Orestes Brownson and the Just Society Part 1

“In most cases,” Brownson continued, “the sufferings of a people spring from moral causes beyond the reach of civil government, and they are rarely the best patriots who paint them in the most vivid colors, and rouse up popular indignation against the civil authorities. Much more effectual service could be rendered in a more quiet and peaceful way, by each one seeking, in his own immediate sphere, to remove the moral causes of the evils endured.”

The humanitarian, or social democrat (here Brownson uses those terms almost interchangeably), is by definition a person who denies that any divine order exists. Having rejected the supernatural order and the possibility of a Justice more than human, the humanitarian tends to erect Envy into a pseudo-moral principle. It leads him, this principle of Envy, straight toward a dreary tableland of featureless social equality--toward Tocqueville’s democratic despotism, from which not only God seems to have disappeared, but even old-fangled individual man is lacking.

The just society will seek to give unto each man his due: not through the release of selfish impulse, not through a sentimental and enervating socialism, but by recognizing both the Christian virtue of charity and the profound natural differences that distinguish one human being from another. The just society will not repudiate democracy, properly understood, though it will turn away from both the atomistic “Jacksonian” democracy and the oppressive humanitarian democracy:

“Democracy, understood not as a form of government, but as the end government is to seek, to wit, the common good, the advance in civilization of the people, the poorer and more numerous, as well as the richer and less numerous, classes, not of a privileged caste or class, is a good thing, and a tendency toward it is really an evidence of social progress.” Such a democracy, if it is to remain just, must be restrained by solemn and prudent constitutions and by an enlightened faith. Nevertheless, its government will not hesitate to conduct itself with courage or to undertake large projects. It is shallow sophistry to say that government is a necessary evil: government is no evil, but a device of divine wisdom to supply human wants. The function of government is not repressive merely:

Its office is positive as well as negative. It is needed to render effective the solidarity of the individuals of a nation, and to render the nation an organism, not a mere organization—to combine men in one living body, and to strengthen all with the strength of each, and each with the strength of all—to develop, strengthen, and sustain individual liberty, and to utilize and direct it to the promotion of the common weal—to be a social providence, imitating in its order and degree the action of divine providence itself, and, while it provides for the common good of all, to protect each, the lowest and meanest, with the whole force and majesty of society. . . . Next after religion, it is man’s greatest good; and even religion without it can do only a small portion of her work. They wrong it who call it a necessary evil; it is a great good, and instead of being distrusted, hated, or resisted, except in its abuses, it should be loved, respected, obeyed, and, if need be, defended at the cost of all earthly goods, and even of life.

Source: “Orestes Brownson and the Just Society.” The Essential Russell Kirk. Selected Essays (2006) by George A. Panichas [editor].