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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Not one word of disagreement. Question (making several leaps to get here): Is any society closer to the Created Order than any other? And what difference would that make concerning one's loyalty?
There is a good example of response to the loyalist dilemma in "The Duty of the Hour," a speech made by the Rev. Mr. Robert Lewis Dabney to the young men of the South in 1866. Can be found in Dabney's SECULAR DISCUSSIONS. May I suggest also the great Calhoun's "A Disquisition on Government" for a view of the proper relation of man, society, and government.
Could somebody please put Dabney's "The Duty of the Hour" online? It is not online now, nor is "Secular Discussions" in any local library.
"Anti-Americans stand by their own, no matter how they came to power, or retain power. Only in the West do we seem always prepared to abandon our flawed friends who do not measure up.
This is a formula for eventually not having any friends."
Pat Buchanan
Pat must be following along with our discussion,"The Credo for Conservatives" or else enjoying the music of Patsy Kline from back in the day when folks knew what it meant to "Stand By Your Man."
"We cannot simultaneously be protected by the American army and refuse to serve, if drafted."
Dr. Fleming ran a discussion on this some weeks ago. To a great extent it's a moot question today because of the "volunteer military" we have, and because training takes so long that a standard draft-era two-year enlistment would leave about a year of actual service.
A draft also is unlikely because, if it ever were used to man the wars of (bad) choice in the Middle East, the American people finally would be aroused to insist that the wars be ended posthaste.
To protect the United States itself, and nothing more, a military much smaller than that of today would be needed -- perhaps 20% of the current size. And there always will be "a few good men" eager to prove themselves in the military.
Another question is whether mass armies even make any sense today. As William Lind keeps pointing out, we now face Fourth Generation warfare (basically, non-state entities), but a draft army is cannon fodder for Second Generation armies (massed firepower with control at upper levels) or Third Generation (maneuver warfare with initiative at lower levels). We no longer face the Wehrmacht, the Red Army, or the Imperial Japanese Navy.
Another question is what to do when an army itself becomes immoral, such as including women -- even mothers with babes at home -- in combat units. I joined the Army three decades ago (1978-82) and, believe me, if I had known I would have be going on field maneuvers, even in peacetime, with mothers, I never would have joined. I was in a field intelligence unit and, on one maneuver in West Germany in 1981, along came Pvt. W., six months pregnant because she couldn't get some chit from a doctor letting her stay in the barracks.
And it's much worse today with women serving in the Bush-Obama wars.
The military says women are not in combat units, but that's a lie. Modern combat brings support units right into the battle. More than 100 U.S. military women have died in the Iraq War.
Another problem: What if a military draft, although not needed for actual defense, is included as part of a coercive "national service" regime, as Obama has proposed, which would include boys AND girls? Would you counsel draft resistance by your daughter?
John, "The Duty of the Hour," along with the rest of Dabney's work, is available at the Dabney Archive:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22duty+of+the+hour%22+site%3Adabneyarchive.com
3. You can obtain Dabney's work from Sprinkle Publications, Harrisonburg VA.
4. Wasn't it Tammy Wynette instead of Patsy Kline?
Yes, Dr. Wilson, I think you have it right. But either singer would be preferable to the contemporary song where men marry only housekeepers -- women who marry a man for a few years,divorce him, keep his house,and never look back.
As to the draft, I think it is unlikely to be restored in the near future, largely for political reasons. I agree entirely on the evils of women in the military. To allow the government to draft my daughter would be far worse than requiring her to attend a public school. I would not advise resistance--which would probably be futile--but I would in anticipation get her out of the country.
Yes, some regimes approximate more closely to a just social order than others. I would say that the usurpations of modern states upon our natural duties is among the worst things a government or regime has ever done to its citizens. Our regime is far more repressive and unnatural than anything I know of from history.
I should have added, in response to John Wilson, that our loyalty will inevitably vary in proportion to the nature of the society in which we live. Setting aside the case of Jews in the Third Reich, we could take an extreme case of Christians in the USSR. They would not be justified in violating traffic laws or robbing members of the party pr playing lone vigilantee--a contradiction in terms--but however much love they might have for Russia, it would be hard to love a nation-state committed to destroying everything decent. Whereas, a generally wholesome commonwealth--Athens in 480 or America in 1800--is entitled to ungrudging affection and something of a blind eye for the inevitable faults. Most commonwealths are somewhere in between and depending on our orientation we shall have somewhat different views of, say, England under Elizabeth or Rome in the age of Nero, but neither was an actual tyranny and while each ruler persecuted Catholics, one could generally mind one's own business, stay out of trouble, and lead a normal life unmolested by the royal or imperial crazy in charge. It was probably wrong for a Pope to discharge English Catholics from their allegiance--and it certainly made things harder for English Catholics. If I had been an English Catholic, I am not at all sure I would have welcomed Spanish troops, indeed, I think quite the opposite. One topic worth exploring is the complexity of conflicting loyalties, which can bring about a situation in which there is no good course of action, only bad and worse. Modern moralists like Kant think this is impossible, but it is not. Once we recognize that it is wrong to steal in order to feed our children, but worse not to feed them, two good things happen: first, we avoid the hypocritical smugness of people who justify their wrong-doing because good is supposed to come of it, and second, we are aware that we must make restitution for the wrongs we have done in a good cause.
