The Fall of Orban's "Illiberal Democracy." Fukuyama Was Right.

 

        Viktor Orban with J. D. Vance and Rod Dreher in Washington, D.C., November 2025

     

                                                                        Peter Magyar

"It's nice to have a strong man running your country."  That's what Donald Trump once said about Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary.  One indication of his political strength is that he has been Prime Minister since 2010, which makes him the longest serving Prime Minister in Europe.

But that could be ended by the parliamentary elections coming up on April 12, because polling shows that Peter Magyar is leading Orban in the race to become the next Prime Minister.  Magyar is a former Orban loyalist in Orban's Fidesz party who now leads the opposition party Tisza.

If Orban loses, that would signal the collapse of the international right-wing movement for populist nationalism because Orban's illiberal regime in Hungary has been the model for that movement.  That explains why Trump and Vance have endorsed Orban for reelection, and why Vance has been visiting Hungary to support Orban.  There are reports that Vance will appear with Orban at a campaign rally in Budapest a few days before the election.  Trump and Vance are desperately worried that Orban's defeat would be a crushing blow to the international MAGA movement.

But Magyar's victory would be just the final nail in the coffin for Orban's regime, which has been in decline for years now.  There are at least three signs of that decline.  Orban's policies for strengthening Hungary's families have failed to raise the female fertility rate.  Orban's promotion of a "Christian Hungary" has failed to revive Hungarian Christianity.  And, finally, huge numbers of Hungarians have been voting with their feet against Orban's regime by emigrating to Western European countries that offer them a better life than what they can have in Hungary.  The fact that these emigrants are going to those European nations that rank high on the Human Freedom Index confirms the argument of Francis Fukuyama that most human beings today regard the liberal social order that secures human freedom as the best regime.

THE ILLIBERAL STATE

As a young student and lawyer, Orban was originally a liberal anti-communist.  In 1988, he was one of the founders of the Alliance of Young Democrats (with the acronym FIDESZ), which challenged the Hungarian Young Communist League.  In 1989, Fidesz became a political party that supported the overthrow of the communist regime in 1990.

In 1989, Orban studied at Oxford University on a research fellowship funded by George Soros, the Hungarian-born philanthropist whom Orban now denounces as the conspiratorial funder of liberal causes in Eastern Europe.

In 1990, he left Oxford early so that he could return to Hungary to run in the first post-communist parliamentary elections.  He was elected a Member of Parliament, and he became a leader in Fidesz.

In 1994, after Fidesz lost the parliamentary elections badly, Orban decided that if he was to have any chance of becoming Prime Minister, he would have to move Fidesz away from its center-liberal position and towards the sort of right-wing populism that had propelled Silvio Berlusconi to become prime minister of Italy (Higgins 2025; Szelenyi 2022).  He was willing to change his political principles if he thought that would help him win votes and gain political power.  And, indeed, he became prime minister in 1998.  But he lost the general election in 2002.

In 2010, Orban returned as prime minister, and this time, he wanted to make sure that he would remain in power for many years.  He began silencing or taking over media outlets that he considered hostile to Fidesz.  He had the government fund an elaborate propaganda apparatus serving Fidesz.  He wrote a new constitution that would make it difficult for his opponents to win control of the parliament.  He removed the civil service protection for many government employees, and replaced them with his loyalists. He also took control of the courts so that he could appoint judges loyal to him.  

All of this supported what Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way (2002, 2010) have called "competitive authoritarianism."  Somewhere between a fully authoritarian regime and a fully democratic regime, a competitive authoritarian regime has multiparty elections, but they are not completely free and fair, because the incumbent's abuse of power tilts the electoral playing field against the opposition, and basic civil liberties are restricted to make it hard for the opposition to challenge the ruling party.

Under competitive authoritarianism, opposition forces can compete seriously for power.  And, occasionally, the opposition can win an election, and the incumbents lose.  But this regime is still not fully democratic, because the ruling party uses its power over the government to attack opponents and co-opt critics.

These three regime types are distinguished by the kind of countervailance--power checking power--that they allow.  A fully authoritarian regime allows little or no countervailance.  A fully democratic regime allows strong countervailance.  A competitive authoritarian regime allows weak countervailance.

In a speech in 2014 that attracted attention around the world, Orban explained that "the new state that we are constructing in Hungary is an illiberal state."  He said that this would break away from the principles of liberal democracy that had dominated the global regime (including Hungary) from 1990 to 2010.  Beginning with the global financial crisis of 2008, he argued, it had become clear that the Western liberal social, economic, and political order based on the principle of individual freedom had failed.  This created an opening for newly emerging global powers based on illiberal nationalism--nations like Singapore, China, India, Russia, and Turkey.

Previously, Orban observed, the liberal states in Western Europe had been organized around the liberal principle of individual freedom: "With regard to the relationship between two people, the starting point of the liberal organization of society is based on the idea that we have the right to do anything that does not infringe on the freedom of the other party."  Here Orban paraphrased the definition of freedom adopted by John Locke--freedom as not being constrained or coerced by others, so long as one does not infringe on the same freedom for others (see Locke, Second Treatise, para. 57).

Notably, Orban did not completely reject this liberal principle of freedom.  But he did insist that this would not be the central organizing principle of the illiberal state.

What is happening in Hungary today can accordingly be interpreted by stating that the prevailing political leadership has today attempted to ensure that people's personal work and interests, which must be acknowledged, are closely linked to the life of the community and the nation, and that this relationship is preserved and reinforced.  In other words, the Hungarian nation is not simply a group of individuals but a community that must be organized, reinforced and in fact constructed.  And so in this sense, the new state that we are constructing in Hungary is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state.  It does not reject the fundamental principles of liberalism such as freedom, and I could list a few more, but it does not make this ideology the central element of state organization, but instead includes a different, special, national approach.

So Orban's illiberal state would secure some individual freedom, but there must also be a "national approach," because "the Hungarian nation is not simply a group of individuals but a community."  Here you see why the conservative communitarian critics of liberal individualism--like Patrick Deneen, Roger Scruton, and Rod Dreher--have all made their pilgrimages to Budapest to honor Orban and receive his praises for their promotion of Orbanism in the United States and the UK (Szelenyi 2022).  Dreher moved to Budapest in 2022 so that he could be a part of Orban's propaganda operation--particularly, the Danube Institute, a state-backed think tank for disseminating Orban's ideology (Worth 2026).

