On freedom...........................

 

.............................................and authority.

by design........................

 It seems to be our liberal political instincts that push us in this direction of centralizing authority: we distrust authority in the hands of individuals.  With its reverence for neutral process, liberalism is, by design, a politics of irresponsibility.

-Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work

lifelong skepticism................

      Like Churchill, Orwell saw little of his father, who traveled from Burma to visit his family in 1907, and then moved in with them when he retired in1912. "I barely saw my father before I was eight," Orwell noted.  By that time, the boy had been shipped off to boarding school.  The distant figure of Orwell's father "appeared to me simply as a gruff-voiced elderly man forever saying 'Don't.'"  So began Orwell's lifelong skepticism of authority.

-Thomas E. Ricks, Churchill & Orwell: The Fight for Freedom

indelibly engraved.....................

 In 1750, Mayhew, fresh from receiving his Scottish divinity degree, preached a sermon in Boston celebrating, somewhat shockingly, the hundredth anniversary of the execution of King Charles I.  One of the lessons, the radical young man noted, was that "no civil rules are to be obeyed when they enjoin things that are inconsistent with the commands of God."  Indeed, such resistance to authority was "a duty, not a crime."

    Adams was paying attention to such thinking.  He would later note that this was the sermon that made Mayhew's reputation.  He studied it repeatedly before he went off to college.  "I read it, till the Substance of it was incorporated into my Nature and indelibly engraved on my Memory," he told Thomas Jefferson decades later.  "It was read by every Body, celebrated by Friends, and abused by Enemies."

-Thomas E. Ricks, First Principles

On being unmoored..............

      It is impossible to be one's own pope.  For some, the moral life becomes an endless, solipistic quest to figure out "what my true self stands for."  Many feel they have to reinvent the moral wheel daily, which is the height of arrogance, not to mention utterly exhausting.  Still others externalize all of the conscience's furies, directing them against the faults of others or those of social and political systems.  Worse, too many simply learn to tune out the conscience's voice, now lowered to a murmur for lack of authoritative supports.

     The think-for-yourself culture celebrates all of these groups for their "free minds."  Yet we know that most people sway, feather-like, to the prevailing winds of news and social media, fashion and fadism, public and "expert" opinion, P.R. and propaganda.  Large corporations, especially, what nothing more than for our minds to be independent—that is, unmoored from absolute, unbendable moral authorities that might challenge corporate agendas.  And how much the better for the powers that be if pliant consumers and docile workers fancy themselves rebels and radicals.

-Sohrab Ahmari, The Unbroken Thread:  Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos

Hey, it could happen...................

 

Power vs Authority.........................

 Authority is not mere power, and it is extremely unhelpful, even dangerous, to confuse the two.  When people exert power over others, they compel them, forcefully.  They apply the threat of privation or punishment so their subordinates have little choice but to act in a manner contrary to their personal needs, desires, and values.  When people wield authority, by contrast, they do so because of their competence—a competence that is spontaneously recognized and appreciated by others, and generally followed willingly, with a certain relief, and with the sense that justice is being served.

-Jordan Peterson,  Beyond Order:  12 More Rules For Life