Tom Fleming@ 8-9: Maybe the case of Iraqi Christians is pertinent. Christian culture in Iraq has for all intents and purposes been destroyed by the American presence. I'm quite sure that if I were an Iraqi Christian in 2003 I would not have welcomed the liberators. As nasty as Saddam was, his "regime" (as the neocons like to say) gave a certain security to some of the world's oldest Christian churches. I'm not willing to go so far as you do in saying that our "regime is far more repressive and unnatural than anything I know of from history," but your overall point is certainly well taken.
"One topic worth exploring is the complexity of conflicting loyalties, which can bring about a situation in which there is no good course of action, only bad and worse. Modern moralists like Kant think this is impossible, but it is not."
Surely the Democratic and Republican parties have fully demonstrated this Kantian fallacy in the last several elections Heck, the Republicans are so bad they are planning to run Newt and Mitt,(again) while the Democrats hold up their end of the worst by running Barack for another four. I can't wait to read what kind of hillarious mental gymnastics Christians will attempt in 2012 in order to support one or the other. Maybe Newt will be invited to Notre Dame or Mitt will visit Bob Jones while Barack visits Georgetown and Hillary attends graduation at Rev.Sharpton's Temple of Doom.
"The fate of ... a serious and civilized Christian living in this savage anti-Christian country is very hard." Indeed it is, especially for young folks who don't remember what America was like when it was at least somewhat Christian.
But blame has to go not just to the government, but to Christian leaders. The government didn't force the Episcopalians to give up the old Book of Common Prayer, or Lutherans to give up their beautiful old service (except for some services for old Germans), or Methodists to become obsessed with population control, or most Protestants to adopt "Christian Rock," or Catholics to junk their beautiful old Latin Mass and Gregorian Chant for hootenanny Masses and worse.
Anyone familiar with the government schools knows that their main purpose is to inculcate atheism. If every Christian church, of whatever denomination, built a school and insisted that all the church's children attend (if not attending a similar Christian school or home-schooled), and vote against all funding for government schools, the government schools would collapse within a few years.
And the Christian churches have almost entirely refused to excommunicate not only politicians who have legalized abortion, but politicians who force taxpayers to subsidize abortions and the high-tech cannibalism of living infants known as "stem-cell research." Orthodox Jews excommunicated Joe Lieberman in 2000 for supporting abortion. Why can't Christians excommunicate their own reprobates?
Catholic bishops, in particular, are descendants of the apostles who were martyred for the truth of Christ. And their brother bishops, today, are being martyred in China, North Korea, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Yet they seem more concerned with keeping the Church's tax exemption so they'll be paid enough money to keep up the payments on their retirement condos. They ignore St. John Chrysostom's warning that "Hell is paved with the skulls of bishops."
They also refuse to reform the Catholic school system, K-college, as the recent scandal of Obama at Notre Dame showed so clearly. They should be providing us a refuge from this rotten culture, as the Church indeed did up until about 45 years ago. Some of the old refuge still exists, such as the St. Vincent de Paul Society, but not enough.
Still, I see hope in young priests who have been raised in orthodox homes. Holiness always attracts the young and hopeful.
Dilemma of conflicting loyalties. How about the miserable peoples of central and eastern Europe during the WW II era who had often to choose between the fascists and the communists? This would make an important case study, I think. The modern total state and its ideologies sometimes leave us no humane alternatives.
Another case study. Southerners, though defeated, still had a society worthy of loyalty. It was strong enough that it was able to quietly bring some Christianity and humanity back into American life.
"Southerners, though defeated, still had a society worthy of loyalty. It was strong enough that it was able to quietly bring some Christianity and humanity back into American life."
In its rural areas the South is still the hope of our country, if we can just roll back the constant barrage and cutural assault long enough to re-enforce the perimeter to pre-pare for the long siege. The South, having mingled permanent realities with its very way of living over a long period of time and knowing the ways of extreme suffering and sacrifice has the tenacity it will takee to survive but all the means of communication by which such efforts are organized and sustained are controled by their enemy.
