The Tory and the Individual

I prefer the word “Tory” to the word “conservative” as a description of my political worldview, despite the potential for confusion caused by the fact that this term is widely used as a nickname for members and supporters of the Conservative Party. The Tory worldview is built upon the timeless principle that royal authority and ecclesiastical authority share a divine vocation to co-operate for the common good, which principle can be seen as the basis of both Dr. Johnson’s definition of a Tory in the eighteenth century (1) and T. S. Eliot’s description of himself as “an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature, and a royalist in politics”.

Conservative, on the other hand, is generally defined in opposition to liberalism. Liberalism is a progressive ideology, that is to say, it is built upon a linear view of history that sees humanity as constantly moving towards a better world. Thus, its content is perpetually changing, if not its basic secular, rationalistic, presuppositions. This means that the meaning of conservatism is perpetually changing as well, usually to incorporate a defence of last year’s discarded liberalism against that of the present day.

It has become customary to identify the set of terms liberal and conservative with that of left and right. When the latter set of terms entered the discussion of politics each had a clear, well-defined, meaning and it made sense to regard the right as being essentially synonymous with the Tories. The political usage of left and right began in 1789 with the French Revolution. Supporters of the House of Bourbon, the Roman Catholic Church and its clergy, the nobility, and the Ancien Régime gathered on the right side of the chairman of the National Assembly whereas the supporters of the Revolution amassed on the left side. By the twentieth century, the terms left and right had come to be seen as the two poles defining the entire spectrum of political thought, but it was no longer clear what constituted each of the poles. There were several attempts to define left and right. One of these, which attained a certain degree of influence, especially in North America, saw the spectrum in terms of individualism versus collectivism, defining the right as the individualist position and the left as the collectivist position.

Any attempt to reduce the political spectrum to something that simplistic is bound to generate confusion. In this case, the right-individualist versus left-collectivist spectrum was thought up by men who were liberals in the nineteenth century sense of the word and therefore individualists, after liberalism, at least in North America, had moved away from individualism and towards a form of collectivism. The new collectivist liberalism was equated with the left, by the older kind of liberals who equated their own position with the right and conservatism.

So where does the Tory fit on the individualist-collectivist spectrum?

It is not easy to answer this question because the Tory is both an individualist and a collectivist. He is not, however, an individualist in the same sense that a nineteenth century liberal was, nor is he a collectivist in the way a twentieth century left-liberal is. In a future essay I intend to explain the difference between Tory collectivism and left-liberal collectivism. For the remainder of this essay we will look at the difference between Tory individualism and classical liberal individualism.

In the classical liberalism of John Locke and J. S. Mill, the individual is prior to society. To be an individual, in this view, is the natural state of man, whereas society is an artificial construction, created by the mutual voluntary assent of individuals, in order to better secure their rights and liberties.

Now a moment’s reflection is all it takes to realize that this is utter poppycock. What classical liberalism asserts of the individual, cannot be said to be true of any actual individual. I live in the Dominion of Canada, a country that just celebrated its 148th birthday. I am not over 148 years old, nor do I know of any other Canadian who is that old. Canada is older than any individual who lives in it. Her existence is clearly prior to that of any individual who lives within her borders. Even if this were a much younger country, however, it would still not be true that our individual existence predates our social existence, because each of us is born into a family, which is a unit of social organization, albeit on a much smaller scale than that of a country. We do not choose the family we are born into, nor do we choose the country we are born into, although people, as they grow older, affiliate themselves with other families through marriage and may choose another country in which to live.

Since what classical liberalism asserts about the individual is observably not true about any actual person, the individual of whom liberalism predicates priority before society, must be a generic figure who exists only in the abstract. Indeed, everything that liberalism asserts about the individual, such as his possession of certain inalienable natural rights and his sovereign ownership of his self, is asserted of the individual in such a way as, if true, to be true, not just of specific individuals, but of every individual equally. What this tells us is that in classical liberalism, individuality is defined by what makes us all alike. (2)

This, however, is a serious flaw in liberal thought. For in normal conversation, when we speak of actual individuals, of Bob, Walter, June and Sally, their individuality, that which makes them individuals, is not that which makes them alike but that which makes them stand out from others. In liberal theory individuals are equal, but it is uniqueness rather than equality that is the mark of true individuality.