I should say, however, that the Danube Institute does show some commitment to the liberal principle of open debate and freedom of thought.  Their mission statement includes this passage:

Our primary audience is the universe of centre-right intellectuals, political leaders, and public-spirited citizens. But we will also engage our counterparts on the democratic center-left in vigorous and principled public debate on as many occasions as possible and appropriate. We hope to draw upon the best minds of our day across national boundaries in international forums.

A recent example of their commitment to the liberal principle of intellectual freedom and debate is their event debating the question "Is Liberalism a Threat to Religious Liberty?"  One of the invited participants was Andrew Koppelman, a law professor at Northwestern University, who is best known for his philosophic and legal arguments for gay rights.  His response to the proposed question was to suggest that this was a weird question, because since religious liberty originated as a principle of Lockean liberalism, to suggest that liberalism could threaten religious liberty was nonsensical.

If you peruse the website of the Danube Institute, you can see their concern for thinking through all of the themes of Orban's illiberal state, two of the most prominent being Christianity and family life.

DECLINING CHRISTIANITY

In 2018, Orban declared that Hungary must be a "Christian democracy," and "a Christian democracy cannot be liberal" (Orban 2018).  A Christian democracy cannot be liberal because "it gives priority to Christian culture" over all other cultures, and therefore it denies the liberal principle of multiculturalism.

But Orban was vague about what exactly he meant by "Christian culture."  Most confusing was his claim that in affirming the importance of Christian culture, he was not affirming any Christian doctrines of faith.

Christian democracy is not about defending religious articles of faith--in this case Christian religious articles of faith.  Neither states nor governments have competence on questions of damnation or salvation.  Christian democratic politics means that the ways of life springing from Christian culture must be protected.  Our duty is not to defend the articles of faith, but the forms of being that have grown from them.  These include human dignity, the family, and the nation--because Christianity does not seek to attain universality through the abolition of nations, but through the preservation of nations.  Other forms which must be protected and strengthened include our faith communities.  This--and not the protection of religious articles of faith--is the duty of Christian democracy.

Orban's statement is incoherent.  On the one hand, he says that a Christian democracy must be illiberal.  On the other hand, he says that a Christian democracy must not enforce any religious articles of faith and must secure the freedom of all "faith communities," which sounds like the liberal principle of religious liberty and toleration.  

Christian democracy would be truly illiberal if it meant some form of Christian integralism or theocracy (like medieval Catholicism or 17th century Massachusetts Bay Colony).  But clearly Orban does not want that.  If he doesn't want the state to enforce any religious doctrines, that sounds like liberal democracy.  Indeed, Rod Dreher has said that authentic Christianity "can't exist if liberal democracy goes away" (Worth 2026, 36).  And as Koppelman pointed out, when the Danube Institute defends religious liberty, they're defending a fundamental principle of Lockean liberalism.

Moreover, if Christianity supports "the preservation of nations," as Orban says, does that mean the preservation of nations with diverse religious traditions?  Europe has some predominantly Muslim countries--such as Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Turkey--and in some cases, these Islamic traditions go back to the Middle Ages.  So it would seem that Orban's nationalism would have to allow for Islamic nationalism.  But then Orban's Christian democracy has been interpreted by many of his supporters as a defense of Christian Europe against Islam.

Another problem here is that by insisting that the state must not enforce any religious doctrines, Orban implies that religious freedom should include freedom of thought for atheists.  The fundamental religious doctrine of monotheism is "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth" (the Apostle's Creed), and if Orban does not think the state can enforce belief in that doctrine, then he must think that atheists are free from persecution.

So in saying that Christian democracy supports Christian culture but not Christian doctrines, Orban implicitly endorses the kind of atheistic religiosity promoted by conservatives like Roger Scruton, who want to enjoy the religious feelings that sacralize a national culture but without the religious belief in the real existence of God outside the human mind.  (The vacuousness of ritualized Christian culture without Christian belief was manifest three years ago in the coronation of King Charles III as the Christian King of Great Britain.)

But in the long run, believing in the importance of Christian culture without believing in the truth of Christian doctrines fails to slow the decline of that Christian culture.  We can see that in Orban's Hungary.

According to the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, the majority of Hungarians do not identify themselves as religious.  In the census of 2022, 42.5% identified themselves as Christians, 1.3% as non-Christian religious believers, 16.1% as not religious, and 40.1% refused to answer.  Since it's unlikely that religious believers would refuse to answer the question, those who did refuse are probably not religious.  That means, then, that 56.2% of Hungarians do not identify themselves as religious.  And since most of the houses of worship in Hungary reportedly have few people attending, we can assume that most of those who identify themselves as religious are not devout believers.

If creating a Christian democracy in Hungary means that at least a majority of Hungarians are serious Christians, then Orban has failed to achieve that.

But that doesn't mean that Christianity cannot rebound in Hungary.  The number of Catholics and Reformed Protestants has dropped by about one half in 20 years.  But Hungary's fastest growing Christian church is the Hungarian Faith Church, which is a charismatic Pentecostal form of Christianity.  With its headquarters in Budapest, it has over 150,000 members, of which over 70,000 are in Hungary.  In a nation of 9.8 million people, those are impressive numbers when you consider that this church was founded as recently as 1979 by seven Hungarians.  Notably, Orban's son Gaspar Orban converted in 2014 to the Faith Church, and he has even become a minister in the church who claims to have received revelations from God and witnessed miraculous healings.

As I have argued, Christianity originated as a charismatic or Pentecostal form of religion rooted in animistic shamanism.  Animism was the first religion, and shamans were its first practitioners.  The religious experience of animistic shamanism is the natural seed in the human mind from which all subsequent religions have evolved.

The defining feature of Pentecostal doctrine is the teaching that all true Christians can be filled with the Holy Spirit, and the most prominent gifts of the Holy Spirit include healing, praying, prophesying, and preaching through speaking in tongues.  Here we see, once again, Christians becoming shamans who, through extraordinary states of ecstasy, engage with divine entities and provide services like healing and divination.

                              A Fresco of the Pentecostal Dove, Symbolizing the Holy Spirit

As long as we have liberal social orders with religious liberty, we will have free markets in religion that will allow the more charismatic Pentecostal religions to gain a growing share of the market because they appeal to the natural human desire for religious transcendence in making contact with the spiritual world through shamanic practices.  Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religious movement in the world, with over 600 million adherents worldwide.  So while Christianity in general might be in decline today in Hungary and elsewhere, we can expect a continuing revival of charismatic Christianity.