The US can't continue to exist in its present form. The fundamentals aren't there. It is either going to break apart or be taken over by its foreign creditors. If it breaks apart, it will be in the usual way, from the top down: Wall St. vs the military-industrial complex. This started to happen, over 30 yrs ago, but then the process was halted. This seems to me less likely than the takeover, which will be assisted by members of the ruling elite trying to save something for themselves. In these circumstances you have to decide where your loyalties lie.
"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"
I think we have gone too far when we question the existence of the individual. The individual must be formed within a family and community, and maintain some connection to these things throughout life if he is to avoid becoming a beast or a suicide. But surely the individual can have some autonomy in his thoughts and actions without flying off into absurdity. We are men, not Myrmidons!
Dr. Fleming states that civil disobedience is an unmitigated evil, but then indicates that he is talking about "the doctrine" of civil disobedience. I'm not sure what this refers to. It is apparent from the discussions in the comments that the actual practice of civil disobedience, refusing to obey various civil laws, is approved by the commentators, including (with great reluctance) Dr. Fleming himself.
Civil disobedience--as opposed to conscientious refusal to obey and immoral command--is the refusal to obey goo and/or legitimate laws either because one disagrees with the traditional enforcement of, for example, borders, or because one disagrees with something else the regime is doing, e.g., on invades private property in order to protest abortion or refuses to pay taxes to a regime in which slavery is legal.
If one is going to say "I think we have gone too far, " one has to explain why. The concept of the individual is a fairly modern notion, and it is odd that we can take for granted this creature as universal when it is not universally recognized. The term itself is quite misleading because it implies that human persons are undivided entities like atoms, when we know that is not true. A great deal of work has been done on the concept of the person in primitive societies and in early Greece, and while some of the theorists have gone too far--in supposing, for example, that because Homer has no word for the person he has no concept of human persons--it is a useful corrective to our glib assumption that Enlightenment concepts are universal. If one is going to have this conversation, one has to begin by distinguishing "the person" from the "individual," but this is not the place for that conversation. I bring up this problem only to remind people that the prejudices of the modern age are not truth itself.
I did not, I should add, intend to distinguish between the practice and the theory of civil disobedience-since I repudiate both-but in referring to the doctrine, I did mean to indicate that the entire theory is evil, even though an otherwise decent human being might engage in the practice. I do not know, by the way, what would be so wrong in being one of Peleus' and Achilles' Myrmidons. Nor do I believe that most American males can properly be described as men, at least not the specimens I run into every day--soft-voiced androgynes who snigger about the women they cannot have.
I put in the following codicil to the above section:
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.
Just as all (or most) politics is local, so all discussions of this kind are, sooner or later, personal. I've spent almost exactly half my life teaching at a small liberal arts college in Michigan that has, for better or worse, gained considerable attention, mostly because of its refusal to accept government handouts or control. That principle of institutional (communal) independence has been, by and large (but not always), a powerful binding force, a reason for the "collegium." Skipping over many other things that could be brought up regarding this little college, my many years of observation (and deep commitment to it) have convinced me that there is one fundamental reason that it has prospered. It has little to do with abstractions like "liberty," and almost nothing to do with factions of the "conservative" movement. It is simply this: The overwhelming numbers of students who come to this college are from families--that is, from homes that have two parents (or at least believe deeply in the traditional family) and instinctively understand the eternal covenant between the dead, the living, and the unborn. I have no doubt that "ethnicity" and "race" are important elements in the cults that make up cultures, but as the Church has always understood, the family is the "first and best teacher of the faith."
"The concept of the individual...implies that human persons are undivided entities like atoms, when we know that is not true."
I only meant to defend the "person", or the "self". A person certainly cannot survive long as an "undivided entity" unless he sacrifices all his beliefs and dignity.
The only Madison Jones I've read is "Forests of the Night," which is dark but very powerful, and utterly devastating to our Emersonian delusions. I've ordered "A Cry of Absence" on Dr. Fleming's recommendation.
Mr. Wilson,
I always enjoy your comments and thank you for them. How is my old friend,David Whalen, and his family?
"The overwhelming numbers of students who come to this college are from families–that is, from homes that have two parents (or at least believe deeply in the traditional family) and instinctively understand the eternal covenant between the dead, the living, and the unborn." That is almost Chesterton's definition of Tradition as a "democracy of the dead."
If what Dr. Fleming has demonstrated for us here as the very roots of civility and the community, and who could seriously disagree with these very elementary principles, the question arises as to who are the destroyers who assert "being friends to mankind, diversity with a milllion faces, the welcoming of hoards within our city walls and the new world order of abstractions." There is no doubt more to this discussion than we have covered. But it is a good beginning.
