Prescriptive Authority, the Power of Numbers, and Justice

In my last essay I offered my commentary, for what the commentary of a royalist, Tory, Canadian is worth, on what has been happening in the republic on our southern border in the ongoing electoral extravaganza that is this year's presidential election.   I opened with a paragraph, explaining, as I usually do when putting my two cents in about such matters, that I have no dog in this race and pointing out why the whole affair confirms my belief in our own institutions.   Specifically, I meant the monarchy, obviously.   When you  fill the office of head-of-state, the person who represents the country as a whole, by popular election, you run the risk of a scenario where factionalism has gotten so extreme that whoever wins, approximately half the country will resent the outcome and refuse to accept it.   That is what happened in the last American presidential election, 2016, leading to this year's fiasco.   That is one of many reasons to prefer a hereditary head-of-state.

Today I offer something of an addendum to the previous essay.   I have often stated in the past that I believe in and support Parliament the institution rather than democracy the ideal.   Parliament is a democratic institution, of course, but it is not merely democratic.   It is very old, if we include the history of the Westminster Parliament on which ours is modelled.   Its antecedents go back at least to the Great Council of the Norman kings and arguably to the Witenagemot of Alfred the Great.   These are the ancestors of both Parliament and the Privy Council and the former became recognizable as such shortly after the Magna Carta Libertatum.   It became more democratic over time, of course, but its authority, like that of the monarchy in whose name it legislates, is derived from ancient, established, and proven usage, or, to use Edmund Burke's word meaning the same, prescription.    I stress this, even though (or especially because) it places me at odds with most of our "Conservative" politicians, and more so the liberals and socialists, all of whom prattle on forever about our "democracy", because prescription confers a stable, secure, authority on a governing institution.   Democracy the ideal, can only confer power on a government, and a volatile, unstable, form of power at that.   Remember the distinction between authority and power.   Authority is the respected right to lead, power is the feared ability to coerce.   Authority needs a certain amount of power to back it up at times, but woe to those whose governors have only power and no real authority.

Democracy is specifically the power of numbers.   That the power conferred by having numbers behind you does not automatically translate into the just use of that power is an observation that was central to all of Plato and Aristotle's writings about governance.   More recently, although it was a couple of centuries back, Alexis de Tocqueville in his commentary on democracy as he had observed it in the American republic, coined the expression the "tyranny of the majority" to warn about the danger of the misuse of democratic power.   Those who put together the constitution of the American republic were aware of this problem, which is why they put in features such as the Electoral College, rather than adopting a more simple democracy.   In the twentieth century there were those who tried to re-think democratic theory so as to eliminate the problem.   One proposal was to replace "majority rules" with "what everyone agrees on rules."   How such people failed to see that the potential for totalitarianism, already present in the older Modern ideal of democracy (there is a reason Jean-Jacques Rousseau is called both "the father of modern democracy" and "the father of totalitarianism"), is magnified, not lessened, by this substitution, is beyond me.   If democratic legitimacy is conferred by getting everybody to agree rather than a majority vote then those would claim democratic legitimacy for their agendas can tolerate no dissent.   Everybody must be forced to agree.   Is it not obvious how that has become the attitude of the present, "woke", Left?

Now, let us think about the last American presidential election and the current one.

In 2016, Donald Trump won the presidency in the Electoral College.   His opponent, Hilary Clinton, had been expected to win.   A sizable percentage of those who voted for Donald Trump that year did so, not because they wanted Trump per se, but because they couldn't stand the thought of Hilary Clinton as president.   Or, as some wags put it, they figured she had had her two terms as president already and didn't need a third one.

The "woke" Left refused to accept this outcome.   Donald Trump, who before running for president was a television celebrity, became first an object of ridicule for progressives in the media, then an object of hatred.   Note, incidentally, how the behaviour of the media over the past four years clearly proves what liberals have, until fairly recently, tried to deny - that the mainstream media is overwhelming slanted to the Left.   Well over 90 percent of television newsreporting, somewhat less for the print media but still well over fifty percent, dedicated themselves to the destruction and demonization of Donald Trump, his positions, and his supporters.  Day in and day out, for four years, there was a constant bombardment from the newsmedia, and not just the American newsmedia, about what a horrible, racist, neo-nazi, bigot and white supremacist Donald Trump was.   The violent wing of the Left mobilized and took to rioting, vandalism, and outright assault on Trump supporters, and the media winked at it, if it did not expressly state its approval.

The media has now declared Biden the winner of this year's election.   In my opinion they have acted prematurely.   Biden's win has not been certified and is being challenged in the courts.   Even as the media was declaring for him, the Supreme Court of the United States ordered all of the late Pennsylvania ballots, that is, those received after the cutoff, separated from the others.   However, the point I am making does not depend upon who is ultimately and legally declared the winner,

More people turned out this year to vote for Donald Trump than in 2016.   More, not less.   In 2016 a sizeable section of Trump's votes were really votes against Clinton rather than votes for Trump.   That is not the case here.   Biden is not the kind of person to inspire either enthusiasm or hatred.   Those who came out to support Donald Trump this year - approximately half of the voters, whoever legitimately has the slight marginal lead - did so, because they love their president, in spite of the way he has been demonized for four years.   Interestingly, and this is something I will probably have more to say about at a future date, that includes record numbers of black, Hispanic, and Jewish voters.  (1) Conversely, apart from his own vote, assuming he remembered to cast one, and those of his immediate family, very few of the votes cast for Biden were cast for Biden per se.   I am not referring to all those who rose from the dead to vote, voted twice or more and in states other than their own, or those whose Trump votes may have been switched to Biden votes through some high-tech gizmo.   The legitimate votes for Biden were votes against Trump, by people who hate him.

"Love trumps hate", Hilary Clinton said in 2016.   The "woke" Left latched on to this as a slogan and have used it ever since, oblivious to the fact that hate better describes the vicious rage that energizes and motivates everything they do than it does the words and behaviour of Trump and his supporters.   Does "love", in the ordinary sense of the word, trump "hate" in the ordinary sense of the word?   If so, then Donald Trump, who has endured four years of bitter hatred directed against him, only to have a record number of people turn out and vote their love for him, is the moral victor, the person who deserves the victory, even if the number of those voting their hatred of him is slightly higher.

