Virtue and Freedom

Theodore Dalrymple points to the essential flaw in the sociological mode of governance adopted by Tony Blair and New Labour. Commenting on the thousands of new laws passed in the last few years limiting the freedom of individuals in Britain -- laws that remind him of Mussolini's brave experiment in fascist Italy -- he writes:

The assault on freedom in Britain in the name of social welfare is an illustration of something that the American founding fathers understood, but that is not very congenial to the temper of our times: that in the long run, only a population that strives for virtue (with at least a degree of success) will be able to maintain its freedom. A nation whose individuals choose vice rather than virtue as the guiding principle of their lives will not long remain free, because it will need rescuing from the consequences of its own vices.

....

One of the destructive consequences of the spread of sociological modes of thought is that it has transferred the notion of virtue from individuals to social structures, and in so doing has made personal striving for virtue (as against happiness) not merely unnecessary but ridiculous and even bad, insofar as it diverted attention from the real task at hand, that of creating the perfect society: the society so perfect, as T S Eliot put it, that no one will have to be good.

It is that kind of society in which Mr Blair and his acolytes believe; by happy co-incidence, they also believe that they are the very men to bring it about. If it means that power has to be delivered up into their hands and the hands of the vast apparatus they direct...

Read it here.

Dr. Daniels [Dalrymple's real name] is right. The collapse of moral standards and informal mechanisms for enforcing them provides those who have a will to run other peoples' lives with a reason for exercising their worst impulses. An absence of public virtue is directly related to a decline in public freedom.