The problem of governing the social commons emerges directly from some of our oldest and most profound debates about democracy: What role should the government play in the lives of individuals? How should we manage, contain, and reform maladapted elements of our society? How should communities nurture and shape their young people to prepare them for the challenges that await them? Does tradition offer us wisdom and guidance, or does it bind us to vestigial social practices inappropriate to modern life? The political scientist Ben Peterson, my guest on this episode of The Glenn Show, meets these questions head on in his forthcoming book, Community, Character, and the Governance of the Social Commons: Sanctuaries of Order. It’s a rigorous blend of social science, political theory, and Christian moral thought that grapples with these issues of agency, responsibility, and human development.
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Ben argues that the institutions most crucial to maintaining order are not police departments or court systems but families, churches, and neighborhoods — the informal institutions where norms are enforced through reputation rather than regulation. Your neighbor seeing you throw trash on the sidewalk may carry a greater consequence than a citation from the police, because your reputation is valuable to you in ways that a fine is not. Viewers of my recent conversation with Steven Pinker will notice parallel themes: the social commons Peterson describes is precisely the terrain where common knowledge and shared norms do their work. We get into real substance: criminal justice reform, where Ben observes that “the left misses morality, the right misses grace”; racial inequality as a supply-side problem — the failure to develop human potential through socialization, family structure, and norms; and the spiritual dimension of human agency, which I believe in deeply, even as I acknowledge that plenty of my colleagues think it’s complete horseshit.
