Is it the individual citizen who is more important in a free society, or is it the government? It's easy to see this as the philosophical choice during this election season: One side seems to favor the liberty of the individual, while the other favors the primacy of the government.
But apparently it's not so simple.
In a provocative essay in the Weekly Standard titled "The Real Debate," conservative writer Yuval Levin challenges the individual-versus-government cliché by explaining that "what matters most about society happens in the space between those two, and that creating, sustaining, and protecting that space is a prime purpose of government."
He adds: "The real debate forced upon us by the Obama years -- the underlying disagreement to which the two parties are drawn despite themselves -- is in fact about the nature of that intermediate space, and of the mediating institutions that occupy it: the family, civil society, and the private economy."
The problem, according to Levin, is that these mediating institutions have become a source of bitter ideological conflict. As he sees it, the bigger government becomes, the more it threatens the health of these institutions that live in the middle space.
"Progressives in America have always viewed those institutions with suspicion," he writes, and have sought to empower the government to put in place "public programs and policies motivated by a single, cohesive understanding of the public interest."
Conservatives have resisted such a gross rationalization of society, Levin writes, and "insisted that local knowledge channeled by evolving social institutions -- from civic and fraternal groups to traditional religious establishments, to charitable enterprises and complex markets -- will make for better material outcomes and a better common life.
"The life of a society consists of more than moving resources around, and what happens in that space between the individual and the government is vital -- at least as much a matter of character formation as of material provision and wealth creation. Moral individualism mixed with economic collectivism only feels like freedom because it liberates people from responsibility in both arenas."
But real freedom, Levin says, is "only possible with real responsibility. And real responsibility is only possible when...
