On the Liberating Constraints of Truth and Virtue

Have you noticed that schools often have a mission to equip students to change or even to remake the world? That they view liberty as simply the state of being unfettered, so that all constraints must be abolished in order for man to be truly free?

Chesterton recognized that this romantic view tends not toward freedom but to nothingness, not toward empowerment of the self, but to the diminishment of the world:

[T]he moderns imagine that romance would exist most perfectly in a complete state of what they call liberty. They think that if a man makes a gesture it would be a startling and romantic matter that the sun should fall from the sky. But the startling and romantic thing about the sun is that it does not fall from the sky. They are seeking under every shape and form a world where there are no limitations—that is, a world where there are no outlines; that is, a world where there are no shapes. There is nothing baser than that infinity. They say they wish to be as strong as the universe, but they really wish the whole universe as weak as themselves. –G.K. Chesteron, On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family

An education dedicated to liberating students from all limitations, including reality itself, is not merely in error—it is tragic. It is like sending out a mariner to chart his course, but rather than providing him with a compass, telling him that he has been freed from the constraints of direction...and then wishing him well. Classical education recognizes that true liberty is found in a life constrained by virtue and conformed to the truth. We will not send out sailors without a compass.