DECLINING FAMILIES

One reason why Christian culture is so important for Orban is that he sees it as supporting the traditional family with lots of children.  And that's important because families having and rearing many children resolves what Orban has said (in a 2017 speech) is "the greatest existential question for European civilization"--Will the drastic decline in Europe's population continue until there are hardly any Europeans left?

In that 2017 speech, Orban lamented that the population of Hungary had declined from 10,709,000 in 1980 to 9,799,000 in 2017, so that in less than 40 years, Hungary had lost almost a million people, which was more than all the casualties that Hungary sustained in World War II.

Orban announced that "Making Families Strong Again" would be the motto for the Hungarian government's family policies directed to raising the birth rate.  He explained:

It is important to highlight that the restoration of natural reproduction is a national cause; and it is not just one national cause among many, but the national cause.  And it is also a European cause: not just one European cause among many, but the European cause.  The goal of the Government of Hungary is to raise our birth rate to 2.1 per cent by 2030, which would be a replacement rate for our society.  At present, this figure stands at 1.5 per cent.

The technical term for the birth rate is the "total fertility rate" (TFR), which is a measure of an imaginary woman who passes through her reproductive life subject to all the age-specific fertility rates for the ages 15-49 that were recorded for a given population in a given year.  So this rate is the number of children a woman would have if she was subject to prevailing fertility rates at all ages from a single given year, and if she survived throughout all her childbearing years. 

If there were no mortality until the end of a woman's childbearing years, the replacement level of TFR would be around 2.0.  The replacement fertility rate is close to this for most industrialized countries.  For the global average, the TFR at replacement is about 2.33.  Here "replacement" means maintaining the present level of population into the future.

The drop in fertility rates that has occurred in most of the wealthier nations over the past hundred years has been called "the demographic transition" by demographers.  In the most developed societies today, the rich and powerful tend to have low fertility rates, and it's the lower class people who have higher fertility rates.  So as societies become wealthier, the total fertility rate for the whole society tends to drop, and over the past 70 years, it has dropped below replacement levels.

I have argued that one can explain this in Darwinian terms through the "embodied capital theory of human life history."  In the developed societies, the economic and social success of children depends ever more on their acquired technical skills and educational training, so that as adults they can compete for jobs that require special talents and knowledge. Consequently, rearing successful children in such societies requires that parents make increasingly costlier investments in the education of their children.  And as the cost of children has thus increased, the quantity of children demanded by parents has decreased, because parents now express their natural desire for parenting successful children by investing more resources in fewer children, thereby choosing quality over quantity in their children.

Moreover, for human beings to be able to invest so much in their children, they must first invest time and energy in their own education and career development and in the search for suitable mates.  Consequently, successful people in modern developed societies must often delay their marriage and having children, and thus the average ages for getting married and having the first child have risen.  When women do this, they sometimes reach the end of their reproductive years, and so produce fewer children than they would have desired.  It's likely that one reason for the total fertility rate falling below replacement levels is that couples who desire two or three children delay marriage and reproduction for so long that the women reach the end of their physiological fertility sooner than they had expected.  Then couples must rely on fertility treatments or adoption to satisfy their parental desires.

Orban has been trying to reverse this tendency to lower fertility through governmental policies that promote marriage and large families.  Hungary has a large per-child tax deduction that gets progressively larger with the second and third child.  Mothers of two or more children are exempt from paying income taxes for the rest of their lives.  Women with three or more children can have all of their student loan debt cancelled.  Families with home mortgages can have a large portion of that debt paid by the government in proportion to the number of their children.  The government has built or renovated infant day care centers around the country, and day care costs are heavily subsidized by the government.  The government has also built "family-friendly" infrastructure in the cities, such as beautiful playgrounds and parks, where parents can take their children to play.

But as of now, it appears that all of these pro-family policies have failed to raise the fertility rate.  In 2011, when Orban first became prime minister, Hungary had Europe's lowest TFR at 1.23.  By 2021, it had risen to 1.61.  But in 2025, it was back down to 1.27--essentially, the same all-time low as in 2011.

It is possible that policies designed to incentivize having more children may have had the opposite effect.  For example, providing tax exemptions for mothers of two children might provide a work incentive for those mothers.  European women are career-minded, and giving them tax exemptions could be reinforcing the idea that they should be earning more money, which directs the mother to invest more time and energy in her career rather than in her children.

When it comes to housing, Hungary's policy of subsidizing mortgages could be increasing the demand for housing but not the supply, which creates bidding wars that make homes less affordable.

Now let's consider how Hungary compares with the United States with respect to population growth and the fertility rate.  Unlike Hungary, the population of the U.S. has been growing steadily for over a hundred years.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of the U.S. has grown every year since 1900, except for one year during the Spanish flu epidemic, growing at an average of 0.85% per year since 2000.  As of today, the population of the U.S. is 342,415,867, which makes it the third largest national population in the world, behind only India and China.

This is surprising since the TFR for the U.S. is only 1.79, which is substantially higher than Hungary's 1.23, but it's still below the replacement level of 2.1.  What explains the growing population despite the below-replacement TFR is immigration.  Consider these calculations for the U.S. from the U.S. Census Bureau:

One birth every 9 seconds

One death every 10 seconds

One international migrant (net) every 97 seconds

Net gain of one person every 45 seconds

This shows that the mistake make by Orban's Hungary has been in limiting immigration into Hungary.  If Hungary had allowed more freedom of movement of immigrants into Hungary, comparable to that allowed by the U.S., Hungary could have had an increasing population.

Now, of course, if Trump's policies for closing the U.S. borders and deporting immigrants continues, this could reverse the century-long trend towards increasing population and bring about the sort of depopulation crisis that has afflicted Hungary.

This supports my argument for open borders and freedom of movement.

DECLINING FREEDOM LEADS TO DECLINING POPULATION

I have pointed to two causes of Hungary's declining population--low fertility rates and low rates of immigration into Hungary.  But there's a third cause: the emigration of Hungarians out of Hungary.

According to Hungary's Central Statistical Office, a total of 367,515 Hungarians have officially left the country during the 15 years that Orban's Fidesz government has been in power.  This is actually an underestimation because foreign statistics often record nearly twice as many new arrivals from Hungary as Hungarian authorities do departures.  Another reason for this being an underestimation is that many Hungarians living abroad retain a Hungarian address.  Adjusting for these factors, there could be as many as 640,000 Hungarian emigrants who have left the country.  Notably, most of these emigrants are aged 25-49 years old--the prime age for people who could contribute to the economic and social life of Hungary.

