Wickedness vs. Righteousness; Freedom vs. Responsibility

and limiting the claims of power

I was plugging along down at the gym through Henry Kissinger’s A World Restored about the peacemaking after the late Napoleonic unpleasantness, and I came upon this gem, where Kissinger is describing the dilemmas of Metternich the conservative and the question of will and “limiting the claims of power.”

It represented an effort to deal with the most fundamental problem of politics, which is not the control of wickedness but the limitation of righteousness. (p.206)

Perhaps this is an echo of the leftist maxim:

The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.

What does it all mean? I suspect that it means that the control of crime is a fairly simple question of police and law courts. But a campaign by devoted activists to transform society so that crime will disappear from the face of the Earth is an invitation to disaster.

Likewise, the various “issues” with which we trouble our leaders are not the problem. The problem is the people that use “issues” as an excuse to transform society.

And then I thought, does the same question arise in the case of freedom vs. responsibility? When we talk of freedom do we not assume that freedom is only possible when its beneficiaries are responsible. I think that conservatives generally do. But whatabout our liberal friends?

What then of FDR’s Four Freedoms:

freedom of speech,
freedom of worship,
freedom from want, and
freedom from fear.

Is not the Freedom from Want the basis of the modern welfare state that sucks up 30 percent of our income into the hands of righteous administrators. So, are the administrators righteously fighting wickedness or wickedly fighting freedom and responsibility?

I don’t know. I don’t pretend to know the answer.

I like Kissinger’s suggestion: what if righteousness is more of a problem than wickedness?

But Kissinger has a point that “limiting the claims of power” is a big deal.