Defending Tolerance

Values, liberty, and democracy.

Loren Lomasky from the November 2003 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

Galston argues intelligently for the theory of incommensurability and its political corollaries. Unlike many contemporary liberals who maintain that individuals should be allowed to pursue whatever ends they wish just so long as they make their choices autonomously, Galston responds, "the promotion of personal autonomy, understood as choice based on critical rationalism, is not among the shared liberal purposes." Traditionalists merely accept rather than critically evaluate what has been handed down to them, but there are values inherent in traditional modes of life that cannot be achieved through critical reflection. Not better goods -- different goods.

Even among those who locate themselves squarely in the liberal camp, many draw the line with choices that impinge on the upbringing of children: You may devote yourself to whatever gods command your own allegiance, but you may not impose them on uncomprehending, defenseless minors. No one is better positioned, for better or worse, to affect the future well-being of children than their parents. Therefore, it is argued, even the liberal state has a considerable stake in superintending the conditions under which children are raised.

Whether or not parents approve, children must be afforded the capacity to appreciate a wide range of potential ways of life and to freely choose among them. This means, for example, that enclaves from modernity such as Amish communities are suspect insofar as they propagate themselves from one generation to the next. It also indirectly buttresses a case for the public schools as an agency liberating children from the dead hand of their parents' past.

Galston, by contrast, defends parents' entitlement, within very broad limits, to bring up their children as they see fit; he is no proponent of sending the National Guard to liberate little Amish boys and girls. His defense of parents' rights is cogent bordering on eloquent. The discussion is notable in its own right, but all the more so because in between his encampments in ivory towers, Galston served as President Clinton's Deputy Assistant for Domestic Policy. Many of his colleagues in that administration were avid to extend the helping hand of government into family relationships. That Galston bids them halt is significant both theoretically and politically.

Nonetheless, the book retains traces of the dark side of Clintonism. At just the point at which Galston might be expected to observe that parental authority worthy of the name must extend to educational alternatives, he instead opines, "There is no compelling reason to believe that the emphasis I have placed on expressive liberty and the role of parents, if taken as the basis for actual policy, would significantly erode the dominant position the public schools now enjoy." The National Education Association's cheerleaders will applaud, but the rest of us should cringe. Nor am I reassured by Galston's rather cavalier dismissal of economic liberty's importance for individual self-determination.

Nonetheless, the planners of a postwar Iraq -- not to mention postwar America -- could do a lot worse than to consult this accessible and engaging essay.