What's most interesting about these emigrants is that prefer to emigrate to countries that rank high on the Human Freedom Index.  This should not be surprising if one recognizes, as I have argued, that countries ranking high in freedom tend to provide the best conditions for people to live good lives because they have wider opportunities for freely pursuing their happiness.

Here are the five most popular destinations for Hungarian emigrants, with their Human Freedom Index ranking in parentheses: Austria (22), Germany (17), UK (19), Netherlands (9), and Switzerland (1).

By comparison, Hungary ranks 67th out of 165 countries.  Previously, Hungary ranked much higher at 26th in 2009 the year before Orban's Fidesz came to power.  Hungary's rankings have dropped steadily during Orban's time as prime minister.

So Hungarians are voting with their feet against Orban's illiberalism and for freedom secured in a liberal social order.  Declining freedom thus leads to declining population.

LIBERAL DEMOCRACY AT THE END OF HISTORY?

This failure of Orban's illiberal Christian democracy confirms Francis Fukuyama's famous argument in 1989 for "the end of history," in which human beings show their natural desire for the freedom--both economic and personal freedom--that comes from liberal democracy.

Actually, the appeal of the liberal principle of individual freedom is so powerful that even Orban cannot reject it completely.  As we've seen, Orban accepts the importance of securing that Lockean liberal conception of freedom in any good regime, although this cannot be the central organizing principle of his "illiberal state."  Consequently, Orban's "illiberal state" is not absolutely illiberal.  Someone like Rod Dreher (2023) can even defend Orban as the "guardian of liberal freedoms"!

We can see this in Hungary's rankings in the Human Freedom Index.  Under the rule of Orban's Fidesz party from 2010 to the present, Hungary's freedom ranking has fallen from 26th to 67th out of 165 countries.  But notice that a 67th ranking puts Hungary well above the world average.  Most countries rank lower.  Here are some examples of the lower ranking countries:  Mexico (91), Indonesia (92), India (110), Kuwait (113), China (149), Russia (152), and Iran (164).

If you look at how Hungary ranks in the various categories of personal freedom and economic freedom, where 10 is the highest possible score, you will see that Hungary ranks low in "rule of law" (4.9), "expression and information" (5.4), and "size of government" (6.1).  But Hungary ranks high in "freedom of movement" (9.9), "security and safety" (9.6), and "freedom in relationships" (8.8).

Thus, Orban's illiberal democracy is really very liberal, but not liberal enough for those Hungarians who have voted with their feet against Orban by leaving the country, and for those who will vote against him in the coming election.

REFERENCES

Dreher, Rod. 2023. "Orban: Guardian of Liberal Freedoms." The Critic, November.

Higgins, Andrew. 2025. "Viktor Orban's 'Propaganda State' Is Starting to Show Cracks." New York Times, October 12.

Levitsky, Steven, and Lucan Way. 2002. "The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism." Journal of Democracy 13 (April): 51-65.

Levitsky, Steven, and Lucan Way. 2010. Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Orban, Viktor. 2014. "Speech at the 25th Balvanyos Summer Free University." July 26. Tusnadfurdo (Baile Tusnad), Romania.

Orban, Viktor. 2017. "Speech at the 2nd Budapest Demographic Forum."  May 25.

Orban, Viktor. 2018. "Speech at the 29th Balvanyos Summer Free University." July 28.

How Leo Strauss Predicted the Nietzschean Nihilism of Trump's Intellectuals

                                                                          Leo Strauss

Francis Fukuyama has published an essay for Persuasion on "A Chilling Prediction by Leo Strauss."  He reproduces an excerpt from a lecture on "German Nihilism" that Strauss gave in 1941 at the New School for Social Research.  In his prefatory remarks, Fukuyama says that we should find this text "chilling" because Strauss's intellectual analysis of the young German nihilists supporting Hitler's Nazism describes perfectly the thinking of those far-right intellectuals who today are supporting Trump.

Just like the German nihilists described by Strauss, Fukuyama observes, American far-right thinkers today--like Adrian Vermeule, Patrick Deneen, Curtis Yarvin, and Costin Alamariu ("Bronze Age Pervert")--want to destroy liberalism because it is morally degrading in promoting the soft hedonism of the open society rather than the hard heroism of the closed society. 

This points to Strauss's primary claim in his lecture:  "German nihilism desires the destruction of modern civilization as far as modern civilization has a moral meaning." He explained: 

It is a moral protest.  That protest proceeds from the conviction that the internationalism inherent in modern civilization, or, more precisely, that the establishment of a perfectly open society which is as it were the goal of modern civilization, and therefore all aspirations directed toward that goal, are irreconcilable with the basic demands of moral life.  That protest proceeds from the conviction that the root of all moral life is essentially and therefore eternally the closed society; from the conviction that the open society is bound to be, if not immoral, at least amoral: the meeting ground of seekers of pleasure, of gain, of irresponsible power, indeed of any kind of irresponsibility and lack of seriousness.

Strauss saw that the intellectual godfather of this German nihilism is Friedrich Nietzsche--the Nietzsche who scorned the ignoble pleasure-seeking life of the "Last Man" based on the slave morality dictated by the Christian principle of the equal dignity of all human beings, which denied the master morality of the few noble masters fit to rule over the multitude of inferior human beings.  In foreseeing the future emergence of a new nobility of those few superhuman higher men entitled to enslave the many subhuman lower men, Nietzsche has had a seductive appeal to those young nihilists who imagine themselves becoming the masters at the top of the natural order of rank in a new hierarchical closed society at war with its liberal enemies.

As Strauss indicated, what made this intellectual attitude "nihilistic" was that while it was clear about what it denied--liberalism--it was not clear about what it affirmed because its preferred alternative to liberalism was vague.  Since its No was more emphatic than its Yes, it was nihilistic in its passion for destruction--for Nothing--without offering any vision of what exactly would replace liberalism.

Similarly, Fukuyama suggests, today's "post-liberals" have no coherent conception of what should replace liberalism.  On the one hand, Deneen and Vermeule seem to want something like Catholic integralism--a Catholic theocracy enforcing a religious morality.  On the other hand, Yarvin and Alamariu are atheists who want to return to some kind of pagan hierarchy enforced by a strong, even tyrannical, government.  All that the two sides have in common is their hatred of liberalism.