Which is yet another reason for preferring the authority which prescription vests in ancient institutions, whether our own monarchy and Parliament, or those of the 244 year old American republic, over the power of democratic numbers.

(1) This is something the pre-Trump Republicans were trying to achieve for about three decades.   Their method involved trying to divest themselves of their image as a "white" party by adopting a moderate version of the "rainbow coalition" policies of the progressive Democrats.  It failed.  Trump, by contrast, did pretty much the opposite of that.  He ran on a platform of stopping the export of jobs, controlling immigration, securing the borders, and supporting law and order, which obviously had a strong appeal to middle and working class, white Americans and which explicitly opposed the anti-white hostility that the Democrats' "rainbow coalition" had evolved into under Obama's presidency, but was not racialist in the way his demonizers absurdly claimed.   Lo and behold, it accomplished what the Bushes and Dole and Romney and McCain all failed to do. 

GTN Tory Classics 4: The Economic Age

One of the things I dislike the most about contemporary politics is the exaggerated importance it attaches to economics. This is true both of those who favour economic freedom and private property on the one hand and those who believe in a state-planned economy and/or collective ownership of property on the other.

This does not mean I attach no importance to these matters. I believe in private property and in laws protecting private property. I believe that economic decisions are best made by those who will be most affected by the outcome of those decisions. For most economic decisions this amounts to the free market position - that people are themselves the best judges of what to buy and what to sell, how much to spend or ask for in a market exchange. Some economic decisions, however, must be made by the leaders of communities or the governments of countries. These are decisions whose outcome affects the entire community or country.

Examples of the first kind of economic decision include decisions as to what kind of career to train for, whether to stay in a job or look for a new one, whether to open a new business or seek employment, whether to save, invest,or spend one's income, and, if one has this option, what other than essentials to buy with one's income.

Examples of the second kind of economic decision include decisions as to whether a country needs domestic production of a particular commodity or whether it is better to rely upon foreign imports and decisions as to how much and what kind of infrastructure to build and maintain out of the public purse.

These decisions cannot be made in isolation from each other, of course. The decision a government takes, to protect its domestic iron industry, because a consistent supply of foreign iron is threatened by war, will affect the choices of those buying and selling iron and deciding whether to go into an iron-related line of work. Likewise, economic decisions at the level of a community or country, cannot properly be made without taking people's personal economic choices into consideration.

In 2009 I wrote a series of economic essays, most of which
were arguments for economic liberty and against socialism. It ended with "The Free Trade Cult", which argues that history demonstrates that free trade doesn't work the way economic liberals say it does. I intend to post several of the essays from this series including "The Free Trade Cult". The first essay in the series, the one which follows, was "The Economic Age". This essay came first, because it contained the most important thing I wished to say about economics - that we, whether we be capitalists or socialists, place too much importance on economics.

The Economic Age


By Gerry T. Neal
June 2, 2009

“The age of chivalry is gone. -- That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.”

Those famous words were spoken by Edmund Burke in 1793, in response to the murder of Marie Antoinette by the revolutionaries in France. 2 years previously the 18th Century Whig statesman had written Reflections on the Revolution in France in which he rejected the abstract, rationalist, planning that led to the horrors of the French Revolution which had only just begun, and embraced the Tory view of traditional, organic society in which authority, rights, and liberty were firmly established by prescription. He had seen, even then, where the Revolution was headed.

Clearly, Burke did not think very highly of economists. What did he mean by the word “economist”? The context of Burke’s remarks would suggest that “economist” like “sophister” and “calculator” was being used to describe a class of people who rejected the noble sentiments of the age of chivalry – the gallantry and honor that, as Burke had just remarked, should have caused “ten thousand swords” to leap to Marie Antoinette’s defense. These people replaced these sentiments, with numbers, cold reason, and pragmatic materialistic calculations of their own self-interest.

Burke’s lament, was over seeing the day when such people would become dominant, when society would be rationally planned from the top down, and when people would be primarily guided by cold, rational, materialistic, pragmatic motivations in their everyday decisions rather than by noble sentiments and loyalties. He believed, that much of what made life worth living, which he summed up in the phrase “the unbought grace of life”, would fall by the wayside and perhaps be lost in such a society.

Burke was correct in his beliefs and his predictions. We see the evidence all around us. Far too many people identify “the good life” with obtaining material possessions and dismiss concepts like honor, loyalty, virtue, and character. The concept that true happiness is not related to how much you have compared to other people but to being satisfied with what you have and where you are, while familiar to the ancients and the great Christian ethicists, is alien to such people. This is true regardless of whether the rational materialist favors “capitalism” or socialism.

That does not mean that economic questions are unimportant or that “capitalism” and socialism should be regarded as equally good or equally bad.

Economics, a term derived from the Greek word for the management of a household, is today used to describe the discipline which studies the mechanics of the production, trade, and consumption of material goods and services. Thought on these subjects has been recorded for millennia, of course, but as a distinct formal discipline economics was only in its infancy stage in the 18th Century. While the nature of the discipline is such as to make it especially attractive to people with the rationalist, materialistic mindset Burke decried, it is by no means necessary for one to be a rationalist, materialist to form an educated opinion on these subjects.

Edmund Burke’s own views on economics are known to us. He was a friend of Adam Smith who published his An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776. Smith, who died in 1790, once remarked that Burke was the only man he had ever known who “thinks on economic subjects exactly as I do, without any previous communications having passed between us”. Burke, for his part, had heaped praise on Smith’s book. This suggests that Smith’s comment was no exaggeration.

Smith’s book marked the beginning of what is now called classical economics. It is both a history of the evolution of production and commerce and an argument for the free market. The specialization resulting from the division of labor results in greater production of any given product. The same principle applies on a larger scale to the specialization resulting from commerce. As everybody produces more and more of the product they specialize in to sell to others who in turn are producing other products, the general wealth of the nation increases, everybody is better off, and the best thing the government can do to facilitate the process is to keep out of the way.

