Ron Paul and Pius IX
I wrote here once before about the repartee that keeps the snarks flying between me and my beloved lady Texan. I noted that each of us treasures his own impossible dream. In mine, the Habsburg monarchy is restored in Central Europe, accepting the voluntary fealty of most of its historic realms (I don’t expect the Czechs, but given the horrid policies of Germany, we just might get the Bavarians. The Flemish, perhaps?) My beloved is also subject to fantasies: In hers, the United States is governed according to the text of its Constitution, the rights of localities are respected as the U.S. founders intended, and the rights of private property, freedom of association, and freedom of contract are honored by the State—which eschews “entangling alliances” and confines its activities mostly to guarding the borders and enforcing legal contracts.
I know—what a pair of crackpots! In a good nanny state, the Authorities would step in and prevent us from marrying. The only folk who really ought to be in the business of breeding fall into one of two categories:
Canny Fathers: The initiates of the Noble Lie, who like Leftists have “seen through” the myths of revealed religions and traditional societies. Unlike Leftists (whose egalitarianism drives them to share these unsettling truths) these intellectuals are flexible enough to support these myths in the hope of keeping their servants honest (Voltaire), their nations vital (Charles Maurras) and the masses compliant to rule by their “betters"(Allan Bloom, Leo Strauss). Distinguishing characteristics: graduate degrees from the U. of Chicago’s program in Social Thought, pasty complexions, and bylines in Commentary.
Cannon Fodder: The true believers who sign up to die for one or more such noble lie, the zealots who pay the bills and cast the votes that keep their “betters” in power—and whose sons fight the wars that give chickenhawks Left (Darfur, Kosovo) and Right (Iraq, Iran) a thrill of borrowed masculinity. Distinguishing characteristics: gold stars in windows, foreclosed mortgages, debilitating combat injuries, plots at Arlington.
The ascendancy of John McCain exquisitely points up this duality on the Right. Indeed, it’s hard to tell which side of the divide McCain is playing. (Not to diminish his heroic behavior in prison… but is John McCain the last man alive to realize that the Vietnam war was a fraud—a Great Society program conducted via napalm, a desegregration order enforced via B-52s?) In fact, this may be the element in McCain’s personality which renders him such a fascinating (indeed, Manchurian) candidate: He really loves Big Brother. The rallying cry of the Republicans for the general election in 2008 is obvious--the motto that will rally its convention, recur in its TV ad campaigns, and hang on banners behind candidate McCain (in lieu of “Mission Accomplished")> Expect to hear this in 30 second ads for the next 10 months: ”Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.”
Arguing with the neocons is like whizzing onto a mushroom cloud, so let me return to my first theme: Is there any reconciling the principles of traditional conservatism (that is, Throne and Altar) with the founding themes of the American Republic? Or is Paul Gottfried right to suggest that there never was any real common ground between the American resistance to bureaucracy at home and Communism abroad, and the European reactionary tradition to which some of the most eloquent self-styled “conservatives” (Russell Kirk, Whittaker Chambers, Erik von Kuehnhelt-Leddihn) sometimes appealed? I go into this question in much greater depth in my book on Wilhelm Röpke—the economic genius who helped form the policies that launched the postwar German “miracle.” In the book, I point out how Röpke synthesized the insights of classical economics and liberalism with what is best in the European Right—the Counter-Enlightenment, the Agrarian and Distributist movements, and the regionalist resistance to centralizing bureaucracies.
However, there’s one key issue which Röpke never addressed, which has troubled my discusssions in recent years with both conservative Christians, and consistent libertarians: Doesn’t an honest person have to come down, in the end, on the question of whether or not he supports a state-sponsored Church? Furthermore, how could someone whose ideal regime would partake in a variety of “statist” acts in pursuit of the Common Good make common cause with libertarians who oppose almost any such actions? Should Christians in America support the dismantling of the secular school bureaucracy, and the growth of home-schooling and parochial education—or attempt to “reform” the existing state bureaucracy, and somehow infuse it with “values”? Should American Christians favor a state which suppresses immoral forms of association (pornographic film companies, racist organizations) and supports the formation of wholesome ones (religious orders, charities)? Or should we ask only liberty for our own congregations and convents, and oppose the others by persuasion?