This hatred of liberalism is also what moved the German nihilists to support Nazism.  And, as Fukuyama indicates, Strauss seemed to clearly reject Nazism in his 1941 lecture when he identified it as the "lowest, most provincial, most unenlightened and most dishonorable form" of German nihilism.  But still, Strauss argued, liberals needed to understand the nihilistic roots of illiberal politics in order to see the power of the Nietzschean nihilistic critique of liberalism.  Fukuyama thinks the same is true today in America: liberals need to understand why the American far-right intellectuals hate liberalism and why that hatred of liberalism as rooted in Nietzschean nihilism has such an appeal for many people today--particularly, the young men supporting Trump.  

Actually, Fukuyama does not explicitly mention Trump in his remarks, but the implicit reference to Trump is clear.  It should be noted, however, that while Fukuyama explains the far-right intellectuals supporting Trump as illiberal nihilists, he has explained Trump himself as motivated not by any ideology but by what Nietzsche called ressentiment--"acute resentment of others based on wounded pride, perceived disregard, fears of inadequacy, and a desire to exact revenge on those who had earlier failed to pay adequate respect."  I have explained this resentment as an expression of Trump's chimpanzee grandiose narcissism.  Moreover, Fukuyama has suggested, the core of the MAGA movement is mostly moved not by any ideology--like the illiberal nihilism of the far-right intellectuals--but by the shared resentment of people who think they have not been respected by those who belong to the elites and look down on them with disdain.  This explains why Trump's staunchest supporters will remain loyal to him even when they suffer economically from his policies--such as high tariffs that will harm many of Trump's voters.

I agree with everything Fukuyama says here.  By the way, I also agree with Fukuyama's defense of liberalism as first announced in his 1989 "End of History?" article.  

But I do think Fukuyama misses three crucial flaws in Strauss's reasoning that should come out of a careful reading of his "German Nihilism" lecture that are pertinent to our understanding of, and our response to, both German and American nihilism.  

First, Fukuyama does not notice Strauss's quiet endorsement of the "young nihilists" that Will Altman and others have identified as evidence that Strauss was attracted to the nihilism of the Nazis.  

Second, Fukuyama also does not notice that in naming Nietzsche as the godfather of illiberal nihilism, Strauss failed to recognize Nietzsche's support for liberalism in the writings of his middle period (particularly, Human, All Too Human).  

Third, Strauss had also failed to see how philosophic proponents of liberalism like John Locke and Adam Smith had shown that liberalism cultivates the moral and intellectual virtues, which refutes the charge of the illiberal nihilists that liberalism must be ignoble and degrading.

Since I have previously elaborated each of these points, I will only briefly summarize them here with links to previous posts and references to the 4th edition of Political Questions (PQ4).

STRAUSS'S NAZISM?

Fukuyama's excerpt from "German Nihilism" does not include this passage:

I have tried to circumscribe the intellectual and moral situation in which a nihilism emerged which was not in all cases base in its origin.  Moreover, I take it for granted that not everything to which the young nihilists objected was unobjectionable, and that not every writer or speaker whom they despised, was respectable. . . . Let us then not hesitate to look for one moment at the phenomenon which I called nihilism, from the point of view of the nihilists. . . . A new reality is in the making; it is transforming the whole world; in the meantime there is: nothing, but--a fertile nothing.

Notice that in taking "the point of view of the nihilists," Strauss actually goes a long way towards endorsing their position: some (most?) of that to which the nihilists objected really was objectionable, and some (most?) of the writers and speakers whom they despised really were despicable.  This is one piece of evidence cited by Will Altman for his provocative claim that Strauss supported Nazi nihilism in its attack on liberalism (PQ4, 491-99).

In "German Nihilism," Strauss took "the point of view of the nihilists" in explaining their argument that an illiberal "closed society" was ennobling, while a liberal "open society" was degrading.  Any reader of Strauss will know that he often embraced this idea that every healthy society--and particularly, the premodern societies like Athens and Sparta--was a closed society as opposed to the modern open societies of liberalism that inevitably became corrupt.  Actually, as I have argued, Athens was a much more open and liberal society than Strauss was willing to admit--that's why the philosophical schools of Plato and Aristotle could flourish in Athens but not in Sparta.

Strauss did not allow "German Nihilism" to be published while he was alive.  It was not published until 1999 (in Interpretation), which was 26 years after his death in 1973.  Was this because he feared that it was too open in suggesting his sympathy for German nihilism?

Similarly, Strauss's praise of Martin Heidegger in "Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism" was not published until 1989 (in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism), 16 years after his death.  Heidegger joined the Nazi Party in 1933.  He offered vigorous philosophic defenses of Hitler and the Nazi Party.  And he never apologized for his support of the Nazis--right up to his death in 1976.

Strauss had been a student of Heidegger, and he praised Heidegger as the greatest thinker of the twentieth century.  In "Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism," he left his reader doubting whether there was any good refutation of Heidegger's Nazi attack on liberalism:

All rational liberal philosophic positions have lost their significance and power.  One may deplore this, but I for one cannot bring myself to clinging to philosophic positions which have been shown to be inadequate.  I am afraid that we shall have to make a very great effort in order to find a solid basis for rational liberalism.  Only a great thinker could help us in our intellectual plight.  But here is the great trouble: the only great thinker in our time is Heidegger.

Notice how emphatic Strauss is in using the word "I" here.  He once explained that one form of esoteric writing was to use the word "we" to seemingly endorse a common opinion, rather than saying "I," which suggested that one was truly endorsing that opinion. 

This is part of the evidence supporting Altman's argument that Strauss saw himself as the culmination of the "Third Wave of Modernity" that overthrew liberalism--first Nietzsche, then Heidegger, and finally Strauss.

Although I am not fully persuaded by Altman, I am persuaded that he has proven that Strauss often implied some endorsement of the Nazi attack on liberalism, and he never publicly and emphatically rejected Nazi nihilism and affirmed liberalism--as did some of his friends like Hans Jonas.  That was a moral and intellectual failure on the part of Strauss. 

NIETZSCHE'S DARWINIAN LIBERALISM

Another of Strauss's failures was in saying that Nietzsche initiated the Third Wave of Modernity that would lead to the illiberal nihilism of Nazism.  Although this might be true for the early and late writings of Nietzsche that were so often praised by the Nazis, it is not true for the writings of the middle period, and particularly Human, All Too Human.

In this book, Nietzsche defended a Darwinian liberalism that rejected many of the main ideas of his later writing--such as the celebration of the Ubermensch (the Superman or Overman), which became a theme for the Nazis.  

