Idols for Destruction
Note one of the implications here is that Libertarians and Collectivists work cheek by jowl in their allegedly opposite work. If Libertarians are successful in their political pursuits the result will be the eventual ascendancy of Collectivism and if Collectivists are successful in their political pursuits the result will be the eventual revolt of the Libertarian. This is because as Schlossberg notes they are each doing the same work of destroying the intermediate institutions so that all that remains is the atomized individual who can only find identity as set against the backdrop of the State.
Libertarians do this by insisting on the “freedom” from all mediating institutions in the name of individual sovereignty, resulting in an individual who can only understand themselves against the background of a sovereign state. Collectivists do this by insisting that all is inside the state and nothing is outside the state, thus insuring that individual can only understand themselves against the background of the state.
Schlossberg underscores this when elsewhere he pens,
“Collectivism and egoism (Libertarianism) are both derived from immanence, both can live only when the limitations of transcendent law are overthrown, both are symptoms of the same disease. If it is lawful for the individual to do as he pleases, why should it not be lawful for the commisar to do as he pleases? If there is nothing to restrain one lawfully, then there is nothing to restrain the other.”
Another implication here is that there is can be no genuine liberty where the intermediate institutions are destroyed. Man can not be free apart from belonging to intermediate institutions like family, church, and nation (as distinct from the state). When these institutions are eclipsed man loses his identity and has only his collective self in the tyrant state wherein to determine his identity and so meaning. True liberty can only prosper where family, church, and nation have interdependent liberties befitting their natural and God-assigned jurisdictions.
Think about where we are now. The Church is now an extension of the State. We see this in the majority of Churches who are now reinterpreting Christianity through the prism of Cultural Marxism, Critical Race Theory, and Wokeification. There really no longer exists an Institutional Christian Chuch whose voice is strong enough to challenge the presuppositions of the God state. Individual churches and voices exist but in terms of cultural infrastructure leverage the church is dead and is owned by the State. The same is true of the family as institution. Individual families exist who understand their appointed jurisdictional authority but like the Church the family’s cultural infrastructure as a means of leverage is dead. So, the State has succeeded in destroying the intermediate institutions.
And until we rebuild those intermediate institutions, culturally and institutionally speaking, God is dead.
