So here’s a provocation by me that explains Obama’s focus on contraception and his tyrannical move on immigration in terms of libertarian convergence theory. I also bring in the 22nd Amendment. Please be free to be critical. It’s probably always a mistake for political scientists — and especially professors of political philosophy — to think they have any special insight into what’s going on now. But Carl has inspired me to think somewhat more about liberty in the here and now.

Speaking of Carl and liberty, I really like the rather genuinely Whitmanesque long quote in his last post. Yet another criticism of The Dead Poets Society is that Mr. Keating only mentions that “captain, my captain” is, in Walt’s poem, “Lincoln.” It’s pretty funny to tell your students that they should regard you as their Lincoln. But Keating’s “teaching method” — being are all romantic and rather narcissistic — has no place for the appreciative study of Lincoln. For the very manly Whitman, Lincoln is a martyr who should be the centerpiece of a new American civil theology that properly ennobles the suffering and dying of American citizen-soldiers during the Civil War in pursuit of justice. I’m not for civil theology, of course, but I forgive Whitman, because the main deficiency in his education that distorted his poetry was his lack of knowledge and tone deafness to specifically biblical theology. Absent that knowledge, he failed to reconcile the conflict between the personal experiences of oceanic universality and of those of deep, lonely particularity. He knew, in fact, that he had failed, even with the help of Hegel. I am for education that includes the study of the great virtues of nobility and generosity as well as, of course, the deeply personal Christian virtue of charity. Lincoln has ‘em all, in some measure.

Carl’s quote isn’t about Whitman’s ennobling of Lincoln and war either. But I do like the emphasis on American hostility to limits, as well as the American affirmation of waste. For we followers of Whitman, there are no limits to what Americans might achieve through a free economy and technological ingenuity. America “works” only with confidence in economic growth and technological innovation dissolving or at least ameliorating seeming intractable human problems.

Too much old-world concern with limits may be fatal for us. Consider what sophisticated hostility to population growth is doing to us now, for example. And our Porcher friends too often perceive limits that aren’t really there. I remember, for example, that a few years ago Pat Deneen couldn’t say enough about the looming techno-collapse that would be the result of “peak oil.”

On the other hand, too little concern with limits may be fatal too. Economic growth alone might not be anywhere near enough to keep our failing middle class from continuing to fail. And there might not be a techno way out of every threat posed to our flourishing by man-made climate change and finite natural resources. And there are, of course, natural limits given to us by our invincible natural purposes to what we should do biotechnologically. The idea of limits or moderation is a large part of any life in the service of the one true progress toward wisdom and virtue. It’s the idea of relational limits, finally, that allows us to use techno-libertarian means for non-libertarian ends, for the loving cultivation of relational institutions that shape our lives and make our lives worth living.

So when it comes to limits, we postmodern conservatives are somewhere in between Porchers and the wholehog followers of Whitman.

Should Americans celebrate our indifference to waste symbolized by beer cans on the side of the road? Being an incorrigibly messy and wasteful (or deeply left-handed) person myself, I’m open to that, to a point. I certainly think we’ve become too puritanical when it comes to waste, as in wasting paper. Still, it’s the South that’s most about trash on the side of the road and rusty mobile homes in the front yard. And I don’t think Whitman is the inspiration for that.