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Conclusions Acton’s Legacy and Lessons The law is not the will of the sovereign that commands, but of the nation that obeys. The passion for power over others can never cease to threaten mankind. a free Church implies a free nation. The absolutism of the state recovers all its oppressiveness where the vast domain of religion is not protected from its control by a Church in which there is no room and no excuse for arbitrary power. he, therefore, that deems he can advocate the cause of religion without advocating at the same time the cause of freedom, is no better than a hypocrite and a traitor.1 a Lt h o U G h a C t o N N e v e r P r o D U C e D a book on liberty and consequently did not have an opportunity to articulate his definitive view on the subject, this does not mean that he bore no coherent theory of political liberty in his mind, nor that we cannot retrieve this theory from his writing. on the contrary, acton had a remarkably thorough and complex theory of civic freedom and its development throughout history. Furthermore, in spite of the gaps and contradictions in acton’s literary inheritance and the difficulties in interpreting it, his theory and history of liberty in Western civilization can be re-created with a high degree of accuracy. at a closer look, his opinions show a remarkable consistency, and even his most controversial beliefs fall into suitable places where they acquire rationality and become befitting components of the whole. The preceding chapter on his ideas of the best practical regime and the ideal of liberty, for which he searched, proves this well. Conclusions 263 in our final evaluation of acton’s thought on liberty, let us first note and appreciate his methodology for arriving at a theory of liberty. This passionate lover of freedom does not begin with a preconceived scheme of what makes liberty genuine, or a society and polity truly free. No, he observes the order of various communities in history, things as they were, and then draws conclusions based on evidence. in this he is like aristotle writing on politics or ethics: he starts with common sense observations and gradually ascends toward more general ideas. The Greek approach to practical knowledge allows acton to avoid a doctrinaire attitude and its consequences—abstract principles, sweeping generalizations, and collusion with an irritating reality that refuses to fit the theory. Furthermore, this approach lets him sketch out a survey of freedom from the dawn of Western civilization until his own time, deriving a theory of liberty that is striking in its simplicity yet remarkably complex and profound. What are acton’s most notable observations, propositions, and ideas? Perhaps the most fundamental conclusion in his theory is the simple observation that freedom always originates and thrives in self-governing local communities run by their citizens. in acton’s view, self-government virtually amounts to civic liberty. There can be no freedom without it, and no guarantees of civil liberties, however generous and thorough, can compensate for this deficiency. Naturally, civic communities exist in a variety of forms and afford various degrees of liberty. in small political entities, they can enjoy full or partial independence, like the Jewish tribes after they reached the Promised Land, like the city-states in classical Greece, or like the urban republics in northern italy prior to and during the renaissance. in large states and empires, civic communities usually take the shape of municipal self-government, as in the roman empire, as well as in medieval and early modern europe and america. self-rule can be based on a privilege granted to a town, province, estate, or national and religious minority. The right of self-government can also be a component part of a constitutional order that leaves local communities in charge of their own affairs. if self-rule is established on a federal principle, as in the United states of america, it can become the best and most mature form of government. By separating powers between local and central government and by balancing powers against one another, federalism supports and strengthens liberty at the lowest as well as the highest levels of authority and hinders the drift toward arbitrary power, a tendency inherent in any form of government. While self-government based on federalism is optimal, even the most reduced and barely tolerated municipal self-government—for example...

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