One can make a good case (as Bruce Detwiler does) for "Dionysian aristocratic radicalism" as the political teaching of Nietzsche in his early and late writings.  But one also needs to recognize that Nietzsche's endorsement of liberal democracy rooted in Darwinian evolution in the writings of his middle period contradicts what he says in his other writings.  Then, if one compares those two teachings, one can make a good argument that Nietzsche's Darwinian aristocratic liberalism is morally and intellectually superior to his Dionysian aristocratic radicalism (PQ4, 457-60).  This is Nietzsche's defense of liberalism against the attack of the German nihilists.

Strauss failed to see this.

LOCKE AND SMITH ON LIBERAL VIRTUES

Strauss also failed to see how Locke and Smith had made powerful arguments for liberalism's moral and intellectual virtues.  One of Strauss's most influential pieces of writing--particularly among the far-right intellectual critics of liberalism--is his interpretation of Locke in Natural Right and History, which presents Lockean liberalism as promoting a vulgar and soul-deadening soft hedonism, which Strauss famously called "a joyless quest for joy."  This is the Locke that "post-liberals" like Patrick Deneen have scorned.

But as I have argued, this ignores much of what Locke wrote about how a free society secures the liberty that allows for the cultivation of moral and intellectual excellence--including the freedom to live the philosophic life (for people like Strauss!) (PQ4, 489-91).  So, while critics of liberalism like Deneen insist that Lockean liberalism teaches "pursuit of immediate gratification" and the "absence of restraints upon one's desires," he says nothing about how Locke contradicts this claim in Some Thoughts Concerning Education.  In that book, Locke stresses the importance of parents educating their children so that they have a sense of shame in caring about their good reputation (secs. 56, 61, 78).  Locke says that "the great principle and foundation of all virtue and worth is placed in this, that a man is able to deny himself his own desires, cross his own inclinations, and purely follow what reason directs as best though the appetite lean the other way" (sec. 33). "It seems plain to me that the principle of all virtue and excellency lies in a power of denying ourselves the satisfaction of our own desires where reason does not authorize them" (sec. 38). Children must be taught that "covetousness and the desire of having in our possession and under our dominion more than we have need of" is "the root of all evil" (sec. 110). 

Above all, Locke insists, children must be taught and habituated to show "civility"--respect and good will to all people (secs. 66-67, 70, 109, 117, 143-44). Here Locke's emphasis on the need for "civility" is part of what Norbert Elias identified as the "civilizing process" promoted by early modern liberalism to overcome the incivility, violence, and corrupt manners of medieval pre-modern Europe.  Deneen and Strauss are silent about all of this.

They are also silent about Smith's argument about how a liberal society--"allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice"--promotes the moral and intellectual virtues.  Strauss said almost nothing about Smith, but Strauss's thinking about liberal political philosophy shaped the interpretation of Smith developed by Joseph Cropsey, Strauss's student and colleague.  Cropsey claimed that in Smith's "commercial society," commerce takes the place of virtue.  But as I have indicated, Cropsey ignored or played down everything Smith said--particularly, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments--about how the moral and intellectual virtues are cultivated in a free society (PQ4, 340-48).

Moreover, Cropsey was completely silent about how Charles Darwin saw that Smith's moral philosophy was confirmed by his scientific theory of moral evolution, and how this has been deepened by the evolutionary studies of morality over the 150 years since Darwin's Descent of Man (PQ4, 316-28).

Strauss and the Straussians have failed to see how a careful reading of Nietzsche, Locke, and Smith can reveal the nobility of liberalism in securing the liberty that makes virtue possible, thus refuting the moral critique of liberalism by the illiberal nihilists, including those today who try to provide the intellectual justification for Trump's illiberalism.

Ten Principles of Darwinian Lockean Liberalism, Part Two

NATURAL PUNISHMENT

3.  The natural rights to life, liberty, and property are enforced in the state of nature by every individual having the natural right to punish offenders of the natural law--either through forcible punishment or through reputational punishment.

Locke thought that in the state of nature, everyone had the "executive power of the law of nature" to punish those who violated the natural law that no one was to harm another.   Locke claimed that in the state of nature, there is a law of nature "that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions" (ST, sec. 6).  But then he immediately qualified this no-harm principle by saying that one may rightly harm another in punishing someone for an offense against the law of nature.  This must be so because the law of nature could not be a true law if it were not enforced by punishment of those who violate it.  Enforcing the no-harm principle requires harming those who would harm us.

In the state of nature, Locke explained:

"The Execution of the Law of Nature is in that State, put into every Mans hands, whereby everyone has a right to punish the transgressors of that Law to such a Degree, as may hinder its Violation.  For the Law of Nature would, as all other Laws that concern Men in this World, be in vain, if there were no body that in the State of Nature, had a Power to Execute that Law, and thereby preserve the innocent and restrain offenders, and if any one in the State of Nature may punish another, for any evil he has done, every one may do so.  For in that State of perfect Equality, where naturally there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one, over another, what any may do in Prosecution of that Law, every one must needs have a Right to do" (sec. 7).

Notice that Locke did not rely on divine punishment to enforce the law of nature.  The law of nature, like all the other laws that concern "Men in this World" would be in "vain" if individual human beings did not punish the offenders of that law.  This punishment has two distinct purposes: restraint and reparation (secs. 8, 10-11).  Punishing for restraint is to prevent or deter misconduct, and everyone has the right to punish for this purpose.  Punishing for reparation belongs only to the injured party, who seeks some recompense for the damages he has suffered.

Locke indicated that this human punishment of offenders in the state of nature works at three levels.  Through first-party punishment, individuals punish themselves through conscience and guilt (secs. 8, 21, 122, 209).  Through second-party punishment, individuals punish their tormentor through retaliation and revenge (secs. 8, 10-11, 18-19).  Through third-party punishment, individuals can join with those who have been injured unjustly for a collective punishment of the offender (sec. 10).

Locke also distinguished two general kinds of punishment.  In the Second Treatise, Locke stressed forcible punishment as punishing with physical force those who have inflicted physical harm on their victims, which included capital punishment of thieves and murderers (ST, 11, 17).  In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke identified reputational punishment as a second form of natural punishment: by the "law of reputation," established by a "tacit consent" in "the several societies, tribes, and clubs of men in the world," social opinion calls whatever is socially praised virtuous and whatever is socially blamed vicious; and those who disobey this law are punished with a bad reputation (II.28.10).  In Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Locke advised parents that they should use this law of reputation--social praise and blame--as the most powerful means for shaping the moral character of their children: this was "the great secret of education" for cultivating the moral and intellectual virtues in children and particularly for instilling "civility"--a "respect and good will to all people" (secs. 56-65).