That which makes a person unique, which sets him apart from others, may be good or it may be bad. That which sets Louis Pasteur apart from others, makes him stand out and be memorable, are the ways in which he benefitted mankind through his discoveries. Pol Pot was also a very distinct individual, but it is his evil for which he will be remembered.

The Tory is an individualist, but his individualism concerns actual individuals, and not the abstract, generic, concept of the individual. These are real men and women, embodied souls, created in the image of God but marred by sin, thus possessing much potential for both good and evil. Their individuality is not a shared trait, but is different for each person, because it is the nature of individuality to make a person stand out as distinct and unique, whether for better or for worse. The Tory does not see individuals as being prior to their families, communities, and societies, but rather sees their families, communities, and societies as providing the necessary pre-existing context within which their individuality develops. The Tory believes in both the common good and freedom for individuals, but neither at the expense of the other. Whereas the classical liberal believes the individual to have possessed absolute freedom in a fictitious, pre-society, “state of nature”, the Tory recognizes that society is the state of nature for human individuals and that it is only in the context of a stable, societal, order that they can have and experience any real freedom.

(1) “One who adheres to the ancient constitution of the state, and the apostolical hierarchy of the church of England, opposed to a Whig.” (Whig was defined as “The name of a faction”).

(2) By making “individual” into a generic, defined by that which can be said about each “individual” equally, liberalism has created a false universal. Universals are general concepts of which we encounter particular examples. For example, the idea “tree” is a universal, of which the elms, oaks, maples, and poplars we see in our neighborhood are particulars. “Man” is a universal, as is “woman”, but “individual” is a designation of particular men and women. Liberalism’s individual, ascribes to a term of particularity, the characteristics of a universal. That liberalism would blur the distinction between particular and universal is unsurprising in light of the fact that liberalism is the philosophical great- great-great-grandchild of nominalism, the fourteenth century movement that rejected the classical concept of universals, whether as Plato’s Forms existing in another realm of which this world is a copy, or Aristotle’s Ideas found embodied in their particulars in this realm, and asserted that universals are merely projections of our own mind and will upon the reality around us, that help us to make sense of it.

King, Byng, and Canada’s Parliamentary Monarchy

A conservative is a traditionalist, i.e., someone who believes strongly in preserving all the good things – ideas, customs, habits, institutions, rules, etc. – that have been passed on to us in the present from the past, as a trust for future generations. A progressive is an innovator, i.e.. someone who believes that the road to a better future starts by moving away from the past through radical experimentation guided by the light of reason and science.

The terms “Tory” and “Whig” are synonyms for “conservative” and “progressive” respectively, but they have more specific connotations. They are the old names for the parties which were re-organized and re-named into the Conservative and Liberal parties in the nineteenth century. The old names were used from the late seventeenth through to the early nineteenth century. The Tories were the champions of the rights and privileges of the Crown and of the established Church of England. The Whigs were the champions of the elected legislature and of the dissenting, non-conformist, Protestant sects.

The term “Tory” is still widely used, mostly as a nickname for the members of the Conservative Party. I use it as a self-descriptive label in a somewhat different sense, to indicate that my conservatism is the older type of royalist and religious conservatism rooted in established institutions that the Tory Party stood for before it changed its name, and not primarily a conservatism of low taxes and free markets, although I have nothing against those things per se.

The term “Whig” has not survived as well. The American Republic was founded upon Whig principles in the eighteenth century and for a time the term was used as the name of an American political party, albeit one whose policies differed somewhat from those of the English Whigs. This was dissolved in 1860 and the Republican Party took its place. Canada was founded upon Tory principles as a confederation of provinces that had remained loyal to the British Crown in the American Revolution. Here, we do not refer to the members of the Liberal Party as Whigs in the way we speak of members of the Conservative Party as Tories, we call them “Grits” instead.

