Is a cancer growing in the bowels of liberalism? . - Tolerating Freedom - The Long Truce: How Toleration Made the World Safe for Power and Profit; - Brief Article - book review

Reason, June, 2002 by Loren E. Lomasky

The authors of these two books are not Marxists, but like Marx each claims to have discerned a cancer growing in the bowels of liberalism. Although A.J. Conyers and John Gray spring from very different locations on the political spectrum, each is convinced that liberalism's ideal of toleration is fatally compromised. This is no trivial complaint. Central to the program of liberalism is the requirement that people are to be let alone to act as they see fit provided only that they not infringe the rights of others.

To be sure, this policy is often belied in practice. Even in mostly liberal societies such as that of the United States, a sticky web of paternalistic laws coerces individuals for what is alleged to be their own good, and ill-defined conceptions of "social justice" are invoked to justify a panoply of redistributive programs, sometimes from rich to poor, sometimes from poor to rich, always at the expense of personal liberty. For committed liberals, toleration remains as much aspiration as accomplishment, but it is an aspiration that cannot be abandoned without committing philosophical suicide.

In The Long Truce, Conyers, professor at the George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University, argues that the creed of toleration is at war with itself. The modem nation-state has succeeded in rendering individuals spectacularly free to act as they see fit, especially with regard to making and spending money. If one looks only at the bottom line, all appears well. The picture is more complicated, however. While individuals have been empowered by the modern state, intermediate associations such as churches, families, and guilds that previously stood between them and the omnipotent state have been divested of authority. Because the state reserves to itself exclusive entitlement to command obedience, it shows itself intolerant toward all institutions other than itself. The superficial wealth of liberal society thus disguises an underlying spiritual poverty.

Conyers' indictment strains credulity, especially when lodged against the United States. Look around, and as far as the eye can see are intermediate associations jostling up against each other. We are a land of churches--and synagogues, mosques, Hindu temples, New Age retreats. We are members of labor unions, professional associations, hobbyist clubs, social fraternities, ethnic associations. Charitable organizations raise money to heal the sick, save the whales, convert the heathen. Many of these groups are evanescent, while others persist over decades and centuries. Some wax while others wane. How can it be denied that liberal toleration extends to associations as well as solitary individuals

Conyers does deny it, but only by putting a peculiar twist on the concept of toleration. To be sure, he admits, individuals may sign up as they wish, but they also enjoy carte blanche to withdraw, That's the rub. Should you choose to leave the church, it has no recourse. It cannot compel you to remain in the congregation, forbid you from joining a competing sect, or punish you for your waywardness. The state jealously denies it a power to discipline. Conyers is not in every respect a reactionary, but he writes affectionately of a medieval world in which associations wielded both carrots and sticks. That, he maintains, was true toleration.