Natural Law, Herbert Spencer, Donald Trump and American Values

• In Event: 3477 - The 2018 Midterm Election and Beyond: Electoral Politics during the Trump Presidency

Abstract

Donald Trump promised a return to American Values but Americans hold a range of values from individual rights to the common good. However, values change over time and the ongoing culture war is polarizing political opinion and affecting voting behavior. The values held by conservatives and Trump supporters are more traditional and religious than the progressive and secular values held by liberals. We can make sense of Trump’s American values by considering Herbert Spencer’s ideas about natural law, and his legacy among twentieth and twenty-first century American conservatives. Parsons, in his typology of American Values, noted the historical primacy of religious values in America focusing on ‘This Worldly Asceticism’, which is externally oriented to support rational instrumental (economic) action by individuals. In contrast, ‘Salvationism’, which is also religiously based and externally oriented, is consummatory, that is, oriented to realizing and following value-expectations by observing universal and unchanging rules sanctioned by God’s will. Natural law is not positive law enacted by governments, but underlies the ethical and legal norms in a society. Spencer supported natural law over positive law and drew upon natural law when arguing for individual liberties and a minimalist state. Both natural law and Spencer’s political views are explicitly evident in Breitbart News and the dissent of Justice Thomas in the same-sex marriage case. Spencer’s principles are evident in the Conservative Manifesto of 1937, the1960 Sharon Statement of the Young Americans for Freedom and the Trump administration’s implemented and proposed regulation rollbacks.

Author

• Harry Perlstadt, Michigan State University