Politics: Philosophy of the State: Russ Kuykendall exposits the difference between neo-Burkeans vs Libertarians

Russ Kuykendall has given us a brilliant and incisive statement of the difference between what I guess he might want to call a "neo-Burkean" view of the relation of the state to a society composed of intermediate spheres from huge to small relationships, organized and relatively unorganized, and the individual who is who she or he is by taking on roles and being a beloved, being a member of a family, having membership in a fellowship or a church / synogogue / mosque / temple maybe, a curling club, a hockey team, a political party, a business as an investor or proprietor or employee, a profession, a union, a friendship .... That's society and the state has to see that all these different individual persons with all their roles and memberships in spheres of relationship and activity often thru organizations and formal institutions are just to one another. Neo-Burkean knows all about individuals (as far as they can be known in political theory, especially thru the role or office of citizen) but it also knows about so-called "intermediate" societal entities as well. The state, I would say, is actually one of these "intermediates," one among many, but like all the othrs it has a special task - that allows us to diagram it above the others in order to oversee their imbalanced relations with one another, and hence to work to better balance thru state action for public justice. Mr. Kuykendall says it all better than I can here. In contrast, Libertarianism is blind to the intermediates and sees only the individuals (really, it sees only one individual in the end, the "me" each of has a sense of for her- or himself). Kukendall's blog entry for today is a must read for anyone who talks about "freedom" in the vague way of most liberals and in the stark way of most Liberatarians - both of which want to relegate neo-Burkeans and most social conservatives in general to political silence and exclusion. Read today's Kuykendall! - Owlb

Herman Dooyeweerd, key jurdical scholar and political philosopher of the Amsterdam School, cited by Kuykendall