Musings Of An Indie WriterTuesday, March 31, 2009
Argument, Rhetoric, And Ethics: Breaking The Moral Barrier
Long, long ago, on a website far, far away. your Curmudgeon posted two brief essays that addressed the ethical obligations and pitfalls facing anyone who attempts political outreach, even on the smallest scale. The key motif of those pieces was that some on the political Left regard themselves as morally licensed to use any tactic whatsoever to prevail in debate. They might not uniformly believe that the end justifies the means in the general setting, but when the end is rhetorical ascendancy, they'll bless any means that will get them there.
The late Don Lavoie once counseled against assailing a left-liberal's moral position. He asserted that they take their moral position too seriously for that -- that an attack on their moral basis merely guarantees a condition of permanent, unbridgeable hostility. Your Curmudgeon has tried to follow that advice for more than twenty years. The results have persuaded him that Lavoie was wrong.
That is a terrible conclusion to reach:
"The purpose of argument is to test something: either an idea, or your rhetorical skills. The techniques of argument are logic, evidence, analogy, examples and counterexamples, all of which require mutual respect. The ethics of argument require that truth be only the deciding criterion -- and that disagreement be respected wherever uncertainty leaves room for more than one opinion."The purpose of combat is to neutralize the enemy, because his desires and your desires are totally incompatible. The techniques of combat allow for the possibility of eliminating the enemy, if that's the only way he can be neutralized. The ethics of combat are simple: It's him or you."
Svenson glowered. "So I was trying to eliminate Artie instead of arguing with him?"
Carlucci nodded, face perfectly straight. "What else does a charge of 'moral absolutism' mean? It means 'this room ain't big enough for both our moral positions.' And suppose that's true? What's left then, but to fight to the death with sabers?"
[From "The Hawk"]
In his masterpiece The Vision Of The Anointed, the great Thomas Sowell lays out a compelling case that left-liberals' attitudes include the unquestioned assumption that they are morally superior to anyone who disagrees with them, One who starts from that premise, regardless of his benevolence in other venues, easily comes to regard anyone who disagrees as "benighted:" either evil and therefore not to be trusted in any way, or so helplessly stupid that his forcible subjugation and re-education is completely justified. Since the typical conservative or libertarian who ventures to discuss politics is at least as intelligent and well informed as the typical left-liberal, the latter is "reluctantly" forced to conclude that the former is evil.
In other words, while conservatives carefully restrain themselves from saying or implying anything negative about left-liberals' morals, left-liberals start from the position that anything they can do to neutralize conservatives' influence on political discourse, including deceit, fraud, and violence both direct and indirect, is morally acceptable. In their eyes, we're devils, and they most certainly do not believe in "giving the Devil his due."
In your Curmudgeon's travels over the political landscape, he's observed almost no left-liberals who fail to conform to this pattern. The implications for conservatives' strategies and tactics are quite clear.
It is no longer viable to assume that the benevolence of our adversaries is beyond question. That constitutes self-disarmament, while the adversary deems himself unconstrained, fully licensed to use any and all means to prevail. Needless to say, we cannot and must not sink to their level; we must remain honest at all times, and willing to admit our mistakes. But we can no longer refrain from calling the left-liberal moral position into question -- publicly, and under the harshest available spotlight.
John Hawkins posted a fine compendium of left-liberals' amoral and immoral rhetorical tactics at TownHall today. Several of them involve outright defamation of conservatives' motives or views. It is not possible for your Curmudgeon to imagine that one who recurs to such tactics is honestly interested in seeing the best ideas or the best ways prevail. Nor is it possible for him to imagine that anything good could come from implicitly sanctioning such tactics by not calling the practitioner on them, at once and at the top of one's voice.
Today, the nation is in grave danger from its ruling cadre. Part of the reason is the restraint we on the Right have shown in addressing their motives and morals.
More anon.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Functions Of Doubt: A Sunday Rumination
The 2009 Lenten season is barreling toward its climax. With only a handful of episodes to go, Christ fans all over the world are on the edges of their seats, marveling at the audacity of the Savior, puzzling over His words ("Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life." -- John 12:25), and asking one another, "Do you think He'll really go through with it?" (Betting pools on that last aspect of the season are officially discouraged.)
All right, you can stop laughing, or snorting in outrage, or whatever you're doing. There's a point to all this. You might have grasped it already.
Yes, He "went through with it." He did ask His Father, in the Garden of Gethsemane, to "let this cup pass away from me," but He also submitted to His Father's will. Being fully human, He was as tormented by doubt as any man who can see disaster approaching. Being fully divine, He knew it to be his duty to stand His ground. The singular events of the Passion and Resurrection, while not foreordained, were necessary for the redemption and enlightenment of the world, and He knew it.
If the Son of God had to suffer the torments of doubt as the climax to His ministry among us approached, why not we?
I wrote some time ago about the inexorability of doubt. As the years pass, it seems ever clearer to me that doubt is, quite as much as faith, a gift from God.
Doubt in the secular realm is what propels science and the mechanisms of authentic justice. Scientists are trained to be skeptical about one another's claims to have unearthed new knowledge. They review one another's papers to that effect with a searching eye. They rush to reproduce one another's experiments, knowing that the debunker rises nearly as high as the discoverer in their occupation's esteem. As for justice, even a man witnessed committing murder by a large crowd will go to trial, and will be represented by counsel for his defense, for the eye is an unreliable organ, and always there exists the possibility of extenuation. Nor can his jury expose him to punishment without arriving at a complete concurrence upon the rightness of it.
The systematic operation of doubt is what makes it possible to have confidence in anything.
Inversely, the most dangerous men in the world are those who have absolutely no doubts. They proceed into their courses heedless of any and all counsel that their understanding might be less than perfect. They ignore warning signs; having lost sight of their goal, they redouble their efforts. They're often called ideologues, but the term is inappropriate; an ideologue is one who espouses a doctrine of causality, which (if he's honest about it) he might yet concede has been proved incorrect. The proper term for the doubtless man is fanatic.
I can't blame you for thinking about political subjects as you read that last paragraph. It's a feature of our current calamity that's likely to bear copious bitter fruit.
Doubt in the realm of faith and the spirit, where evidence is always ambiguous and proof is impossible, has another set of functions.
Pope Benedict XVI, one of the most powerful minds ever dedicated to the Church and perhaps the foremost public intellectual of our time, has written that faith is inseparable from doubt. Doubt, indeed, is the validator of faith; it's what makes faith an honest proposition. He whose "faith" is unquestioning, never disturbed by uncertainty or a plausible alternative explanation, has closed himself away from the world as it exists around him. He's likely not to want to hear of anything beyond what he already knows. If his "faith" is in a false proposition, the demonstration of its falsity will enrage him. He becomes capable of monstrosities beyond human ken.
There's an interesting play on this in the Old Testament. In one of my favorite passages, the suffering Job, having been reaved of all he once enjoyed, including his family and his health, when harassed by his (former) friends, replies:
I know that my Redeemer liveth,
And that he shall stand,
At the latter day, upon the earth.[Emphasis added, as at the time of Job's torments the RFC for HTML was still "in draft."]
If the story of Job is fact rather than fiction, and if the above is not a mistranslation, it indicates that Job did not grasp the distinction between faith and knowledge. Nor did he appreciate the limitations God had placed upon Satan in afflicting him. For every man is finite; every man has his breaking point. By implication, there's some degree of horror that would break any man's faith, even Job's -- and God had ordained that Job would not suffer so much.