There’s a long list of activities which a pope such as Pius IX, Leo XIII, or even Pius XII would have considered the duty of a Christian ruler—including the promotion of a specific creed, the enforcement of marriage laws based closely on Christian sacramental principles, the suppression of “vice” and “immoral” literature, just to name a few. Now, apart from the first of these (rejected in the U.S. First Amendment) most of these same activities were performed by state and local governments in the United States—well into the 1960s. While the most “popular” of our Founders (those quoted by secular historians) were mild Deists, M.E. Bradford documented the fact that most of the men who voted for the Declaration and for the Constitution were convinced Augustinian Christians. They would have agreed heartily with 95 percent of what papal politics called for. This common ground was one reason why Catholic immigrants were able, in large part, to assimilate to America and eagerly cleave to such a deeply Protestant country.
There were weaknesses, alas in this great, ecumenical compromise. The Enlightenment rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence was an ever-present temptation to transform the ethos by which an English-speaking settlement had chosen to govern itself into an ideological machine—an abstraction which men would come to love instead of their country, whose dictates (like those of Jacobin France and Bolshevik Russia) would always prevail over the nation’s or people’s best interests. A “propositional nation” is no place where men and women should have to live—any more than they ought to contract propositional marriages, or bear propositional children. The centralizing tendency massively reinforced by the Civil War (and the “incorporation doctrine” later applied to the 14th Amendment) ensured that every issue of significance would ultimately be federalized. There could be no room for difference in laws on anything that really mattered—from marijuana to marriage. What is worse, it subjected to the anti-Establishment clause (which the Founders applied only to Congress) every local law and school board decision—meaning that the U.S. would move from a broadly Christian country with a stern safeguard against the attempt to impose a single church, to one whose government must by its internal, Constitutional logic become a rigidly secularist regime. Deprived of the support of religion, even the implications of natural law (such as heterosexual marriage) would ultimately be subject to the withering logic of pure individualism (on the one hand) and egalitarian group activism (such as I discussed last Friday).
By the mid-1960s, court decisions had sliced through and gutted most of the residual Christian content of American laws, and begun to homogenize our legal standards from Juneau to Tuscaloosa—the better to meet the lowest common denominator favored in Greenwich Village. Despite occasional outbursts of resistance—a few Commandments in an Alabama courthouse here, a stubborn Virgin in a sturdy creche at a city hall over there—the overt de-Christianization of America’s public square has continued with hardly a hitch. Given the text of our First Amendment, and the modern logic of centralization which has prevailed throughout modernity, this was probably inevitable—much as we’d like to blame the activists of the ACLU or some other notoriously secularizing organizations.
Which leads me to my conclusion: In an American context, given our constitutional heritage and the large body of legal decisions solidifying its interpretation, on nearly any issue, Christians of any denomination should reject the assistance of the State. Our efforts to capture it, the courts have
made it clear, will always fail. Any attempt to infuse the activity of the government with the moral content of a revealed religion will be rejected, in the end. Indeed, the more our own institutions cooperate with the government, the more they will be compromised; hospitals which take federal funds will be subject to secular ethics on issues like contraception, end-of-life, and even abortion. Religious colleges accepting federal grants will eventually be federalized, and so on.
It seems clear that the public sphere in America is irretrievably secular. So the only logical response of Christians must be to try to shrink it. Instead of attempting to baptize a Leviathan which turned on us long ago, we’d do much better to cage and starve the beast. We should favor low taxes—period, regardless of the “good” use to which politicians promise to put it. We should oppose nearly every government program intended to achieve any aim whatsoever. We can make exceptions here and there: We can favor the protection of innocent lives, which would cover things like fixing traffic lights and throwing abortionists into prison. But that is pretty much that. Christian public policy should focus not on capturing the power of the State but shrinking it, to the bare minimum required to enforce individual rights, narrowly defined. Likewise, the share of our wealth seized by the state must be radically slashed, to allow for private initiatives and charities that will not be amoral, soulless, bureaucratic and counterproductive (like the secular welfare state). Instead of asking for handouts to our schools in the forms of vouchers, we should seek the privatization of public schools—which by their very nature, in today’s post-Christian America, are engines of secularism. And so on for nearly every institution of the centralized State, which has hijacked the rightful activities of civil society and the churches, and which every year steals so much of our wealth to squander on itself that we can barely afford to reproduce ourselves. (So the State helpfully offers to replace us with immigrants, but that’s another article.)
