Musings Of An Indie WriterSub Story Title 1
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Obama’s Bayonet
A politician of the modern sort -- i.e., one who regards "his" office as really, truly his and will do anything to remain in it -- will be forever alert to the possibility of losses of support from those voters who were instrumental in propelling him into office. That necessity can undermine his policy agenda...assuming he has one.
I don't think there's much doubt that Barack Hussein Obama has a policy agenda, do you? All the same, the man wants a second term -- he wouldn't be campaigning so hard, otherwise -- and it appears that he might be ready to back away from his recent assertion of power over First Amendment freedom-of-religion rights:
The Obama administration is willing to work with Catholic universities, hospitals and other church-affiliated employers to implement a new policy that requires health insurers to offer birth control coverage, a top adviser to the president's re-election campaign said on Tuesday.David Axelrod, a senior campaign adviser to President Barack Obama, said the administration had heard the Church's concerns and never intended to "abridge anyone's religious freedom."
But he gave no sign that the administration would reverse course under intensifying pressure from Church leaders and political heat from Republican presidential candidates.
"This is an important issue. It's important for millions of women across this country. We want to resolve it in an appropriate way, and we're going to do that," he said in remarks on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program.
White House spokesman Jay Carney also sought to diffuse criticism from Church leaders, telling reporters later on Tuesday that the administration would work with religious organizations "to see if the implementation of the policy can be done in a way that allays some of those concerns."
Fifty-two percent of American Catholics who cast votes in November 2008 cast those votes for Obama. That's one hell of a lot of votes: probably enough, were he to be deprived of them, to eject him from the White House. It raises some interesting questions about the acumen of his political strategists.
But Obama has been caught in a cleft stick on this issue. His hard-left base has demanded that every employer and every medical-care institution in the country be shackled to their dream of "universal health care." That dream includes free contraception, abortion on demand, and several other items that Catholics have been taught are absolutely, irremediably morally wrong. But objections of conscience be damned: the Left wants socialized medicine, and it knows it can't get there from here without first imposing top-down, one-size-fits-all controls on every person, business, and organization in the country.
The ambiguous qualifications offered by Axelrod and Carney suggest strongly that the original move was a trial balloon -- that Obama and his political handlers wanted to "probe with the bayonet" in authentic Leninist style and thus discover whether there’s any steel beneath the Church's cassock. They had some reason to suspect that the Church would roll over. When it reared up on its hind legs, it probably came as a surprise to them -- and now we'll undoubtedly see a reprise of the old "good czar / evil counsellors" ploy, in an attempt to preserve Obama's portion of the Catholic vote for November.
Will it work? Unclear, if we interpret "work" to mean "win Obama a second term." After all, there's that hard-left base to consider. They aren't likely to be happy about any exemptions granted on religious grounds. Whether that would be enough to keep any substantial number of them home on November 6 is difficult to predict.
The usual calculation in such a situation proceeds from a key question: Can the voters I've just pissed off go anywhere else? The answer generally arises from the "hardness" of the offended bloc. The more ideologically absolute the voter, the more difficult it is to predict his response. Seldom will he "cross the aisle;" the possibility is unlikely even to occur to him. But he might abstain from voting, which is bad enough if the candidate has been counting on his support.
This is the second cleft stick of recent development. The first was the Keystone XL pipeline: the unions want it badly, but the enviro-Nazis oppose it with all their shriveled anti-human souls. It appears that Obama's strategists are betting that the unions are more solidly behind Obama than the green bigots. We shall see when the votes are tallied, especially the votes from union-power states such as Michigan and Ohio.
Whatever the ultimate outcome, conservatives cannot help but take some cheer from these events. The supposed "master politician" and his Chicago crew of finaglers have become entangled in their own political underwear. It's a possibility permanently inherent in special-interest-coalition politics -- and one conservatives have been hoping would enmesh The Won ever since his inauguration.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
100 Years Ago Today Part 4
Certain features in that original servile state from which we all spring should be carefully noted by way of conclusion.First, though all nowadays contrast slavery with freedom to the advantage of the latter, yet men then accepted slavery freely as an alternative to indigence.
Secondly (and this is most important for our judgment of the servile institution as a whole, and of the chances of its return), in all those centuries we find no organized effort, nor (What is still more significant) do we find any complaint of conscience against the institution which condemned the bulk of human beings to forced labor.