God, being just, would not have any man suffer past his personal breaking point. In the late James Blish's marvelous novel Black Easter, he has a cleric discourse on this aspect of the Covenant with Man: first, that no man shall be tempted beyond his strength; second, that no man shall slide into heaven without being tested right up to that point. (Mathematicians and others familiar with the concept of an open interval will appreciate the niceties involved in these constraints.)
A sustainable faith must embed that assumption. Yet it's not immune to doubt; nothing is. For we do not discover exactly how strong we are until we've been tested right to our limit, and the process that locates that point involves a degree of peril whose depth we cannot know.
Allow me a few words of personal disclosure.
The process by which we are required to approach God -- i.e., our human, mortal lives -- involves innumerable occasions for doubt. The spiritually most important of these are those moments when one feels doubt of oneself.
The Catholic Mass, which centers on the Rite of Transubstantiation and the distribution of the Eucharist, precedes the administration of the Host with a recitation, by everyone in the congregation, of a slightly edited version of the words of the centurion of Capernaum:
And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, and saying, "Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented." And Jesus said unto him, "I will come and heal him."The centurion answered, "Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst come under my roof, but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me, and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it."
When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, "Verily, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into the outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
And Jesus said to the centurion, "Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee." And his servant was healed in that selfsame hour. [The Gospel According To Matthew, 8:5-13]
[Emphasis added; instruction in HTML was not part of a centurion's preparation for his duties.]
At Mass, before the communion procession begins, we say:
"Lord, I am not worthy to receive thee, but only say the word and I shall be healed."
This is significant for two reasons. First, it's a restatement of a postulate of the Christian faith: that nearness to God is not an "inalienable right," but rather a gift, for which we must ask and of which we must strive to be worthy. Second, over my years as a returned communicant, I've yet to see anyone remain in his pew when the communion procession begins; everyone goes forward to accept the Transubstantiated Body of Christ.
Perhaps it should be that way; I have no power to see into men's souls, and wouldn't presume to judge whether another man is in the state of grace required to accept communion. But when that point in the Mass arrives, I regularly ask, "Lord, have You 'said the word?' May I accept this instrument of Your grace? How will I know if not?"
At times I've agonized over it. My faults are many. Though I strive to keep them in check, I don't always succeed. And just this morning I realized that one of the functions of doubt in my life is to keep me asking those questions, and listening for any indication, from my conscience or elsewhere, that the answers might be unfavorable.
The Fatima Prayer:
O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, and lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of Your mercy.
...suggests that to keep doubting oneself, to keep asking Jesus that brace of questions and listening attentively for any sort of answer He might deign to give, is among the most important things a Christian can do for the health of his soul.
I hope and pray that all my brothers in Christ are as well served by their doubts...and that they never, ever succumb to the seductions of spiritual certainty.
May God bless and keep you all.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
A Teensy Bit Of News
In case you've been wondering why I've been so quiet, there's been a little development.
Matt proposed last Saturday.
I'm engaged to be married.
I've spent most of the week getting over the shock -- in a good way, of course.
No, we haven't set a date yet. We haven't even decided where we're going to live. Things have been happening fast for me, and it's time to slow them down a little.
Matt's comfortable with a longish delay. Things have been happening fast for him, too. (Some of them are very exciting, but he hasn't given me permission to talk about them yet.) So we're likely to have a protracted engagement -- probably until my current contract is over and we have to decide which coast to live on. ("Gives you a whole year to try to weasel out of it," he just said.)
And to think all I wanted was a drive in the country and to look at a few guns!
Be happy for me. Everyone. Please.
Hedging Your Bets Part 3: Defending Your Property
Your Curmudgeon originally intended to title this segment “Defending Your Privacy,” because that’s the chief import of property rights. Without secure property rights unbreachable for any reason short of a national calamity, there can be no privacy: no private decisions, no private security, and no private life.
Consider for a moment: Which of the things you’ve done in the past day, or week, or month have not involved the acquisition, use, or disposition of privately owned goods? Which of them would not have been torpedoed if the State had arbitrarily confiscated whatever you were seeking to own, use, or sell? What about your plans for your future, or for the future of your loved ones? Can you imagine a plan that doesn’t embed the assumption that you’ll be able to acquire what you need or want, and employ or dispose of it as you see fit?
For that matter, what would your freedom of speech be worth if you were denied the right to own instruments of communication—that is, if all you could do is shout? If the polling place were located outside your walking radius, and you were denied the right to own mechanical means of transport, what would that do to your “right to vote?”
Think it over.
Because all things must pass away, property of every sort has a transient character. Indeed, few of us own any particular thing lifelong. We acquire and dispose of properties—homes, land, movable property, and intellectual or abstract items—according to needs and desires that arise, persist for a while, and depart. More, material goods deteriorate over time; few things are nearly as shiny when we part with them as they were when we first desired them.
Those observations have been used to frame an argument that property rights are fundamentally contradictory—impossible. The argument is worse than specious; it’s an attempt to snatch your belongings from your unresisting hands.
Immutable property is impossible; immutable property rights are not. The key difference is the relation a property right establishes between you and others: your sole and absolute right to decide, as proprietor, whom you’ll allow to acquire (or share the benefits of) what you own.
Indeed, if it were not for the absoluteness of property rights, there could not be commerce of any sort. How could you buy, sell, or trade without the assurance that what you’re dickering for would become properly yours once a deal is struck? If your rights over what you own were less than absolute, how could anyone confidently trade with you?
They who seek the destruction of property rights are too clever to go for outright abolition. The attack on property rights in our time is an attack on their absoluteness: an attempt to hedge them about with nebulous qualifications that would permit the State to wrest your possessions from your grasp whenever it so chooses.
To defend your property, it’s vital to understand the nature of this threat. Few persons are sufficiently alert to incursions on it.
At this time, the most visible assaults are being made on the rights of real property: land and the structures erected on it.
Some of the assaults are via the “traditional” avenue of eminent domain confiscation. Eminent domain—the taking of private property by a government—is nominally hallowed by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution:
”...nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.”
...the wording of which suggests that private property may only be taken “for public use,” and only if the owner is compensated with its current market value. However, the recent Supreme Court decision Kelo v. City of New London, in which a 5-4 majority held that “a public purpose” is adequate justification for a taking, has altered the relations between real property and the State. For “a public purpose” is inherently subjective; if the State says the taking has “a public purpose,” how is anyone to challenge it?
In the Kelo case, the “public purpose” was a projected increase in tax revenue; the condemned homes in Fort Trumbull, New London were to be turned over to a private corporation for commercial development. The same “public purpose” has since been asserted in other states and municipalities. But in no instance was it necessary for the government pursuing the taking to certify, in a legally actionable sense:
- That the tax revenue increase would really take place;
- That the monies thus raised would meet an existing public obligation or further an objectively justifiable function of government;
- That no other course of action less invasive of private property rights would adequately serve the same purpose.
This, of course, is part and parcel of government action: no refunds! The State suffers no burden of restitution in the event of non-performance or inadequate performance. If it were otherwise, quite a lot of American parents would be owed quite a lot of money, based on the hideous performance of their local government-run schools. At worst, a group of politicians might be turned out of office, with no guarantee that their replacements would be any better or any less rapacious.