Later, the term “capitalism” would be applied to Smith’s system. This was not Smith’s term. It was in fact coined by Karl Marx to refer to the period in his dialectic understanding of history, in which feudalism was supplanted by industrialism and commerce, and which Marx believed would be supplanted by revolutionary socialism leading to his communist utopia in its turn. The identification of Marx’s “capitalism” with Smith’s free market probably came about because Smith’s glorification of commerce could be seen as championing the activities and interests of the emerging bourgeoisie class. Marx, who saw everything in terms of class conflict, identified the bourgeoisie as the heroes of the capitalist revolution against feudalism and the villains in the coming revolution of the proletariat.

It is interesting that Marx regarded capitalism, not as a conservative or reactionary force in society, but a revolutionary one. As Marx was a champion of the revolutionary cause this observation on his part has to be regarded as praise of capitalism, which may seem odd, but actually makes sense when one considers his view of history as progressing towards a certain end.

Was Marx right? If he was right about capitalism being a revolutionary force what does that say about Smith’s arguments for the free market, which were endorsed, as we have seen by the leading 18th Century opponent of revolution?

The answer to the first question is yes. If we define capitalism as the historical transformation of rural societies with a predominantly agricultural economy into urban societies with a predominantly industrial economy, then capitalism was undoubtedly revolutionary. Capitalism weakened all sorts of ties that are fundamental to a functioning society. The ties between people and the land they live on were weakened as people moved en masse from the farms into the cities looking for work. The ties between people and previous generations were weakened as crafts and trades were removed from the home and concentrated in factories and stores. Institutions like the family were undoubtedly weakened and Thomas Carlyle was not unjustified in remarking that human interaction was being cheapened by being reduced to the “cash nexus”.

A few observations are necessary at this point. The first is that capitalism as described above was not the free market Adam Smith was advocating. The rise of modern, manufacturing-based economies, concentrated in large scale factories in urban centers, was accomplished with the active assistance of governments. This is a matter of the historical record.

The second is that those who condemn capitalism for its atomizing effects on society will not find an acceptable alternative in socialism or communism. Socialism’s objection is not to an urban economy centered on industrial manufacturing. Its objection is to that economy being in the hands of private owners instead of “the people”. The negative results of capitalism described above were regarded as positive and progressive by Marx. If capitalism was revolutionary, socialism is a thousand times more revolutionary.

A third observation is that manufacturing and increased production are not themselves the problem. It is not wrong for a society to desire a higher material standard of living for its people and this can only be achieved by increasing production. What is wrong is when people and society place make material prosperity their ultimate goal and make all other considerations subservient to that goal.

Adam Smith argued for a free market on the grounds that it was the best system for maximizing human industry and production and therefore increasing the nation’s material wealth and standard of living. He was right but his was not the best argument for the free market. The best argument for the free market is that freedom is itself a good. Moreover, freedom, the right and ability of people to make their own decisions for themselves (including economic decisions), is a superior good to any material goods that can be manufactured, bought, and sold. It is for this reason that a free economy should be defended against the advocates of a planned economy. The latter believe that they can somewhere find a group of experts competent enough to make everybody’s economic decisions for them.

That is the same arrogant mindset of rationalistic planning that Edmund Burke saw devastating France in the 1790s.

GTN Tory Classics No. 2: Our Traditional Liberties and the State

I originally wrote the following essay in May of 2009 as a companion essay to "On Being a Tory in the Age of Whigs". In "On Being a Tory in the Age of Whigs" I made a case for social institutions like the family, church, and community and for the authority within these institutions - parents in the family, for example - based upon tradition and prescription. In this essay, "Our Traditional Liberties and the State", I made the case for personal liberty against statism.

I wrote both of these essays before I started this blog but the theme of both is reflected in the blog's title. "Throne and altar" is an old expression summarizing what the Tories, the original conservatives, stood for, i.e, social order and continuity grounded in the ancient constitution of church (altar) and state (throne). Liberty is personal freedom.

When William F. Buckley Jr. started National Review in the 1950s to be the printed voice of the American conservative movement, his writers included traditionalists like Russell Kirk who drew inspiration from the older conservative tradition that included high Tories like Samuel Johnson and classical conservatives like Edmund Burke. Buckley's writers also included libertarians, i.e., liberals who continued to believe in the individualistic liberalism of the 19th Century after mainstream liberalism became collectivist in the 20th Century. One of the men Buckley invited to join him in editing National Review was Frank S. Meyer. Meyer is best remembered as the proponent of fusionism - a theoretical attempt at synthesizing classical conservative traditionalism with classical liberal libertarianism.

My joining the idea of "liberty" to the "throne and altar" of Toryism is similar, in one sense, to what Meyer was attempting with fusionism. In another sense it is very different. All periods of liberalism, both classical and modern, have been periods in which the modern state has developed, grown, and concentrated power that had formerly been diffused throughout society into itself. The root ideas of contemporary, North American, progressive or collectivist liberalism, can be found in the ideas of classical individualist liberalism. In titling my blog Throne, Altar, Liberty therefore, I was not, like Meyer, trying to create an artificial synthesis between classical conservatism and classical liberalism, but stating outright that old Toryism is more consistent with personal liberty than any form of liberalism.

Since this essay goes with "On Being a Tory in the Age of Whigs", I recommend reading the two essays together. It is an ovesight on my part that I did not post this essay here much earlier, when I posted its companion. The theme that links the two essays is the idea that prescription and tradition is the source of both our liberty and government authority, and that the modern state, by growing so big and intrusive, threatens both the foundation of its own authority and our personal liberty.


Our Traditional Liberties and the State


By Gerry T. Neal
May 4, 2009

Liberty or freedom is the state of being able to choose for yourself, what you will think, say, or do, rather than having your every thought, word and deed dictated to you by others. Liberty is a good thing, something which men ought to value and seek, both for what it is in and of itself, and for other good which arises out of it.

Liberty, like most good things, has its limits. The man who wishes for unlimited liberty can obtain it only by giving up other goods, namely every good which arises out of living with other people in society. If he goes off on his own, to live on a desert island apart from other people entirely, he will have his unlimited freedom. But if he wishes to enjoy the benefits that come from living among other people in a civilized society, he will have to accept the limitations that come from living under rules. Society and civilization cannot exist without certain basic rules being in place and being enforceable..