Slaves may be found in the literary exercises of the time bewailing their lot -- and joking about it; some philosophers will complain that an ideal society should contain no slaves; others will excuse the establishment of slavery upon this plea or that, while granting that it offends the dignity of man. The greater part will argue of the state that it is necessarily servile. But no one, slave or free, dreams of abolishing or even changing the thing. You have no martyrs for the case of freedom as against slavery. The so-called servile wars are the resistance on the part of escaped slaves to any attempt at recapture, but they are not accompanied by an accepted affirmation that servitude is an intolerable thing; nor is that note struck at all from the unknown beginnings to the Catholic endings of the pagan world. Slavery is irksome, undignified, woeful; but it is, to them, of the nature of things.
[Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State. Bold emphasis added.]
The nearly uniform acceptance of the institution of slavery as natural, unavoidable, and therefore ineradicable throughout the first six millennia of Mankind's history is something the modern mind finds hard to accept. Belloc's thesis is that slavery was a response to the general condition of poverty in which by far the greater part of the human population was immured. His response to the seeming resurgence of slavery in industrial England -- though not by that name, of course -- was his economic philosophy of Distributivism, about which more later.
Indeed, becoming a slave, and therefore having a claim on an owner whose responsibility it became to maintain his property, might well have seemed the only acceptable course to men whose lives and families were at the brink of extinction from impoverishment. But it's unwise to stop there. We have other questions to ask:
- How did it come about that, while the great mass of men were so grindingly poor, a few were so very rich as to be able to afford to maintain the rest as slaves?
- Does the answer to Question 1 above tell us anything useful about why the poor were so desperate -- and why they had no other means of bettering their conditions but to accept enslavement?
Two of the Nineteenth Century's preeminent thinkers, Herbert Spencer and Henry George, submitted an answer: land tenure. A class of men, whom we shall call the gentry, held all right and title to all the arable land, and were maintained in that condition by the use of force. As land is the fundamental resource, from which all other resources but labor are derived, that left the remainder of Mankind, whom we shall call the peasantry, unable to sustain itself by independent effort. The submission of the peasantry to the gentry, and the institutions of slavery, serfdom, villeinage, and all comparable arrangements, followed in due course.
The notion that land tenure was the root of this social evil was George's rationale for the Single Tax: a 100% tax on the value of unimproved land. George saw this as sufficient to relieve social poverty by giving landholders an incentive to release unimproved lands back to the common, so that others might acquire and use them. Spencer found this agreeable as well. Neither man penetrated to the contradiction beneath the idea: that a force of sufficient power to maintain the gentry in their position of privilege would also be sufficiently benevolently inclined toward the peasantry to enforce such a tax on the gentry.
That having been said, there is much justice in George's position that the gentry's maintenance of unchallengeable title over unimproved lands was the lever by which it forced the greater part of Mankind into servility. In the pre-industrial eras, access to arable land was by far the most important factor in human survival. The gentry's grip upon it brought about the "original condition" of mass servility; after it had endured for some centuries, such that even a thinker of the order of Aristotle could write unblushingly that some men are naturally slaves, the mindset required to maintain the institution was firmly established.
Things are different today, of course. But the differences aren't necessarily qualitative. Land in pre-industrial times was the overriding necessity of survival, but today less than 3% of the working-age population feeds the entire nation and quite a few others besides. The peasant of the Twenty-First Century isn't looking for a plot of land to till and sow; indeed, were he given one, he probably wouldn't have the first idea what to do with it. So it falls to us to ask:
More anon.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Noo-YAWK!
I have a reputation for being a contemplative, hypercerebral sort. If you buy into it, you’ll find my jubilation at the New York Giants' incredible Super Bowl win of last night rather discordant. But I must tell you, Gentle Reader: that's your problem.
Heroes? There were a few.
Eli Manning has assumed his rightful place among the game's best quarterbacks. Tom Brady has one more Super Bowl victory than Eli, but he won his rings with Patriots teams that were far more solid, and that accomplished far more during their regular seasons, than Eli's Giants. There will be no more invidious comparisons between them, especially given the Giants' carved-up running game and fractured receiver corps.
