Very nice post; thank you. Two thoughts arise. First, democracy, like the marketplace, are instruments, the means to an end. They are very suitable means in that they fit our human natures and how people with all their virtues and vices will act. However, as a means they are not enough; they must be informed by just ends, and the people using the means must be concious of the just and unjust ends to which the instruments will be directed.

This leads to thought two: understanding the proper ends requires scope and depth of appreciation. This is not limited to "book learning." It is reverence, awe, and affection for the world we live in arising from our life lived. This appreciation was (is?) described as piety, a virtue that connects us to our past - both personal and cultural - links us to our posterity, and situates us a subjects of God. It is our place in the world, a world we did not make but which we have custody of and responsibility for. This is a living context within which life can be humanely and justly lived.

Do these two points "constrain" us? Yes, in the sense they do, but it is the constraint given by the rope to a rock climber. It secures, fortifies, and emboldens us to scale boldly.

Yes. Thank you.

I should just post the comments, and not have to blog.....

Actually, that wasn't my comment - that was Hale Adams...my comment wasn't nearly that profound! I just said I thought the whole thing was a description of his beliefs, not an argument, and called it all a cop-out...

I far prefer your comments on this than Scruton's, but I do need to disagree with you on one point - you said, "Honor, for instance. The reports from our troops tell me it's still in existence, but it's not something the market is any friend of."

I couldn't disagree more. You will not get very far in the business world without a sense of honor - sure, you can take your built-up reserve of honor and squander it to swindle someone, or if you're really good, you can swindle your way from mark to mark - but if you're going to build a company that lasts, or if you're going to move up the corporate ladder, you've got to have honor, or nobody will want to buy from you, or have you work for them, or work for you.

And you can see the concrete value of honor everywhere in the business world - especially where it's absent. Used car salesmen don't have a reputation for honor, and that adds expenses - if you're buying a used car, you'll pay a mechanic to inspect it. The salesman's lack of honor adds a tax to his product. Businesses have phalanxes of attorneys to sculpt airtight contracts. That costs a lot of money - it's a very expensive substitute for honor.

I think the marketplace values honor very highly - so highly, that the risk that someone might not be honorable is too great to chance, and you have to use Due Diligence, Contracts and Audits as substitutes.

Ooops, sorry Hale. I'll fix it. These things are all far more rushed than I like to admit...

Ethan, you are absolutely right about about honor in business, and I try to do business myself that way. But still I think there is something there that is beyond the thing that the market rewards. Beyond a mere reputation for honesty and fair dealing.

I'm not sure I like the sound of the phrase "mere reputation for honesty and fair dealing." What's "mere" about that? I'd say it's the foundation of a truly human life. Quakers call it Integrity, and it's one of the central Testimonies of the Society--and one I struggle with quite a bit, finding it both an inspiration and an accusation (which are two of the primary effects of the Inward Light, according to Fox). I think I know what you're trying to say, but I'm going to task you with making it a bit more explicit.

And speaking of explicitness, I think it would also be worth struggling a bit more with Chesterton's and Scruton's perspective, which too often amounts, in practice, to a kind of trans-temporal collectivism. Yes, tradition can be a valuable guide, and yes, we are stewards of the earth for posterity, but we find freedom only in the present. The present is the only part of eternity in which we share God's freedom of decision--it is the only point in eternity where we really do reflect God's image.

As Edward Cell says, speaking of the Quaker emphasis on living in the present:

"It is here and now that we are called upon to respond to conditions of concern and to seek whatever measure of truth is made available to guide our response. We lose the meaning of our lives if we turn away from the present and orient ourselves toward the past or the future. The past, of course, is important, but only as it informs the meaning of present reality and future possibilities. The future, too, carries weight but only as its possibilities can be grasped in the potential of the present and in its power to symbolize hope that partially transcends present discernment."

"Mere" is the wrong word, since of course it is very important. But what I'm rambling on about are things that are outside the marketplace, and I suspect that a lot of the "honor" which one encounters in business has a large component that is not just a response to the rewards that the market offers to honety and fair-dealing, though those are significant.

Which brings me back to the earlier point that the apparent split between cultural and economic conservatives is not really so very great, because a lot of what makes our economic life hum may come from our culture and religion, rather than be something that emerges routinely from the working of the marketplace.

But I don't think "business honor" is a good example for me, because the market does reward honesty in so many ways, and so trust and honesty will tend to happen whatever the culture. A better example might be the willingness to accept risk and "creative destruction." In the long term the market rewards this hugely, but in the short term many are punished. It seems to me to be a cultural strength or proclivity. I suspect most people in France or Japan would be flabberghasted to know how many Americans can contemplate the bankruptacy of GM with equanimity.

And I suspect there isn't really an issue of "trans-temporal collectivism." We are making decisions in the present, or think we are, but you can read the history of the last 3 or 400 years and see French speakers and English speakers making choices very similar to what they make today. And getting similar results. If Louis IV came back he would look at Airbus and be just as bewildered at its failure to dominate the world and sweep aside less well-endowed Anglo-Saxon competitors, as he was with Colbert's enterprises...

Scruton and Chesterton are just pointing out things that we normally are unconscious of.

An attention to history based on unchanged aspects of human nature and a devotion to tradition that ignores those parts of human nature that do change, or that have been misperceived are two very different things.

A good example of the latter is the whole brouhaha over the changing nature of marriage, esp. as regards same-sex marriage. The part of human nature that has changed is the near-inevitability of children from sexual activity; the parts that were mis-perceived are the existence of homosexuals (rather than the existence of perverted heterosexuals), and the earlier belief that the male seed was the sole source of life and the concomitant distortions of the female role in human society.

This is where the kind of thinking typified by science fiction is so useful, allowing us to prise apart things assumed to be monolithic to see what the results are. What I am prescribing is, if you will, your beloved "creative destruction" applied to tradition, something that is just as necessary to cultural freedom as it is to economic freedom.

Again, be very clear that I am not arguing against tradition; I am only arguing against giving it disproportionate weight.

I'll leave marriage for another day...

But "tradition" is not exactly what I'm writing about. (Or maundering about.) Traditions are things you can see plainly. You can say, "Let's change this tradition, it's old-fashioned to string up rustlers."

But there are subtler things that we can hardly perceive, and yet they influence us. Why do Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and the US, despite widely varying official policies, all tend to assimilate immigrants in a way that France or Germany do not? You might say there's something underneath traditions, something that generates them.

Can this something be learned? Destroyed or changed? Should we be fighting to preserve it? It's actually a good subject for science fiction...suppose some Anglo-Saxons of 1000 years ago were transported to another planet. How "English" would they turn out to be 1000 years later? Or Franks; how "French" would they end up being?

I'm coming to think that the Anglosphere has the advantage in individualism as affecting scale, that is, a kind of letting each person and institution perform in the scope that is within its control. Then, since there are enough of us to impact the market, there are fine little urbanscapes here & there for us to enjoy. We just can't make it all that way.

Nothing wrong with our strong preferences and tastes. So long as we, or others, are not given artificially-extended scope to impose taste (not survival necessity) on the whole scheme.

Emergence, the organic principle in all its fractal variety, creates richness. It's unpredictable and messy at times. We don't get as much as we think we would like of "our way." But it's not buried by some general proliferating superficial invention, Someone's "Good" Idea, either.