Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Then Leave The Man Alone

Culture and Politics - Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, May 12, 2011

Beware of all isms except for prisms, as the fellow said. This goes double for libertarianism, and I would point you to Denny Burk's applause of Michael Gerson's critique of Ron Paul. Since I have praised Paul in this place before (and will no doubt do so again), I should perhaps offer an explanation of what gives here.

There are different kinds of libertarian approaches. One is when liberty itself has become the standard, and an attempt is made to apply that standard wherever practically or theoretically possible, and sometimes when impossible. This kind of liberty is an abstraction, divorced from any particular Word from God, although it is often assumed that God generally likes liberty. Christians like Ron Paul can mistakenly go for this, and it leads them to sometimes take surprising stands, such as Paul's support for the legalization of prostitution.

But there is another variant of a libertarian approach, one that is consistent with social conservatism, and one that I would like to argue for here. When God, as it were, "leaves us alone" with one another, we should take note of the temptations that Scripture describes under such circumstances. This is a libertarianism that is based on a scriptural understanding of what power and privilege tend to do to the hearts of men.