Hugo, Danny, and Saddam
Reading Paul Weyrich’s article today on Hugo Chavez’s crackdown on the Venezuelan media, and our “free” media’s reaction to it, brought to mind an event from my first term at Michigan State. Our campus parish, like most Catholic parishes around colleges and universities, was unabashedly leftist; still, I was going there for the Eucharist, not the politics, so I tried to shut out all of the nonessentials.
This particular Sunday, however, I couldn’t do so. The pastor announced that ten percent of the Sunday collection would, as always, be donated to a “worthy charity”; this week, that “worthy charity” was the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Giving a tithe to a murderous leftist regime was bad enough, but what really made my blood boil was the fact that Daniel Ortega’s government had, that very week, shut down the independent Catholic radio station--an important focus of opposition to the Sandinistas. I left that church (and, sadly, left the Church, though only for a month) before the Mass had ended, without receiving Communion.
Coming of age politically in the tail end of President Carter’s term, I was wrapped up in debates over Nicaragua. This event, and others, had convinced me that the United States, because of the role that we had played in the overthrow of Somoza, had a moral obligation to the people of Nicaragua to rid them of the Sandinistas. It took me years to realize why I was wrong.
In the West, we tend to place pride as the first of the seven deadly sins. (In the East, it’s usually gluttony or acedia (sloth).) That means that true repentance requires, always, a certain humility. Good confessors know that, when a man can undo the damage wrought by his sin, he should, and they will ask him to; but they also know that, sometimes, he cannot do so, and encouraging the delusion that he can is likely simply to confirm the sinner in his pride, which will lead to further sin.
What’s true of men is true of nations, and the problem in Nicaragua in the 80’s, and Iraq today, is our prideful insistence that we can set right that which we messed up. We couldn’t then, and we can’t now, and all that our refusal to admit, in humility, that we cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again is likely to bring is more death, destruction, and chaos. Pulling out of Iraq is one bad option among many bad options; the action can be redeemed, however, if it becomes an opportunity for the United States to grow in humility. Then, perhaps, we’ll be less likely in the future to rush in where angels fear to tread.
As, for instance, into Venezuela.
Catholicism | Conservative | Iraq war
Comments
Mr Richert, have you ever thought about abandoning Gringo Paleoconservatism and signing on to European Christian Democracy? When I mention this tradition to Gringos, many of whom are somewhat educated, I get either blank stares or the supposition that I’m talking about Dimmykrats who are Christians. I urge you to at least investigate this tradition with the Wikipedia article q.V. “Christian Democracy”—an article grossly inadequate, but it’s a start.
Paleoconservatism, where I once hung my hat, may have died anyway with Sam Francis anyway. And maybe its demise is for the best; for it could never shake itself in Gringoland of racialism, Judeophobia, and nationalism—three things alien to the Möser-Burke- de Maistre- Chateaubriand movement’s principles.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
An excellent post by Mr. Richert.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Mr. Cundiff, I’m familiar with various European Christian Democrat movements and parties. And the connections to Catholic social teaching, on which I’ve spilled more than a few words, make it a very attractive theoretical option. In practice in Europe, it’s often been less attractive.
The main problem with what you propose, however, is that there is no Christian Democrat tradition in the United States, nor is there much of a foundation on which to build one. It’s simply not an American movement. Paleoconservatism is.
Don’t be too quick to write us paleos off, or to tar too broadly with the brush of “racialism, Judeophobia, and nationalism.” Chronicles has already lasted 20 years longer than the neocons thought that we would . . .
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Thank you, Mr. Richert, for you thoughtful reply to my posting.
1. In that posting I was a bit hasty, so let me clarify: I do not wish to suggest by no means that anyone at Chronicles is racialist, nationalist, or Judeophobic. And I particularly abhor Cultural Marxists (or anyone else)using these terms in a McCarthyite manner. I am suggesting instead that some paleos have been slow about purging these diseases from the movement, and have thus given ammo to the paleo’s enemies.
2. You are right that there is no Christian Democratic tradition in the US. So ... join me, and there will be two of us! And there is indeed no foundation for it, so let’s lay one!
3. What is more, I have a liberal democratic friend (and I mean Liberal Democracy in the European sense, not the American) who says we really don’t have a CONSERVATIVE tradition in the US, nor do we have the foundation for it. The Federal US was founded before the Counter-Revolutionary
movement really got off the ground (Möser excepted, and probably unknown in the Anglophone world), the High Tory Cavalier Royalists in Virginia of 1641 were Whig by 1775,
The Anglican Church on both sides of the sea isolated the High Church and became Latitudinarian in 1688, the remaining American High Tories left by 1783, and Conservatism just died in Gringoland. Jefferson thought Tommy Paine really cool—and Paine sure ain’t conservative! In England itself it took a century for real Conservatism to recover after 1688, except for Johnson, and Jacobitism was considered shear treason.
Jefferson’s tradition remains was un-conservative save for its localism and agrarianism. The only remaining US of A conservative intellectuals are Henry Adams (an agnostic) and T.S. Eliot (who got out of Dodge), and maybe Kirk. Maybe the case can be made for a minor figure, Irving. My friend wonders if Roger Scruton is the only conservative in England. I think my friend is correct in these opinions. Perhaps Paul Gottfried’s upcoming book will change my judgement.
I have been accused of playing games with words. So, I am using “conservatism” the way Karl Mannheim used it. Chateaubriand coined the term, and I think we should let his movement own it. This movement produced, late in its history, only two major card-carrying Judeophobes and nationalists, Drumont and Maurras (they weren’t racialists, and so they weren’t Anti-Semites,unlike Schönerer), and for Maurras Judeophobia wasn’t a foundational principle but cheap trick to rally support to his nationalism (he knew Dreyfus was innocent), and his “integral nationalism” was tempered by his very strong regionalism. He was also more Orleanist than Legitimist, and one could ask (I don’t know) if his royalism was just another prop for this nationalism. And until on his deathbed, he was the self-described “Catholic atheist”.
Otherwise by the late 19th C, many real conservatives were becoming proto-Christian democrats: Le Play, Keller La Tour du Pin in France; in Germany Ketteler, Pesch, and the founders of the Zentrum; and in England Manning.
I welcome correction.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“I do not wish to suggest by no means that anyone at Chronicles is racialist, nationalist, or Judeophobic” should read: “I do not wish to suggest by any means ...”
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give Taki's Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. Personal attacks, ethnic slurs, the riding of hobby horses and the beating of dead ones will be deleted as soon as they are detected by our small but alert staff. Repeat abusers of this policy will be barred from leaving comments. All comments reflect only the views of those posting them and not necessarily those of this website, its editors, or authors. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
Commenting is not available in this section entry.