This is not to endorse the universal claims of doctrinaire libertarians, and assert that every State in history has been a tyranny (except perhaps medieval Iceland). It’s not to deny that any community anywhere has the moral right to employ the State to pursue its vision of the Good. (There’s nothing wrong with Kaiser Franz Josef endowing a monastery here and there, or the Israeli government helping educate rabbis.) In many cultural contexts, the State can fruitfully employ its power to promote the faith and morals held in common by a community. But that can’t happen here. Not in America. Several of our Founders, and generations of our lawyers, have seen to that. We have no more reason to cooperate with the secular state than Irishmen have to trust the British Crown. And that’s how I reconcile Ron Paul with Pius IX.
Comments
John, what do you think?
All history aside, what does John think.
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“It’s not to deny that any community anywhere has the moral right to employ the State to pursue its vision of the Good. (There’s nothing wrong with Kaiser Franz Josef endowing a monastery here and there, or the Israeli government helping educate rabbis.) In many cultural contexts, the State can fruitfully employ its power to promote the faith and morals held in common by a community.”
Yet why would it be good for other nations but not for us? If you agree that in America the state should be as small as possible, then that should apply to all nations, since we humans everywhere are all subject to natural law. The difference, though, is that while neocons would want to use force to bring change to other nations, we as libertarians would hope to use persuasion and stand as an example.
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Opposing the state is just the flip side of working with the state—you’re still looking in the wrong direction. As people like Sam Francis have pointed out, the conservative movement captured the government (in the 1980s) but failed miserably because it didn’t capture the culture. Forget about reconciling Pius IX with Ron Paul and start reconciling him with Antonio Gramsci.
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The obvious problem with a Christian withdrawal from the public sphere is that once again you are singularly focusing on the state. The private sector is just as bad, if not worse, in any number of areas. The major purveyor of cultural filth in the USA is the entertainment media. As I pointed out to you in the last thread, capitalism will cater to every vice imaginable where it is profitable to do so.
It could be much worse. The meager restraints on obscenity currently in place could be lifted. Whatever vestigial remnants of decency left in our culture would evaporate as “freedom of expression” is taken to its logical conclusion. The answer to privatism is not more privatism.
You are right that fighting the armies of lawyers is a lost cause. No remedy will be forthcoming through official channels. Yet for some reason conservatives always decide on strategic retreat from the battlefield. This can only end in long term defeat.
Here’s a thought to contemplate. What happened to Ceauşescu in 1989?
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John, you’re the living proof that being well educted is no guarantee for also being intellectually sane.
This article is your usual rabble of one step forward, one step back. A little bit of sugar, a little bit of salt. Easy come, easy go. A little bit of nothing.
You say you are trying so hard to see, but you have closed your eyes so hard that even when turning your face straight into the sun, you will still not see the light.
Here’s a couple of advice for you…
Stop living in the past.
Give those books a rest and take a walk in the park now and then.
Stop constantly sucking up to the Powerful Ones.
Realize that life isn’t primarily about “conservative principles” or any other principles, it is instead like a dart board. Your needs and your wellbeing in the middle, the those close to you, your kids, your wife, etc. Then your tribe, then the associated friendly tribes pulling in the same direction as yours. Etc. And in reverse, should anything in an outer circle conflict with something in an inner, that’s BAD and you shouldn’t embrace it. Inne circle more important, outer less.
Now ask yourself where in those dart circles you will find those things you so dislike; abortions, anti-christianism, anti-catholicism, pornography, cultural degeneration etc. What individuals and groups are promoting this? Identify them with their own dart boards. They have names, a gender, an age, a tribal association, yes? I guess the red alert went off with that last one, huh?
You want to fight abortions, but you don’t even dare identifying who the bad guys are? Like going into the woods hunting for ... an animal who’s name you don’t dare mentioning.
Twit.
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Craig Senna, are you the guy who wrote “Deteriorata?” That’s what your advice to John Zmirak sounds like.
“Deteriorata
(National Lampoon)
Go placidly amidst the noise and waste, and remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof. Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep. Rotate your tires. Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself; and heed well their advice, even though they be turkeys. Know what to kiss - and when. Consider that two wrongs never make a right, but that three do. Wherever possible, put people on hold. Be comforted, that in the face of all irridity and disillusionment, and despite the changing fortunes of time, there is always a big future in computer maintenance.
(You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not,
The universe is laughing behind your back.)
Remember the Pueblo. Strive at all times to bend, fold, spindle, and mutilate. Know yourself. If you need help, call the FBI. Exercise caution in your daily affairs, especially with those persons closest to you… That lemon on your left, for instance. Be assured that a walk through the seas of most souls would scarcely get your feet wet. Fall not in love, therefore, it will stick to your face. Gracefully surrender the things of youth: the birds, clean air, tuna, Taiwan - and let not the sands of time get in your lunch. Hire people with hooks. For a good time, call 606-4311, ask for Ken. Take heart in the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting enough cheese. And reflect that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be worse in Milwaukee.
(You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not,
The universe is laughing behind your back.)
Therefore, make peace with your god, whatever you perceive him to be: hairy thunderer or cosmic muffin. With all its hopes, dreams, promises, and urban renewal, the world continues to deteriorate. GIVE UP!”
http://monster-island.org/tinashumor/humor/deterior.html
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Craig is right.
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John,
I don’t think you are a twit.
You have tackled a problem that has been perplexing me very much of late: How does a doctrinaire Catholic who loves Christendom and its values (e.g. the social reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ) reconcile himself to (or, at least, deal with) some of the principles of his anti-statist, pro-natural law allies whose political background is immersed in what I think you call “classical liberalism”—which would include much of what we call “conservatism” in this country? I move in circles very unlike yours, but we wrestle with many of the same questions. You speak of reconciling Pio Nono with Ron Paul. We could make it Dom Gueranger with George Washington, or Edouard Cardinal Pie with Robert E. Lee. It seems that you are opting for a pragmatic solution which faces the fact that Leviathan (the modern state) is so out of control. It resists baptism, so it must be limited. This is sensible and logical, as far as it goes.
As our mutual friend, Mr. Gary Potter, has told me, modern statecraft is so obscenely out of order, so invasive into the lives of the citizenry and private institutions, that in our concrete setting, confessional states are not desirable. Attempting it now would perforce invite the kind of Cesaro-Papism that turned the Byzantine Church into a plaything of the Emperor for much of its history. In other words, should we attempt to baptize Leviatian, the font will produce a Philip the Fair, not his grandpa, St. Louis IX.
As a religious duty, it is incumbent upon Catholics to try to make America a place where a future Christendom can be built, but the actual building of it requires much that is beyond our control. This is not overly pragmatic. It’s realistic. Even Englebert Dolfuss, who worked closely with Pope Pius XI (the pope of Quas Primas!), wisely did not attempt to make his Austrian Republic a Catholic confessional state.
What we American Catholics have to remember, though, is what Leo XIII told us in Testem Benevolentiae: this situation ("classical liberalism") is NOT an ideal.
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No time now to read article and comments but had to look at the falg (you DO remember the White Flag of Henri V, right?). And it’s a good one, but I still prefer the Cruz de Borgoña (Cross of Burgundy for you gringos).
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Ah, the eternal argument about the State, which has been
made to take center stage to the detriment of a
balanced view of the situation.
Certainly, a too strong and overpowering State is a
problem, and it ought to be cut down to size **but**
not by those who refuse to see that some of the opponens
are as troublesome as the STate itself, and can be
more dangerous.