Assaults on real property rights are the most visible, but there are assaults ongoing against our rights to movable property—also called tangible or personal property—to which insufficient attention has been given.
Movable property is any property that’s not land or a structure that must rest upon land: a huge category to which millions of items belong. Though it might seem difficult for a government to target such items, nevertheless there are several ways it can be done:
- By making it illegal or prohibitively difficult to possess or store;
- By making it illegal or prohibitively difficult to maintain;
- By making it illegal or prohibitively difficult to use;
- By making it illegal or prohibitively difficult to buy or sell.
First, consider the shotgun. While it’s still straightforward, outside of a few municipalities, to buy or sell one, the shotgun cannot legally be used except in designated areas and for very narrowly specified purposes. More, there are states in which it’s illegal to use the only ammunition to which most shotguns are suited: lead balls propelled by a gunpowder charge. The chemicals required for cleaning a shotgun are also coming under fire, as “hazardous toxics / inflammables;” the environmental regulations being laid upon their makers are steadily raising their price. Finally, if one owns a firearm of any sort, and that firearm is stolen and used in a crime, in an increasing number of jurisdictions the legitimate owner can be held civilly liable for some portion of the victim’s losses.
Second, consider the lawn mower. Most lawn mowers are gasoline-powered; very few are muffled. Environmental activists are making ingress against lawn mowers both as “polluting devices” and as noisemakers. There are a few jurisdictions in which they’ve succeeded in making the lawn mower a regulated, licensed device.
Third, consider the automobile. Federal regulations have made cars far more expensive than they once were. The main rationales have been crashworthiness and pollution: two arguments which a decent person would not want to reject out of hand. Nevertheless, the result has been that the cheapest new cars available today cost about three times what their predecessors did thirty years ago, measured in constant dollars or grams of precious metal. In consequence, persons on the lower end of the economic ladder find it ever more difficult to afford personal transportation. This has been of no small import to working families in suburban or rural areas, and to those eager to move from an urban to a suburban or rural area. And of course, the uncertainties in the price of gasoline, which is also highly sensitive to taxation and regulation, compound the problem still further.
There are many other examples your Curmudgeon could cite, but the point has been made.
Unfortunately, the assaults on real property rights are, for practical purposes, impossible for an isolated individual to meet. Even a mobilized community, such as Fort Trumbull in the Kelo case, is hard pressed to resist the State. In the current legal regime, if the State wants your home, it will get it one way or another, and you’ll be fortunate indeed to get adequate compensation for it. There might be some hope in complex legal entailments—contractually guaranteed easements and community-wide restrictive covenants, which would impose a further burden of justification upon the government pursuing the taking—but no set of impediments is insuperable. It’s much like the threat of burglary: A sufficiently determined thief will find a way in no matter what you do. All you can hope for is that your defenses will persuade him to seek a softer target.
With regard to movable property, as with the defense of your money, the best defense lies in not becoming a target. Keep your business to yourself, as much as humanly possible. Transact with others of like mind, and contrive to keep your dealings private. Other things being equal—and yes, your Curmudgeon is aware that they seldom are—prefer sparsely settled locales to more densely populated ones. If you must become visible, try to limit the scope and duration of your visibility, especially if you find yourself trying to thwart some politician’s agenda. The longest memories seem to belong to those who bear grudges…and no one remains as faithful to his grudges as a politician scorned.
Next up: Defending your liberty.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Political Judgment and the Moralistic Left, pt. 1
American political culture has a long tradition of idealizing the “pragmatic” and the “practical” over the “idealistic” and “ideological.” Since the Progressive Era, one of the more dominant strands of political philosophy, exemplified by John Dewey at the University of Chicago, has indeed been called, rather neatly, “pragmatism.” It is hard for us to not to imagine politics as grappling over the best-conceived practical policy solution to every one of our nation’s problems, though the power of idealism has played a great role in the politics of many of the world’s other nations, most notably European ones. American elite culture, in particular, has long prided itself on its technocratic prowess, its ability to judge the correct solution to a problem and impose it effectively on the citizenry.
The media is nothing if not a reflection of our elite culture. Since the media, or at least what we here at Eternity Road call the Old Media in the fashion of the Curmudgeon, is overwhelmingly liberal in its political inclinations, it is no surprise that it has tried to claim the mantle of pragmatism purely for its own side of the political spectrum. This tendency was on full display during the 2008 campaign:
The consensus forming in anticipation of Barack Obama’s ascendancy is that, with apologies to Code Pink, pragmatism is the new black. The president-elect himself has encouraged this vogue, both explicitly in his rhetoric and implicitly in his recent cabinet appointments. It remains to be seen whether a substantive departure from doctrinaire liberalism will follow, but in the meantime we suffer from an annoying side effect: Suddenly every third person is walking around pronouncing himself a pragmatist and sneering smugly at “ideology,” as if the distinction were something more than empty rhetoric.
Later on, Anthony Dick argues that the promise of the new pragmatism is empty:
And even within the overlapping consensus of society’s basic values, pragmatism provides no refuge from ideology. People are describable as liberal or conservative not only because of the disparate values they hold but because they are predisposed to believe that the world works in a different ways — and that certain instrumental policies are therefore more or less likely to succeed. Consider practical economics, for example, where conservatives generally think that free markets lead to greater prosperity and well-being on the whole, while liberals see a greater role for regulation, taxation, and redistribution. There is a gaggle of empirical data on both sides of such disputes, but reasonable minds can and do differ on how to interpret it.
There are two points that I feel must be appended to this discussion. First, in part one it will be debunked that liberals, taken as a whole, actually value pragmatism. Second, part two will take up the question of pragmatism in the larger context of judgment about politics, and whether or not the “pragmatism” that is idealized by our elite culture is actually a suitable means for making political judgments.
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The Moralistic Left
The sociologist Daniel Elazar once identified three major strands of American political traditions, each originating from different geographical areas or cultural axes of Europe: New England Puritan communalists/moralists (the United Kingdom), Middle European individualists (the Germanic cultures), and the Southern traditionalists (non-Puritan Anglo-Saxons, to some degree the French). These were the founding political cultures of the United States - every subsequent generation of immigrants, with few exceptions, has grafted themselves somewhere along these axes.
These political cultures are not partisan - there is nothing inherently Republican about Southern traditionalism or Democratic about Mid-Atlantic individualism. That fact has produced a striking pattern of regional continuity - those raised in the South tend to be traditionalists whatever the preferred party of their particular age in history, and they tend to take that traditionalism with them when they migrate internally. Because traditionalism is a very unifying and coherent political culture, the South has tended to vote as a bloc; as such, its political influence has been outsized. The party of the South, within the broad outlines necessary for generalizations about politics, has been the party of the Presidency. The party that controls it has an inherent advantage in presidential politics, and almost without exception the out-party must make in-roads into Southern territory in order to win. We observed that in the Clinton, Bush, and Obama elections.
All of the foregoing implies that if we examine the regional bases of each party, we can predict with a fair degree of accuracy what the drivers of that party’s political philosophy will be. Indeed, if we examine the Republican Party, with its dominant centers in the South, the Midwest, the Mountain West, and the Southwest, we find some mixture of individualism and traditionalism animating the party platform. To generalize horribly, the individualists make fiscal policy, while the traditionalists make social policy. These groups are often in tension and just as often try to intrude on each others’ declared spheres of influence, but it seems that, for now, this is the consensus.