Perhaps the funniest highlight ever to be captured by a camera came with 57 seconds to go, as Ahmad Bradshaw struggled not to enter the end zone, while the entire Patriots team prayed that he would, and indeed, parted like theater curtains to admit him. Never before in NFL history has a running back been so chagrined to score a touchdown...and never before has the sight of a player tottering over helplessly, with no one anywhere near him, been an occasion for so much laughter and chagrin.
Among the receivers, Hakim Nicks and Mario Manningham, neither of whom was particularly impressive during the regular season, rose impressively to their challenges. Nicks, for once, omitted to grease his hands; Manningham made two critical catches, the second one reminiscent of David Tyree's Super Bowl 2008 miracle catch, without which the game could not have been won. Victor Cruz did unexpected service by drawing coverage away from his two less hyped and respected teammates.
It's impossible to say too much about second-year phenomenon Jason Pierre-Paul. I don't think I've ever seen a better all-around athlete in any team sport. He played the 2011 season and the subsequent playoffs as if he were determined to erase the memory of every other defensive end in NFL history. There hasn't been a defensive "impact player" of his caliber since Lawrence Taylor.
Steve Weatherford has certainly earned his contract renewal, and a big raise, to "boot." The punter's incredible ability to "coffin corner" a kick is unmatched in my experience of NFL football. Indeed, he deserves a far larger share of the credit for the Giants' victory than might be supposed, as, had Tom Brady not been safetied on his first play from scrimmage, the complexion of the game would have been greatly different, especially the final two minutes.
It was hard to believe, given the way the first half ended and the second half began, that a furious and well motivated Patriots team wasn't about to run the Giants out of Lucas Oil Stadium. But however he did it, Tom Coughlin kept his young men's heads in the game, focused and performing. It makes it easy to believe what several Giants players said beforehand about their love and respect for the veteran head coach.
That's it for the 2011-2012 pro football season. And just in time; I'm exhausted. Now let's see if the Rangers can keep it up all the way to the Stanley Cup!
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Missteps: A Sunday Rumination
It isn't often nowadays that I feel compelled to expand on Catholic teachings. We have a fairly large, rather well trained clergy for that. But now and then, political posturings and the clergy's missteps compel me to put my shoulder to that rather heavy wheel.
Missteps I said, and missteps I meant. The Church is peopled by...well, people. People can make mistakes, and often do. Even the pope, whom we are taught to regard as the supreme temporal authority on Christian theology, can be wrong. His infallibility cannot and does not extend beyond the explicit teachings of Christ when He walked among us in human flesh.
Among the worst of the Church's missteps of recent years has been its willingness to endorse political means when they're nominally pointed at Christian ends.
I've said it so often that I should hardly have to repeat it: The defining characteristic of government is its privilege of using coercive force without penalty. Indeed, if a government were denied that privilege, it would have no reason to exist, as it could only do what other, completely voluntary institutions can do. So to argue that for government to undertake a particular task is right and necessary is to argue that the proposed end can only be attained through coercion.
The tasks governments have undertaken since the beginning of the Twentieth Century have overwhelmingly been melioristic: attempts to "improve" us, either as individuals or as a society. Such "improvements" have been used as the rationales for every government undertaking, and every exertion of its unique privilege, except for the war-making power.
A religious institution or organization might well find itself in agreement with some of the proposed "improvements." Indeed, Christ Himself exhorted us to love our neighbors as we do ourselves, which implies a duty of judicious concern for those around us. When such concern impels us to succor the needy or assist the disadvantaged, it is praiseworthy. When it moves us to appeal to the State to stick a gun into our neighbor's ribs and relieve him involuntarily of his property, on the grounds that it will allow the State to perform our charitable functions for us, it is not. It is imperative that men of good will, whether religious or not, oppose State "benevolence" with all their forces and compel it to cease and desist with its "charities." That State action inevitably produces a worsening of the conditions of the poor and disadvantaged only adds a dollop of irony.
Yet major Christian denominations, including the Catholic Church, have repeatedly endorsed political means for the relief of need and suffering. Moreover, they have maintained that position in the face of crushing evidence to the effect that political "charity" actually degrades the condition of its nominal beneficiaries.
Even to have started down that path was wrong. To persist in it is the exact opposite of Christian charity.
The very best example of Christian charity ever composed was provided us by the Redeemer Himself:
Now an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus, saying, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
He said to him, "What is written in the law? How do you understand it?" The expert answered, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus said to him, "You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live."
