Credo for Conservatives Part III: Order, Tradition, and Loyalty
III. A social order, being a natural expression of human sociability, should not be undermined, overturned, or rejected on frivolous grounds.
A. Man is not a purely natural creature and he never lived in a state of nature. Thus, since there is no such things as universal human rights or natural equality, it is not, generally, up to "individuals" (if such beings can be properly said to exist) to judge which laws should be obeyed and which disregarded. Setting aside marginal cases of purely evil societies, most tribes, cities, provinces, and nations defend the members from aggression, punish crimes against persons and property, and provide a variety of useful services, such as police and fire protection, construction of roads, bridges, supervision of the marketplace. Man being man, all societies are riddled with self-seeking and corruption, but dishonesty and corruption—particularly since they are universal—cannot justify resistance to the law, much less the overthrow of a regime.
B. Loyalty to a particular place and regime is a normal and healthy outgrowth of our loyalty to kinfolks, friends, and neighbors. It is through love and loyalty that our moral sense is nourished and developed. We do not develop our moral conscience by memorizing lists of rules, much less by learning to reason morally. We become moral human beings by participating in a series of communities that command our loyalty and, sometimes, our obedience.
C. To undermine such loyalty—as has been done by every movement of illuminists, liberals, libertarians, Jacobins, Marxists, multi-culturalists, prohibitionists (the list is endless)—is inherently wrong, even where a regime or ruler is manifestly corrupt and oppressive. We are, naturally, justified in defending the interests of kin and friends and co-religionists and in trying to change bad laws and policies, but the revolutionary overthrow of a regime can only be justified in extreme cases, e.g., where the regime requires us to participate in what we—note the significant use of the first person plural, not singular—we have always regarded to be evil. If Pharoah or Herod orders the murder of our children, we cannot comply and may indeed have to take up arms to resist. If Pharoah wants to let other people kill their children, that is an entirely different story.
D. Civil disobedience, then, is an unmitigated evil, the doctrine of anti-Christian ideologues like Thoreau, Gandhi, and King. No conservative, much less a Christian, could invoke such a doctrine without discrediting himself.
E. This is not a doctrine of non-resistance. Constituent communities that enter a federal union have the moral authority to decide whether they stay or leave. Inevitably, the union will have something to say, if the decision is secession.
F. We may personally or as members of a group decide to withdraw our allegiance, but then, we are probably required to leave the sovereign jurisdiction we are abandoning. We cannot simultaneously be protected by the American army and refuse to serve, if drafted.
G. Revolutionary movements that overturn good old governments may compel our obedience but they do not necessarily command our loyalty. This puts the loyalist or reactionary in a difficult position. Should a supporter of the Bourbons collaborate with the enemies of his country? On balance, I think not, especially with the benefit of hindsight. Should he break the law by sheltering fugitives? Absolutely, especially if he can do so without endangering his family.
H. The fate of a Roman under Lombard or Frankish rule, a Tory under American rule, a Confederate under Reconstruction, or a serious and civilized Christian living in this savage anti-Christian country is very hard. On the one hand, he should be trying to hand on to the next generation some sense of their heritage, while on the other he is obliged to obey laws imposed by the conqueror. A wise conqueror—like Theoderic the Visigoth—will seek the loyalty and affections of his conquered subjects, but we are not always so fortunate.
This is only a rough sketch, which needs the help of questions and challenges to make it right. What I wish to establish is that loyalty and obedience are in themselves good, though political loyalty is sometimes limited by prior moral claims of family members and friends and by the moral sense that we have received from the traditions in which we were brought up.
J. One element I have omitted so far in this discussion is race, for which I have been taken to task. Although race is clearly a reality that goes deeper than skin color, nose shape, and hair texture, it is not, in many cases and in many circumstances, a palpable reality that guides our conduct. For example, a person living in a racially homogeneous society will not be motivated much by race, especially by the rather silly distinctions that racialist anthropologists have speculated upon.
