Against Socialism by Saint Raphael of Brooklyn, Now Available!
- John Coffman
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
Uncut Mountain Press has now released the fourth book in their series of writings by Saint Raphael of Brooklyn. Against Socialism evaluates the atheistic principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which came to be idolized in the West. Get your copy here!
From the chapter on Liberty
Suppose I wanted to grant liberty not to specific individuals but to an entire nation. Would such liberty bring good or evil to that nation?
Before answering this question, we must carefully consider three natural facts that exist in every human group, namely:
First: In every nation or sect, and even within each part of it, the number of foolish and immoral people far exceeds the number of rational and moral people (i.e., wise and educated people). Or, as Voltaire says: “The ratio of fools and wicked to wise and educated people is one hundred to one.”[1]
Second: When the wise and the educated resist the foolish and the wicked, they use only lawful means. As for fools and wicked people, they are capable of using both permissible and forbidden means in the defense of their misbehavior. For this reason, fools and wicked people are usually much stronger than wise and educated people, not only in terms of numbers but also in terms of means, especially in countries that value liberty.
Third and finally: What follows from these two truths (namely that vice prevails over virtue) is that it spreads like an infectious disease to those wise and literate[2] people who are weak-willed. Since those with weak will are more numerous than those with strong will in every place and time, we observe that in countries of freedom in particular, the number of rational people is decreasing, while the number of fools and wicked people is increasing and multiplying.
Knowing these three truths, which apply to every nation or human group in every place and time, we answer the question above by saying that as long as humans are unable and will never be able to discover or invent a way to make all humans, or at least most humans, be born rational, literate, and strong-willed, then freedom, whether granted to an entire nation or to a sect within it, can only be an evil that ultimately leads to the corruption of that nation or sect in general and of every individual within it in particular.
ENDNOTES:
[1] Voltaire, De la paix perpétuelle (On perpetual peace), Paris, 1769.
[2] Publisher’s Note: Historically, “literacy” meant that aspect within the ruling classes of mastering the great religious, philosophical, epic, and classical texts in order to legitimize their authority, train in statecraft, improve moral judgment, refine character, and have a common cultural expression that would be familiar in the larger Western world; this deep, difficult literacy was the chief proof that one was qualified to rule. However, during the Industrial Era (around 1830 to 1914), Western states introduced compulsory mass primary education explicitly to create factory workers and soldiers who could read simple instructions, timetables, safety signs, forms, etc. The bar for “literacy” was deliberately lowered to basic functional literacy, while deep classical literacy was kept as a privilege of the smaller number of people that pursued higher education. Consequently, contemporary global literacy rates count almost everyone who can read and write simple everyday sentences, saying almost nothing about whether anyone can still engage with the demanding classics that once defined one who was educated and qualified to rule. The definition became quantitative, overthrowing the traditional qualitative definition. For more information see: Heers, Archpriest Peter, Formation in the Love of Truth (Florence, AZ: Uncut Mountain Press, 2024).
SOURCE:
Hawaweeny, Saint Raphael of Brooklyn, Against Socialism (Florence, AZ: Uncut Mountain Press, 2026), pp. 22-24.