It is one thing to preach about keeping the State out
of certain areas, another to wonder what we enable
by that.
For example, I like to point out that we could not
have freedom of religion until the Aztec religion was
wiped out - or any religion which depends on human
sacrifice. Same with religions which support sacred
prostitution. I think that it was Bernard Shaw that
tolerance was OK, but some things cannot be tolerated.
It is not the same thing to tolerate a vegetarian than
a cannibal.
Too many enemies of the State are in the curious position
of the man who fought for the right to keep pets in
his appartment, but when he drafted the regulations, he
was not careful wiht the wording, and found out that
his neighbor was keeping cobras. There must be way
that allows you to keep cats but not poisonous snakes
or alligators (unless you are the late Steve Irwin). If
you refuse to see the problem and allow for it, then
you will not find many allies.
For example, it is one thing to say the universal
principle “Parents should be the ones who decide about
their children”, and another wonder what you can have
recourse to when such parents want to genitally mutilate
their daughters to keep them sexually pure. Or sell them
to a brothel (practices more common that we like to
think).
Face it, forbidding the State to have a say on certain
practices, amounts to general toleration - even of the
intolerable - and from that we are in the sliding slope
towards multiculturalism and moral relativity.
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An outstanding article by Mr Z, and good reflective thoughts by Brother André Marie (Boyd Cathey?). Toryism needs to be about re-Establishment, with a degree of toleration for minority Dissenters and Non-Conformists as to their interior worship.
“In the book, I point out how Röpke synthesized the insights of classical economics and liberalism with what is best in the European Right—the Counter-Enlightenment, the Agrarian and Distributist movements, and the regionalist resistance to centralizing bureaucracies.”
He was, in short, a Christian Democrat and follower of real Catholic Social Teaching.
“So the only logical response of Christians must be to try to shrink it.”
Join the League of the South, Mr. Z. Failure to recognize the imperative of “shrinking” is the error of Sam-Franciscanism. Once North America returns to a confederation of sovereign poleis, some of these poleis will have Establishment, with Eliot’s The Idea of a Christian Society as the blueprint,—with this proviso, that The State (if there is a State) of a polis cannot control The Church, the error of Caesaropapism, Erastianism, Gallicanism/Cisalpineism, Josephism, and Horney Henry (VIII).
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Thanks to Adriana, Sid, and Frere Andre Marie (who is NOT Boyd Cathey, I assure yo, but a very talented young Catholic member of a religious community, whom I got to know when he was an undergrad and I a grad student at LSU). I hope you’ll all continue to add commentary on this site.
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Sid et al: let me assure you that I am not Frere Andre Marie, but I do find his remarks on target. The one thing that traditional Catholics do need to rmember is that the ideal (the “thesis” in Catholic theology) of a nation and a people who accept publicly both the individual religious and social sovereignty of Christ the King remains a teaching of the Catholic Church (q.v., Quanta cura of Bl. Pius IX, Quas Primas of Pius XI, etc). That in our day and age practical considerations may dictate other praxis, avenues of action does not in any way change that teaching and that ideal. Too many Catholics, I fear, especially since Vatican II, have given up on Christinizing the milieu and the laws and the culture in which they live. In so doing, they also turn their back on the Church and Our Lord, who remains King of both men’s hearts AND of society. The popes and the Church have consistently taught this for hundreds of years. And just recently Pope Benedict XVI reaffiremd that fact that Catholics MUST evangelize and convert society (not by force) to the point where the laws of society reflect Christ’s Kingship.
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Dr Boyd D. Cathey wrote:
“And just recently Pope Benedict XVI reaffiremd that fact that Catholics MUST evangelize and convert society (not by force) to the point where the laws of society reflect Christ’s Kingship.”
And just how does a Roman Catholic accomplish such a daring project in making all of society’s laws reflect the Kingship of Christ? What? to use the same democratic instruments that modern man has at hand to achieve this goal? These same modern democratic instruments that help to destroy the old Westphalian order? What nonsense!