Now, we should examine the contemporary Democratic Party. Examining the elections of the last few decades, we can easily discern that that base of the party lies in New England, the Upper Mid-Atlantic, and the West Coast. If we investigate the overarching political cultures of these regions, we find strong centers of individualism on the West Coast and of moralism in New England, with some mixture of the two in the Upper Mid-Atlantic. Like traditionalism, New England moralism is a powerful and coherent political tradition. In recent political debates, it has usually overcome the forces of individualism in the Democratic Party.
It is therefore worth discussing what New England moralism is as a political philosophy. It is most certainly not pragmatic, though that is not to say it is completely unconcerned with the practical outcomes of policies. It is, more precisely, a heuristic device or method of reasoning about politics. For the moralist, the separation between “fiscal issues” and “social issues” is, at best, highly confused. Furthermore, one’s political choices, such as for whom to vote and to whom to donate, as well as one’s lifestyle decisions, particularly choices about consumption, are reflections on one’s moral character.
The liberal activist base of the Democratic Party is highly moralistic; whether they as individuals originate from New England or elsewhere, they have absorbed the basic Puritan ethic in some way. They want the state to regulate the most private of consumption decisions, such as the amount of toilet paper one buys or which light bulbs one plugs in, not just to prevent some bad outcome like “global warming,” but because buying too much toilet paper or inefficient light bulbs is a sign of immorality that must be stamped out. In their political heuristic, opposition to abortion or gay marriage is not just wrong-headed thinking or poorly reasoned, but is a sign of personal bigotry or pathology. Hence, not only should the government permit these things, it should do its best to stamp out vocal opposition to them for the good of the people, and for the good of the souls who persist in diseased thinking. The political battles that the moralistic left have fought and won, such as civil rights and abortion, have not just achieved their initial aims, but have expanded to run roughshod over fundamental individualistic rights such as free association and free exercise of religion.
While thinking about the foregoing, it is important to remember that moralism is not the same as “moral reasoning,” or even believing that politics and moral choices are intertwined. Rather, moralism assigns a moral dimension to nearly everything, even those actions or decisions that affect no one else. Witness this fine piece of moralistic reasoning from the website Feministing.com:
I’m keeping my last name. I think hyphenation is nice - and that’s probably the route we’ll go with kids - but I like my last name. A bunch. I’ve even considered adding in my mother’s last name as well, as a little “f—k you” to the patriarchy, but I think Jessica Michelucci Valenti is too much of a mouthful, even for one with as big a mouth as me.
On the issue of same sex marriage, frye886 says, “It seems to me a more powerful action by many couples would be to refuse to get married and publicly state the reasons why not.”
Andrew and I discussed not getting married until everyone could, and we think that’s an understandable choice. Instead, we’re trying use our impending marriage as a pro-active way to talk about same sex marriage among our friends and family, and being mindful of the inequity in every step our process. (For example, in our engagement announcement we asked anyone considering getting us a gift to instead donate to an organization fighting for same sex marriage rights; we’re planning on saying something about it as part of our ceremony; and we’ve taken the advice of several commenters and will have cards indicating we’ve made a donation to said orgs instead of favors.)
Note the moral significance layered on to the private decision to get married (as if it were a comment on broader social inequalities) and even over the bride’s decision whether or not or how to change her last name. Many on the Right, where moralistic reasoning is rather scarce (social conservatives tend to reason in a traditionalist manner, rather than moralistically), tend to comment on this as though it were some kind of mental disease, and it would be easy to see things like this as prime evidence of obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is important, however, to recognize that pieces like this represent a powerful tradition in the United States, and that they animate the heart of liberal policymaking today.
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I am hoping this discussion will illuminate two important aspects of contemporary leftism/liberalism: it is not “pragmatic,” it is not non-judgmental, and it is not tolerant. Too many authors have satisfied themselves with pointing out this example of liberal utopianism or that example of liberal intolerance without examining the reasoning process that produces those examples. The union of individualism and moralism that is the contemporary Democratic Party and the ideology of liberal elites is a pernicious two-headed hydra - wedded to the celebration of individual license and, no doubt ironically for those social conservatives used to being branded as close-minded prudes by the elite, the condemnation of any who disagree as sinners. If hypocrisy is the tribute virtue pays to vice, then promotion of promiscuity, abortion, drug use, and other moral licenses is the bribe liberal moralism hands off to liberal individualism with one hand as it condemns freedom of individual expression, association, and thought with the other.
In part two, I will examine more carefully the idea of political judgment, the true position of pragmatism within American politics, and possible responses to liberal moralism.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
A Glimmer of Hope?
Just when one begins to despair that any semblance of sanity can be salvaged from the wreckage of western sociopolitical culture there emerges a voice which exhorts a return to reason and logic. Oddly enough, such a voice can be heard emitting from one of the unlikeliest of sources; the European Parliament. The following video appears to have gone viral, as well it should. The indictment delivered by Daniel Hannan against the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is equally applicable concerning the two most recent occupants of the White House.
Hat tip: Larrey Anderson
cross posted at: Fighting in the Shade™
Thoughts On Monarchy
Fran here. Much of my writing is driven by unpredictable currents of thought and remembrance. That is, the topics I address are spawned from confluences of ideas that I wasn't consciously pursuing. Some of the most striking are strongly connected to the themes I address in fiction.
I fetched the cloth-wrapped bundle that I'd propped in the corner when we arrived and brought it to him, stretched across my palms. He rose to his feet, and I handed it to him."Unwrap it carefully."
He did, and his eyes grew wide.
The saber gleamed in the muted light. I'd spent a lot of time and effort sharpening and polishing it.
It was a plain weapon, not one you'd expect to see in the hand of a king. There was only the barest tracing on the faintly curved blade. The guard bell was a plain steel basket, without ornamentation. The hilt was a seven inch length of oak, darkened with age but firm to the touch. There was only a hint of a pommel, a slight swell of the hilt at its very end.
"What is this?"
"A sword. Your sword."
A hint of alarm compressed his eyes. "What do you expect me to do with it?"
I shrugged. "Whatever you think appropriate. But a king should have a sword. By the way," I said, "it was first worn by Louis the Ninth of France when he was the Dauphin, though he set it aside for a useless jeweled monstrosity when he ascended the throne."
Time braked to a stop as confusion spun his thoughts.
"I don't know how to use it," he murmured.
"Easily fixed. I do."
"But why, Malcolm?"
I stepped back, turned a little away from those pleading eyes.
"Like it or not, you're a king. You don't know what that means yet. You haven't a sense for the scope of it. But you must learn. Your life, and the lives of many others, will turn on how well you learn it." I paused and gathered my forces. "What is a king, Louis?"
He stood there with the sword dangling from his hand. "A ruler. A leader. A warlord."
"More. All of that, but more. The sword is an ancient symbol for justice. Back when the function of nobility was better understood, a king never sat his throne without his sword to hand. If he was to treat with the envoy of another king, it would be at his side. If he was to dispense justice, it would be across his knees. Why do you suppose that was, Louis?"
He stood silent for a few seconds.
"Symbolic of the force at his command, I guess."
I shook my head gently.
"Not just symbolic. A true king, whose throne belonged to him by more than the right of inheritance, led his own troops and slew malefactors by his own hand. The sword was a reminder of the privilege of wielding force, but it was there to be used as well."
