Don’t Fight for Liberty

There is much confusion in the ranks of the American right over what exactly we are fighting for. There tends to be some general agreement that we are standing for a very vague notion we have agreed to call liberty, and that this should be a sufficient rallying cry to unite us in loyalty to each other.

Liberty may very well serve that purpose so long as we do not delve too deeply into the meaning of that term. Some of us have this looming intuition lodged in the back of our minds that liberty has some connection with rightness and duty. Others, seeking simplicity, see this as a contradiction and argue that if we stand for liberty, we must stand for liberty in all things.

What then are we to fight for?

G.K. Chesterton said, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” No hero marches into battle merely to destroy for the sake of destroying. He marches into battle for the sake of conserving. He marches not because he trying to break free from something, but because he is bound to something.

Chesterton, in another passage, reminds us of this curious fact that “Love is not blind; that is the last thing that love it. Love is bound.”

No struggle can be just unless it is motivated by Love, and if it is truly motivated by Love then the ultimate motive will not be to break free, but to remain bound to something good and beautiful. All too often we see the truth that tyrants are not tyrants because they bind the wrong things, but because they break the good things.

Henry VIII broke from the Church; Robespierre broke from the State; Caesar broke from the Republic; and against them all the truly free men wept at the breaking of these bonds just as Aeneas wept at the thought of his broken home. They wept for their lost Love.

This is the grave distinction between the Conservative and all other dispositions: while everyone else is seeking to break free of anything, the Conservative has a deep suspicion that there is a blessed tie that binds; that he will never be free until he is bound to something.

Don’t fight for liberty. Fight for Love.