Nevertheless, Whig ideals have often been on display in the policies and actions of the Liberal Party in the Twentieth Century. Likewise, Canadian history, once written by such stalwart Tories as Donald Creighton and W. L. Morton, in the last half of the Twentieth Century began to bear a marked resemblance to what Sir Herbert Butterfield called “The Whig Interpretation of History”, when a new school of Liberal historians, including such notables as Pierre Berton and Peter C. Newman arose. Whereas the older school of historians were patriots of the Dominion of Canada founded in 1867, who believed in its founding principles, and saw its British heritage of Common Law, the Westminster Parliamentary system, and the Crown itself as an indispensable part of what Canada was all about the newer school were advocates of a newer kind of Canadian nationalism, heavily promoted by Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau in the 1960s and 1970s, which sought to create a new Canadian identity by stripping Canada of as much of her British heritage as possible and de-emphasizing the rest, while emphasizing the traditions and heritage of French Canadians, Canadian Indians, and new immigrants from the Third World. This new Canadian history can be seen at its most Whiggish, however, when it discusses a 1926 event known as the King/Byng affair.

To understand this it would be helpful to define the basic difference between Tories and Whigs under the Westminster system. A Tory and a Whig can both support the system of parliamentary monarchy. They view it differently, however. A Whig has a natural distrust of kings and regards the powers of the elected assembly as a fundamental check on the potential for tyranny in the royal office. A Tory’s natural distrust is of mobs and the demagogues that stir them up, and he regards the office of the king as an essential check on demagoguery, political opportunism, and the “tyranny of the majority” that Alexis de Tocqueville warned the Americans about.

The Whig interpretation of history, as Butterfield explained it, is the theory, predominant in the histories of the Whig historians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in which the past is seen as one endless series of progressive events leading up to the liberal democracy of the present. Every event in which royal power is limited is regarded as a positive step towards the rights, freedoms, and democracy of the day, regardless of whether the king at the time was behaving tyrannically, as was the case with King John, or was a good man defending the traditional rights and prerogatives of his office, from unscrupulous fanatics, as was the case with King Charles I.

In classrooms across Canada, the King-Byng affair, if discussed at all, is given the Whig treatment. It is portrayed as an important step in Canada’s becoming a sovereign country with full control over her own affairs. While this view conforms to the 1926 election propaganda of William Lyon Mackenzie King’s Liberals it does not conform to the facts.

The events leading up to the affair began with the 1925 federal election. At the time King was Prime Minister, the Liberals having won the 1921 election with 118 seats. This was reduced to 101 in the 1925 election. Arthur Meighen’s Conservatives won 116 seats. Ordinarily this would have resulted in the Conservatives being asked to form a minority government. King, however, went to Lord Byng of Vimy, the Governor General (viceroy) at the time, and told him that he had obtained the support of the Progressive Party for the continuation of his government. Byng reluctantly accepted this.

Before the year was out, King’s government was rocked by scandal. Here is how John G. Diefenbaker described it in his memoirs:

Within weeks of the 1925 election, the entire range of corruption began to emerge. Canadian customs officers were involved in a smuggling ring operating in Windsor-Detroit, in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, and throughout the New Brunswick-Maine boundary. Directing much of these operations was a senior Customs Inspector and implicated was the former Liberal Minister of Customs and Excise, the Honourable Jacques Bureau, who, instead of being sent to jail, had been appointed to the Senate by King prior to the 1925 election. (John G. Diefenbaker, One Canada, Volume I, p. 146)

A House committee was appointed to investigate and when its report was in, the Conservatives called for a vote of censure against the King government, the socialists called for a Royal Commission to investigate the customs corruption further, and finally a proposal was put forward that combined both of these calls.

Desperate to avoid a vote of censure, and having obtained an adjournment, King went to Lord Byng and asked him to dissolve Parliament. Byng, in Diefenbaker’s words “rightly and properly refused King’s request” for:

Never before in Canadian or in the whole of British parliamentary history had such a request been granted to a Prime Minister facing the censure of the House of Commons. (Ibid. p. 147)

Byng instead, asked Arthur Meighen, leader of the Conservative Party – which had won the largest number of seats in the preceding years election – to form a government. It was entirely within his rights and prerogatives as representative of the Crown to do so. As it so happened, Meighen’s government lost a confidence vote shortly after being formed and an election was called anyway. During that election, King lied through his teeth about the whole affair. Here is how Diefenbaker described it:

