The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

I have come to appreciate David French, a columnist for the New York Times and an evangelical Christian.  Writing in one of the most liberal newspapers in America, his voice is surprisingly refreshing and wise.  Recently, he wrote a column highlighting the difference between a libertarian and a libertine.  He writes:

• “The difference between libertarianism and libertinism can be summed up as the difference between rights and desires.  A libertarian is concerned with her own liberty but also knows that this liberty ends where yours beings.  The entire philosophy of libertarianism depends on a healthy recognition of human dignity.  A healthy libertarian can still be individualistic, but it’s also deeply concerned with personal virtue and the rights of others.”
• “A libertine, by contrast, is dominated by his desires.  The object of his life is to do what he wants, and the object of politics is to give him what he wants.  A libertarian is concerned with all forms of state coercion.  A libertine rejects any attempt to coerce him personally, but he’s happy to coerce others if it gives him what he wants . . . He rejects restraints on his appetites and accountability for his actions.  The guiding principle of his worldview is summed up in the declaration:  I do what I want . . . It mocks personal restraint.  And it’s happy to inflict its will on other if it achieves what it wants.  Libertinism says my rights are more important than your rights, and this means that libertines are terrible ambassadors for any cause that requires self-sacrifice.”

As I have thought about this distinction, I am convinced that American civlization is embracing a libertine approach to almost everything.  If true, this is both frightening and potentially self-destructive.  Consider these examples from a recent opinion piece by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal:

• “The crisis of comportment on Capitol Hill is getting worse whether senators should be allowed to wear children’s play clothes on the floor, because one senator felt this was emotionally necessary for him. His emotions were overridden and the old dress code restored. Now it is how members feel free to act in public.”
• “The former House speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.), was walking through the halls with his security team when he was charged with elbowing a kidney of Rep. Tim Burchett (R., Tenn.), who’d been part of the successful effort to remove him as speaker. NPR’s Claudia Grisales was there and saw it all. ‘Have NEVER seen this on Capitol Hill,’ she tweeted. ‘McCarthy walked by with his detail and McCarthy shoved Burchett.’ Mr. Burchett lunged forward, and a chase ensued, followed by a verbal confrontation.’  Did this happen? Of course . . . Mr. McCarthy denied Mr. Burchett’s charge, at first allowing that ‘I guess our shoulders hit or something,’ and later growling, ‘If I kidney-punched someone, they would be on the ground.’  Mr. McCarthy is someone who’d want to avenge himself on a foe, and what’s he going to use, his wit? He is an odd man in that as soon as he became a figure of some height and sympathy, after wrongfully being taken down last month, he decided to remind everybody why nobody liked him.”
• “. . .  in a public hearing, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R., Okla.) challenged Teamsters President Sean O’Brien to a fight. Mr. O’Brien had gotten lippy on Twitter, calling Mullin a ‘moron’ and ‘full of s—.’  Why not fight it out here, at the hearing? Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) stopped it—‘God knows the American people have enough contempt for politics, let’s not make it worse.’ Afterward Mr. Mullin told an Oklahoma podcaster how he fights and what we missed. ‘By the way, I’m not afraid of biting. I’ll bite 100%. In a fight, I’m gonna bite. I’ll do anything, I’m not above it. And I don’t care where I bite, by the way.’”
• “The same day in the House, Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.) called Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D., Fla.) a ‘Smurf’ and ‘a liar’ after Mr. Moskowitz accused Mr. Comer of personal corruption. And Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) lacks the ‘maturity’ to understand the implications of her political actions, which prompted her to reply with a tweet saying Mr. Issa lacks—and here she posted emojis of a football, a basketball, a baseball and so on. In June she was picked up calling one of her competitors, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R., Colo.), ‘a little bitch’ on the House floor.”
• “Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.) pleaded guilty to falsely pulling a fire alarm in a Capitol Hill office building, which had to be evacuated. Earlier he had denied it and likened his Republican critics to Nazis. In March he distinguished himself by standing in the halls and screaming, of Republicans, ‘They’re freaking cowards, they’re gutless.’”

What is wrong with these people? Why do they do act this way?  “Here we point out why all this is bad for America. It makes democracy look cruddy and small, like something shrinking before our eyes. It makes our leaders look second rate and insubstantial. It disheartens parents, who are trying to create rules for the road for their children. It disheartens normal Americans who are worried for their country and see in its increasing wildness and lack of dignity a sign that we may not be able to hold together in the long term.  And of course it pleases our competitors in the world. They think we’re a sinking nation, poorly educated, riven by race, seeking refuge in drugs. The embarrassing behavior of our political leaders is, to them, more evidence of our breakup. Do you wish you knew Chinese president Xi’s thoughts this week as he traveled through a San Francisco bedecked in Chinese flags? I’ll tell you. He thinks we are on a long slide, our time is over, America was the 20th century but this is the 21st.”

Let’s think about this libertine approach to life as it is reflected in the abortion rights movement.  The one side of the debate approaches abortion as an absolute right that all women should have regardless; a purely libertine approach to the abortion issue:  Prenatal life is insignificant and the life of the baby is insignificant when compared to the rights of the mother to terminate at will that life.  But, the other side of the debate, French argues,  is “loudly telling women that they [must] carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, with all the physical transformations, risks, and financial uncertainties that come with pregnancy and childbirth, at the same time that millions of its members were also [during the COVID pandemic]  loudly refusing the minor inconveniences of masking and the low risks of vaccinations—even if the best science available at the time told us that both masking and vaccination could help protect others from getting the disease . . . ‘Do as I say and not as I do’ is among the worst moral arguments imaginable.  A holistic pro-life society requires true self-sacrifice.  It asks women to value the life inside of them even in the face of fear and poverty.  It asks the community to rally beside these women to keep them and their children safe and to provide them with opportunities to flourish.  It requires both individuals and communities to sublimate their own desires to protect their lives and opportunities of others.”  He concludes that “pro-life America has to reconnect with personal virtue.  It has to model self-sacrifice.  It has to show, not just tell, America what it would look like to value life from conception to natural death . . . There is no selfish path to a culture of life.”

At the heart of a culture of self-sacrifice is love, not libertinism.  Carl R. Trueman highlights the fifth-century theologian Augustine, who noted “that the better the objects of a society’s love, the better the society.  For example, a shared love of honor orders a society toward the honorable, and this ordering can inculcate noble sentiments.  The opposite is true as well.  The worse the objects of love, the worse the society.  A shared love of pleasure orders a society toward the pleasurable, and this ordering simulates our base impulses . . . The Augustinian notion of love protects against the us-versus-them mentality . . . and [the] zero-sum notion of power [it] encourages.”

In our increasingly polarized culture, even Christians give evidence of the penchant for libertinism.  Russell Moore writes that “Defined as they are around the controversies of the day or by outrage against the right enemies, some people are too focused on what they perceive to be the fundamentals but not focused enough on what’s truly essential.  Theology gives way to politics.  Mission gives way to tribalization.  Trollishness replaces Trinitarianism.  Culture wars replaces Christology.  Morality becomes legalistic about the sins of others while being libert[ine] about the sins of people like us.”

See David French in the New York Times (13 November 2023); Peggy Noonan, “So You Think You Want a Political Fighter?” in the Wall Street Journal (18-19 November 2023); Carl R. Truemen in First Things (November 2023), pp. 29-35; and Russell Moore in Christianity Today (November 2023), p. 25.