The Enlightenment Is Not Enough

On the face of it, Enlightenment individualism is far less repulsive than other modern ideologies — it is much more truthful and principled than racism, and makes more modest claims than utopian collectivism.  Its “body count” of innocents seems much lower than its competitors’.  Much of what is healthy in American culture and politics can be traced to a rugged individualism based on people fiercely defending their rights. Individualism is a medicine that Europe desperately needed to burn out the tangled mass of privileges, unjust social hierarchies, and economic absurdities that it had inherited from feudalism.

Let us not underplay the evils of feudalism, as illiberal Catholic thinkers are prone to do — especially those who damn Enlightenment liberalism, and many of those who fancy themselves distributists.  Alexis de Tocqueville, no fan of social revolution, painted this picture of feudalism during the presidency of George Washington: