Monday, March 21, 2005
DuPont on Europe, Individualism, and Collectivism
In today's on-line Wall Street Journal, former governor Pete DuPont has a short essay called "Europe's Problem -- and Ours: Will the EU Choose Collectivism Over Individualism? Will We?" It might be worthwhile to refer back, after reading the essay, to a post from a few days ago, in which I quoted Bradley Lewis's thoughts on the individualism v. collectivism dichotomy. He wrote:
It seems to me that the basic problem here is to see politics in the categories of individualism and collectivism and to identify the Catholic tradition with collectivism. Individualism run amok (as sometimes seems to be the goal of many political "conservatives"--an odd thing on its face: what's "conservative" about that?) is often vicious, but so is collectivism. The question one should ask from the perspective of the Catholic intellectual tradition is what protects and promotes the common good, understanding the adherence to basic moral norms as itself partly constitutive of that very common good. This leaves a great deal for Catholic citizens and politicians to argue about when it comes to policy, without confusingly assimilating questions of doctrine to those of prudence.
While I suspect that I am more sympathetic to Gov. DuPont's concerns than are some of my MOJ colleagues, I still want to ask him, "isn't there a -- here comes an overused term -- 'third way'?"
Rick
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2005/03/dupont_on_europ.html