But the expert, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"
Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him up, and went off, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, but when he saw the injured man he passed by on the other side. So too a Levite, when he came up to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan who was traveling came to where the injured man was, and when he saw him, he felt compassion for him. He went up to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him, and whatever else you spend, I will repay when I come back this way.' Which of these three do you think became a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?"
The expert in religious law said, "The one who showed mercy to him." So Jesus said to him, "Go and do the same." [The Gospel According to Luke, 10:25-36]
Note that the Samaritan didn't look around for someone else to take the job onto his shoulders. Neither did he "dial 911." God had placed him in the proximity of a man who needed help through no fault of his own. He rose to the challenge, not because the revenuers were jabbing him with the barrel of a gun, but because he saw it as the right thing for him to do, personally. That, and that alone, constitutes true Christian charity.
Whenever the Church has allied itself with a political force, the Church and Christians generally have been the losers. That includes the endorsement of political means overtly intended for the alleviation of human suffering. It is no province of the State to do any such thing, no matter how ardently the lazy among us would prefer it.
It's been suggested, and by some fairly intelligent people at that, that a Church-State alliance, once forged, can never be unmade. Christians had better hope that that's not the case. If the Church is to retain its sanctity, breaking all such bonds is the most important practical task confronting it in our time. Those of good will but weak understanding, who look back on the old Throne-and-Altar days with approval, have little idea how great was the damage done to the Church by those arrangements.
Given what we know of the perniciousness of political power, the venality of power-seekers, and the State's history of murder and destruction when allowed to run free, a Christian who approves of the use of government's powers for any end other than the security of the borders and the peace of the streets has absolutely no excuse. He is a literal participant in the degradation and destruction of the very faith he claims to hold, and of the institution to which Christ entrusted its conservation.
We don't say "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" merely because it sounds profound. We say it because it's true -- because we're all too prone to forgetting it. No end can justify an evil means. Any means that takes moral judgment out of the hands of individuals is inherently evil. When agencies and instruments of violence are permitted to don a cloak of "compassion" and "mercy" by undertaking charitable duties that properly belong to us as individuals, the evil is compounded beyond all understanding. It's a Christian's duty to resist it to the limit of his powers...if not beyond.
May God bless and keep you all.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Free-riding Europeans.
Last year’s Libya war was supposed to prove that the Europeans could take the lead in a smaller conflict closer to their borders. But contrary to the White House spin, the U.S. was the lone indispensable military force in Libya. The Europeans lacked the precision guided munitions, intelligence resources and refueling tankers to finish off Moammar Gadhafi’s forces, which weren’t exactly the Red Army.
“Paper Allies.” Wall Street Journal, 2/4/12.
Brainy 44
We've heard quite a great deal from the Sycophant Media about how smart Barack Hussein Obama is. I recall a couple of statements to the effect that he's "the most intelligent man ever to become president." The effusion of praise for our 44th president's intellect has slowed down a bit in recent months, but one still hears the occasional exclamation about it from a columnist desperate for access to Obama or one of his inner circle.
Well, let's have a look at a trifle of relevant evidence:
WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama connected his faith with his policies toward the poor at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, a subtle but sharp contrast to remarks made by presidential hopeful Mitt Romney the day before."Living by the principle that we are our brother's keeper. Caring for the poor and those in need," Obama said before an audience of about 3,000 at the Washington Hilton. These values, he said, "They're the ones that have defined my own faith journey."
Oh, my. "We are our brother's keeper." A principle? A Christian principle? Is any Gentle Reader awake enough to cite where the phrase "my brother's keeper" actually occurs in the Bible?
That's right: Genesis:
In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry and his countenance fell.The Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it."
Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let us go out to the field." And when they were out in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" He said, "I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?" [Genesis 4:3-9]
So our brainy president has transmuted an evasion by Mankind's first murderer into Christian doctrine. Brilliant! Innovative! Thomas Jefferson would be awed. But surely we could expect nothing less from "the most intelligent man ever to become president."
