The Individual

In one of my many hours of driving around this last week, I tuned into the Tucker show as I often do. He had on Dave Smith, who was fresh off his Douglas Murray smackdown on Rogan. I like Dave on a lot of things, but find him to lean too heavily into the libertarian smugness that so often characterizes that political philosophy. One line stood out to me in their conversation that I think I would like to add some historical depth to. At one point in the podcast, Dave said that countries do not have rights; individuals do. He made the argument that people may choose to develop communities together for mutual benefit, but that a country or a nation does not have an inherent right to exist; only the people within that nation do. Tucker, as he is apt to do with all of his guests, agreed with the statement. While I tend to agree with the premise of the statement from a natural law perspective, I was quickly reminded of a speech I heard at Colonial Williamsburg from the actor who portrays George Wythe.

In the speech, he discusses the new nation of America and what our role is as its citizens. He describes the duty we have to our neighbors, and in larger measure to our society and country. The line that stood out most to me was the idea that in this new American experiment, the people decided to take the crown off of one sovereign and place it upon the heads of the many. Each person, then in turn, becomes a king themselves. With it comes the weight and responsibility of the sovereign. I love the idea of this, and frankly, it is the moment within purist libertarian philosophy that leaves me wanting. We have a duty to others, and without it, our sovereignty is quickly convertible to tyranny.

It is very sound logic.

Mankind, by my world view, is inherently evil. We are fallen creatures, separated from divinity by our own choice and desires to be “like God.” The early tales from Judaism and, by association, Christianity speak of the moment in the Garden of Eden as the deciding point for humans. I am not a literalist when it comes to scripture, so I can happily live in the tension that the story of Adam and Eve may not be truly a man named Adam and a woman named Eve. The Hebrew word used in Genesis is “אָדָם” - and it is pronounced Ha-Dam. Perhaps it was the first man who named himself Adam, but more likely it is a word that describes his humanity. Realistically, it has no bearing upon its factual reality to me, nor would its allegorical use diminish my belief in God. The story is about mankind and his relationship to creation and to his God. The bigger moment is after man has resided in the Garden with peace and a relationship with God, he is tempted by the resentment of God’s knowledge and his lack of it. In the story, the serpent tempts Eve to eat the fruit from the tree that God said they should not eat from. In a crafty way, the serpent says, “Surely you will not die, but you will become like God.”

Eve eats and then convinces Adam to do the same. They become aware of their nakedness and are banished from the garden of eternity, into a life that includes toil in work, pain in childbirth, and eventual death. The disobedience is only one aspect of the sin; the desire to be as God creates the curse of separation and sin that is then assigned to humanity forever. From my perspective, this inherency of evil stays with us and is only redeemed through belief.

Therefore, if man is evil, he will do evil things. I would say that if there is any evidence of the inherent tendencies of man, the world and its affairs demonstrate it with blazing abundance.

The founders understood this darker arc of humans. Their writings and speeches say with unequivocal confidence that humanity is a mess. They gave no distinction between king or subject for this very reason; all of mankind was burdened by the same curse. Jefferson declared it in his divorce note to the King when he said that “All men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights…” Madison said it when he declared that “If men were angels, there would be no need for governments.” They understood that if left to his own devices, man would always move toward corruption. They framed their documents that way, and built their government structures with guardrails to keep both citizen and citizen leader checked by the underlying understanding that man has their dark tendencies.

Which takes me back to George Wythe, the teacher and mentor to so many of the Founding Generation. He articulates the relationship that humanity must have to one another. If we have decided to play the role of a king, we must then be good kings if we are to survive as a nation. As he says in the clip above, if a King were to decide to only serve himself, what would we call them? A tyrant? A despot? A narcissist? And if we believe a king to be that, what is the duty of a citizen according to our founding documents? To throw off such governments that do not secure the rights of our persons.

If we have placed the crown upon our heads as the sovereign, do we not then have a duty to act with the same weight of responsibility to one another that a king or queen would have to their subjects? Wythe would argue we do. So while the collective is always subservient to the individual, the individual must uphold their duty as the sovereign. Meaning that they must act morally and in the interests of their subjects or neighbors.

I love all of that depth. It is so imperative to understand as citizens, and it is something long ago abdicated to others whom we “vote” for. We, as the Hebrews of old did, clamor for a king and ruler because, as Wythe says, “all men desire to be kings, but none want the responsibility of it.” When bad things happen because of the proclivities of humans towards evil, those impacted by the wrongdoing ask for a better person to rise up and right the wrong. But that is not the solution. A society will only survive with the internal directive and fortitude to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

So, Dave is partially right about the rights of the individual and the diminishment of the collective’s right to exist. Yes, the individual has rights, but those rights come with a depth of responsibility akin to the king. They must act as a sovereign if they are to secure those rights, which means that they must separate themselves from their own desires for power and prestige and act in the interests of others first and foremost. This is not our modern America, and it is certainly not the one that Mr. Wythe describes. The individual has been vanquished by bad leaders and the corruption of humanity, but only because they chose not to live for others first. A country, which is made up of millions of sovereign people, forms a collective to protect and secure their liberty. Many might do that better than one, especially against the unscrupulous. But that collective has an implied moral responsibility to each act as a benevolent king unto their neighbor, else they shall be labeled tyrants.

We have a country of people who do not know the weight of the crown. Our duty in any restoration of goodness associated with a collective republic is to return to the understanding of the weight a crown of a king bears upon the brow. The individual matters, restrained by personal responsibility to their neighbors. Perhaps nations do not have “rights,” but their existence reminds the individual that their rights matter to the other citizens within their sovereignty.