Mackenzie King then produced one of the most transparent falsehoods of any man in any generation of our country. He claimed that Canada was in the midst of a constitutional crisis, that the Governor General, Lord Byng, had acted on instructions from Downing Street in inviting Meighen to form a government, and that he, MacKenzie King, would save the common people of our nation from colonial peril. King’s “challenge of imperialism” was so phoney it made Barnum look like an amateur. There was no substance in it, either in law or in logic. But it attracted the public imagination, or at least King’s performance did. (Ibid., pp.147-148)

What the last sentence means is that King’s Liberals won the election. This doesn’t speak well of the electorate at the time that they would buy King’s spurious charge of interference from London when the Prime Minister had clearly asked for a dissolution of Parliament for entirely self-serving reasons, showing utter contempt for the legislative body that was about to censure his government for corruption. This charge was all the more spurious given that in King’s letter to Lord Byng, resigning his premiership he reminded the viceroy that:

in our recent conversations relative to dissolution I have on each occasion suggested to Your Excellency, as I have again urged this morning, that having regard to the possible very serious consequences of a refusal of the advice of your First Minister to dissolve parliament you should, before definitely deciding on this step, cable the Secretary of State for the Dominions asking the British Government, from whom you have come to Canada under instructions, what, in the opinion of the Secretary of State for the Dominions, your course should be in the event of the Prime Minister presenting you with an Order-in-Council having reference to dissolution. (William Lyon Mackenzie King to Lord Byng, Governor General of Canada, June 28, 1926)

Lord Byng, far from acting under orders from Downing Street, had rejected King’s advice that he consult with London, before doing his constitutional duty of refusing to dissolve a parliament just so the Prime Minister could avoid a vote of censure.

Far from being a champion of Canadian sovereignty against imperial interference in Canada’s domestic affairs, King was a sleazy politician, desperate to cling to power and avoid the censure his government richly deserved. While the Whig interpretation of this event is taught in history classes around the country, the Tory interpretation of this event, as explained by John Farthing in his posthumously published Freedom Wears a Crown is more in keeping with the facts. According to Farthing, the King-Bing-Thing, damaged the traditional constitution of parliamentary monarchy that is the foundation for our country’s form of democracy and tradition of personal liberty. King, in insisting that Byng should have granted his dissolution request, showed contempt both for the constitution role of the King, whom Byng represented, and of the Parliament that wanted to censure him. He did not want his government to be accountable either to the Crown or to the elected assembly. Here is how Farthing put the matter:

If a Prime Minister either receives or is threatened with adverse vote in Parliament has he the right to demand of the King the immediate dissolution of the Parliament? Must the Sovereign or the Governor General accede to any and every such request on the part of a Prime Minister? If so, then it follows by the same logic that Parliament itself also becomes a puppet of the same Prime Minister. (John Farthing, Freedom Wears a Crown, p. 67.)

If the King or his viceroy must grant a dissolution whenever the Prime Minister asks for one and for whatever reason, even if it is to prevent the Prime Minister from being held accountable to Parliament, then the Prime Minister and his cabinet have usurped the rightful, constitutional powers of both the King and Parliament. Ever since Stephen Harper became Prime Minister of Canada the Liberals and NDP have accused him of showing contempt for Parliament and running the government as if he and his cabinet were accountable to nobody. If this is the case, he is following the precedent of Liberal Prime Ministers going back until Mackenzie King in the 1920s.

The solution to the problem is not one either the Grits or the NDP are likely to accept, but it was identified by John Farthing years ago, who wrote:

I suggest that only when its true and rightful priorities are restored to the Canadian Constitution – when the King is recognized as of prior significance even to the Prime Minister – will the Cabinet take its true place in our national government and fulfil its democratic function. (Ibid. p. 68).

Bibliography

John Farthing, Judith Robinson ed., Freedom Wears a Crown, Toronto, Kingswood House, 1957.

John G. Diefenbaker, One Canada: Memoirs of the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker, Volume One: The Crusading Years 18695 –1956, Toronto, Macmillan of Canada, 1975.