His hands clenched and unclenched in time to his thoughts. I knew what they had to be.
"The age of kings is far behind us, Malcolm."
"It never ended. Men worthy of the role became too few to maintain the institution."
"And I'm...worthy?"
If he wasn't, then no worthy man had ever lived, but I couldn't tell him that.
"There's a gulf running through the world, Louis. On one side are the commoners, the little men who bear tools, tend their gardens, and keep the world running. On the other are the nobles, who see far and dare much, and sometimes risk all they have, that the realm be preserved and the commoner continue undisturbed in his portion. There's no shortage of either, except for the highest of the nobles, the men of unbreakable will and moral vision, for whom justice is a commitment deeper than life itself."
His face had begun to twitch. He'd heard all he could stand to hear, and perhaps more. I decided to cap the pressure.
"Kings have refused their crowns many times, Louis. You might do as much, though it would sadden me to see it. But you could break that sword over your knee, change your name, and run ten thousand miles to hide where no one could know you, and it wouldn't lessen what you are and were born to be." I gestured at the sword. "Keep it near you."
I've cited that passage here at Eternity Road more than once before. It's from Chosen One, a novel I wrote about ten years ago. It encapsulated ideas I'd been pondering for a long time: about the varying qualities of men; about the nature of justice; and about the independence of good government and republican government. I'm still playing with those ideas, as my hopefully-soon-to-be-finished novel Which Art In Hope will demonstrate.
In my adult life I've become acquainted with thousands of men, from all walks of life and all the nations of the world. I've gotten to know perhaps a hundred of them very well. That's enough, I think, to form a sample of Mankind sufficiently representative for some tentative conclusions about human quality.
In brief, most people are fit to govern their own lives, if only barely, but nothing more. A few plainly aren't even up to that; if not looked after by wiser and more capable others, they'll kill themselves ignominiously and, quite likely, take a few innocent bystanders with them. But there are a very few whose wisdom, ability, and passion for justice are demonstrably great enough that others should take their advice, even if they find it humiliating to hear and painful to follow.
One of our fondest secret wishes is that a person of that kind should rise to the rule of our nation, free of encumbrance by legislatures, judiciaries, and regulatory bodies with contrary inclinations. The wish, though unarticulated, is so strong that we attribute monarchic powers to our presidents, permit them far more latitude than the Constitution grants them, and hold them accountable for every rise or fall in our national fortunes.
Though he'd never admit it, the typical American voter goes to the polls every four years to elect a king.
We wish for a king so powerfully because of the failure of the premier American political innovation: "a government of laws, not of men."
If that sounds bizarre coming from a self-described libertarian, please remember that the notion of "a government of laws, not of men" was a reaction to the hostility of European royal and noble houses to individual freedom and international peace. Though the record of the European monarchies is mixed, it is nevertheless a warning that to repose unchecked power in a man, or a small group of men, is to gamble everything valuable in life on the whims of the powerful. The Founders cemented the supremacy of the law over the ruler into our political system to forestall exactly that. They trusted in written law -- words of clear and specific meaning, pondered by men of acknowledged good judgment, and ratified by the majority thereof -- to restrain the whims and rapacity of rulers.
They overlooked a few things.
First among the under-considered aspects of the matter was this: Every string of words, no matter how carefully crafted, is subject to "interpretation." The appellate judiciary, which was entrusted with this power de facto, collaborated in the destruction of the postulate beneath "a government of laws:" that a law once written would be stable in meaning, and therefore in application. That's the true import of the hideous phrase "living Constitution."
Second was this: Men who seek power over others regard "a government of laws" as a challenge, not an insuperable obstacle. There have been very few persons who've sought public office, here or anywhere, whose ambitions have stopped short of absolute mastery of their nation. Given time to work, the availability of allies, and the dynamics of demagoguery, they'll undermine the knowability of the law, and the constraints the law imposes on them, as surely as the Sun will rise tomorrow.
Third was this: Once the law has been breached to make room for arbitrary power in the service of injustice, the great majority of those who respond will strive, not to restore the proper bounds on the power-wielders, but to gain control of the State and use it in their own interests. That readiness to subordinate freedom and justice to personal and provincial interests is the engine of special-interest politics. It raised its head with the first public-works projects, and it's only grown stronger over time.
John Randolph, one of the more pragmatic of our Founders, wrote that "You may cover whole skins of parchment with limitations, but power alone can limit power." Nor was he incorrect. The Second Amendment to the Constitution tacitly acknowledges that fact. So does the Sixth, which reserves to a jury of private citizens the ultimate power of the State: the power to punish. But note how badly power-wielders have abraded those guarantees. Today a man needs government permission to own or carry a firearm, and even then he's almost certain to be harassed by the gendarmes if he carries it openly. Today, government bodies staffed by hundreds of thousands of unelected functionaries impose fines and confiscations with neither legislative direction nor a jury's ratification. Two such, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Internal Revenue Service, are permitted to confiscate a man's whole property on their sole authority, and compel him to sue for its return.
Clearly, men who desire power are but poorly impeded by written law.
Superhero fiction is powered by the wish for a king. What else, after all, is a superhero but an individual raised above the common ruck by his possession of extraordinary powers, who elects to use them in the defense of justice? (Such fiction is realistic to the extent that it acknowledges that some super-powerful persons, at least, would use their abilities for personal gain at others' expense.) Gauge from the popularity of such fiction the power of the popular wish for a savior of superhuman quality.
NBC's new drama Kings is an exploitation of that wish that's more clear-sighted and overt than most. It depicts Silas Benjamin, King of the fictional but very America-like Republic of Gilboa, as a man genuinely dedicated to peace and the well-being of his people. He's not a superhero, and he's not uncompromisedly moral or just; the two segments of the series to date show him willing to kill and coerce in service to what he regards as the greater good. Of course there are intrigues and power plays abounding around him and his court, but he himself is portrayed as a good ruler, recognized and loved by his subjects as such. It's possible that Silas Benjamin represents the practical upper bound of what we could expect from a human king. He's far more plausible for the position than Louis Redmond.
But as Malcolm says to Louis in the passage cited earlier, there are too few men worthy of kingship -- even as worthy as Silas Benjamin -- to make the institution generally viable. Beyond that, of course, the problem of selection is a thorny one. Historically, monarchs rose to their thrones far more often than not by force of arms. That tests one sort of ability, but it's no gauge for wisdom or a commitment to justice.
It is noteworthy in this regard that Christians, whose Redeemer sacrificed Himself for the sake of the whole world and every man who's ever lived or ever will, call him the King of Kings. It might not require Divine stature to be a truly good king...but the only King in whom we know we could repose that degree of trust refused all temporal power, died on a cross, and sits at the right hand of the Creator of the Universe. He set a a tough standard for mortals to meet.
The enduring challenge facing us who understand and love freedom is to find a political pattern that resists the temptations inherent in the availability of unbounded power. When the power of the State rests in the hands of a monarch, we're exposed to the whims and passions of a single man. When it's in the hands of an oligarchy, a parliament, or a bureaucracy, we're exposed to the greed and ambition of many men. In neither case can we trust that "the laws" will protect us, no matter how carefully they're written.
Freedom and justice have no protection beyond what We the People supply from our own sinews and blood.
