Cruz: One of the things I find interesting in your question
is you said
you guys may disagree on this.
And I think that was insightful
because I listened to what Michael said
and I thought it was quite learned
and yet I didn't really agree with it.
Student: Liberty is a word that's kind of used as
a buzzword on the right,
but it's also used by many on the right
to justify and perhaps even passively
allow the cultivation of very vicious acts.
So I was wondering if Michael and Senator Cruz,
if you could both give your own definition
of the word liberty,
and maybe compare and contrast,
because something tells me you might not perfectly agree
on the definition.
Knowles: Sure, I'll borrow my definition of liberty
from Lord Acton.
Winston Churchill famously said
that if you don't have a good education
you should just quote
really smart people.
So, I'll quote...
Cruz: And I quote Michael Knowles
[audience laughter]
Knowles: So Lord Acton points out
that liberty is not the ability
to do whatever you want to do,
but rather the right to do what you ought to do.
And we touched on this a little bit earlier
when we talked about
how liberty and licentiousness are not the same thing,
about how the rational will exists
to mediate between the appetite,
the base passion, and the divine will.
And it's what separates us from the beasts.
So I guess the example I would use
to bring all of that down to earth
is education.
The point of education is to make us free.
Right? That's why we call it liberal education.
We call it the liberal arts.
So the whole point of it is to make us free.
And when you were free,
you are not being coerced, right?
I think that's probably
the basic thing we would all say about freedom.
But the irony here,
or the complication
is that in order to attain this freedom,
you need to be coerced by your teachers,
by the exams,
by the grades.
You're coerced for 12 years, 13 years,
I don't know, 15,
it depends on how much schooling you're going to go through
By the time that this administration is over
with free college and pre-K,
it's going to be 35 years.
So it's a lot of coercion.
But it does serve a purpose.
You do actually have to train your will.
And this is a difficult process.
And when people are in college,
sometimes they make some mistakes.
They let their appetites run away with them.
It's not so good.
George W. Bush famously said,
"When I was young and irresponsible,
I was young and irresponsible."
But the idea is you want to mature and grow up.
And so I think we have this
mistaken conception of liberty
that really comes from Freud.
We have this kind of steam engine idea of liberty,
which is that
I've got all of these appetites and desires.
And if I don't engage in them,
even the base ones,
even the naughty ones
that I'm not supposed to do.
If I don't let off a little steam
every once in a while,
then I'm just going to explode.
This is different
from, say, Aristotle's understanding of behavior,
of vice and virtue,
and the Catholic understanding
and my own understanding,
which is that
when you practice the virtues,
which are habits,
they get a little bit easier.
This is a fallen world.
We're all sinful.
We're going to stumble.
We're probably not going to act perfectly in this world.
In fact, I know that we're not.
But it is going to become easier
the more you practice these virtues.
And the same is true of the vices,
and I say this with a great deal of experience.
When you practice the vices,
it's kind of hard to do it
the first couple of times,
and then it's easier and easier.
And then it's harder to stop.
And this, I think, it would be the description of addiction.
And so any coherent understanding of liberty
I think has to take into account virtue.
It certainly did for the founding fathers.
It has for statesmen for all time.
You mentioned the mystical body of Christ.
Christ says in the gospels,
"The man who sins is a slave to sin."
And we just know that to be true in our own lives.
Anyone who's ever sinned
knows that that is the case.
And so I think I agree with you.
I think sometimes,
and just in recent decades,
we've taken a more shallow view of liberty
and liberty is not a shallow thing.
And to quote Ronald Reagan,
it's not passed in the bloodstream, either.
It's one generation away from being lost,
which is why it's so important to educate people in freedom.
That's what YAF is trying to do.
That's part of the purpose of this podcast.
And while the Left, I think, wants to
really suppress our freedom
by appealing to all of our vices,
Senator Cruz and I talked about this
on the PragerU book show.
We talked about "Brave New World"
and the conquering of the people
by cultivating vice.
I think we need to recognize
that to have true freedom,
we have to have some idea of what's good.
Cruz: So that was an amazingly erudite
and well-thought-out answer.
