Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Fatherless Under the Fig Tree

Culture and Politics - Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, July 25, 2011 7:12 am

Hard libertarianism and/or anarchy is a function of what might be called civic fatherlessness. Just as the antitheist regards the eternality of the Father as tyrannical on the face of it, so also the hard libertarian regards any civic authority whatever as something to chafe the soul.

Within this paradigm, all political authority is based on coercion, straight up, and since coercion is (obviously) bad, then at best we should regard political authority as a necessary evil, and at worst tyranny to be thrown off. Those who are more eschatologically minded long for the day when the state withers, or blows up, or something, and then every man can sit fatherless under his own fig tree. This view assumes that the only possible justification for civil authority is pragmatic, and when we grow past the need for such pragmatic expedients, then we will no longer have any presidents or kings. We will have grown out of our need for civil fathers, or so the pipe dream goes.

But as I write this, I am in my late fifties, and my father is in his eighties.
He is still very much an authority in my life, and the respect I owe to him is truly significant. But suppose I were telling this to a libertarian friend, and he said that it was just because I was afraid of a spanking. That would obviously be ridiculous, even though there is a grain of truth there -- that arrived about five decades late. Godly fathers do establish their authority by love and discipline, but the house they are building is not the same as the scaffolding. When a son grows to maturity, the scaffolding comes down, and the fatherly authority remains. We do not grow out of our need for discipline by our authorities without growing into something else. And what we grow into is not a vacuum above us.

Scripture tells little children that their honor of their father and mother is rendered through obedience (Eph. 6:1). When children are grown, the honor is still required, but it is rendered through different means. When the children are grown, they are supposed to honor father and mother through financial support (Mark 7:11-12). The surrounding duties are different because the central duty is the same.

An unruly and ungodly people must be ruled in a rough and tumble fashion (1 Tim. 1:9). But as their capacity for self-government grows (which is only possible through the gospel), they discover that in their maturity they can see things about their rulers that were not clear to them before.

"And the Lord made Solomon very great in the sight of all Israel and bestowed on him such royal majesty as had not been on any king before him in Israel" (1 Chron. 29:25).

"The God of Israel has spoken; the Rock of Israel has said to me: When one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of God, he dawns on them like the morning light, like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning, like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth" (2 Sam 23:4).

And of course, in our day, when we really are dealing with various tyrannies that do not have the fear of God as a political consideration at all, the key phrase to focus on in the previous passage is "when one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of God." What we have now is a ganglion of thieves "ruling impudently over men, ruling in the arrogance of man."

But even so, we still salute the uniform.