But let this be remembered always: There is no form of government synonymous with freedom and justice. One of the foulest deceits of our time is that "freedom" is merely another word for democracy -- majority rule through the vote. No doubt the typical monarch of the Age of Kings, whatever his defaults and whatever his subjects thought of him, considered himself a paragon of justice. Yet those glorious potentials of the human condition, so rare in recorded history, have made their appearances when and where they would, and seldom in conformance with the form of the State or the pretensions of its rulers.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Don’t hold your breath.
Is President Barack Obama a capitalist? The stock market would probably rally 1,000 points if he made a convincing prime-time speech making the case that he is a capitalist.
In that speech, he could lay out why capitalism is a superior system, why freedom to make lots of money is vital to our nation’s relative success, and how socialism gradually diminishes the standard of living. In so doing, Mr. Obama could provide a definition of capitalism for millions of Americans who have forgotten it, but who still happily opine to pollsters about the right course for our financial system.
John Bell, Letter to the Editor on the topic of “Obama, Socialism and the Fairness of Tax Deductions,” Wall Street Journal, 3/23/09.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Hedging Your Bets Part 2: Defending Your Money
In the keynote essay of this series, your Curmudgeon laid out the case for assessing ourselves -- that is, ordinary private American citizens -- as being under attack by "our own government." Yes, those are "sneer quotes." The government of the United States is not currently "ours," in the sense of being an institution we can trust to work for the common defense and general welfare of the citizenry. It's been captured by enemies of freedom whose veneer of benevolence, despite their relatively brief time in power, has already thinned to transparency.
If you need proof of that accusation, consider this: Before the 2008 elections, we could be reasonably certain that our rights to freedom of expression and our enfranchisement as voters would be respected, regardless of who happens to be in power. Though these are but the desiccated remains of liberty, still they were our last resources through which to attempt the correction of our ever more dangerous political path. But the Obama Administration and its loyalists (e.g., ACORN) have made it plain that those assets will be undercut by such measures as a renewed "Fairness Doctrine" and a weakening-to-impotence of the laws against illegal immigration and election fraud.
There are two, and only two, directions to take when all peaceable measures in defense of freedom have been emasculated: revolt or self-defense. The nation seems disinclined to revolt. The "tea parties" are being shrugged aside by the administration and Congressional Democrats, and without the cooperation of the Mainstream Media, sentiment for a genuine show of force against escalating federal oppression, corruption, and profligacy cannot get off the ground. Therefore, it's time to shout "Sauve qui peut," and to study the methods by which one can defend oneself and one's own.
Your Curmudgeon has written several times on the true nature of money. Some have disagreed, in some cases from a difference in definitions, in others from unwillingness to discard the arrangements of the century past. But only an utter fool could dispute the following: The dollars in your wallet and your bank account are losing their purchasing power as you read this.
For most Americans, the highest priority after immediate physical survival is the protection of their earning and purchasing power. Therefore, your Curmudgeon will first address the defense of your money -- not "the dollar," but rather whatever purchasing power you already have, plus whatever you can earn in the days to come.
Your purchasing power, which will henceforth simply be called your money, is under assault from several directions. The first is taxation.
If you're a salaried employee, a description that applies to most Americans, you receive a fixed wage once every week or two. When asked for your salary amount, you probably respond in before-tax terms, but it's the after-tax amount that constitutes your actual compensation.
You don't have to earn much before landing in the highest federal income tax bracket. Once there, you face the following:
- 33% of your salary goes to the federal government as income tax;
- 7.5% goes to the federal government as "payroll tax" (i.e., Social Security and Medicare taxes);
- A variable fraction -- from zero to 6.2% -- goes to a state government as income tax;
- If you own real estate, from 1% to 3% of the market value goes to county and local governments as property tax;
- A variable fraction -- from zero to 8.5% -- of every dollar you spend on anything but food and housing goes to state, county, and local governments as sales tax;
- Anything you purchase that's made by others and sold in the public marketplace has taxes built into its price.
(There's quite a lot of insult added to all these injuries -- schools that propagandize rather than educate; police that would rather not police; roads that resemble the surface of the Moon; a steadily shrinking military that's overstretched in dealing with the occupation of a country less than a tenth our size; and so forth. But all things in their proper course.)
It's a lucky man less than 50% of whose annual earnings go to taxation. In the United States of America in the year of Our Lord 2009, he's very much the exception. Clearly, any methods of avoiding taxation one can find are greatly to be prized, especially if they don't involve becoming, as a commenter recently put it, an involuntary guest of the federal government.
One motif unites all feasible methods of keeping what one earns away from the grasp of the taxman: privacy.
Hearken to a fictional vignette from the pen of the late, great Cyril Northcote Parkinson -- yes, he of Parkinson's Law -- in which a British surgeon has just presented a bill of £4000 to his patient:
"Your fee of £4000," he concluded, represents the proportion I retain from the last £44,500 of my income. To pay you without being worse off would mean earning another £44,500 more than last year, no easy task.""Well," replied the surgeon, "you know how it is. It is only by charging you that much that I can afford to charge others little or nothing."
"No doubt," said the patient. "But the fee will absorb £44,500 of my theoretical income -- no inconsiderable sum. Might I ask what proportion of the £4000 you will manage to retain?"
It was the surgeon's turn to scribble calculations, as a result of which he concluded that his actual gain, after tax had been paid, would amount to £800.
"Allow me to observe," said the patient, that I must therefore earn £44,500 in order to give you £800 of spendable income; the entire balance going to the government. Does that strike you as a transaction profitable to either of us?"
"Well, frankly, no," admitted the surgeon. "Put like that the whole thing is absurd. But what else can we do?"
"First, we can make certain that no one is listening. No one at the keyhole? No federal agent under the bed? No tape recorder in the -- ? Are you quite sure we can keep this strictly to ourselves?"
"Quite sure," said the surgeon after opening the door and glancing up and down the corridor. "What do you suggest?"
"Come closer so that I can whisper. Why don't I give you a case of scotch and call it quits?"
"Not enough," hissed the surgeon. "But if you made it two cases -- "
"Yes?"
"-- and lent me your cabin cruiser for three weeks in September -- "
"Yes?"
"-- We might call it a deal!"
"That's fine. And do you know what gave me the idea? I studied Parkinson's Second Law and realized that excessive taxation has made nonsense of everything!"
[C. Northcote Parkinson, The Law And The Profits]
Of course, governments don't approve of that sort of barter. It evades their mechanisms for capturing your income, which rely upon the use of legal tender and the banking system. Also, there are "in-kind" laws which attempt to address barter transactions...but barter, if practiced in private by private, trustworthy persons, is nevertheless safe from their reach.
(This is not the place to discuss the legitimacy of tax laws. Some libertarians hold that taxation of any sort is morally indistinguishable from theft. The position is defensible, but it leaves unanswered the question of whether government held to the same moral standards as private persons is even possible -- a serious question for serious attention at another time.)
Privacy in transaction makes possible the striking of bargains on a two-party basis, as opposed to the three-party scheme -- buyer, seller, and State -- preferred (of course) by the State. Sometimes, privacy is not attainable; for example, if you draw your salary from a legally chartered corporation, there's little you can do to keep it to yourself. Also, very large purchases -- real estate, cars, and items of similar magnitude and visibility -- and purchases from large, highly visible institutions -- department store and supermarket chains -- can't practically be concealed from the taxman's questing gaze. But:
- Modest transactions,
- Between two persons at or near the same economic level,
- Which don't need to be made public for some extrinsic reason,
...can be kept private in perpetuity.
