The autonomous notion of freedom that indergrids both variants of liberalism intrinsically leads to a reliance on what T.S. Eliot identified as, “systems so perfect that no one will have to be good” or truly free. That is, both variants see different impediments to the individual’s freedom–the “conservative” variant views the State the villain, the “progressive” counterpart views inherited relations and the impersonal market forces the villain–and thus differ in their views of the liberating system–for “conservatives,” market decentralization, for “progressives,” the State. Nonetheless, both largely see human liberation in terms of deliverance at the hands of political system and freedom in the maximum capacity possible for autonomous initiative.

The “conservative” emphasis on the “little platoons” is largely, at least implicitly, utilitarian. That is, conservatives tend to exalt some notion of constitutive relations and the “little platoons” to the extent that such local relations and bodies protect against State-intrusion and build toward individual self-reliance. The illusion here is the idea of self-reliance. Everyone is ontologically, naturally, dependent to some degree–everyone is a creature dependent on the Creator, one’s existence also depends on his parents, human being’s depend on each other for sustenance and friendship, and all person’s depend on the natural world for resources and sustenance.

In neglecting these given relations, or at least treating them as utilitarian means for self-assertion, our political ontology leaves a wanting and unnatural notion of freedom. For the sake of attaining an illusive notion of freedom, individuals will cede their freedom to favored ideologies and systems that falsely promise to spare on the work and responsibility that accompany the gift of existence. This is far from a glorification of a “morality of obligation,” to borrow Servais Pinckaers phrase. Indeed, the Church is unique in her exaltation of a morality of desire. As Pope Benedict XVI regularly affirms in his Year of Faith cathecesis, Christ answers the deepest longings of the human heart.

Rather, Christianity proposes a right ordering of human desires that, in our existentially wounded state, are disordered into base impulses. Although one is free to deny Christian revelation, the giveness of human existence–the human person’s created and ontologically dependent nature–is an unifiable reality. In truly honoring one’s created nature and making a total gift of self, a lifelong vocation of maturity and rebirth according to one’s unique capacities–one experiences a true freedom and joy that alone holds any hope of answer to human desire.

This is far form a suggestion that all human relations are moral or that some are immune from oppression. A tyrannical tendency is possible in the most local relations. Monsignor Luigi Guissani recognized this temptation as the reason why those in positions of authority or those who seek authority are “often tempted to hate a true religiosity themselves, unless they are profoundly religious themselves, because religiosity challenges possession.” Thus, for this reason, nothing is more feared in any human relation–familial, social, political–than true religiosity.

One is dependent on God before anyone or anything else and unless one’s religious (religion means relation) rationality to God is the basis of all other relations, such relations become instruments for assertion and power. Secularism, the mentality that,in Cornelio Fabro’s words “If God exists, he doesn’t matter” is an invitation to the most subtle forms of oppression. Such a mentality sows the seeds if an ontological atheism, even in an outwardly or at least superficially or formalistcally Christian culture as ours has been historically.

The autonomous ontology that undergrids both variants of liberalism either denies a given religious relationality or at least implicitly asserts that such a relation is irrelevant to human life here and now absent a mostly utilitarian use as postulate for whatever ethical presuppositions appeal to one’s ideological sensibilities.

Thus, American religiosity is largely a matter of an individual attempting to make Christianity see through his own ideological lenses, rather than an invitation to open oneself to see with the eyes of Christ. Such an ideological reduction of religiosity, usually Christianity particularity, tends toward a cultural pantheism of self-absorption that reduces human relations, to, at least implicitly and often subtly, power struggles.

Marriage is a concrete example. The secularist-bourgeois reduction of Christian marital love and consequent misreading of Pauline teaching–secularist in the sense of superficially Christian but ontologically secular–turned spousal relations into a one-sided subordination rather than a relation of, in the words of John Paul II, mutual-subordination and reciprocal self-gift that mirrors the Trinitarian love of God. Paul, evoking God’s Triune model of love, commanded husbands to love their wives as the Father loves His Church–a love of total self-gift.

The bourgeois-secualrist reduction of marriage turned marriage into a power-struggle for self-assertion that the “sexual-liberationist” movements reacted against. Likewise, such a reduction also left and continues to leave deep wounds on family life. If religiosity becomes at best an easily manipulated postulate for morality, than the notion of a given human anture or natural law is easily prone to physicalist-postivist revisions–even among conservatives. Although conservatives at least formalistically appeal to some notion of natural-law and a given human nature in defenses of marriage as a conjugal union, such concepts increasingly prove flexible to a more alterable positive law. If individual autonomous freedom, to the greatest extent possible, rather than living and honoring a given nature, is the end of life, than notions of human nature and natural-law prove flexible to autonomous will.

Thus, among many social-conservatives, the procreative dimensions of marriage are defined in looser terms–many question whether the command to multiply and fill the earth still applies. Many see natural-family-planning methods and contraceptive use among married couples as synonymous. Yet,in actuality, the difference is clear. Natural-family-planning methods allow a husband and wife to responsibly delay and space pregnancies according to the natural patterns of the human body. Thus, NFP treats the conjugal and procreative act as a gift that deserves respecting. Contraception treats procreation as an option that holds only to the criterion of convenience and want. Unsurprisingly, many will only have children if they believe that such a choice is in their “interest”–emotive or financial.

Liberalism, in both its variants, fails because the political philosophy is built on a wanting and inhuman ontology–an ontology that seeks freedom and the realization of desire without the maturity and space that both ends require. The result is a reduction of desire and freedom and ultimately a cultural exhaustion and bewilderment that results in a loss of both.

In front of these circumstances, one is wrong to seek a new political system or structure–a promise of grand project that will restore society while minimally compromising our freedom that in actuality will never materialize. Rather, the answer is simply to affirm the givennes of every moment and provocation as we live our vocations. Concretely, this means living each moment and challenge with interest–not because it is in our emotional, financial or professional interest but because we are interested in life. Interest in life manifest itself in a gratitude and thanks–we say thank you and gives thanks not because it is the respectable, traditional or right thing to do. Rather, one says thank you because there is nothing more beautiful and liberating than the awareness that she is really alive and all thanks to the love of an Other who creates her here and now.