Since the moral standards of this law of reputation vary across cultures, Locke was criticized for being a moral relativist who denied the eternal natural law.  But he responded to this criticism by insisting that despite the cultural relativity, there was some universal regularity in the reputational standards of morality--so that "as to the main, they for the most part kept the same everywhere" (ECHU, II.28.110).

Darwin agreed with Locke.  In his Descent of Man, Darwin explained the evolution of the natural moral sense as rooted in the evolved social instincts of human nature that make human beings intensely attentive to the approbation or disapprobation of people in their social groups, so that they want to have the good reputation for displaying praiseworthy virtues and avoiding blameworthy vices (2004, 120-151).  

Evolutionary anthropologists studying the ethnographic record have confirmed this by finding that there are universal social norms of moral good and evil enforced in societies around the world and throughout history by reputational punishment--norms of social cooperation that include helping kin, loyalty to one's group, bravery, generosity, fairness in social exchange, and respecting property rights (Curry, Mullins, and Whitehouse 2019; Westermarck 1906).

These ethnographies of foraging bands show that they form moral communities through agreement on moral rules and then enforce those rules through the forcible and reputational punishment of deviants (Boehm 2012).  Through gossip, ridicule, and shunning, those who violate the rules are punished with bad reputations, and people will refuse to cooperate with them.  The most pervasive means of reputational punishment, deeply rooted in our evolutionary history beginning with our hunter-gatherer ancestors, is gossip (Boehm 2012; Feinberg et al. 2012; Feiberg et al. 2014; Hoebel 1955; Raihani and Bshary 2019; Wiessner 2005; Wu et al. 2016a, 2016b).  Through gossip, we ridicule, shame, or denigrate people for their bad behavior and thus punish them by giving them a bad reputation that imposes social costs on them.  Empirical studies have shown that most human speaking time--perhaps 65% across cultures--is devoted to gossip (Dunbar 2004).

If reputational punishment is not enough to enforce obedience to the rules, then the community can use coercive force, such as expelling deviants from the group, or, in the worst cases, killing them.  Nevertheless, foragers resort to capital punishment only rarely, and usually it's to punish a murderer.

Forcible punishment creates two possible problems.  The group can be torn apart by conflict.  Or an angry relative of a person killed can take vengeance on the executioner.  To avoid these problems, the group must reach a consensus on the punishment and even persuade the close relatives of the victim to cooperate.  In rare cases, the entire community might participate in the execution.  Or, more commonly, the group will delegate a close relative of the victim to do the killing.

Executing a bully is often dangerous for the executioner, however, because bullies are often formidable and aggressive enough to fight back and harm the executioner.  The solution to this problem, is killing at a distance.  There is plenty of evidence that human beings evolved for throwing and shooting projectiles--rocks, spears, arrows, and bullets--that can kill even the strongest opponent from a safe distance (Bingham 1999, 2000; Bingham and Souza 2009).

Some ancient cave drawings provide evidence for this.  For example, rock drawings from a cave at the stone age site of Remigia, Castellon, Spain, dated to sometime before 6500 BC, show this.  In one drawing, we see that on the right there are ten men jubilantly holding their bows over their heads.  On the left, we see a man lying on the ground with exactly ten arrows sticking in his body or on the ground.  Given what we know about hunter-gatherer foragers in the ethnographic record, it's more likely that the victim here was a deviant member of the band who had violated the moral rules of the band--perhaps by murdering someone--and he was becoming a bully who was trying to assert his dominance over the group (Boehm 2017).   One study of the ancient rock drawings in the inland regions of the Iberian Mediterranean basin identified forty-nine scenes of violent content (such as battles, ambushes, and fights), which included eight scenes of "execution squads" (Lopez-Montalvo 2015).

CONSENT TO GOVERNMENT

4.  To overcome the insecurity of natural rights in the state of nature, where every individual is judge in his own case, and his judgment is often distorted by his personal bias, human beings have consented to formal governments to secure their natural rights through formal laws and institutions for making, enforcing, and adjudicating impartial laws.

Locke recognized that there are at least three problems with relying on the individual right to punish to enforce the law of nature in the state of nature (secs. 123-126).

First, there's the problem of knowledge:  many individuals do not have a clear and unbiased knowledge of the law of nature.  In the Letter Concerning Toleration (43), Locke says that the American Indians are "strict Observers of the Rules of Equity and the Law of Nature."  But in the Second Treatise (sec. 123), he says that in the state of nature "the greater part" of men are "no strict Observers of Equity and Justice."  In fact, some men are so "degenerate" that they have no knowledge of the law of nature, and they become like wild animals in their violent attacks on others (ST, secs. 10-11, 128).

Second, there's the problem of partiality: individuals being partial to themselves often cannot render impartial judgment in their own cases, and they are often negligent or unconcerned in judging the cases of others.

Third, there's the problem of cost:  punishment can be too costly to execute, because the offender will fight back and inflict injury on those who try to punish him.

To solve these three problems, people will give up their powers in the state of nature for legislating, judging, and executing the law of nature (secs. 128-131).  They will consent to enter a political society with governmental institutions for legislating, judging, and executing positive laws for the whole community that conform to the law of nature.  This can solve the problem of knowledge, because the legislative power will publicly promulgate the laws.  This can solve the problem of partiality, because the judicial power will decide legal cases through impartial and fair judges.  This can solve the problem of cost, because the executive power will employ the collective force of the community to punish lawbreakers in ways that minimize the costs of punishment for individuals.  All of this should serve the common good of the whole community--in securing the natural rights of all individuals to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

So while Locke disagreed with Hobbes' claim that the state of nature was always a state of war, Locke agreed that there was such a propensity for the state of nature to become a state of war that people would consent to government to secure a more peaceful life.  Some anthropologists have objected that hunter-gatherer societies have been generally peaceful, even calling them the "harmless people" who have never known war (Fry and Soderberg 2013).  

But Darwinian anthropologists have argued that if hunter-gatherers appear to be peaceful, this is because usually by the time anthropologists have contact with them, the foragers have come under state control, which has had a pacifying effect, just as Hobbes and Locke said: because the state of nature easily becomes a state of war, people will benefit from having governments to enforce laws collectively that dampen their tendency to violent conflict.  Once anthropologists probe into the distant history of foragers, they discover a history of extreme violence that was reduced once they came under governmental authority (Boehm 2012; Lee 1979, 370-400; Wrangham and Glowacki 2012).  