Gentle Reader, as they say on C.S.I., people lie; evidence doesn't. The evidence is that Barack Hussein Obama isn't just a step or two short of the genius plateau; he's functionally a moron, and apparently has morons for speechwriters, at that. But let the killing stroke go to the great Mark Steyn:
But according to National Review columnist Mark Steyn, author of "After America: Get Ready for Armageddon," Obama's comments leave much to be desired, particularly when it comes to the president's own brother, George Hussein Onyango Obama who lives on $12 a year in Kenya."Oh give me a break," Steyn said on Hugh Hewitt's radio show on Thursday night. "For a start, when he says, 'I am my brother's keeper,' his brother is back in Kenya living on $12 a year. That's what he was living on at the time of the 2008 election. So all the president has to do in terms of shared responsibility is put a $10 bill in an envelope and mail it to Nairobi or Mombasa or wherever and he will double his brother's salary."
Perhaps the ultimate refutation of Obama's moronic statement lies in this: By implying that the government, acting through its taxing power, must assume responsibility for the less well off in America, Obama has expressed longstanding left-liberal doctrine -- which absolves individuals acting as individuals of any responsibility at all. That is a direct, undisguised contradiction of Christian doctrine, as expressed by Christ Himself:
"When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be assembled before him, and he will separate people one from another like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?' And the king will answer them, 'I tell you the truth, just as you did it for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it for me.'"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire that has been prepared for the devil and his angels! For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you did not receive me as a guest, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they too will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not give you whatever you needed?' Then he will answer them, 'I tell you the truth, just as you did not do it for one of the least of these, you did not do it for me.' And these will depart into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." [The Gospel According To Matthew, 25:31-46]
Barack Hussein Obama isn't merely unintelligent; he's also the exact opposite of Christian. Let anyone who disputes this argue with Jesus Himself; I'll sit on the sidelines and watch.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Columnist As Machiavellian Kingmaker?
As a long-time admirer of columnist Ann Coulter, whose importance to articulating and marshaling conservative sentiment has seldom been properly appreciated, I was utterly appalled to read her column of yesterday, in which she mounted a thoroughly unprincipled defense of "RomneyCare," the Massachusetts state-level health-care seizure that became the mold from which ObamaCare was cast.
To be fair, Coulter marshals the best imaginable defense of RomneyCare...but it's still light-years away from sufficient. To be even fairer, she cites a couple of solid libertarian-conservatives who've also endorsed RomneyCare, so she's not alone...but having company in your error, even prestigious, well-respected company, doesn't make you any less wrong.
I was ready to write her off as having ascended into the GOP Establishment and detached from her previous conservative allegiances. Indeed, I might do so yet. But in today's Daily Caller, there just might be a hint of something better peeking through the distasteful surface of Coulter's unprincipled stance:
Later in her appearance [on Sean Hannity's radio show], Hannity asked Coulter who she thought Romney should surround himself with as president. She said that she “better have his ear” and recalled an encounter with Romney."Did I tell you I met him at a fundraiser?" Coulter said. “I went up to him. I was about to leave. But I said -- I just wanted to go up to him and tell him, 'You owe me and you better be as right-wing a president as I’m telling everybody you’re going to be.'"
Coulter said she also plugged Christie to be his running mate, but said the former Massachusetts governor said "oh don't worry" or something to that effect.
I won't mince words: This is an ugly move. It's a power play by a columnist, admittedly a columnist with a large and energetic following, by which she hopes to gain influence over a candidate whom she thinks has the best shot at unseating Barack Hussein Obama. By choosing this course, Coulter has left off being an opinion-monger and is bidding for a "seat at the table" of practical Republican politics. She might think it's the best shot available, given current circumstances and the dispiriting crop of Republican candidates.
But it's a long shot...indeed, it's a very long shot in high winds and poor visibility. Mitt Romney's history of persistently seeking ever-higher office, plus his record as Governor of Massachusetts, speaks quite clearly to his priorities: first, last, and always, greater power and prestige for Mitt Romney. If my assessment of him is accurate, he'll use any endorsement, any advantage, and any tactic to get where he wants to go -- the Oval Office -- and once there, will conduct himself as if it was his sole achievement. He won't feel indebted to Ann Coulter or anyone else. He certainly won't feel obligated to alter his policy preferences.
There is precedent:
On receiving the Democratic nomination for President at Baltimore in 1912, [Woodrow Wilson] declared, "I am a Presbyterian and believe in predestination and election. It was Providence that did the work at Baltimore." After the election, he told William F. McCombs, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, "Before we proceed I wish it clearly understood that I owe you nothing." Surprised, McCombs reminded him of his services during the campaign, but Wilson exclaimed, God ordained that I should be the next President of the United States. Neither you nor any other mortal could have prevented that." [William F. McCombs, Making Woodrow Wilson President, cited in Paul Boller's Presidential Anecdotes.]
