater and greater hostility towards institutional and cultural limits on the individual will. As that hostility builds, effective government is eventually sacrificed at its altar, rendering populist fury self-defeating. Conservative leaders must chart a different way forward, one that respects their voters’ anger while still retaining enough governing competence to solve the problems that caused it.
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