For example, the most violent society ever studied by anthropologists are the Waorani, living in the remote Ecuadorian rainforest, among whom for some time about 60% of all deaths were homicides.  The Waorani themselves wanted to end the killing, and they were happy when they came under a governmental authority that reduced the killing (Robarchek and Robarchek 2008).

Of course, even if people have consented to government to secure their peaceful enjoyment of their natural rights to life, liberty, and property, that government can itself become the greatest threat to their rights.  The inevitable conflicts of interest that arise in every community will incline those with political power to use that power to favor their own interests over the interests of others, and thus government will often fail to promote the public good in securing the natural rights of all.  If government becomes utterly tyrannical, then the rights of those being exploited are less secure under government than they would have been in the state of nature, because in a tyrannical government, the rulers can use the collective force of government to exploit the ruled (secs. 91-93).

Although Locke spoke of individuals "wholly giving up" their right to punish offenders against the law of nature in consenting to government, he made it clear that individuals could reclaim this right whenever they were thrown back into the state of nature (ST, 99, 127-130).  So, for example, we have the natural right to kill a thief who threatens our life and property if there is no officer of government available to protect us, because when the thief exercises force without right against us, and there is no common judge with authority to protect us, we are in a state of war with that thief (18-19).

Similarly, if a tyrannical government exercises force without right in threatening our life, liberty, and property, we can rightly defend ourselves against that government that has put us into a state of war (199-204).

Moreover, even if in consenting to government, we have partially given up our natural power of forcible punishment of those who threaten us, we still retain our natural power of reputational punishment of people through our power of approving or disapproving their conduct, and thus enforcing by popular opinion our social standards of virtue and vice (ECHU, II.28.10-11).

What Locke calls the law of reputation is what evolutionary theorists of cooperation--beginning with Richard Alexander (1987)--have called "indirect reciprocity."  In direct reciprocity, we reciprocate the cooperation or defection of others: if you scratch my back, I will scratch yours (Trivers 1971).  In indirect reciprocity, we reciprocate someone's reputation for cooperation or defection:  if you have the reputation for scratching other people's backs, I will scratch yours.  In large societies, where we need to interact with many people who are not our kin, and with whom we have not had any previous interactions, we rely on their reputations to decide whether we can trust them; and our social happiness depends on our maintaining our own good reputations for being virtuous people.

Insofar as Locke saw this moral law of reputation as compatible with individual liberty, he would have agreed with Friedrich Hayek's criticism of John Stuart Mill's "no-harm principle" in On Liberty.  Mill wrote:

"The object of this essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties or the moral coercion of public opinion.  That principle is that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any f their number is self-protection.  That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.  His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. . . . The only part of the conduct of anyone for which he is amenable to society is that which concerns others.  In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute.  Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign" (1956, 13).

Following this principle, Mill condemned "social tyranny" as "tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling" and the "despotism of custom." 

Hayek disagreed: "the fact that conduct within the private sphere is not a proper object for coercive action by the state does not necessarily mean that in a free society such conduct should also be exempt from the pressure of opinion or disapproval. . . . John Stuart Mill directed his heaviest attack against such 'moral coercion.' . . . it probably makes for greater clarity not to represent as coercion the pressure that public approval or disapproval exerts to secure obedience to moral rules and conventions" (1960, 146).  In a free society, Hayek believed, society but not the state enforces moral virtue.  The enforcement of moral rules through the social pressure of public approval or disapproval should not be seen as coercion (1960, 62-63, 402, 451).

When Patrick Deneen (in Why Liberalism Failed) scorns Locke's liberalism for its "atomistic individualism" and its failure to cultivate the moral virtues of social life, he says nothing about this--about how Locke insisted on the importance of promoting social virtue through social praise and blame.

Locke thought he could understand the history of government by studying the history of the American Indians.  From his reading of Jose de Acosta and Gabriel Sagard, Locke learned that there were at least three stages in the evolutionary history of government in indigenous America.  

First, among the pure hunter-gatherer Indians, there were no formal governmental institutions, but there were informal leaders selected by the people of each band to mediate disputes and to lead them in war.  Second, among the horticultural tribes, there was a government by councils, in which leaders would have to win the consent of the council members for any decision.  In these first two stages, people enjoyed the freedom that came from government by popular consent that looked like a kind of democracy.

Acosta's third stage was that of autocratic monarchy or empire--like that of the Incan Empire or the rule of Montezuma in Mexico.  Originally, this was a "moderate rule" that is the best, in which the kings and nobles acknowledged that their subjects were "equal by nature and inferior only in the sense that they have less obligation to care for the public good."  But later this monarchic rule became tyrannical as the rulers treated their subjects as slaves and treated themselves as gods (Acosta, 346, 359, 402).

Today, political anthropologists and paleo archaeologists who study the evolutionary history of government have seen a roughly fourfold evolution--from bands to tribes to chiefdoms to states--that resembles Acosta's three levels.  For example, in the political history of Indigenous North America, there seems to have been a movement from democratic bands and tribes to autocratic chiefdoms and then back to democratic bands and tribes (DuVal 2024; Hamalainen 2022).

For thousands of years, the first American Indian settlers in North America lived as egalitarian hunter-gatherer-fishers in bands with informal leaders whose power depended on persuasion rather than coercion.

Then, between 1500 BC and 500 AD, there is evidence for the systematic cultivation of corn, beans, and squash, which allowed some tribal peoples to settle into horticultural villages that were probably governed by tribal councils and leaders with popular consent.

Around 900 AD, a climate shift (the Medieval Warm Period) brought rising global temperatures, which lengthened growing seasons and supported more intensive and systematic farming.  This eventually allowed for the emergence of cities with centralized power structures.  The best known of these cities are Hohokam (Arizona), Cahokia (Illinois), and Moundville (Alabama).  At the peak of their power, these cities were ruled by elite chiefs and priests exercising religious, political, and economic dominance over the commoners.

But then there was another climate shift around 1300 towards colder, drier, and more unstable weather (the Little Ice Age).  Harvests began to fail, and famines became more common.  By 1400, the cities of Cahokia, Moundville, and Hohokam were abandoned.  People no longer wanted to live in centralized hierarchical cities ruled by elites who exploited the people under them.  Trade, religion, and politics became more democratized in that people chose to live in small foraging bands and horticultural tribal communities where decisions were made by popular consensus.

This popular rebellion against exploitative elite rule illustrates the fifth principle of Locke's political philosophy.

To be continued . . .