There is an old saying that illustrates very well the reason why this is so. It goes: “your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins”. In addition to cleverly explaining the limits to liberty which naturally arise from living with other people, this saw also gives us a hint as to the principles determining when it is appropriate for society to limit individual freedom and when it is not. If your activity harms someone else, such as when your swinging fist makes contact with the nose of the person next to you, that is when society, with its government and laws, has the right to step in and tell you to cease and desist. That is what laws and governments are there for.

If the only person your action harms is yourself it is not the government’s place to tell you to stop. If what you are doing causes injury to yourself and/or your property but does not cause harm to other people and their property, your activity is private, and the government has no legitimate authority over it. The legitimate authority of government, is over public activity, i.e., activity that affects others. When your acts cause harm to other people, to their property, to the institutions of society or property belonging to the institutions of society, that is when the government has the authority, and the duty, to step in and prohibit your behavior.

When the state fails to make this distinction and prohibits private acts it threatens our liberty, an essential part of our traditional heritage. The freedom to make our choices for ourselves must include the freedom to make wrong choices, choices which will harm us. We are not free, if we are free only to make right choices, choices which have only good consequences.

The modern state has greatly overstepped the bounds of its legitimate, prescriptive authority over the public sphere.

Today the government tells you that you need its permission to build a house on a piece of land you own. Moreover, you must get its approval for the design of your house, and use materials it has permitted, and builders it has licensed.

To get from one city to another, in a vehicle which you own, the government tells you that you need their permission, in the form of a driver’s license. Moreover, the government tells you that you cannot exceed a speed limit they have arbitrarily chosen, or have alcohol in your bloodstream over a certain percentage they have arbitrarily set. It is one thing for the government to say that if you kill or injure someone else with your reckless speeding or by driving under the influence of alcohol, that you will face a severe penalty. It is quite another thing for the government to say that if even you have caused no damage to other people or property you will still face a severe penalty for driving too fast or too drunk. The latter is an abuse of state power.

Seat belts are installed in vehicles for you to use for your own protection. It is your choice whether you want to use them or not. If you do not buckle up, the only one who can be hurt by it is you. Yet the state insists that if its agents catch you driving without your seatbelt done up they can ticket and fine you. Tyranny done in the name of “your own good” is still tyranny.

The government’s legitimate authority is over public activity. The state has no business telling us what we can or cannot think. It has no business telling us what we can or cannot say. The only time it is appropriate for law to limit what you can say is in a case like a crowded theater, where it is illegal to yell “Fire!”. Yelling “Fire!” in such a situation is an act of mischief, designed to spark a riot, and get other people hurt. So in that instance it is really an act, and not words themselves, that are prohibited.

Today, however, the government criminalizes certain forms of speech because of the thoughts they express. This is what so-called “hate crimes” laws are about. For example, Section 13 (1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act reads:


It is a discriminatory practice for a person or a group of persons acting in concert to communicate telephonically or to cause to be so communicated, repeatedly, in whole or in part by means of the facilities of a telecommunication undertaking within the legislative authority of Parliament, any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.

This amounts to a prohibition because the Canadian Human Rights Act exists for the purpose of prohibiting discriminatory practices. It is also utterly draconian. Note that the words communicated electronically (the courts have extended “telephonically” to include other forms of electronic communication) don’t have to express “hatred or contempt”. They don’t even have to actually expose anyone to hatred or contempt. They just have to be “likely to” do so.

But lets suppose someone’s words went beyond that. Lets suppose they did expose someone protected by the CHRA against discrimination to “hatred and contempt”. Lets suppose they expressed such “hatred and contempt” themselves. Even in that case it would be none of the government’s business. The government is there to protect people, property, and society itself from harmful actions, not to protect people’s feelings from hurtful words. The freedom to think our own thoughts and express them in our own words is one of the most fundamental of our traditional freedoms. It is too important to sacrifice to the cause of political correctness.

In fact the entire Canadian Human Rights Act is an attack on our basic freedoms. It would be one thing for the government to say that it will treat all of its citizens equally in providing the protection of the rule of law and justice. It is quite another thing for the government to prohibit private discrimination, which is what the Canadian Human Rights Act does. If we aren’t free to decide who we want to associate with, who we want to live with, work with, or do business with, how can we be said to be free at all? Freedom of association, another one of our basic traditional freedoms, is too important to sacrifice to the egalitarian agenda.

We need to stand up firmly for our traditional rights and freedoms and demand that our government return to the limits of its traditional authority over the public sphere and abide therein.

GTN Tory Classics No. 1: The Human Rights Scam

For the next two or three weeks I will be posting essays that I wrote in 2009 before starting Throne, Altar, Liberty. I distributed these essays to my friends through Facebook and e-mail. The dates on the essays are the dates these essays were originally posted to Facebook and/or e-mailed. I am posting them at this time because I am going to need at least two weeks to complete the essay I am working on.

The first essay in this series will be "The Human Rights Scam". I thought this essay would be particularly fitting at this time because of the hoopla in the news about the 30th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms this past Tuesday. The progressive media is always telling us about the debt of gratitude we owe to Pierre Trudeau and the Liberal Party for this Charter which, according to progressive commentators, finally secured for us the rights and liberties Americans had enjoyed for two centuries under their Bill of Rights. This is all a lie. Our most basic rights and freedoms are derived from Common Law and were our possession, as subjects of the Crown, before the Charter. It is because the Americans had cut themselves off from the Crown and the prescriptive tradition that was the source of those rights, that they felt they needed to secure them for themselves with the Bill of Rights. Our Charter does not make those rights and freedoms any more secure than they were before 1982. In fact, it does the exact opposite. The limitations clause in section one and the notwithstanding clause in section thirty-three give Parliament and the provincial legislatures the authority to disregard our most basic prescriptive rights and freedoms. The so-called "human rights" legislation, at the federal and provincial levels, does in fact violate our basic freedoms. That is what this essay is about.

