Wendell Berry

THE COMEDY BEGINS WHEN THESE TWO RUGGED OR
“AUTONOMOUS” INDIVIDUALISMS CONFRONT EACH OTHER.
CONSERVATIVE INDIVIDUALISM
strongly supports “family values” and abominates lust. But it does not dissociate
itself from the profits accruing from the exercise of lust (and, in fact, of
the other six deadly sins), which it encourages in its own advertisements. The
“conservatives” of our day understand pride, lust, envy, anger, covetousness,
gluttony, and sloth as virtues when they lead to profit or to political power.
Only as unprofitable or unauthorized personal indulgences do they rank as
sins, imperiling salvation of the soul, family values, and national security.
LIBERAL INDIVIDUALISM
on the contrary, understands sin as a private matter. It strongly supports protecting
“the environment,” which is that part of the world which surrounds,
at a safe distance, the privately-owned body. “The environment” does not
include the economic landscapes of agriculture and forestry or their human
communities, and it does not include the privately-owned bodies of other
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people --all of which appear to have been bequeathed in fee simple to the
corporate individualists.