Death from Above, Death from Below
14th February 2024
One reason both for the popularity of economic liberalism in the United States, and for it being considered a ‘conservative’ value, is that it is psychologically connected to its opposite or counterpart. However implicitly tied to the idea that individual calculation of self-interest in monetary terms will produce collective prosperity and virtue, and however much it is de facto applied (such as to endear the tax code to large corporations rather than proliferating startups, family-owned businesses, and enfranchised communities), we cannot help but notice that the aesthetic of American liberalism is often Chestertonian-distributist.
This is the cornerstone of much conservative thought. We may also think of Donoso Cortés and his emphasis on intermediate classes as bulwarks of Spain’s constitution (her literal constitution as society and body politic). And yet Western culture in general is deeply conditioned by habits of mind that militate against the cultivation and safeguarding of those kinds of property arrangements.