Ethnicity is an obvious reality in most societies. Even though the French and German speakers on either side of the Rhine were and are closely related racially, a great deal of blood was shed in efforts to determine their ethnicity and language. Ethnic loyalty and ethnic conflict are very real, and much of what is described as religious conflict—in Ireland and the Balkans—is really an ethnic struggle in which religious affiliation is the badge of ethnic identity.
This is not to say that racial identity never can be the basis for loyalty, but this happens, precisely, when race comes to represent ethnicity and can serve as an organizing principle. In addition to the social and political hierarchy of identities—Texan, Southerner, American, European—there are also religious hierarchies, such as Baptist, Protestant, Christian—each one defined by opposition to rival religions, class distinctions, professional and guild loyalties, and, as more important than any of the above, ethnic and racial loyalties. In 17th-18th century North America, it is easy to study the conflict between French Catholics and Anglo Protestants, but the dichotomy becomes more complex when we take into account the double game sometimes played by French Huguenots, or the unfortunate habit of both French and English in setting their native allies against rival European settlers. A little racial loyalty, in such a case, would have been a good thing.
Some societies are structured along caste lines that have an ethnic or racial component. Upper caste Indians were quite different ethnically from lower caste and no-caste people. It is perhaps in colonial societies that these distinctions become more significant. In South Africa and Rhodesia, it is hard to understand the position taken by English liberals whose efforts on behalf of Africans reached entirely predictable conclusions. In the post War South, a very basic struggle was engaged between Whites and Blacks. The old Bourbons—who were hardly less racist than the populists who succeeded them—made some attempt to protect the interests of Black people, especially the small middle class and those whose families had been attached to them. There was also a sense of noblesse oblige. These honorable sentiments, however, seemed a bit antiquated in the midst of Reconstruction, and the ill effects of the Second Reconstruction, still being experienced in acute form in most of the USA, is a warning against social revolution.
Race is clearly not everything or the most important thing or the card that trumps all other cards, but when one is counting up the cards in one's hand—kinship, friendship, religion, citizenship, etc.—ethnicity and race will have some importance at some times. When race is turned into "the whole ball of wax," as one racialist acquaintance of mine used to say, life is cheapened. I strongly recommend a careful perusal of Madison Jones' brilliant novel, A Cry of Absence, which says as much as anything I have ever read about the problems of anti-white and anti-black racism and the ill effects they have on character and community.
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Robert,the monastic tradition is one of the West's treasures.Those lines quoted above almost make me want to get a tonsure and forego women and poker forever.But alas,I am a weak contemptible barbarian,and I shall saunter towards perdition in spite of everything.And let me add that your defense of Richert is most noble,not to mention heart-warming.You must understand however,that while monasticism is a fine thing,the world of civil society must carry on as best it can.Only a minority can renounce this wretched world;because otherwise,there would no longer be a world to renounce.
Though most likely we shall never meet,be assured of one thing.If we do,dinner is on me.And that my friend is a promise.
Sempronius writes "Only a minority can renounce this wretched world;because otherwise,there would no longer be a world to renounce."
This is what St. Thomas observed as well and he had excellent things to say about teachers as the fruit of the contemplative life. It is not really fair for me to quote Newman today because as the old professor who introduced him to me once said, " Newman wrote in real English." I think we have met before but if you buy the dinner, I will buy the wine.
I would like to thank Mr. Seabrook @6 for posting a link to a copy of "The Duty of the Hour," a speech by Rev. Dabney. I would recommend anyone still striving to pull apart civil disobedience vs. conscientious resistance to read this first. Although it may not answer everything confusing, it might pull some of us one-at-a-time off the pile on Dr. Fleming.
It's an exceptional piece of writing and understanding.
I don't like taking quotes out of context, but here is a particularly telling part:
"You must decide, then, each one for himself, what things must be conceded to the necessities of new events, and what things must be disclaimed as contaminating to the unconquered soul. May I not safely advise, that, in making these decisions you should always refer them to that standard of judgment which we held before our disasters, as the truer and worthier one; rather than to that standard to which we are seduced by their humiliations?"
Thus, the duty of the individual is linked to the cultural standard of unconquered men with intact spirits. The application to contemporary context is always necessarily a product of free will, but the standard guiding the decision is not up for individual debate or decision and should be the constraint of action.
