I still would recommend that you read Natural Law and Natural Rights by John Finnis, but this is certainly a book that political scientists will appreciate having at the elbow, since it is seminal in its critique of modern political-social policies and ideologies. At a time when our nation is at war with Islamic fundamentalism under the pretense of spreading democracy (traditional liberalism), it seems essential to many that our political philosophy should be reassessed to make sure that it actually is founded upon a rigorous underpinning such as natural law, that is, a real right and wrong that is universal. The author, founder of the American Public Philosophy Institute, proposes rightly that this is the only way to justify any of our actions here and abroad. This of course places the political sphere squarely in the argument over private morality, which immediately draws fire from the Left, but which can also find itself at odds with the Right. (For example, many fundamentalist evangelicals do not believe in natural law, although all Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox technically do.)



Political theorists such as Rawls, Gutmann, Raz et al are the current defenders non-natural law theory, and Wolfe interacts with their views competently and convincingly, demonstrating the inherent weakness of their position, which is that the State doesn't take any sides on moral issues. Wolfe shows that it is absurd to argue for the State's absence on moral issues (as it is so wont to do if moral liberals had their way) since it begs the question of natural law by using the leftist definition of human nature and thus public reasoning- i.e. the State sanctions whatever the majority want. What is most dangerous with the leftist approach, and central to the foreign policy question, is that without a functional belief in natural law, there is no point of reference to convince those who do not already assume the by-product to be true- that is, the core democratic values including self-determination, rule of law, human equality, etc. In this way, the clash of civilizations is really a clash of orthodoxies: do universal human rights really exist or are their social constructs that can change. If it is the latter, then we better reassess our policies, since we have under that orthodoxy zero moral authority since there are zero moral truths at all.

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