This militates toward the use of small merchants near to one's "home base." If you and he are at about the same economic level -- compare your houses and cars, and allow no more than a 50% difference -- you can make it work. But more is required.
First, you must give him a reason to trust you. If he's known you long enough, that will often be sufficient. If not, you have some work to do. Nor is it possible to prescribe exactly what course of action will do the job.
Second, you must persuade yourself that you can trust him. There's money to be made in betrayal, and the tax authorities are quite candid about their use of it. In this particular connection, there's weakness in numbers. Avoid organized "barter clubs." In such an arrangement, every member holds all the others at his mercy. A situation in which many persons know, simply by your presence among them, that you're interested in evading the tax laws, is the exact opposite of privacy.
Even two-person agreements carry an element of risk. If you have any doubts about a merchant's benevolence, you must not make it possible for him to profit by betraying you. Whatever deal you propose, in whatever context, must be worth more to him going forward in time than anything he could "earn" by traducing you to the State.
Third, you must have something to trade for what you want from him. This is obvious...yet it isn't quite as obvious what that something must not be: legal tender. It's virtually impossible for a small merchant to deal with some persons publicly and others privately, yet sequester the gains from the second away from the first. Legal tender, whether physical or credit, will become visible sooner or later. The consequences will be dire: certainly for him, and quite possibly for you shortly afterward.
Which brings us back to the nature of money.
Money is a medium of exchange and a store of value. The significance of the first property should be obvious: not everyone can be persuaded to accept a chicken in exchange for a loaf of pumpernickel, and besides, barter of that sort makes it difficult to "make change." But the importance of the second property has always been at least as great. Today, it's near to overpowering.
The State's ability to tax us relies on our use of legal tender: the dollar. But the dollar is not money; it's a politically managed currency with no intrinsic value. In the absence of the legal tender laws, it would be worthless.
That wasn't always the case. Time was, the dollar had a statutory definition as a fixed amount of gold or silver. By presenting a dollar bill to any bank in the country, the bearer could demand the equivalent weight of precious metal in exchange. (If you've ever seen a Silver Certificate, that's what that was about.) That property of hard (redeemable) money is what stabilized the dollar until 1913, since no bank that wanted to remain solvent would issue more banknotes -- the origin of the paper dollar -- than it could redeem in precious metal.
(Yes, some banks did so; the famous bank runs of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries testified to the variable trustworthiness of financial institutions in those days. But the banks that did so either fell, or were wildcats protected by corruption at the state and territorial levels. One could always protect oneself from such perfidy by dealing exclusively in gold or silver.)
The most salient point about money in our current situation is this: legal tender, which a merchant is required by law to accept "for all debts, public and private," is not money. It cannot store value; the Federal Reserve, no longer required by law to redeem a dollar in precious metal, can therefore inflate the supply of dollars without limit.
If you can't get the barber to accept a dozen free-range eggs in exchange for a haircut, and if the use of legal tender makes it next to impossible to keep your dealings private, why not try money?
How? Coming right up.
Have a gander at the following:
Those are stores of value. At this time, the first of them stores about $100; the second stores about $14. They're not legal tender; you certainly wouldn't want to try to pay your property taxes with them. No law can compel your plumber or your barber to accept them in payment of a debt -- but that doesn't mean that they won't.
In the absence of State coercion, a medium of exchange is decided upon by the persons who elect to use it. That's how money came to be: not by governmental decree ("fiat" money), but by the free decisions of millions upon millions of persons to store their wealth -- the part they didn't immediately need to convert into other kinds of goods -- in the precious metals.
The precious metals remain quite as usable as stores of value as ever. The dollar, by typical estimates, has lost 96% to 98% of its purchasing power since 1913. However, because of our accelerating productivity, gold and silver have gained purchasing power: using a constant basket of goods available both then and now, an ounce of either will buy about 50% more today than it would in 1913.
What remains for us who want to defend our money is to return to its roots, to the maximum extent our circumstances permit:
- Convert as much of your disposable income as is practical into precious metal;
- Carry some of it with you at all times;
- Look for opportunities to deal with small, local merchants rather than large ones with no real tie to your community;
- When the circumstances are right, ask such a merchant whether he'd be willing to accept payment in silver or gold. Such a transaction is inherently private, and to the advantage of you both.
Never fear that gold or silver will someday "no longer be valued." We have over 2500 years of history, from all the nations of Man, testifying to the enduring value of the money metals. But more than that, we already know that the dollar, which has deteriorated so badly to date, will deteriorate even faster in the coming years, owing to the rapacity of the federal government. Besides, astronomers keep a rather close watch on the skies; there are no solid gold or silver asteroids about to strike the Earth.
Absorbing and exploiting the logic of this is the first step in defending your money.
The availability of the World Wide Web, and the spreading availability of broadband connectivity, make it possible to track the value of the money metals at any time of the day. Your Curmudgeon makes heavy use of this site, whose quotes are as up-to-the-minute as any on the Web. For access to the precious metals themselves, eBay is a good starting point; search the "Coins & Paper Money" category for "gold coins" and "silver rounds." Also use a good search engine to seek out institutional vendors of the metals, and compare their prices -- don't forget to include shipping charges! -- to those of private sellers.
Then cultivate the trust of those around you, and help them defend their money while defending your own.
Next up: Defending your property.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Assorted Reflections: A Sunday Rumination
As you might imagine, I've received a lot of feedback about last Sunday's piece, and not all of it was approving. Much of it characterized my actions as quixotic at best, potentially harmful to the Church at worst. Francis Pizzarelli, I've been told, is a highly regarded priest with a large number of admirers...and a fair amount of "political clout" within the diocese. Just who do I think I am, attempting to besmirch the record of such a servant of God?
Who do I think I am? A Catholic Christian, nothing more. Who does Francis Pizzarelli think he is, to rewrite the Scriptures, including the words of Christ Himself:
Now a man came up to him and said, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to gain eternal life?” He said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” “Which ones?” he asked. Jesus replied, “You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false witness, honor your father and mother and love your neighbor as yourself.” [The Gospel According To Matthew, 19:16-19]
...to better suit his own agenda? And if, despite the most urgent promptings of my conscience, I were to say nothing in the face of false witness and simony (the use of a sacred office for secular purposes) in the bosom of the Church, who would I be then?
An Internet friend of long standing put it thus:
I’m an Anglican (e.g. a former Episcopalian). Report this sort of behavior to his bishop in the Episcopal Church, and the guy is likely to be nominated as Canon Theologian....Let this theological cancer grow, and it will consume the Church, magisterium or no.
My thoughts exactly.
