Community

1. Conservative-traditionalist-communitarians are concerned with authority, in the sense of societal ‘peer pressure’ arising from a kind of hierarchical community, which is founded upon tradition and custom and works for the good of the whole through the proper ordering of the individuals’ passions.
2. It seems to me that liberals are wrong in saying that men are born with rights from which follow certain duties. Rather, it seems to be that men naturally have certain duties or obligations, and they are given their rights in order to fulfill these. From this, it seems that there are certain duties we have which do not arise from our own choice but are ‘imposed’ upon us simply because we have been created with them.
3. Both of these pages talk about the importance to the liberal of leaving the realm of life choices and ethics up to the free individual. However, Friedman also seems to stress the fact that one cannot say for sure that there is an objectively better way of life (“of course, ‘bad’ and ‘good’ people may be the same people, depending on who is judging them”), while Swift says that even if there is an objectively ‘good’ life for people, it is vital that they are able to choose it for themselves.
4. Conservatives do seem to believe in the importance of social relations in the determination of values (although some values, they appear to believe, are objectively the same for all communities), and the need for society to enforce conformity to these; however, it seems a bit extreme to say that they want the state to be the one to fund those things founded upon their values, since they seem to believe in a kind of subsidiarity. Liberals on the other hand, would say that aside from a few basic things, such as freedom, justice and autonomy, which should be common to all, value is something determined by individual choice and not through societal relationships.
5. A democratic society would necessarily have to be somewhat non-unanimous in that there are going to be those (in the minority, but nonetheless present) who do not share the exact same values, and who would have to have the values of the majority ‘imposed’ on them in order to belong to the society. In this light, it seems that a certain lack of unanimity could be a part of a community, but this could only be backed up by authority, which seems to be a problem for liberals.