Letter from William Lyon Mackenzie King to Governor General Byng, 28 June 1926 found here:
http://www.canadahistory.com/sections/documents/news/1926%20King%20Byng.html

Obeying God

“He that honoureth his father shall have a long life; and he that is obedient unto the Lord shall be a comfort to his mother.” – Ecclesiasticus 3:6

“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” – John H. Sammis

Obedience is a character trait which does not come easily to human beings. As children we have to be trained to obey our parents, our teachers, and other authority figures, and we resist that training every step of the way. We have a strong inclination to rebel against authority and break the rules. This inclination is what theologians call “Original Sin”. The Holy Scriptures just call it “sin” and St. John defines it as lawlessness, i.e., the rejection of all authority and law over oneself.

The institutions of traditional society stressed the importance of obedience. In the family, children were to obey parents, in the classroom they were to obey their teachers. All members of society were expected to obey the laws of the land as enforced by the Queen’s police. Most importantly, the Church taught obedience to the commandments of God Himself.

Today, however, these institutions are finding it more and more difficult to instill obedience to traditional authorities. Indeed, various popular educational and psychological theories seem designed to discourage parents and teachers from even attempting to do so. Child protection agencies and governments seem determined to strip parents of their authority and their right to back that authority up with discipline.

Behind all of this there is a philosophy which has gradually permeated Western societies over the last few centuries. This philosophy asserts that people as individuals own their own selves and that therefore the only legitimate authority over them is that which they have voluntarily consented to. The name of this philosophy is liberalism.

Where traditional social institutions sought to contain the ill effects of that human condition known as sin and to cultivate the obedience to lawful authority necessary for human societies to thrive, liberalism encourages the sinful attitude of rebellion and undermines traditional authority. While liberalism, as a social and political philosophy, is only a few centuries old, the attitude behind it is much older. Indeed, Samuel Johnson, the 18th Century lexicographer and moralist, correctly identified the source of that attitude when he said “The first Whig was the devil”. The devil rebelled against God, in his pride asserting his own will against that of his Creator and Sovereign.

Sadly, the devil’s liberal attitude has permeated even the Church of Jesus Christ. It is now common, even in Churches which profess doctrinal orthodoxy, for people to respond to a Scriptural command by saying “Yes, but I think…”

This is the exact opposite of the attitude the Holy Scriptures enjoin upon us. A search of the Scriptures for the words “obey” and “obedience” reveals that God expects and requires obedience from all people, but especially from the people He has identified as His own and called by His name. This was true under the Old Covenant and it is true under the New Covenant, although there is a major difference in how God commands obedience in the two Covenants.

The New Testament also commands Christians to obey all the traditional social authorities. Children are told to obey their parents (Eph. 6:1, Col. 3:20), servants are told to obey their masters wholeheartedly out of fear of God (Eph. 6:5-6,Col. 3:22), wives are told to submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-23, 1 Peter 3:1), and all believers are told in several places to obey the civil authorities who are identified as God’s ministers (Rom. 13:1-7, Titus 3:1, Hebrews 13:17). Submission to and obedience to these authorities is treated consistently, in the New Testament, as part of the obedience we owe God. There is not the slightest sympathy with Whiggish thought anywhere in the Apostolic writings. Of course there are also commands to those entrusted with authority not to abuse it – fathers are told not to provoke their children (Eph. 6:4), Husbands are told to love their wives as Christ loves His Church (Eph. 5:25-28), masters are reminded that they too have a Master and are told not to threaten their servants (Eph. 6:9).

The Whig concept of self-ownership was thought out by John Locke in the 18th Century. It was the foundation of his theory of natural rights. Locke conceived of rights as claims or title deeds to property, with the right to one’s own property as the basis of all other rights. Property ownership, however, is not universal and Locke was looking for universal natural rights which belong to each person. Thus, he argued, individuals who have no other property, have at least their own selves as their own, their lives and their liberty.

The Holy Scriptures declare, however, that the earth and everything in it, belongs to God. The Psalmist says “The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1) “Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine”, God declares, in Ezekiel 18:4. He then goes on to say “the soul that sinneth, it shall die”, an assertion of His right as the owners of all souls to punish the soul that disobeys.

Rather than belonging to ourselves, therefore, we belong to God. This is true of all human beings by virtue of the fact that He is the Creator and Ruler of all things. It is true of Christian believers in a special way, however. In addition to being His by right of Creation we are also His by right of purchase, for He purchased us with the price of the blood of His Son Jesus Christ (Acts 20:28, 1 Cor. 6:19-20, 1 Pet. 1:18-19, Rev. 5:9). All people, as God’s creation, subjects, and property owe Him our obedience. He is entitled to our obedience, He has a right to it, and we do not have a right to withhold it. As Christians we owe Him our obedience because He has purchased us, redeemed us from the slave-market of sin, and brought us into servitude to His Son, which servitude is true freedom (Rom. 6:17-18).

Under the Old Covenant, God’s people Israel owed God obedience because He had redeemed them out of their slavery in the land of Egypt. After bringing them out of Egypt He made His covenant with them at Mt. Sinai. The terms of the Covenant were that He would give them the land He had promised to their forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would be their God, and they would be His people. They were to obey the commandments He would give them, which terms they agreed to in the sacrifice that sealed the Covenant. They would be blessed in the land if they did so obey, they would be punished and even driven from the land if they disobeyed (Exod. 19:3-8, Deut. 11:27-28). When driven from the land, they were to remember their God, return to Him, and obey His commandments and He would restore them (Deut. 30:1-5).

Much of the Old Testament consists of the history of the Israelites under this covenant, their disobedience, their judgement, their repentance, and their restoration. Towards the end of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, when the Assyrians and Babylonians would take God’s people captive and remove them from the Promised Land, God sent prophets who prophesied the great judgement God was about to send upon His people, but promised that God would one day break this cycle, would send them a Savior, and make a new and better Covenant, in which He would write His laws upon the hearts of His people rather than upon tablets of stone (Jer. 31:31-34). That New Covenant was established by the blood of Jesus Christ, shed on the cross (Matt. 26:28, Mk. 14:24, Luke 22:20).

There are similarities and differences between the two Covenants. The Old Covenant was made with a particular nation, the entire world was to be invited to enter the New Covenant through the proclamation of the Gospel, and under the New Covenant the people of God are those who accept that invitation by believing in Jesus Christ. The Book of Hebrews tells us that the Old Covenant was a shadow image of the New Covenant. Just as a picture is inferior to the real thing it represents, so the Old Covenant was an inferior representation of the New. The Aaronic High Priesthood was an image of the High Priesthood of Christ. The Tabernacle and later the Temple, were pictures of the Tabernacle of God in heaven. The sacrifices of the Old Covenant, repeatedly offered on the altars of Israel for the sins of the people, could never take away those sins, but they pointed to the one sacrifice of Christ. That sacrifice, was Christ’s death on the Cross, and the Book of Hebrews tells us how that one sacrifice, the blood of which, Christ as High Priest brought into the heavenly Holy of Holies, once and for all effectively took away the sins of the world.

The New Covenant is also superior to the Old Covenant in the way it calls God’s people to obedience. The Old Covenant, was based upon the principle of Law – do and be blessed and live, do not and be cursed and die. Law demands obedience, but it cannot change the hearts of fallen people, whose sinful natures rebel against the Law. The Law, therefore, can only condemn and is a curse to those who are under it (2 Cor. 3:7-9, Gal. 3:10) The New Covenant, offers the blessings of God freely, as a gift to be received by faith, and calls upon believers to respond to God in obedience out of love. “If ye love Me”, Jesus said “Keep My commandments” (Jn. 14:15). With the everlasting life, pardon for sin, and justification, offered freely in the Gospel to believers on the basis of Christ’s effective sacrifice, God also promises the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, to provide the power for believers to overcome sin and obey Christ’s commandments.

That the New Covenant promises the indwelling Holy Spirit and His power to help us obey Christ’s commandments is all the more important because the standard Christ calls us to is higher than that found in the Law. There are 613 commandments in the Mosaic Law. The best known of these are the Ten Commandments, which are the Law's basic commandments of which the others are largely just applications of the principles contained in the Ten to particular situations. Jesus, however, when asked which commandment was most important, condensed the entire Law even further into two commandments, Deuteronomy 6:5’s “And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might”, and Leviticus 19:8’s “thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself”. “On these two commandments” Jesus said “hang all the law and the prophets” (Matt. 22:40). Note that Jesus did not say that His message was contained in those two commandments, which is how these verses are often misread. He said that the Law and Prophets – the Old Testament – was summarized in these two commandments. Shortly before His crucifixion, Jesus gave His Church a new commandment, which is similar to these two in that it uses the verb love. It is found in the 13th chapter of St. John’s Gospel:

