A reader writes:

As you’ve observed quite often, among the worst trends in the lobby for immorality is the argument “consent makes all things good”. It occurred to me this afternoon that the number of propositions a person will consent to is usually a measure of gullibility rather than of any sort of “hipness” quotient. Such an argument recalls Spinal Tap’s David St.Hubbins spouting “I believe everything I read, and I think that makes me *more* selective than someone who doesn’t believe anything … “, right? I ordinarily like to hope, at least, that most people aren’t that dim, (though admittedly we don’t hear from *most* people, just the noisy ones) so if this is a trend, what might really be driving it? And I began to wonder if among the driving forces were not the notorious notion of “contract”. It seems to me that “contract”, a document witnessing or even enacting specific mutual consent among persons, is one of the most pervasive legal notions available, and certainly one evoking shudders and a sort of reverence for those who understand their intricacies. Great swaths of just governmnent theory invoke an unwritten “social contract”, and modern political states are typically formalised by a constitution, an approximation to such a social contract, though what court will uphold them and what police will enforce is often in doubt. It’s as though ethical reasoning about law has, in some people, reached the state that *contract* is the sole gauge of license, and any law to the contrary is outdated.

As it is, I know precious little about actual contract law in any jurisdiction, so my musing sort-of bogs down in this vague condition.

I’m not even sure what I’m really asking in this email. I’m curious whether it agrees with anything you’ve noticed, what other people might think — but I don’t think I’ve got an actual “question” or “suggestion” I want to throw out to the world, just yet.

I hope you enjoyed a blessed Epiphany Day.

I suspect much of what you are getting at here is summed up by Chesterton’s remark that “When you reject the big laws, you do not get freedom. You do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.” A culture chooses not to live in the freedom of Christ is a culture that is choosing, whether it likes it or not, to live under increasingly restrictive laws of men. That’s why our culture strains to tear itself apart between hedonism and crazed litigiousness.