Note: Some of the themes in this essay I reworked into my May, 2010 essay "Human Rights Fraud", one of the first essays I posted here.


The Human Rights Scam


By Gerry T. Neal
May 12, 2009

You hear a lot about “human rights” these days. Countless organizations exist to promote “human rights” around the world or to complain about how this or that country abuses or neglects “human rights”. Every time a socialist wants to take your property and give it to someone else he will recite the mantra “human rights come before property rights”. But what are “human rights”?

To answer that question we must first answer the question: What are rights? Rights are closely related to liberties but they are not identical concepts. Our liberties are everything we are free to do, but our rights are everything we are entitled to. Rights can be categorized according to what it is we are entitled to, who is entitled to it, and where that entitlement comes from. The latter concern, the source of rights, has been a matter of discussion for centuries, and is directly related to the question of human rights.

Theories of rights basically find the source of entitlement in three places: government, tradition, and nature. Not surprisingly those favoring big government prefer to see the state as the source of our rights. When we are entitled to things because the government has written it into the law saying that we are entitled to them these are called our legal or civil rights. These are essential for protecting our rights but there is one basic flaw to legal rights – what government gives today, government can take away tomorrow.

For this reason we need our prescriptive rights. Prescriptive rights are rights which are ours by reason of our membership in a society in which those rights have been possessed from time immemorial. They are inherited rights, rights which our fathers fought for and died, and secured for us over the centuries. They come to us, in the customs, traditions, and ways of our people. Since this is the same way in which our government comes by its legitimate authority, government cannot take away our prescriptive rights, without attacking its own foundations.

Naturally, prescriptive rights will vary from society to society, depending on the traditions and customs of the society in particular. In Canada, a country under the sovereignty of the British crown and the Common Law, we (like the British and the Americans) are heirs to a particular set of prescriptive rights that were known in days of yore as “The Rights of Englishmen”. No greater set of rights has ever been or ever could be devised by the minds of men for the protection of our personal security and liberty than these rights that evolved with the Common Law over centuries of British history.

In the 18th Century, Sir William Blackstone, a jurist and professor of law, wrote a famous and influential treatise entitled Commentaries on the Laws of England that explained the English Common Law to the average reader. This work was divided into four volumes, the first two dealing with rights (personal and property rights), the last two dealing with wrongs (torts and crimes). The rights Blackstone discusses, are the Rights of Englishmen. These he divides into relative rights, such as those attached which come to particular persons by means of status (king, husband, parent, etc.), and absolute rights which are vested in individuals and are those “which every man is entitled to enjoy whether out of society or in it”. The latter, are the subject of the very first chapter of the first volume, and Blackstone, after a brief history of the Rights says they can be boiled down into 3 – the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right to private property. These are the same three rights which John Locke had argued were “natural rights” (which we will discuss shortly) and there is a great deal of overlap between the Blackstone’s concept of individual rights and Locke’s, but Blackstone is very careful to ground, even these rights, in the prescriptive tradition of English Common Law. He goes on to argue for 5 auxiliary rights “which serve principally as barriers to protect and maintain inviolate the three great and primary rights”. These are:

1. The constitution, powers, and privileges of parliament.
2. The limitation of the king’s prerogative.
3. Applying to the courts of justice for redress of injuries.
4. Petitioning the king or either house of parliament for redress of grievances should the courts fail.
5. Having arms for their defense.

Note carefully the last one. Although Blackstone’s right to bear arms is hardly as unqualified as the American 2nd amendment, the right to bear arms is an English tradition, not an American invention.

Other Rights of Englishmen that are our birthright from the historical tradition from the Charter of Liberties and the Magna Carta to the (English) Bill of Rights and Act of Settlement include the right of habeas corpus, the right to a trial by jury, the right to confront ones accusers, protections against retroactive law and self-incrimination, and the presumption of innocence (Blackstone, famously wrote in chapter 27 of the 4th volume of his Commentaries “the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer”).

These, our inherited rights are threatened, by a document ironically entitled “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms”. This document was tacked on to the Canadian Constitution in 1982 by Pierre Eliot Trudeau when he repatriated the British North America Act. Section 33 (1) of the Charter allows Parliament or legislatures to pass Acts which will operate “notwithstanding a provision included in section 2 or sections 7 to 15 of this Charter”. What are those provisions? Section 2 identifies the “fundamental freedoms” of 1) conscience/religion, 2) thought/belief/opinion/expression, 3) peaceful assembly, and 4) association. Section 7 is the right to life, liberty, and security of person. Sections 8-15 include our right to security against unreasonable search and seizure, our right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned , our basic legal rights upon arrest and upon being charged with a crime, our right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual treatment, and our right against self-incrimination. All of these rights, we had under Common Law, as subjects of Her Majesty, by reason of tradition, prescription, and inheritance prior to Trudeau’s Charter. By allowing government to pass Acts which contradict these rights, Trudeau’s Charter is essentially designed not to guarantee them, but to take them away from us.

Mr. Trudeau was a big believer in “human rights” though. In 1977 he had Parliament pass a document entitled the Canadian Human Rights Act. The Canadian Human Rights Act made it illegal to discriminate. To discriminate means to “make a distinction” in the sense of preferring one over another. The CHRA makes it illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis of any of a number of identified reasons – race, sex, religion, etc. This discrimination is illegal under the CHRA in such things as hiring, promoting, and firing employees, serving customers, renting or selling property, and that sort of things. But to make discrimination illegal, means that you are limiting the rights and freedoms of individual persons in Canada. Specifically you are limiting the right of employers to hire, promote and fire whoever they want, the right of businessmen to do business with whoever they want, the right of property owners to rent or sell to whoever they want. In limiting any of these rights you are limiting the basic freedom of association. The Act further, in its Section 13, limits an even more basic freedom – that of thought and speech.

To make matters even worse, the government bodies established by the Act to investigate, prosecute and try cases of discrimination, are not subject to many of the ordinary limitations on police, prosecutors and judges. The burden of evidence in discrimination cases is essentially shifted onto the accused and the trials themselves are a means of punishment.

What kind of “rights” can these “human rights” possibly be that in their name, the most basic rights and freedoms of the English tradition are to be sacrificed?