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. (34)

As with all other aspects of the New Covenant, this new commandment is superior to the two which Jesus said summarize the Old. The phrase “as I have loved you” has a double meaning here. The first meaning is “in the manner in which I loved you”. Later that same night, the night of the Last Supper, Jesus repeated the new commandment and immediately after said “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (Jn. 15:13). This is what Jesus was about to do for the world and especially for His believers and disciples. Jesus therefore, in giving this new commandment, was calling His disciples to a higher love than that demanded by the Law. Earlier, Jesus had challenged His followers by saying “Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me” (Mk. 8:34).

The cross mentioned in that verse does not mean, as it is often interpreted as meaning today, any sort of burden a believer may have to bear. No one hearing Jesus speak would have understood Him that way. To “take up the cross” was to do what Jesus Himself did, when He bore His literal cross of wood down the Via Dolorosa to Calvary. In calling upon prospective disciples to take up their cross, Jesus was literally telling them they needed to be ready to die for Him.

The new commandment is a restatement of this call, which again displays how the New Covenant is superior to the Old. In the call to take up the cross, Jesus was speaking to people under the Old Covenant, under the Law, and the call is stated in terms of an absolute demand, a price that the prospective disciple must pay for the privilege of following Christ. In the new commandment, given on the eve of His crucifixion, it is restated in terms of grace, rather than law. The other meaning of “as I have loved you” is “because I have loved you”. Under the New Covenant, we are called to take up our cross, and be prepared to love each other the way Christ loved us, by laying down our lives for each other, not as a cost to be paid for discipleship, but as an expression of our love for Christ in response to His love for us.

This then, is the standard Christ calls us to, to love each other, with the same kind of love He showed for us when He died on the cross, a love that includes a willingness to lay down our own lives for each other. This is the commandment we are called to obey, a commandment which expresses a standard higher than all the commandments contained in the Law and the Prophets. We are to obey this commandment, not in order to obtain God’s blessing which is given to us freely by grace, but as an expression of our love for God in response to His love for us (1 Jn 4:19). In this life, in which we still have our sinful natures, we will not obey it perfectly, and by grace our standing before God does not depend upon our obedience, but in Christ we are given the power to obey, which the Law could never give to those who were under it.

Let us seek to avail ourselves of that power so as to give to God, out of love for Him, the obedience to which He is entitled.

On Being a Tory in an Age of Whigs

written by Gerry T. Neal on May 4, 2009

I am a Tory. Not necessarily in the sense of “a member or supporter of the Conservative Party”, but certainly in the sense of being a High Tory in principle and belief, i.e., a “throne and altar conservative”. Enoch Powell, the greatest British statesman of the 20th Century, and himself a Tory (even after he left the party) defined the term this way “a Tory is a person who regards authority as immanent in institutions”. That is probably the best simple definition of a Tory that I have ever come across.

What is authority? It is often considered identical to power but they are not the same thing. Power is effectual influence over the minds and wills of other people. Power can be obtained in various ways. In some cases it is the equivalent of brute strength and operates by the use or threat of force. Other times, power is obtained more subtly.. Regardless of the manner in which it is obtained, however, power does not make the imposition of your will legitimate. Might does not make right. That is where the difference between power and authority lies. Authority is the right to be listened to and obeyed. To illustrate, lets say that a kid is walking to school and a bully shows up and demands “Give me your lunch money or I’ll beat you up”. The kid does so, because the bully is bigger and stronger than he is and is easily capable of following through on the threat. That bully has power. Later, the kid gets home after school. He drops his schoolbag on the floor, throws his coat towards the coat rack and misses, and heads towards his room without cleaning up his mess. His mother sees this and says “Stop right there young man, hang up your coat, and put your book bag where it belongs”. Whether or not the mother backs up her words with a threat of punishment, they carry something the bully’s words never could, i.e., authority. She has the right to be obeyed. If she uses a threat of punishment to back up her command, she is using power legitimately, whereas the bully was not.

To say that “authority is immanent in institutions” as Powell put it, is to say that authority rests with an office rather than a person. The queen’s authority, rests in the office of monarch and not in the person of Elizabeth II who occupies it.

