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

One of the most precious terms of the American Republic is liberty. This Republic’s founding documents are rooted in expressing and protecting individual freedom.  In the Declaration of independence, Jefferson argued as a “self-evident truth” that we are “endowed by our Creator” with certain “inalienable rights” and among those are “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  The Bill of Rights (the Constitution’s first Ten Amendments) articulates and guarantees a set of rights each citizen enjoys. “Liberty” is indeed a precious and unique dimension of this Republic. But, in 1992, Justice Anthony Kennedy, in the famous Casey abortion ruling, posited a re-definition of human liberty: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”  That re-definition is quite extraordinary, for it legitimizes human autonomy and dismisses any position that seeks to define ethics as a set of duties and obligations sourced in a God or some Supreme Being. It de-legitimizes the concept that God can be a source of binding, universal ethical standards to which all humans are accountable. It is the human being alone who decides “meaning,” the “universe,” and the “mystery of human life:” Whatever I decide is true or right is acceptable. The logical extension of Kennedy’s remarkable statement is that each human being determines truth, ethical standards and personal morality. There are no universal, binding definitions or standards. Kennedy’s astonishing statement legitimizes the refrain from the book of Judges, “Every man [is] doing what is right in his own eyes,” and applies it to America. Does this re-definition of liberty as personal autonomy have any serious implications for this Republic?

As we begin 2026, I have been reflecting on the pursuit of personal autonomy in American civilization. Reading a number of articles has deepened my thoughts and reflections on this issue.   Various summary comments:

1. Columnist David Brooks has recently written on the topic of love as an antidote to personal autonomy’s pursuit: “To be loveless is to be on autopilot and disengaged from life. Love, on the other hand, fuels full engagement. ‘A person’s life can be meaningful,’ the philosopher Susan Wolf once wrote, ‘only if she cares fairly deeply about some things, only if she is gripped, excited, interested, engaged, or as I earlier put it, if she loves something.’” Pay attention to those words — “cares,” “gripped,” “excited,” “engaged,” “loves.”   Brooks further comments: “I’ve composed this little homage to love because Americans seem to be having less of it. Think of the things people most commonly love — their spouse, kids, friends, God, nation and community. Now look at the social trends.

• Marriage rates hover near record lows, and the share of 40-year-olds who have never been married is at record highs. (Cohabitation rates are up, but that doesn’t come close to making up for the decline in marriage.)  Americans are having fewer kids. Americans have fewer friends than before and spend less time with the friends they have. Church and synagogue attendance rates have been falling for decades. The share of Americans who said they feel patriotic about their country is down, especially among the young. From 1985 to 1994, active involvement in community organizations fell by about half, and there is no sign of a recovery.
• In 2023 a Wall Street Journal/NORC survey asked people about what values were “very important” to them. Since 1998, the shares of Americans who said they highly valued patriotism, religion, having children and community involvement have all plummeted. The only value Americans came to care more about, the survey found, was making money.
• And some of the causes of the romantic recession are social and economic. Over the past four decades, the share of people in a relationship has fallen over twice as fast among people without a college degree compared with those who have one. Roughly half of the men under 40 who never went to college are romantically unattached. People without a college degree have less earning potential than college grads and are 2.4 times as likely to say they have no friends.

Brooks reaches these conclusions: “But economic forces can’t explain everything. These trends are not just about who people want to date and marry; we’re seeing a systematic weakening of the loving bonds that hold society together — for community, for nation, for friends and on and on. What’s going on?  My short answer would be that you can build a culture around loving commitments, or you can build a culture around individual autonomy, but you can’t do both. Over the past six decades or so, we chose autonomy, and as a result, we have been on a collective journey from autonomy to achievement to anxiety.