The idea of “human rights” evolved historically out of John Locke’s doctrine of natural rights. Locke (1632-1704) was the founder of the Empiricist branch of the Enlightenment Project that rivaled the earlier Rationalist branch founded by Rene Descartes. In his Two Treatises of Government Locke identified three basic rights which he said belonged to every individual. These were life, liberty, and property, the same three that Blackstone would later write about. But whereas Blackstone, a Tory, would ground these rights in the context of an established tradition, Locke argued for them on the basis of abstract theory. In a primordial state of nature prior to society, Locke argued, men were free and possessed certain rights under natural law. The basic right was that of property. Men had a right to what was theirs. Since every man owned at least himself, he had the right to his life and to do with it what he wanted (liberty). But these rights in the state of nature were difficult to defend and so men formed a contract to establish society, whereby government and law would enforce and defend their rights.

Locke’s theory had many things to commend it, foremost among them his recognition of the primacy of property rights, indeed his identification of rights with property. The Communist Trudeau did not even consider property rights worthy of being mentioned at all in his Charter. The problem, however, is that divorcing rights from the context of a particular tradition and attaching them to all people universally by means of nature, blurs the distinction between what I am entitled to and what I desire (they are not the same thing). This causes the list of natural “rights” to ever expand and inspires anti-social and often destructive behavior. In 1789, for example, the French National Assembly approved the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. This document adopted Locke’s theory but identified considerably more rights than he did. This was understandable considering that its purpose was to stir up the French Revolution. British statesman Edmund Burke, seeing the madness that ensued from this document, wrote his Reflections on the Revolution in France in which he affirmed prescription as the basis of all legitimate rights.

Today, the principal document of the “human rights” doctrine is the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, passed by the General Assembly in 1948. This document is 30 articles long, and while much of it simply rewords the traditional English rights into universal rights it does not properly distinguish between a person’s wants and needs on the one hand and his rights on the other. Having your wants and needs met is a condition right, not a basic right. The only basic rights, the only rights which could conceivably exist in a state of nature apart from society and law are negative rights. Negative rights are entitlements to things you already have. They place no burden on anybody else – other than that they leave you alone to enjoy your rights. Positive rights – which entitle you to something you don’t have, and which place a burden on others to provide those things – may belong to someone by right of membership in a society which grants those rights to its members. They cannot be universal rights belonging to all humans.

Clearly the doctrine of “human rights” is a socialist doctrine. It is also an egalitarian doctrine – the Universal Declaration of Human Rights preaches equality and non-discrimination long before it gets around to enumerating the basic rights of life and liberty. But it is also a foundational doctrine for World Government.

The doctrine of “human rights” is a version of Locke’s doctrine of the universal, natural, rights of the individual, emphasizing the universal, where Locke emphasized the individual. Even if we properly limit our concept of natural rights to negative rights to one’s own life, liberty, and property, these rights don’t mean a whole lot unless they are recognized and respected by others. That is where the importance of society with its inherited rights and legal protections comes in.

By placing the importance on universality rather than on the individual the doctrine of “human rights” becomes an argument against particular societies and their particular traditions and in favor of a universal society that will universally protect “human rights”. It is no coincidence that the idea of “human rights” is so closely connected to the United Nations.

The doctrine of “human rights” inspired the tyranny and bloodshed of the French Revolution. Here in Canada it has been the basis for our being denied basic rights which are ours by inheritance from the English tradition. One shudders to think what this doctrine might inspire if a World Government arises to take over its enforcement.

Freedom in Society

The basic political definition of freedom within the tradition of the English-speaking world could be “the right to do whatever is not specifically forbidden by law”. Anarchists, who regard freedom as the absence of law, would obviously object to this definition. It is an important starting point however, because it is the opposite of the notion that people are only allowed to do whatever they are expressly permitted to do by the law.

In these two concepts we see the essential difference between a society that is constitutionally free, and a society that is constitutionally tyrannical or totalitarian. A constitutionally free society has clear, specific rules as to what you are not allowed to do but otherwise leaves you free to make your own choices. A constitutionally tyrannical society has specific rules as to what you are permitted to do and if you do something that is not on that list you could be in trouble with the government. English-speaking countries are by a long-standing tradition constitutionally free societies.

It should be apparent from this that freedom is quantifiable. In a constitutionally free society, the more laws there are the less freedom you have. There is a form of tyranny which can exist within the form of a constitutionally free society because “the right to do whatever is not specifically forbidden by law” does not particularly mean much when there are laws against everything.

Clearly then if we wish to live in a free society we should be aiming for less laws rather than more. This brings us to the question of what kinds of actions should laws forbid.

Evelyn Waugh admirably expressed the Tory (1) position on this question when he wrote:

I believe in government; that men cannot live together without rules but that these should be kept at the bare minimum of safety. (2)

Laws should be limited to what is necessary. This is true, not only for the sake of maintaining liberty in a free society, but also in order to ensure that the laws we do have are effectively enforced. When laws are multiplied, society’s law enforcement agencies have a tendency to concentrate on laws that are easily enforced but less important over laws that are more important and more difficult to enforce. This produces the situation that Dr. Samuel Francis dubbed “anarcho-tyranny”. (3) Picture a city where the police department goes to great effort to make sure the traffic regulations are kept while gang violence runs amok and unsolved homicide after homicide cases pile up, and will you get the idea.

Now, you have undoubtedly noticed that I have not actually answered the question of what kinds of actions should laws forbid in asserting that laws should be limited to those which are necessary. That assertion merely leads to the question being rephrased as “what laws are necessary?”

How do we determine whether a law is necessary or not?

We can only do so, by examining the purpose of law itself. Laws exist as a means to a particular end and their necessity is determined by whether they are essential to achieving that end.

What purpose do laws serve? What is their ultimate end?

The right answer to this question is that laws exist to facilitate society and to ensure its safety and security.

Society consists of people and between people conflicts often arise. It is to be preferred that people settle their disputes peacefully themselves, but if they cannot do so, the need arises for the dispute to be arbitrated. This produces a need for laws which we would categorize as “civil”. Their purpose is to keep disputes from escalating into violence that threatens the fabric of society.

