But [to be able to practice “justice, mercy, and love of neighbor”] “in some measure” is not sufficient because of the indefinite quantifier. Just as for the regime’s assertion of authority to be lawful and not tyrannical, there must be some just–and publicly, defensibly just–principle of limitation of the power it assumes, so there must also be some definition of the minimum scope to which the power of other societies and institutions that must coexist with the regime can be contracted.
I object to “in some measure” when it really means “in any measure, no matter how trivial or abstract,” because “I can choose to love my neighbor internally even when it makes no measurable difference in our lives” is meaningless bosh. If my love makes no real difference in our conditions, it is the love of a slave; and while that is not nothing to the slave, its existence is an indictment of a society, a pathology, not a legitimate aim of public discourse.
A good discussion, continuing to circle a basic set of disconnects between two different hybrids of a Lockean perspective with a Christian one (Greg’s defense of Locke’s consensus as a high point of Christian reflection on cultural and political practice, and my conception of Locke as a defensive position always necessarily turning toward a more definitely Christian or a more totalitarian and secularizing positive politics). I would like to especially invite comments on the last sentence, there. What do you think?