2. The Courage of Saint Joseph.
Thursday, March 19, was the Feast of Saint Joseph, stepfather to Jesus. Joseph receives little attention from the Gospels, but other para-Biblical materials exist that suggest that his role in the Greatest Story deserves more respect than it usually gets:
But the child [Mary] grew, and when she was two years old, Joachim said to Anna, "Let us lead her to the temple of the Lord, that we may perform our vow, which we have vowed to the Lord God, lest He should be angry with us, and our offering be unacceptable." But Anna said, "Let us wait the third year, lest she should be at a loss to know her father." And Joachim said, "Let us then wait." And when the child was three years old, Joachim said, "Let us invite the daughters of the Hebrews, who are undefiled, and let them take each a lamp, and let them be lighted, that the child may not turn back again, and her mind be set against the temple of the Lord." And they did thus till they ascended into the temple of the Lord. And the high priest received her, and blessed her, and said, "Mary, the Lord God has magnified your name to all generations. And to the very end of time, the Lord by you will show his redemption to the children of Israel." And he placed her on the third step of the altar, and the Lord gave to her grace, and she danced with her feet, and all the house of Israel loved her.And her parents went away filled with wonder, and praising God, because the girl did not return back to them. But Mary continued in the temple as a dove educated there, and received her food from the hand of an angel. And when she was twelve years of age, the priests met in a council, and said, "Behold, Mary is twelve years of age. What shall we do with her, for fear lest the holy place of the Lord our God should be defiled?" Then the priests replied to Zachary the high priest, "Stand at the altar of the Lord, and enter into the holy place, and make petitions concerning her, and whatever the Lord shall manifest to you, do that." Then the high priest entered into the Holy of Holies and, taking away with him the breastplate of judgment, made prayers concerning her. And behold, an angel of the Lord came to him and said, "Zachary, Zachary, go forth and call together all the widowers among the people, and let every one of them bring his rod, and he by whom the Lord shall show a sign shall be the husband of Mary." And the criers went out throughout all Judaea, and the trumpet of the Lord sounded, and all the people ran and met together. Joseph also, throwing away the hatchet, went out to meet them, and when they were met, they went to the high priest, taking every man his rod. After the high priest had received their rods, he went into the temple to pray. And when he had finished his prayer, he took the rods, and went forth and distributed them, and there was no miracle attending them. The last rod was taken by Joseph, and behold, a dove proceeded out of the rod, and flew upon the head of Joseph. And the high priest said, "Joseph, you are the person chosen to take the Virgin of the Lord, to keep her for him." But Joseph refused, saying, "I am an old man, and have children, but she is young, and I fear lest I should appear ridiculous in Israel." then the high priest replied, "Joseph, fear the Lord your God, and remember how God dealt with Dathan, Korah, and Abiram, how the earth opened and swallowed them up, because of their contradiction. Now therefore, Joseph, fear God, lest the like things should happen in your family." Joseph then, being afraid, took her to his house, and Joseph said to Mary, "Behold, I have taken you from the temple of the Lord, and now I will leave you in my house. I must go to mind my trade of building. The Lord be with you."
[The Protevangelion of Saint James, Chapters 7 and 8]
The Protevangelion isn't a part of the canonical Bible -- no, I don't know why -- but it's accorded great respect by Christian scholars nonetheless. It's attributed to Saint James the Lesser, one of Saint Joseph's sons by his first wife. James was one of the Twelve, and became the Bishop of Jerusalem after the Ascension.
If the Protevangelion be trusted, Joseph, knowing he had been given the care of a young woman rich in grace and already dedicated to God, refrained from ever approaching Mary with carnal intent. Indeed, he was perplexed beyond measure when he found that she was pregnant:
Then Joseph was exceedingly afraid, and went away from her, considering what he should do with her. And thus he reasoned with himself: "If I conceal her crime, I shall be found guilty by the law of the Lord; and if I reveal her to the children of Israel, I fear lest -- she being with child by an angel -- I shall be found to betray the life of an innocent person. What, therefore, shall I do? I will privately dismiss her." Then the night was come upon him, when behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, and said, "Do not be afraid to take that young woman, for That which is within her is of the Holy Spirit, and she shall bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. Then Joseph arose from his sleep, and glorified the God of Israel, who had shown him such favor, and preserved the Virgin. [The Protevangelion, Chapter 10:13-20]
Joseph also stood by Mary -- and of course, by his own innocence -- during a subsequent religious trial. Inasmuch as any failure in this regard would have caused both of them to be stoned to death, we have Saint Joseph's courage and steadfastness to thank for preserving not just the life of the Mother of God, but of her unborn Son as well.
Today, of course, the odds are about one in three that the Son of God would be killed before He could see the light of this world.
Saint Joseph, incidentally, is honored on two calendar days. The other is May 1: the Feast of Saint Joseph the Workman. A reflection on the significance of that celebration may be found here.
"Work is love made visible." -- Saint Francis of Assisi
3. Unboundedness.
Because we're men, bound to time and to individuality, we have certain conceptual difficulties coping with entities that are not men. We anthropomorphize as we do because of that difficulty. Even when we know we're deliberately leading ourselves astray by doing so, we can't seem to help ourselves. This passage from C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength resonates with me for that reason:
Mr. Bultitude’s mind was as furry and as unhuman in shape as his body. He did not remember, as a man in his situation would have remembered, the provincial zoo from which he had escaped during a fire, nor his first snarling and terrified arrival at the Manor, nor the slow stages whereby he had learned to love and trust its inhabitants. He did not know that he loved and trusted them now. He did not know that they were people, nor that he was a bear. Indeed, he did not know that he existed at all: everything that is represented by the words I and Me and Thou was absent from his mind....There was no prose in his life. The appetencies which a human mind might disdain as cupboard loves were for him quivering and ecstatic aspirations which absorbed his whole being: infinite yearnings, stabbed with the threat of tragedy and shot through with the colours of Paradise. One of our race, if plunged back for a moment in the warm, trembling, iridescent pool of pre-Adamite consciousness, would have emerged believing that he had grasped the absolute, for the states below reason and the states above it have, by their common contrast to the life we know, a certain superficial resemblance. Sometimes there returns to us from infancy the memory of a nameless delight or terror, unattached to any delightful or dreadful thing, a potent adjective floating in a nounless void, a pure quality. At such moments we have experience of the shallows of that pool. But fathoms deeper than any memory can take us, right down in the central warmth and dimness, the bear lived all its life.
The depth of the wisdom in that passage is astounding. Even its lesser application, to the way we anthropomorphize our animals, conveys tremendous insight. But its greater one, to the gulf between us and the eternal, unbounded Mind of God, is overpowering indeed.
It's commonplace to hear Christians, including Christian clerics, speak of God as if He were a time-bound entity much like ourselves. When we speak of His Plan, we come very close to deluding ourselves fatally, for a "plan" in human parlance comprises a goal and a series of actions to undertake in the hope of reaching it. But God stands outside time, encompassing all that was, is, or will be. A "plan" of the human sort would be meaningless to Him. Indeed, to speak of God as "needing" or "wanting" any particular thing or outcome is equally amphigoric. All such attributions would imply a boundedness He does not possess.
That's a large part of the reason for the Incarnation.
Jesus was given to us for our sakes, not His, and certainly not His Father's. He made it possible for men to approach divinity in a form they could "relate to," a form that experienced time, desire, and human-scale love and loss. The binding of Christ's divine nature to a mortal form allows us to appreciate God and His love without having to stretch our reason beyond its proper limits. For unboundedness is something even our mathematicians can't quite cope with, at least (if I remember my school days accurately) not without devolving into a chalk-and-eraser-hurling quarrel.
Yet it is natural for us to aspire to transcendence: to yearn to shatter our bonds and rise into unboundedness in our own right. And this, too, is a part of the ministry of Christ: the promise of life eternal in the nearness of God, purchasable for a price so modest that many disbelieve it for that reason alone.
To be a Christian is to trust in the soundness of that bargain.
May God bless and keep you all.
