'EQUAL LIBERTY" AS A CORE LIBERAL VALUE

Larry Siedentop, Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England, 2014) ("An what of the United States? There is no room for complacency. The rapid growth of Christian fundamentalism--in part, no doubt, a reaction to the threat of radical Islam--may now jeopardize the traditional American understanding of secularism as the embodiment of Christian moral intuitions. In the Southern and Western states especially, 'born-again' Christians are coming to identify secularism as an enemy rather than a companion. In struggling against abortion and homosexuality, they risk losing touch with the most profound moral insights o their faith. If good and evil are contrasted too simply, in a Manichean way, charity is the loser. The principle of 'equal liberty' is put at risk." Id. at 362. "On neither side of the Atlantic is there an adequate understanding of the relationship between liberal secularism and Christianity." "Failure to understand that relationship makes it easier to underestimate the moral content of liberal secularism. In the Western world today, it contributes to two temptations, to what might be called two 'liberal heresies'. The first is the temptation to reduce liberalism to the endorsement of market economics, the satisfaction of current wants or preferences without worrying much about the formation of those wants or preferences. In doing so, it narrows the clams of justice This temptation reduces liberalism to a crude form of utilitarianism. The second temptation is best described as 'individualism', the retreat into a private sphere of family and friends at the expense of civic spirit and political participation. This weakens the habits of association and eventually endangers the self-reliance which the claims of citizenship require. Both of these heresies focus on the second word of the core liberal value--'equal liberty'--at the expense of the first word. They sacrifice the emphasis on reciprocity--on seeing ourselves in others and others in ourselves--which we have seen to be fundamental to inventing the individual and which gives liberalism its lasting moral value." "If we in the West to do not understand the moral depth of our own tradition, how can we hope to shape the conversation of mankind?" Id. at 362-363.).