Many people today are not familiar with the name of Orestes Brownson. Brownson was a respected American political thinker of the generation that followed Jefferson and Adams. His views on American democracy are compatible with and complementary to those of the more familiar Alexis deTocqueville. You might find this article at the Library of Law and Liberty on him interesting, in particular this passage, an indictment of our modern politics:
The main opponent of Brownson and the authors, however, is the theory of radical individualism, the human person understood too abstractly, merely as the individual with rights. It appears to be the congenital American bête noire. Brownson’s critique of Jeffersonian “Lockeanism†is remarkably relevant, as our authors show, and illumines today’s aggressive individualism, whether in economic life, in culture, or in law. In fact, later conservative arguments that dealt with the progressivism that emerged after Brownson, to the effect that radical individualism leads to collectivism, an increase in state power, and the marginalizing of intermediate institutions, receive fresh impetus from Brownson’s critique of the theory and practice of the autonomous individual. One especially acute irony was that Progressivism itself indicted “individualism†or “rugged individualism.â€
The last point leads us beyond Brownsonian personalism to social and political and constitutional matters. The authors treat them all, some more than others; they do so, however, out of a recognition or apprehension that Lockean individualism is ascendant today and increasingly so. Several years ago Lawler coined a memorable phrase in this regard: it’s imperative to keep Locke in the locked box. The radically individualist view of man must not be allowed to become our authoritative public dogma. If it does, American liberty will be gravely impoverished and, predictably, tyrannical in its implementation.
Read the whole thing.