Lets say you and your neighbor disagree as to where the property line dividing your yards is to be located. Your neighbor would like to put up a fence that will cut through your flower garden whereas you believe the fence should be erected so as to include an apple tree your neighbor claims as his own on your property.

How is this to be resolved?

One way is for you and your neighbor to go throughout the neighborhood, gathering support from your friends, and then fight it out between the two parties, destroying property and shedding blood in the process. This is not the optimal solution.

The other way is for society to have clear laws as to how disputes of this nature are to be settled and a magistrate with the authority to hear your side and your neighbor’s and issue a ruling based on the law which both you and your neighbor must abide by.

Civil laws of this nature facilitate society, that is, they make it possible for people to live in peace together in that collective venture we call society.

The other major category of law is “criminal law”. Criminal laws prohibit acts like taking or vandalizing another person’s property, assaulting or killing another person, or raping or kidnapping someone. If you commit a criminal act you are forced to pay a penalty to society, after you have been caught, arrested, and been proven guilty in a court of law. The purpose of criminal law is to protect society and its members from harmful and destructive behavior.

This brings us back to the question of which acts should be proscribed by law – and to the classical liberal answer to that question.

Classical liberalism or libertarianism as it is more commonly known as today asserts that society’s laws should only prohibit actions which harm people other than the person committing the action in their person or property. This is called the “harm principle”. It was the basic thesis of John Stuart Mill’s famous On Liberty (4) but the concept is present in the writings of earlier liberal thinkers as well.

Liberalism’s harm principle should not be dismissed lightly. As an answer to the question of which acts should be illegal and which should not, there is much to commend it. Actions, the criminality of which are uncontroversial among sane people, such as murder, rape, theft and the like, all fall under the category of actions which are harmful to others.

There are, however, problems with the libertarian position which appear when we look at the underlying philosophy behind it and its application to controversial actions.

The philosophy behind the harm principle is the philosophy of classical liberalism. This philosophy asserts that only “individuals” (persons by themselves, not as members of any larger group) are real, that society is a voluntary association of individuals, and that political society and its laws exist to protect the rights of the individual.

One of the earliest liberal thinkers was the 17th century English empiricist John Locke. Locke’s held that in a hypothetical (not necessarily historical) “state of nature” prior to society, all men as individuals are absolutely sovereign over themselves and possess absolute rights to their life, liberty, and property. In this “state of nature”, however, men are vulnerable to violence from other people. Therefore, to protect themselves and their rights, men form societies, which are contracts between sovereign individuals in which they agree to relinquish a portion of their sovereignty to society, so as to obtain laws to protect their rights against the violence of others. (5)

The problem with all this, however, is that it is manifestly wrong and is indeed the exact opposite of what is observable about the nature of human beings and their societies.

All human societies that are older than a single generation existed prior to the people who make up their membership. More importantly, when we look at society in its most basic form, the family, we see that it is not a “voluntary association of individuals”.

The family is the simple form of society, the building block from which more complex societies are established. Each of us entered the world as a member of a family that we did not choose to enter. We were sired by a father, and born to a mother, neither of which we chose. We do not chose our relationships to our parents, nor do we chose our relationships to our siblings.

The family is prior to the individual person, therefore society is prior to the individual person.

Indeed, there is no such thing as an “individual” the way liberalism conceives him. Liberalism’s “individual” is a person, detached from all society, identified not by that which distinguishes him from other people, but by that which supposedly makes him the same as all other people, i.e., a set of “natural rights” which all individuals are supposed to possess equally.

A person apart from society, however, is not living in a “natural state”. Take a hermit living on top of a mountain, in a remote cave, or out in the desert somewhere? Is such a person living in a more “natural” state than a man living with his wife and children in a community with other men who live with their wives and children? Of course not! These kinds of people, are extremely rare, for precisely the reason that their behavior is not normal or natural for human beings.

Furthermore, a person in isolation from society, is not in the position of having rights but no means to enforce and protect them. Isolated from society, a person has no rights whatsoever. A “right” is by definition a claim on other people and therefore cannot exist in the absence of society.

If liberalism’s philosophy of the sovereign individual being logically prior to society is false and contrary to all observable evidence (and it is), it follows that liberalism’s answer to the question of what is the primary purpose of law, i.e., to protect the rights of individuals, cannot be correct.

Now, if the philosophy of classical liberalism is wrong, and its view of the purpose of law is wrong, does that mean the harm principle is also wrong?

No.

As mentioned previously, if we look for laws which are found universally throughout civilized human societies and which forbid actions that few if any would dispute are criminally wrong, we find these laws tend to correspond to the harm principle.

We also find, when we look into the thought of pre-liberal Western ethical philosophers and theologians, that the harm principle itself is older than liberal individualism.

The most famous work of St. Thomas Aquinas, the 13th Century Dominican priest, is his Summa Theologica. The second part of this treatise is devoted to ethics. Here Aquinas raises the question of “Whether it belongs to the human law to repress all vices?”

In his answer, Aquinas states:

Now human law is framed for a number of human beings, the majority of whom are not perfect in virtue. Wherefore human laws do not forbid all vices, from which the virtuous abstain, but only the more grievous vices, from which it is possible for the majority to abstain; and chiefly those that are to the hurt of others, without the prohibition of which human society could not be maintained: thus human law prohibits murder, theft and such like. (6)

The Thomistic position is both similar to and different from the liberal harm principle. The main difference is that Aquinas’ view affirms society and lawfully constituted authority whereas the libertarian view of J. S. Mill is subversive of society and authority.

The subversive nature of liberalism is such that, despite its protestations to the contrary, liberalism is no friend to the free society. When society and legitimate authority within society are undermined, the result that ensues will be either chaos, tyranny, or a mixture of both. It will never be a free society in which people enjoy both freedom and the benefits of society.

Society as we have seen, is not a “voluntary association of individuals”. It is organic in nature, consisting of a variety of social institutions (family, church, cultural and economic associations of various natures, neighborhoods, communities, etc.) which exist in multiple layers in which society expands outward from the family to become the sovereign polity. Within each social institution and every level of society there are positions of authority.