If Romney, a Mormon, doesn't share Wilson's Presbyterian conviction that the presidency is his by predestination, nevertheless he appears to think it's his by right, and that any means that will get him there, no matter how foul, is therefore justifiable.
Miss Coulter has probably committed a grave error: a profound misestimation of her ability to sway the course of electoral and post-electoral events. If matters eventuate any other way than she hopes, she'll either have helped Obama to a second term, or she'll have collaborated in fixing yet another liberal Republican president on us, while sacrificing her credibility in the bargain. It's the sort of mistake persons who think themselves far smarter than the rest of us are prone to making -- most particularly those who think their end justifies their choice of means. But we shall see.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Freedom Of Religion
Barack Hussein Obama's betrayal of his promises to Catholics in America has been much in the news:
Catholics are fired up over new rules implementing Obama's health care reform law forcing Catholic universities, hospitals, and charities to provide insurance for their employees covering contraception -- even though that violates church teachings."When you push people of faith and you tell them the government is going to knock down the wall of separation of church and state and overreach like the Obama administration, you've got a war on your hands," Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, told Fox News.
In an extraordinary move this past weekend, New York Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan and other archbishops throughout the nation had their priests read letters denouncing the Obama administration policy from the pulpit at Sunday Mass.
"Never before has the government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience," Dolan said in a web video that takes the battle online. "This shouldn't happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights. How about letting our elected leaders know that we want religious liberty and rights of consciences restored and the administration's mandate rescinded? We can't afford to strike out on this one."
In one sense at least, this is outrage that ought to have erupted long ago. Catholics, like all other Americans, are taxed to fund whatever Washington chooses to spend our money on -- and that includes subsidies to Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in the United States. So we've been compelled to support a moral horror for some years already.
Nice Deb has expressed herself memorably on this topic:
The Catholic church may not have liked the Iraq war, but American Catholics were allowed to follow their own consciences on whether or not it was a "just war."When they force Catholic employers to offer their employees health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception, and force almost all individuals to buy that coverage as a part of their policies, it is seen as a direct attack on our faith. Those life issues are considered "non negotiable" meaning that for Catholics, they are always morally wrong and must never be promoted by the law.
Indeed. I share Deb's outrage, and I have for a long time. But the larger subject -- what this means for freedom of religion -- was decided long ago.
To qualify as a religion as the great majority of us understand such, a creed must possess the following characteristics:
- Its claims must be unfalsifiable, such that the acceptance thereof involves an act of faith;
- It must offer a mythos, which sets forth a supernatural backstory for existence, particularly Mankind's place in it;
- It must proclaim an ethos, which decrees some aspects of personal conduct to be mandatory or forbidden, on moral grounds.
There are obviously religions that should be unacceptable in a peaceful society. Islam, which prescribes war against all non-Islamic societies, condones deceit, subterfuge, and conversion by the sword for its advancement, and awards Muslims a civil status superior to that of non-Muslims, is one such. Indeed, any creed, religious or otherwise, that condones aggressive violence or fraud by its adherents would be unacceptable; a society that tolerates such a creed cannot have peace and order.
However, a religion which condemns aggressive violence and fraud, which acquires its adherents by persuasion rather than compulsion, and which leaves matters of ultimate judgment and retribution for sins that are not crimes to divine authority is perfectly tolerable. There are several such faiths, and during the decades when the federal government remained within the constraints of its Constitution, they shared this nation in peace.
The expansion of federal power past the explicit bonds of the Constitution was the cleavage point. A federal court case of great importance for this proposition was U.S. v. Valentine Y. Byler.
Valentine Y. Byler was an Old Order Amishman, whose religion prescribes communitarian assistance to one's neighbors in unearned difficulty. They disdain insurance, including the "social insurance" nominally offered by the welfare state. Therefore, when the IRS attempted to collect Social Security payroll taxes from them, they resolved to resist. Byler was their test case. The court decreed it proper for the IRS to seize some of Byler's horses in "payment" for uncollected Social Security taxes. After that, the Old Order Amish, religiously enjoined from violence even in defense of life and property, were helpless, despite American "freedom of religion."