"Thus, the duty of the individual is linked to the cultural standard of unconquered men with intact spirits. The application to contemporary context is always necessarily a product of free will, but the standard guiding the decision is not up for individual debate or decision and should be the constraint of action."
Thank you Mr.McCabe. This deserves repeating and is better than the summation of Rev. Dabney in my opinion,though both are excellent in seeing our obligations to Tradition.
Though I've been following this and the discussions which led up to it, I've stayed out of it -- partly because I don't have much surplus time to expend in cyberspace and partly because I'm still not quite sure what I think. I must admit that I leaned the other way in the beginning, and F. Devlin's observation --
"the left passes revolutionary laws aimed against traditional and natural arrangements (the family, sex distinctions) and sits back and watches our inherited “respect for the law” do the rest. Why should we allow them to use our virtues against us?"
-- rather strikes a chord.
Still, at the moment I don't yet have much of a coherent position to defend (or amend). I believe I do grasp one thing Dr. Fleming is driving at... one hasn't the right to exercise defiance as an isolated individual, but one might have the right to do so if acting on behalf of a people -- and there really *isn't* much in the way of a people nowadays.
In any event, I hope I shall be forgiven a few stream-of-consciousness bits:
Dr. Fleming might revisit his discussions of Antigone to clarify the distinction between acting solely as an individual "conscientious objector" and acting on behalf of an "authentic, historic, legitimate political community." This might illuminate the whiff of taint I frequently catch whenever liberals laud Antigone for defying the state.
The Antigone story might also highlight Dr. Fleming's point that in some situations "there is no good course of action, only bad and worse." My own reading of the play -- and I think Dr. F agrees -- is that Sophocles was not intending to make some simplistic one-dimensional tale of the good guy (Antigone) vs. the utterly vile and evil bad guy who has no justification for his actions (Creon).
Another scenario which might be pertinent is that of the German resistance against Nazism during World War II, a heartbreaking story that has occupied my interest of late. The situation many German army officers were pinned in strikes me as tragic, as on the one hand many of them felt duty-bound to defend Germany against the Bolsheviks, yet on the other hand they felt obliged to turn against Hitler once the nature of his regime became evident.
To modern Americans, of course, there is no dilemma at all, and everything is in clear-cut black & white; but having read a lot of their letters & so on, I get a sense that a number of these men wrestled seriously with the fact that what they were doing was -- formally, at least -- high treason and the breaking of an oath.
A more contemporary case which might be worth discussing is that of Wendell Berry, who not long ago announced his intention to go to jail rather than comply with the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). NAIS is yet another nail in the coffin of farming communities, and I can personally vouch based on a Q & A session I participated in with a Department of Agriculture bureaucrat that USDA is pushing this thing with an openly malevolent dishonesty which is quite astonishing -- even for those of us who have a low opinion of government bureaucrats to begin with.
For all intents and purposes, the man lied to my face, claiming the program is purely voluntary. (It is, at the "federal level" -- but USDA is encouraging state governments to make it mandatory.) This is part of the USDA's long-standing track record of trying to, in effect, collectivize & nationalize farms -- in effect, a war against agrarian towns.
Of course to consider the thing in real-world terms I suspect the feds will back down, or look the other way somehow, rather than send Mr. Berry to jail, because they don't have the stomach to face the public relations debacle which would ensue if they tried clapping a 75-year old poet in irons. But I think it apropos to the discussion.
And I will go on the record as saying that I'd be unapologetically on Berry's side in this last case; in the (hopefully unlikely) event the feds do seize him for refusing to stick microchips in his sheep, then there is no excuse for the entire state of Kentucky not going into an uproar.
Dr. Fleming,
You state:
"There is a long and tortuous discussion over the centuries on the question of when or if it is right to lie or steal in a good cause. Casuists, both Catholic and Reformed, have come down on both sides of the issue. Some have tried to propose criteria that make stealing right under certain circumstances, but it always seems to me that the rules are either too elastic or not elastic enough. The best of the Protestant casuists I have read, Richard Baxter, is very severe on theft, but he stipulates that if one steals to prevent death by starvation one has to be determined on restitution, as soon as one is in a position to do so. I do not pretend to have any final answer to this question, but I do not know a way of making a theft acceptable, unless one is being coerced."
