Sunday, September 6, 2015

QUOTATION: Freedom is Based On Truth

George Weigel
Freedom must be tethered to moral truth and ordered to human goodness if freedom is not to become self-cannibalizing.  If there is only "my" truth and "your" truth, but nothing that we both recognize as "the truth", then we have no basis on which to settle our differences other than pragmatic accommodation; then, when pragmatic accommodation fails (as it must when the issue is grave enough), either I will impose my power on you or you will impose your power on me. Truth and goodness shape the moral horizon against which the deliberations of free peoples can take place in an orderly and productive way.

--George Weigel, "The Free and Virtuous Society", in Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace, 2008