The overarching principle expressed by that case is plain: When government dictates clash with religious conscience, government wins and conscience must give way. In a few very obvious cases -- murder; kidnapping; rape; theft; fraud; the sexual abuse of children -- this rule is unexceptionable. Beyond those subjects, what bright line could possibly be drawn to protect freedom of religion?
Though the evidence is less than conclusive, it's my surmise that the Founding Fathers' awareness of how destructive to religious freedom unlimited government can be was instrumental to their design of the powers of Congress and the limitations they laid upon the states. After all, the desire for religious freedom was one of the drivers that propelled European emigres across the Atlantic. Several of the Founders were "freethinkers," who would have been discriminated against at best, persecuted at worst in the cuius regio, eius religio states of Europe. Whatever the case, the strict observance of the limits on government power written into the Constitution are what makes it possible for men's consciences to be free in all tolerable ways.
Now that those limits are no longer respected -- has anyone forgotten Nancy Pelosi's "Are you serious? Are you serious?" outburst? -- the notion of religious freedom is laughable. Any pattern of conduct, whether prescribed or proscribed, is now subject to federal interference, including what clergymen say from their pulpits. The most we can say is that the major religions in the United States are mostly "getting away with it" -- with being what they are and practicing as they do -- so far. Washington's incursion upon Catholicism via ObamaCare may be a harbinger of worse to come.
This is really a special case of a far larger tragedy. As Eric L. Harry's fictional anarchist theorist Valentin Kartsev said in Harry's blockbuster Protect and Defend:
"Rights are an archist concept. Rights have no meaning except when confronted with superior power. They are what is left to the people after the government has taken all its wants. Your country's Bill of Rights defines your most cherished freedoms how? By limiting the legal power of government to encroach upon them."
Now that a "compelling government interest" can be asserted to override any claim of rights, it becomes quite clear that freedom -- of any variety, not just religious freedom -- no longer exists in these United States. We have no rights as such are properly understood; we only have permissions, or perhaps the temporary forbearance of a Leviathan that hasn't gotten around to shackling us yet.
What, then, must we do?
Monday, January 30, 2012
The milquetoast party?
If, as all signs are currently pointing, Mitt Romney wins the Florida primary tomorrow, it will mark an important milestone in the primary. Florida is the first winner-take-all state on the calendar, and a win there would cement Romney victories in 3 out of the first 4 contests (I give Romney credit for Iowa despite the results of the recount, as the recount came long after Romney had won the “free media” sweepstakes). That would confirm the “prohibitive frontrunner” status that I believe he won by winning Iowa.
Though it perhaps remains slightly premature to start meditating on the meaning of a Romney nomination, the hour is growing late for Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. Presuming that the nomination shakes out as is increasingly apparent, what does it say about the GOP?
Both parties are imperfect vessels for the wishes of their supporters. In today’s primary system, “divide and conquer” has become the norm. This was no more apparent than in 2008, when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama split the Democratic Party along class and ethnic lines. For the GOP of 2012, Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum are similarly splitting the party along class and religious boundaries. While this divide likely will not play much a role in the general election - Republicans are more united in their opposition to Obama than they are divided over their own candidates - it also provides the key to understanding the near-term direction of the Republican Party.
In fact, if we exclude race from the equation, the main fault lines in the Republican coalition are not so dissimilar from those in the Democratic one. Both parties must increasingly mollify the competing interests of voters that broadly fall into “elite” and “mainstream” categories. In the Democratic Party, this translates to the mainly white, educated elite against the mainly minority, poorer mainstream. For the Republican Party, we are again speaking of a mostly white, educated upper crust, whose interests compete against the working class voters brought into the party’s coalition by Ronald Reagan.
This sort of “elite” versus “mainstream” conflict is not unheard of in American history - the phrase immediately calls to mind the competition between the Republican and Progressive Parties during the Gilded Age. What is different this time is that the competition among these two groups is not happening across the two parties, but within both. Indeed, the elite groups within each party sometimes have more in common with each other than they do with the voters in their own coalitions. This mirrors the sociological phenomenon so ably documented by Charles Murray in Coming Apart. We have not seen in our history a situation where the elite truly separated themselves from the broader society in both material wealth and mores.
Romney is seemingly an avatar of the elite, or “party establishment” as it has come to be known in conservative circles. That being the case, analyzing the consequences of his nomination for the GOP could easily devolve into a pale shadow of Angelo Codevilla’s excellent article on this topic, a fate that I want to avoid at all costs. Instead, I’ll make the initially counter-intuitive point that Romney’s nomination is strong evidence the elites are losing.