• In the 1960s and ’70s, Americans rebelled against the conformity of the ’50s. They put tremendous emphasis on personal freedom, but they also put tremendous emphasis on love. Think of John Lennon and Yoko Ono and all those soupy songs — “All You Need Is Love.”
• Then in the ’80s and ’90s, Americans took that desire for individual freedom and focused it on the realm of life where it’s easiest to feel autonomous: your career. In 1990 Dr. Seuss published a book that is still commonly given as a graduation present. It’s called “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!,” about a boy’s lifelong climb up the ladder to success. Along the way, you notice he has no family, no friends, no attachments to a place. By 1990, this seemed to many like a normal way to envision a good life. I used to ask my college students why they weren’t having romantic relationships, and their No. 1 answer was that they didn’t have time; they were working too hard.
• Then in this century there has been a great loss of faith. A loss of faith in the work grind. A loss of faith in one another, which shows up as plummeting levels of social trust. This has produced the well-documented surges in anxiety, loneliness and a fear of emotional intimacy, especially in young adults.

1. Having spent most of my career in higher education, I am deeply worried about the current state of education in the United States. Progressive education “centers on the child and his/her interests and developing faculties, not with the subject matter and its intrinsic nature. The liberal idea is individual development: Education allows each of us to become, not the ideal citizen, but whatever we wish to be.”  In contrast, classical education “does not regard individual autonomy as the supreme good.”  Education is equipping the child to think, to serve the community and the family as central institutions of civilization. The Founders of this nation desired to build a republic based on “virtue,” the pursuit of good for the community, not for the autonomous self. That passion dovetails perfectly with the Scriptures call self-sacrifice love (see 1 Corinthians 13).

Classical education models are flourishing in the US, and one of the most important is the Founders Classical Academy. As James Traub observes that “the Founders network is one constellation in an expanding galaxy of about 275 classical charter schools across the country. Including private Catholic and Protestant schools that call themselves classical, about 250,000 students now attend such schools.”  As John Caros, academic director for the Founders Classical Academy, comments, “If we want to maintain our individual liberties, our society freedom and flourish as a people, we must have a well-educated and virtuous citizenry.”

The pursuit of personal autonomy pervades every aspect of our Postmodern, post-Christian culture. It is both devastating and self-destructive. Timothy Kleiser, in his review of Alan Noble’s marvelous new book, You Are Not Your Own, writes, “. . . a society premised on the sovereign self has no discernible ends, only an ever expanding and ever demanding number of means. Without an essential purpose for our lives, we’re stuck in a process of becoming that never reaches a clear destination. In this sense, our society’s promise that we’ll progress toward greater happiness is more like a warning. As Noble expresses it: ‘You will keep searching, keep expressing, keep redefining, keep striving for your autonomous personhood until you die.’ “Noble compares our purposeless, ceaseless struggle to that of Sisyphus, the figure from Greek mythology who was condemned to push a boulder up a mountain for all eternity . . . Sisyphus has traditionally represented hopelessness and despair.”

In conclusion, is human autonomy at the heart of liberty? Does autonomy define the essence of personal freedom and liberty? As Matthew Reynolds observes, “the fact remains that most human beings—frail, dependent, and sinful as we are—experience it more as a burden than a blessing. After all, with an absolute freedom to determine who I’m supposed to be and how I’m supposed to live comes an absolute responsibility to realize these goals. The liberating truth, for believers, is that we don’t have to determine who we’re supposed to be and how we’re supposed to live. At a core level, these are questions God has already answered for us.”  Thus, the proposition of absolute freedom, of personal autonomy is a dangerous lie. Indeed, as the Heidelberg Catechism puts it, “I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.”

See James Traub in the Wall Street Journal (10-11 January 2026); David Brooks in the New York Times (11 January 2026); Matthew Reynolds, “The Lie of Self-Ownership” in CT Books (26 October 2021) at www.christianitytoday.com; and Clifford R. Goldstein, “Justice Kennedy’s ‘Notorious Mystery Passage’” in Liberty Magazine (July/August 1997).