The materialist critic often prides himself on being the only adult in the room. He looks at the religious believer, or even the philosophical idealist, and shakes his head. "You are engaged in magical thinking," he says. "You think your beliefs can stop a tank. But only a bigger tank can stop a tank."

This view, which traces its lineage from Machiavelli to Marx, assumes that politics is purely a physics of power. It assumes that thoughts, dogmas, and creeds are merely the exhaust fumes of the material engine.

But this is a superstition of its own. It is the superstition that men are robots moved only by force. History teaches us a different lesson: Men are moved by what they love, what they fear, and what they believe to be true.

The Invisible Dam

Let us look at the concept of "limiting government." How does it actually happen?

It does not happen because of a piece of paper. The Soviet Constitution guaranteed freedom of speech and religion. It was a worthless document. Why? Because the people in power, and the people obeying them, did not believe in the dignity of the individual. They believed in the dialectic of history and the power of the Party.

The American Constitution, by contrast, has (mostly) held back the tide of tyranny for two centuries. Why? Because it rests on a sediment of belief. It rests on the conviction that rights come from a Creator, not the State.

This belief acts as an invisible dam. When a leader wants to seize absolute power, he hits a wall. Not a wall of stone, but a wall of conscience. The soldier refuses to fire. The judge refuses to convict. The citizen refuses to comply. These actions are driven by an internal "belief" that injustice is an offense against a higher law.

The Cynic’s Paradox

The critic says that holding a belief does not limit government. But consider the alternative.

If there is no higher law, and no God to judge the King, then what does limit the government?

The materialist answer is "resistance." We limit the government by fighting back. But fighting back with what? With force? Then we simply replace one tyrant with another. The Bolsheviks overthrew the Tsar to "limit" his oppression, and they built a machine of oppression a hundred times more efficient.

Without a metaphysical limit -- a belief in the sacredness of the person -- revolution is just a rotation of executioners.

The Martyr as the Ultimate Realist

The critic dismisses faith as "magical thinking." But consider the martyr.

When the Roman Empire demanded that Christians burn incense to Caesar, it was a test of political loyalty. The Empire had all the swords. The Christians had only a "belief."

By all materialist logic, the Christians should have been crushed. They had no army. They had no money. They had no political leverage.

But they won. They wore down the greatest military machine in history not by fighting, but by dying. Their "belief" proved to be harder than Roman steel. They demonstrated that there was a part of the human person that the Empire could not conquer. This witness eventually converted the Empire itself.

The Real Magic

The true "magical thinking" is the belief that you can build a free society on a foundation of nihilism.

It is the belief that you can tell people they are merely hairless apes, determined by their genes and their economy, and then expect them to behave like noble citizens who respect the rights of others. It is the belief that you can remove the fear of God from the hearts of the powerful and expect them to limit their own power out of politeness.

That is the fantasy.

The realist understands that the only thing that keeps the wolf from the door is the conviction that the wolf is not the highest power in the universe. We limit the State by believing in something bigger than the State. When that belief dies, the State becomes God, and the age of the gulag begins.