First, I do not want to overstate my case. A good deal of the explanation for Romney’s victory lies in the weakness of his opponents. He is the only candidate currently standing whose credentials at least have the whiff of “president material” about them. The other candidate who might have able to say the same thing, Rick Perry, was doomed by his poor campaign skills. Any consideration of the ramifications of Romney’s nomination must begin with the knowledge that he is more or less winning by default.
That being said, it is interesting to watch the contrast between Romney’s positions and George W. Bush’s in 2000. On nearly every campaign plank, Romney is more conservative than Bush was. He may not convey the same ardor that Bush could, but there is hardly an iota of “compassionate conservatism” about Romney. Even on the social issues that have come to most define the divide between the elite and the mainstream, Romney ticks all the boxes in the conservative column. This is clear evidence that the mainstream of the Republican party, defined by its Tea Party and Evangelical movements, has drug the Republican establishment in its direction. Romney may not be a native son of those movements, but he is doing all he can to appeal to them.
It may therefore seem strange that the mainstream party cannot assert enough influence to get one of its own elected, but it must be remembered most of the resources needed to compete in the current primary system (money and organization) are locked up within the party elite. Most of the eligible candidates are going to be drawn from its ranks. The party mainstream must therefore influence the selection through ideas, at which it is succeeding. Most conventional political and sociological theory says this should not be the case - opinion typically flows from the elite “opinion makers” down. However, one unexpected consequence of the divergence between the elites and the mainstream is the blackballing of the elite media, the typical transmitter of opinion, among mainstream circles, who have instead turned to alternative sources on the radio and the internet.
Additionally, the mainstream movements in the Republican Party have left an increasing mark on lower races for the House, Senate, and governorships. Should Romney win the presidency, these groups would most affect the direction of his policies.
The elite of both parties is a creature of the state, kept isolated by the institutions that the state has increasingly subsidized for them. Undo the state, and they will likewise be undone. Romney, though a member of that elite, is evidence that the mainstream of the GOP is becoming more influential, not less. What remains to be seen is whether the energy of the mainstream party will be enough to start the process of dismantling the leviathan once they have a pliable candidate in office.
100 Years Ago Today Part 3
Hilaire Belloc was a thoroughly principled and upright man. He strove always to know what was true, and to relate it to others with exactitude. This characteristic often caused him to engage historical fallacies that one might think were in no way his responsibility to correct:
[O]ur European ancestry, those men from whom we are descended and whose blood runs with little admixture in our veins, took slavery for granted, made of it the economic pivot upon which the production of wealth should turn, and never doubted that it was normal to all human society....An arrangement of such a sort would not have endured without intermission (and indeed without question) for many centuries, nor have been found emerging fully grown from that vast space of unrecorded time during which barbarism and civilization flourished side by side in Europe, had there not been something in it, good or evil, native to our blood.
There was no question in those ancient societies from which we spring of making subject races into slaves by the might of conquering races. All that is the guesswork of the universities. Not only is there no proof of it, rather all the existing proof is the other way. The Greek had a Greek slave, the Latin a Latin slave, the German a German slave, the Celt a Celtic slave. The theory that "superior races" invading a land either drove out the original inhabitants or reduced them to slavery, is one which has no argument either from our present knowledge of man's mind or from recorded evidence. Indeed, the most striking feature of that servile basis upon which paganism reposed was the human equality recognized between master and slave. The master might kill the slave, but both were of one race and each was human to the other. [From The Servile State.]
Contrast this with the prevalent fiction that the foundation of slavery and of all justifications for it is and has always been racism.
Dinesh D'Souza's fine book The End Of Racism delineates the emergence of conceptions of racial superiority and inferiority -- which only occurred after legally sanctioned slavery had disappeared from the Western World. It's a bit of history our modern left-liberals, racial flacksters, and professional grievance-mongers would prefer that you not know.
The insistence that slavery was a consequence of racism is supremely valuable to modern left-liberal polemicists. A single historical fact -- that Negro slaves were sold to Caucasian slave-traders by Negro tribal kings and potentates -- would put paid to that notion for all time. It's information that deserves to be spread more widely, regardless of any and all resistance.