Problem with most of you here and the conservative “movement” in general is that all to a man pretend that the democratic institutions put in place over these last 200 years are not contrary to the Divine Plan of the Blessed Trinity in governing men.
The Holy Right Arm of the Church is now in a 100 year abeyance, it’s death sentence was pronounced to the world on June 28th 1914, and for good reason, so modern man would say: now we modern men can govern the world as we see fit, let now ignore Christ and His laws.
Enough of this wishful thinking, that by somehow voting for this protestant politician or that protestant politician no matter how naturally noble he may appear, because we will never, never bring about The Kingship of Christ with these modern democratic institutions.
The Blessed Trinity already gave man the secular instrument to help govern and guide man, along side with the Spiritual Authority of the Papacy.
Yet how embarrassing this must be for all of you to admit this. It must be, because none of you write about this in plain language, that to restore all things in Christ we must restore The Holy Right Arm of the Church which is the Authority of the Holy Roman Emperor.
To re-establish the Hapsburg house will not accomplish anything toward this goal of making societies laws reflect Christ’s Kingship. The Church has always held over these last 100 years that the Hapsburg house has always held the office of the Holy Roman Emperor.
This is the means to restore all thing in Christ, not Hilary “Cosmocrator” Clinton or any other protestant politician, with your silly votes you help to perpetuate the existence of the political enemy to Christ the King and His Laws.
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Catholic philosophers in Italy and elsewhere have been grappling with the thought of two revolutions, that consolidated at Philadelphia in harmony with Christian principles, and the French one opposed to them:
http://www.liberalfondazione.it/liberaltrieste2002.htm
Note that the present Pope, before his election, was singled out as an exemplar of the direction we need to take.
And it is the direction you, dare I say we, are taking.
As you know, it may please God to elevate the Blessed Charles to full sainthood through the healing of a Southern Baptist, whose movement did so much to further the cause of religious liberty in America two hundred years ago.
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@Michael Warning:
If you would read some of my previous messages on other Taki threads, I think you would see that I am very wary of “democracy” as a means to advance the cause of the Kingship of Christ. Indeed, in the past I have defended confessionality and other concepts that seem alien to some readers. I have forcefully criticized the Church’s practical embrace of democracy, certainly post-Vatican II, and I consider Christian Democracy, despite its noble intent, to have been, after eighty years of trial but mostly error, to have more or less failed. [I realize that this is debatable, and I do have a certain admiration for the efforts of Wilhelm Roepke and Amintore Fanfani and others, but the fact is that, hic et nunc, in Europe la Democracia Cristiana is pretty much dead or gone over to the political Left.] Still, as Catholics, we must avail ourselves of what legitimate means are available to us. Frankly, I would rather be fighting for Konig und Kaiser, but here in the USA, we must deal with what is before us....WITHOUT comprising principle or our faith, or giving in to the dominant culture.
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The idea of Free Will is an article of faith for every Christian denomination. Classical Liberalism allows individuals to act on their free will to the maximum extent compatible with the free will of others.
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Mr. Zmirak,
Enough with these ridiculous cultural and political arguments. We must move on to more important matters.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make your way to Trastevere one evening. Start at the Piazza Trilussa, pass through the gauche gate of Septimius Severus (which was designed by the Borgia and not the Roman Emperor for whom they are named), down the Via della Lungara about an 1/8 or 1/4 mile and stop at the “Miraggio Roma” Restaurant on your left. The gnocchi agli scampi/"gnocchi in scampi sauce with Dublin Bay prawns” is an excellent dish. Get me the recipe for that sauce. Please.
Incidentally, the house red at the Miraggio is perfectly acceptable and the Montepulciano is good, too. Pizza in the evening is excellent, especially the sausage. While you are in the neighborhood, check out the hole in the wall pub that serves micro brewed beer. It is back toward the Piazza Trilussa and the suds are delicious. Cheers.
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Dr Boyd D. Cathey wrote:”Still, as Catholics, we must avail ourselves of what legitimate means are available to us. Frankly, I would rather be fighting for Konig und Kaiser, but here in the USA, we must deal with what is before us....WITHOUT comprising principle or our faith, or giving in to the dominant culture.”