What is authority?

Authority is the right to command obedience. It is distinct from power, which is the ability to compel obedience by force. It is not completely separate from power, however, because authority includes the right to use an appropriate degree of force to ensure that rules are obeyed.

Where is authority located?

Authority is vested in offices or positions, rather than in the people who occupy those positions and exercise the authority.

What is the source of authority?

The source of authority is the constitution of society. The constitution of society is not a charter written on paper like the British North America Act or the Constitution of the United States of America, important as those documents may be. The true constitution of any society is its system of organization, written in its traditions, and established by prescription.

Society’s constitution is not the voluntary contract that liberalism conceived it to be. Rather, it is as Edmund Burke (7) conceived it:

a partnership in all science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection…not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born…linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible worlds, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. (8)

That description could better be called a “covenant” than a contract. The covenant of society, like all covenants, functions according to the faith of its members.

When members of a society believe in their constitution they will respect the offices of authority established by that constitution (if not necessarily the people who occupy the offices at any given time). The more faith people have in their constitution, the more respect they have for the constitutional authorities, and the more they voluntarily obey the rules without the use of force.

This has a direct relationship to the degree of freedom in society. A wise ruler will seek to govern so as to maintain faith in society and its authorities, and will therefore seek to effectively enforce essential laws without burdening the people with excessive regulations. A foolish ruler, who prefers to maintain order through naked power, will not be concerned about maintaining people’s faith in society by limiting the laws to the few essential laws effectively enforced.

Thus is a functioning society held together by faith. Governors keep faith with the people on their part, by enforcing the laws that are necessary and not passing excessive laws. The people keep faith with the government by respecting the authorities and voluntarily obeying the laws.

In this we see that there is a relationship between legitimate government and consent. It is not the relationship liberalism suggests, however, but rather the inverse. Liberal theory once again has the cart before the horse. Government does not derive the legitimacy of its authority from the consent of those it governs. Rather people voluntarily consent to government when they believe it to be exercising legitimate authority derived from a legitimate constitution.

How does a constitution obtain legitimacy?

The one word answer is “prescription”.

Prescription is the word we use to describe the process whereby a social arrangement gains legitimacy by virtue of having passed the test of time. Rationalists will scoff, but people have far more faith in a social arrangement that has weathered the storms of time and served society well for generations than in an abstract theory that looks good on paper as to why such-and-such a social arrangement is best.

Do not mistake me. I am not saying that we should accept something that is obviously unjust simply because “that is the way it has always been”. I am saying that the generally accepted legitimacy of a stable constitution of society is something that develops over the course of generations through a long period of time.

It can be overthrown, however, in a very short period of time, by government which abuses its authority and betrays the faith of the people, or by subversive doctrines like liberalism which tell people that their personal interests are more important than those of society.

Most of us in the English-speaking world wish to be free. We also wish to be, like all normal human beings, members of societies. We therefore wish to enjoy freedom within society.

The traditional constitution of English-speaking countries in which we are legally free to do whatever the law does not specifically proscribe, contributes towards the fulfillment of that wish. So does the basic idea expressed by St. Thomas Aquinas, that human laws exist to restrict not all vices, but major vices, primarily those in which harm is done to others.

Since we value being part of a society, however, a real society and not liberalism’s “voluntary association of individuals”, we must resist allowing Aquinas’ concept to be twisted into the anti-social, subversive individualism found in the theories of classical liberals like J. S. Mill.

(1) As is my usual custom, here I use “Tory”, not to mean a member/supporter of the Conservative Party necessarily, but a traditionalist conservative, particularly those within the British and Canadian traditions who support the parliamentary monarchy and the Christian Church.

(2) “A Conservative Manifesto” found on page 161 of the 1986 Penguin edition of The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh edited by Donat Gallagher, taken from Waugh’s Robbery Under Law.

(3) The oldest reference I can find for this is “Anarcho-Tyranny USA”, the speech Dr. Francis’ gave to the John Randolph Club in 1993 and published on pages 14-19 of the July 1994 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. In the text of the address Dr. Francis makes reference to his having used the term in earlier columns, but I have no bibliographic details about these. He wrote about it until the end of his life, and revisited the topic in “Synthesizing Tyranny”, the last essay he wrote for Chronicles published in their April 2005 issue.

(4) Mill defines the principle in the 9th paragraph of his introductory chapter. Note that Mill begins this paragraph by saying that the principle should limit all social control over the individual, whether it be by actual laws enforced by the state or the “moral coercion of public opinion”.

(5) Locke’s views can be found in his Two Treatises of Government, originally published in 1689, particularly the second treatise.

(6)http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.FS_Q96_A2.html

or

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2096.htm

(7) Edmund Burke was an 18th Century British statesman who was originally a classical liberal himself. He entered politics as a member of the Whig Party (the liberal party of the 18th century). He was a friend of Samuel Johnson, the prominent 18th century man of letters, who was noted for his Tory views. Burke once wrote to Johnson’s friend and biographer James Boswell that he had dined with Johnson and “we had a very good day, as we had not a sentence, word, syllable, letter, comma, or tittle of any of the elements that make politics”. Burke may very well have been the “scoundrel” Dr. Johnson had in mind in his famous remark about (false) patriotism, recorded by Boswell. The French Revolution changed all that. Seeing the horrible violence that sprung from the “armed doctrines” of the “Enlightenment”, Burke took up cudgels for tradition, organic society, the ancient constitution, monarchy, and the church – the traditional articles of Tory faith - in a treatise entitled Reflections on the Revolution in France originally published in 1790. When Marie Antoinette was beheaded in 1793, Burke bemoaned the fact that in a “nation of gallant men…honor…and of cavaliers”, “ten thousand swords” had not “leaped from their scabbards” to defend her, and mourned the death of the “age of chivalry” and the rise of that of “sophisters, economists and calculators”. Burke had, to paraphrase Irving Kristol, become a “Whig mugged by reality” , a “neo-Tory” if you will.

(8)Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Gateway Edition, (Henry Regnery Company: Chicago, 1955), pp. 139-140.

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.