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Dear Friend,

I wanted to make sure you saw this excellent piece ([link removed]) in Public Discourse by Prof. Hadley Arkes of the James Wilson Institute. The piece echoes Prof. Arkes' insightful speech ([link removed]) at APP Foundation's gala last November, which strongly argued against moral relativism in American law.

This idea is also at the foundation of our mission at American Principles Project. APP is committed to restoring a robust understanding of moral right and wrong to our politics and law, through initiatives like regulating the public scourge of pornography, rejecting the false ideology of "gender identity," and reorienting our economic policy to promote and strengthen families.

Our society cannot be truly free unless it also protects what is truly good. I hope you will take a few moments to read Prof. Arkes' case for this below.

Thanks for your continued support!
Terry Schilling
Executive Director
American Principles Project
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** Classical Liberalism against Relativism ([link removed])
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By: Hadley Arkes
Public Discourse

In his large nature, Robert Miller, my critical but dear friend, offered some kind words ([link removed]) about my political works in the pro-life cause; and he sought also to shelter me from his blows as he loosed his terrible swift sword on Matthew Schmitz. Evidently Schmitz had vexed him for his critique of conservatives’ buying into a stylish form of relativism as an ingenious new strategy in the regulation of “speech.” That strategy has been one of hopeful pragmatism: that we will be able to shelter people like Miller and me from the assaults of the Left if we settle upon a rule, as vacuous as it is simple, that we just forgo any claim to have standards of moral judgment when it comes to judging speech as rightful or assaulting, legitimate or illegitimate.

Like Miller, I am a classic liberal: I think we have a presumptive claim to all dimensions of our freedom, even those not mentioned in the Bill of Rights. But the classical position understood that any instance of “freedom” had to raise the question of the ends to which that freedom was directed, good or bad, rightful or wrongful. The notion of liberty was always attended by the awareness of the distinction between liberty and license. And up until 1971 it was understood even by strong liberals that speech could be rightly restricted at times, for speech could be a vehicle for inflicting serious harms along with any other part of our freedom. Even with the First Amendment, John Marshall could say that anyone who published a libel in this country could be “sued or indicted”—sued in an action for personal damages, or indicted for stirring up tumults in the community, perhaps by inciting attacks on religious minorities.

David Hamlin of the American Civil Liberties Union declared years ago that “we must be free to hear the Nazis because we must be free to choose the Nazis.” This was what Lincoln considered the “degradation” of democracy: that it is all form and no substance, that we are free to choose anything—free to choose slavery or genocide—as long as we do it in a democratic way with the vote of a majority. But of course our “freedom to choose” in a free election is based on that underlying principle, “All men are created equal,” and the only rightful governance of human beings must depend on “the consent of the governed.”

The Nazis rejected that principle at the root. To cast a ballot for a Nazi party in an election is to vote to remove that “freedom to choose” from all of those people around us in the adjacent voting booths. A man who respects the moral ground of his own freedom would not claim this right to choose the Nazis in an election. It would be an act of moral incoherence. But we absorb that incoherence in this way: We talk ourselves into the notion that, as far as the law is concerned, we must be free to hear the Nazis, because the ends of the Nazis must be as legitimate to choose as any other set of ends on offer in the landscape of our politics. That is relativism all the way down. And that, I take to be the deep concern that has animated Matthew Schmitz in his recent pieces ([link removed]) .

As I understand my friend Robert Miller, he would avert that charge of relativism in this way: He himself harbors no doubts in judging the Nazis or the KKK as pernicious. And he has no doubt that he is affirming a deep good in a state of affairs that forgoes controversial moral judgments in the hope of preserving a vigorous regime of freedom. He finds good reason to hope—or bet—that bad causes will be exposed, that things will work out far better in the long run, if we recede from our natural inclination to make moral judgments about those ends of “speech” and politics that may be rightful or wrongful. He draws on Aristotle to register his own hope that “anyone arguing for the true and good should always be able to prevail in fair debate over someone peddling falsehood and evil doctrines.”
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