deep freedom 305doxical task of developing structures of life and of thought suitable for
a being to which no structure can do justice.
Consider now the practical content of the privilege of dissent from
the regime as well as from the visions and ideals supporting it. Part of
the content of this prerogative is the right not only to criticize the re-
gime and to attack its spiritual foundations but also to act against it by
every form of individual and collective action short of violence and
civil war. It is not good enough to require loyalty to the constitutional
arrangements while professing to allow vigorous criticism of its as-
sumptions. Th e assumptions matter because they are embodied in the
arrangements. Th e arrangements are understood and defended in the
light of the assumptions.
Rules deserve no loyalty; only people merit loyalty. To require loy-
alty to the constitutional rules or to any other impersonal norms is to
invade the inner sanctum of the personality the better to commit an act
of idolatry: the projection on a transitory and fl awed form of or ga ni-
za tion of the reverence that we owe only to the thing itself: the living,
suff ering, transcendent, and situated person.
It is not enough to protect apostasy negatively. It is also desirable to
equip a dissident consciousness with the practical means with which to
sustain a form of life and to advocate its virtues, including access to the
means of mass communication. Federalism should be stretched to al-
low diff erent parts of the country or sectors of the society to develop
counter models of the social future. Th ese affi rmative instruments
must, however, be subject to two vital qualifi cations.
A fi rst qualifi cation is that the dissident group not be allowed, in the
name of its distinctive vision, to oppress its members or to deny them,
as children, the public education that can empower them to rebel
against the community or the faith in which they happen to have been
born.
A second qualifi cation is that the individual be free to escape to an-
other country, constituted in a diff erent way, on the basis of diff erent
understandings. Th us, the division of the world into in de pen dent states
is not only a condition for the development of the powers of humanity;
it is also an indispensable safeguard of freedom. It may, however, lead
repeatedly to war, the danger of which is mitigated by the institutional
minimalism that I earlier described.