Surely it is always wrong to steal or lie for a good cause in the sense that the end never justifies the means. There is a way, however, to make theft "acceptable." St. Thomas teaches that stealing is lawful through "stress of need" (IIaIIae, Q.66, art. 7): "In cases of need all things are common property, so that there would seem to be no sin in taking another's property, for need has made it common. "
You also state:
"As for lying, the case is a bit easier when it has to do with a) an enemy or terrorist or b) a lunatic who needs to be talked out of a rash act. In both situations a man’s free will is not being exercised."
Surely a man's free will is being exercised in these cases. The situations cited are stressful; however, a man may freely choose not to lie to both terrorist and lunatic and accept the consequences. I was taught that it is always and everywhere immoral to speak words which do not conform with what is in the mind.
In the Reformed tradition, the doctrine of the "lesser magistrate" is used to delimit resistance and --ultimately-- rebellion from banditry and brigandage, in that a smaller community's authorities can provide legitimacy to principled refusal. Or would the historical example of the Huguenots shed any light on this matter? There was, I believe, some discussions along these lines a number of years ago in Christian Reconstructionist circles (the name of Otto J. Scott comes to mind, but the needed references are currently inaccessible).
Early New Englanders included rebellion against the towns as a capital crime (actually, they even proscribed advocacy of fundamental change in town governance), citing II Samuel, the story of Absalom's rebellion against his father David. The reasoning of New Englanders was their conviction that they were covenanted towns, as David's kingship was covenanted, and rebellion would therefore be rebellion against God. It is instructive, I think, to note that Absalom's rebellion was rooted in his deracination, which started with David's adultery with Bathsheba and spread through David's family, because he was unwilling or unable to right the disorder he had created. Disorder in the commonwealth begins with disorder in the family (and prior, with disorder in the soul); in David's case it took a mighty effort and Joab's loyalty and cunning to get David back in the business of kingship. Does early New England seem "intolerant?" You bet--they had communities that were serious.
I don't mean to antagonize but, regarding what Dr. Fleming wrote about civil disobedience and it being an "unmitigated evil", how does a Roman Catholic square that with the case of Austrian peasant Franz Jagerstatter, beatified by the Pope in 2007, who chose not to fight for the German army and was executed in 1943, leaving a window and four children to fend for themselves? Jagerstatter was certainly brave and Nazi Germany was fighting an immoral war yet he also turned his back on his nation and, in a manner, his family.
Derek,
Aristotle noticed that knowledge is of what usually happens not every time but most of the time. Heroic virtue is the exception and not the rule. There are many acts of heroism and villany committed by men and women during wars and unless perpetual war is the norm, one should not use it as an example. I noticed after the war that the monastic populations greatly expanded in America 200 hundred monks at Gethsemani alone, even before Tom Merton wrote the Seven Story Mountain and it was the same everywhere.
I once spoke to a monk who said he joined the monastery after serving in Korea and thinking there must be a better way to live life than what he was experiencing during war time. He left the community after years of faithful service and married. I use this as an example of extraordinary times calling for extraordinary reactions. Most of the time people marry and raise a family, most of the time people love their country, demonstrate piety toward it, and want to serve it. The exceptions are what prove the very rules we are discussing and attempting to establish.
It is not up to me to second-guess the Pope or the process of beatification. I am not familiar with the case and I doubt that if I were, it would help a great deal. The man may be a saint, even if the grounds for beatification have been misstated. There has been an unfortunate tendency in the past century to sentimentalize moral questions. Nazis all bad, Zionists all virtuous--and vice versa. The Vatican has not, alas, been exempt from this tendency. Hard cases make bad law, especially moral law. If you will but stick to the highway of basic principles, you will then be able to apply them to difficult cases. If you begin with the difficult cases, you will end up in complete perplexity and, ultimately, moral anarchy.