And one of those legitimate means that are available to us is the office of imperial electors. It still exists. This institution has not been activated because we are too content with the current political status quo.
The church needs a secular right arm to defend it. This office has been given to Holy Roman Emperor, no one else. The modern democratic institutions can not replace this holy right arm of the Church. Nor can we wish this to happen, or make it happen. The modern democratic institution is a dead limb that can not be grafted onto the body of Christ.
The church is now defenseless against the assaults of the modern dominant culture. And because of this many Roman Catholics have already given in to the dominant culture.. and it shows… the new mass etc…..
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Great to see posts from Dr. Cathey again.
Br. Andre Marie, would you mind letting us know which order you are in?
I’m off to read my biography of Dollfuss now.
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Excellent discussion. I wonder however whether the old Europe can be revived any better any more easily than can be done on this soil. Then Cardinal Ratzinger found the door shut in his face when he suggested to EU political theorists that mentio of Europe’s catholic roots ought to be recognized. The internationalists who are establishing the new europe may more rabid than their american counterparts. In fact eurocrats blindness to Christendom is probably more
consciously antichristian than the american secularity
hatched from our enlightenment roots. The catholic on both continets finds himself evermore an outsider who’s faith can best be preserved
under a bushel basket while he waits for the inevitable collapse.
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It is sickening to see so many otherwise intelligent people misinterpret what happened in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was lost by the United States government, which fought to lose. It did not permit the South to attack its mortal foe, the North.
But the war itself was just. The North consisted of Communist aggressors. It was in the interest of the United States to help the South, indeed it was the DUTY of the United States to help out another potential victim of Communism. There was nothing wrong with providing military assistance. So many paleoconservatives’ view of foreign affairs seems to be harshly “realist” and amoral: never help anyone else, ever, unless your own country’s life is at stake. Otherwise screw everyone, let them all die their own deaths. I would not want that to happen to this country if it was stuck in mortal peril. I would hope we’d have allies who would help us. The problem with the Vietnam War was not that the United States helped out innocent victims of aggression, but that the U.S. govt. fought the war so stupidly. The soldiers should be proud of their service. It is snide, dishonest, and unjust to oversimplify the war in this way, to confuse ends and means, to confuse tactics and strategy, etc.
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“Not to diminish his heroic behavior in prison… but is John McCain the last man alive to realize that the Vietnam war was a fraud—a Great Society program conducted via napalm, a desegregration order enforced via B-52s?)”
To which I say: unwarranted reductionism. If this is what passes for intelligent commentary, then let me characterize WWII this way: a fraud-- a New Deal program conducted via incendiary bombs, a war that benefited only Communists, that served only to surrender Poland and China to Communists instead of to Nazis and Japanese militariests. Is there much truth to this observation? Only if we admit that this is not the whole truth of the war. WWII was not “just” a fraud, though it entailed much fraud. The Vietnam War was not “just” a fraud, though it entailed much. And a great many anti-war activists were opposed to it for the worst of reasons: personal cowardice, a desire for Communism to win, etc.
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“The church needs a secular right arm to defend it. This office has been given to Holy Roman Emperor, no one else.”
And people say I am utopian!
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In response to the idea that an ever shrinking, non-involved State is an allowance of moral relativism: The writer takes not an account of the ideal goodness of a Catholic person. And the Founders do (at least of Man in general.) The same Constitution that limits the State limits Man in the same sense: Man cannot encroach or impinge on another’s rights. While some evil will always be present a limited State is not an impotent State. And life will ALWAYS be protected. Call me an idealist. Man’s goodness (protected by the State—nurtured however one wishes) is a check on evil AND a check on the State’s potential relativism. Reciprocally, the State protects and enhances the goodness of Man by protecting all individual rights. Therefore the limited State need not be, indeed CANNOT be morally neutral.
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As an outsider to the faith, I find these theocratic fantasies to be extremely odd. For reasons both good and bad, they will not come to pass.
And nostalgia about monarchy is not only historically naive, but unpatriotic as well.
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