What are institutions? They are the building blocks of society. Most exist in every society, although some are unique to a particular society, and those which are universal take on particular characteristics to suit the society to which they belong. The family is the most basic institution. The church is another basic institution. The highest institution (or set of institutions) in any society is the government, the institution which exists to make and enforce society’s rules, to represent that society’s interests to other societies, and to protect the society from attacks from the outside. In the United Kingdom and Canada, the government consists of the institution of the monarchy in which sovereignty rests and the parliament through which people have a say in how they are governed. Other government institutions carry out the day to day business of enforcing the laws the government makes.

The Enlightenment Project, which marked the beginning of what is called “the Modern Age” launched a war against the institutions of society that continues to this very day. The sophists of the Enlightenment blamed society and its institutions for the ills that have assailed human society through the generations. Some argued that society and its institutions needed to be reformed and reshaped in accordance with ideals thought up by rationalist philosophers, among these being equality, popular sovereignty, the rights of man. Others argued that society could not be reformed, but needed to be razed to the ground, and rebuilt anew in accordance to these same ideals.

Tories recognize the foolishness and danger in all of that. Evil cannot be eliminated from the world by human means. Its source, is not society or its institutions, but the human heart, and so it will always be with us, as long as the present world lasts. In theology, this is called the doctrine of Original Sin, a doctrine taught by every major branch of historical, traditional, and Biblical Christianity – Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. The purpose of law and government is not to eliminate evil but to contain it to a certain extent by prohibiting and punishing acts of evil which harm others and society itself. This is, as it should be, a very small role. As Dr. Johnston, the 18th Century Tory wrote “How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.”

Today, government has taken upon itself a larger role, which exceeds the legitimate authority vested in it by tradition and prescription. The “nanny state” watches over its citizens like a mother hen with the aim of preventing them from making mistakes that could possibly injure themselves. Thus, we now have laws against smoking inside buildings and vehicles, laws against drinking and driving, laws against speeding and laws saying one must wear a seat belt in a moving vehicle. The “surveillance state”, in the name of providing us with around the clock security against criminals and terrorists, spies on us night and day. The “welfare state” takes upon itself the responsibility for maintaining our existence from the cradle to the grave.

Each of these expansions of the role and responsibility of government find their origins in some philosophy or another derived from the Enlightenment Project. When the rationalist philosophers began their war against the institutions of traditional society they declared themselves to be fighting for freedom and liberty. But the inevitable result of their efforts has been the creation of the modern state which is the enemy of freedom and liberty. The true defenders of liberty and freedom, the true libertarians, have always been Tories. For our rights and freedoms ultimately are derived from the same source as the authority vested in traditional institutions.

To Christians the ultimate source of liberty and of authority is God. The immediate source, however, from which liberty, rights, and legitimate authority are derived, is the social order, embodied in tradition, and prescription. The word tradition is derived from the Latin tradere – to give up, hand over, pass on. It refers in English to customs, habits, and ways of life, which have been inherited from our ancestors, and which we are expected to keep and pass on to our posterity. Prescription, was defined by American Tory Russell Kirk as “things established by immemorial usage”. Through tradition and prescription the social order, each particular society’s variation on the natural order, is transmitted from generation to generation. From the social order, the institutions of society including government, derive their authority. Note this is the exact opposite of what the modern state and its defenders would have you believe, i.e., that order in society comes from the state down.

The state would also have us believe that it is the source of our rights and freedoms. But when the state is the source of our rights and freedoms, the state can take those rights away. Our real rights and freedoms, are prescriptive rights and freedoms, i.e., rights and freedoms vested in us as individuals, by our membership in a society in which those rights and freedoms have been passed down by tradition. Since tradition and prescription are the source of the authority vested in government as an institution, it cannot take away the rights and freedoms which tradition and prescription have vested in us as individuals, without attacking the source of its own authority. Thus, do tradition and prescription, place limits on the authority they make immanent in the institutions of society.

If we would recover the rights and freedoms that have been taken from us and recover the social order that has eroded away to almost nothing, we must reconnect with the English and broader Western tradition, which the heirs of the Enlightenment Project have done so much to sever us from.