Knowles: Thank you.
Cruz: You know, I will say that number one,
Michael talked about practicing vices.
And I will note that after the last Verdict
we did at Texas A&M,
that you and the entire team came
back to my house in Houston
and we practiced vices.
Knowles: Until about three in the morning.
Cruz: Three in the morning we had some very expensive scotch
and some very good cigars.
And I'll say, you know,
your practice makes perfect.
Knowles: This is the thing.
I keep working on it.
But Senator, to be fair,
the body is a temple and the temple needs incense, okay?
So I'm going to...
[audience laughter]
defend that.
[audience applause]
Cruz: So one of the things I find interesting
in your question
is you said you guys may disagree on this.
And I think that was insightful
because I listened to what Michael said,
and I thought it was quite learned,
and yet I didn't really agree with it.
And you know, I would say there's a distinction.
It may be the Catholic Protestant distinction.
I would say...
I have a more libertarian bent perhaps than Michael.
Knowles: I would say most people.
I think Attila The Hun has a more libertarian bent.
[audience laughter]
Cruz: Look, when you ask what liberty is,
liberty is the right to make your own choices
in your own life.
To think, to speak...
the right to, as John Locke put it,
life, liberty, and property.
One of the famous formulations of liberty
is my right to swing my fist
ends at the tip of your nose.
You have a right to do whatever you wish with your life.
You don't have a right to impinge
on the liberties of others.
You don't have a right to impinge on the rights of others.
There are some in the philosophical world or legal world
that have posited a distinction between
negative liberties and positive liberties.
Negative liberties are essentially, leave me alone.
Don't silence my speech.
Don't prevent me from practicing my faith.
Don't take away my right to keep and bear arms.
Those are negative liberties.
Positive liberties,
and they're typically folks on
the left that are advocating this,
are a liberty to have healthcare,
a liberty to have housing,
a liberty to have...
and it's an entitlement
that is framed as a liberty.
In my view,
liberty is the former and not the latter.
Liberty is the right to be left alone.
Now, what Michael said about
the right to do as you ought...
Yes, I think you ought do as you ought.
That's what ought means.
The power of tautology.
[audience laughter]
But I also think
you have every right not to do as you ought.
And so if you want to exercise
your free will
to be a sloth
or a drunkard,
or to fritter away your life,
you have a right to do that.
Now, I would hope you wouldn't.
I would encourage you not to,
but it is within
the realm of choice for you to make.
And so, in the legal world,
and I'll shift to law,
there's a big debate in constitutional law
that is sometimes viewed as a debate between
Scalia and Thomas.
And it is whether the law protects...
whether the Constitution protects natural rights.
And my view is that the Constitution
limits the power of government,
and there are a host of things.
So for example,
school choice is an issue I'm deeply passionate about.
I've spent 25 years of my life fighting for school choice.
As much as I believe in school choice,
I don't think you should have judges
mandating school choice,
even though it would help kids enormously.
Because I don't think
we should be reading into the Constitution
a mandate for our own personal policy choices.
So when it comes to what liberty is,
I would say I have a
more capacious framing of it,
and I would leave in terms of
urging the virtuous life.
That was a very Aristotelian call on your part.
I think that's a great...
that is a great calling
for pastors and priests and motivational speakers
and anyone seeking to teach us,
anyone seeking to help people
find their calling in life.
But at the same time,
we shouldn't force it.
And by the way,
a natural area this is playing out
is vaccine mandates,
where you have government
trying to force people to make a healthcare decision.
I've been vaccinated.
I believe in vaccines,
I encourage people to get the vaccine.
I also believe you have individual liberty
and the right not to get the vaccine
if you choose not to.
And you're an adult and make your own choices.
And I will say in response to that,
I did tweet out the hashtag, "your body your choice."
[audience laughter]
And the Left lost their mind.
And they just said that no,
you're not allowed to say that.
I'm like, why are you telling people
they got to stick a damn shot in their arm?
I think liberty should have a lot of flexibility
and a lot of room in it,
including the liberty to make stupid decisions.
Because to be honest,
we learn more by mistakes anyway,
and you have the right to do dumb things, too.