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Why I mention "Filmer" now and then

The Royal Oak in which Charles II hid to escape capture by the Roundheads is a prominent symbol of Toryism


A word about Robert Filmer. His name makes an occasional appearance in this blog, mostly in contexts in which I'm warning about abuse of, or excessive claims for, supreme executive power.

I noticed years ago that many libertarians invoke Thomas Hobbes in contexts like that. The dangerous proposed new regulation or evidentiary privilege is "Hobbesian," gasps the writer. I generally agreed that it -- whatever had provoked this outburst on a given day -- is a bad thing, but I grew tired of the ritual invocations of Hobbes there, especially where they didn't fit all that well.

After all, Hobbes was a very secular thinker. He was wary of religion because in his own lifetime he had seen religious fervor lead to an open challenge to the sovereign, and he had seen THAT challenge lead to a civil war that must have looked a bit like a war of "all against all" to him.  He was a member of the Church of England, but he clearly explained that he was so because his sovereign willed it so. He was willing to have his earthly King instruct him in how to worship the Heavenly King -- which implies that he didn't really believe in the Heavenly King at all, in the sense in which believers generally believe. He was happy to make professions of faith, but they were for him a performance as required, not a description of the universe.

When executive authority overreaches in the US, it is rarely done with Hobbesian secularism and cynicism. After all, our system and our cultural baggage come to us largely from those Puritans who raised that challenge to Hobbes' sovereign, that challenge that so terrified him into an embrace of the son of the man they were to execute. In our system, over-reaching by the executive is not Hobbesian. It involves the view that the Heavenly King told me to worship the earthly one, not the reverse.

It is Filmeresque. If I wanted to get all Low Church, I would call it Cromwellian. Or, sticking to the intellectuals of the 17th century, I'd call it Miltonic. But I'll stick with the High Church It is Filmeresque.
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