Ws the refusal to make sacrifices to the Emperor by the early Christians an act of civil disobediance?
"...a person living in a racially homogeneous society will not be motivated much by race..."
I think it would be more accurate to say that such a person takes race for granted.An important distinction,if you ask me.
As for France and Germany:Would France be the same if the Franks were Semites or Africans?
The refusal to sacrifice to the Emperor is properly referred to as an act of conscientious refusal, as would be a refusal to comply with a command to kill your child or send your daughter into the army. Christians debated the extent to which one could accommodate the law. Generally, the practice of performing a token sacrifice and getting a certificate to say so--or just bribing an official to get the certificate--was condemned, but only hypocritical purists refused to readmit the sinners into communion once they had done penance. On the other hand, when Montanists condemned Christians who participated in the celebration of the Emperor's birthday, their argument was rejected.
I don't see how a person unaware of racial distinctions or oblivious to them can be properly said to take them for granted. Obviously, there is a sliding scale of difference. Franks were Germans, though probably a majority of the French gene pool is non-Germanic. France also succeeded in assimilating fairly large numbers of , Spaniards, Italians, and even Poles, but all these people were European Catholics. Although the French were generally less fond of Jews than the Germans were, by the late 19th century a fairly large number of Jews were prominent in French society and many intermarried with Christians--like the parents of Marcel Proust. Of course, this goes way back, since Montaigne's mother was Jewish. Some Arabs can be assimilated in such a society, but only if they are or become Catholic (like many Lebanese and Syrians) and "sign on" to French culture. Large numbers do not work, especially when the old assimilative forces--church, army, school--have broken down.
But France is an excellent example. Let us imagine France in 1800. What sort of foreigner could fit in? In descending order, 1) Catholic Europeans, 2) Non-Catholic Europeans (Protestant, Orthodox, non-believers) who wanted to become French because they admired the civilization, 3) Catholic Arabs. The more alien variables, the greater the difficulty. A Christian Ethiopian who married a European would produce exotic-looking offspring whose children (e.g. Pushkin) might fit in quite well, whereas a Congolese would have had far greater difficulty. None of these categories can be treated as absolute or universal, but each exerts a powerful pressure.
re: 5 by John Seiler
It's disturbing to think how much our republic resembles Plato's Republic. Women in the military, men and women exercise side by side almost in the nude (go to any gym), infanticide is universal (i.e abortion and contraception), women are shared by all men (i.e breakdown of marriage), children are raised by the state (i.e. daycare), etc.
Add the drugs, propoganda sensitizing, and baby engineering and you have Huxley's Brave New World emerging before our eyes. More rapidly than Aldous ever imagined.
That is a world that will have complete order and loyalty and its own traditions. Ones that no sane person will want any part of.
So..."conscientious refusal" is alright but "civil disobedience" is wrong? Then don't we need a way of distinguishing them objectively from one another? What would it be? When Pharaoh commands me to sin? Or only to protect another?
I didn't know the Church ever countenanced sinning with the idea of doing penance later, especially in the matter of idolatry. Where did you get that?
Maybe this would be a good time to read Platos Apology or the Phaedo again to see how important this civil disobedience question is. I think Dr. Fleming is correct to place the emphasis on obligations to ones community given the times. Socrates and Christ both suffered the injustice committed against them while Aristotle fled the injustice so "another crime against philosophy would be prevented." Boethius is another example who found the ultimate consolation in understanding his times instead of attempting to change them with dubious demonstrations. In times like our own when "doing" something and pragamatism is all the rage and largely perceived as the end of life, civil acts of disobedience are preferred to the more fruitful acts of contemplation or consideration of what ought and ought not to be praised.(Why else would any civilized man prefer fast food if he was not always in a hurry?) There has always been this tension between love and knowledge. A man "takes" the best woman he can out of love for her, raising a family is an activity, happiness as Aristotle observed was indeed an activity but the the ultimate joy of the Beatific vision is knowledge not love -- perfect repose not perfect desire. Christ speaks to this when asked by the scribes about folks who have married several times(which one will be their spouse in heaven?) or what sins the people had committed who were killed by natural disasters. The fact these questions are still raised in almost every generation is testimony to the good Romans who became interested in his answers and of our own culture that is not.
Is there a Part II?
The distinction between civil disobedience and conscientious refusal is not mine: It is fairly conventional in discussions of social ethics. It is the difference, say, between Lot's refusal to turn the angels over to the mob and the the sanctuary movement that violates immigration law. 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. 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. I would say, though, that if a man decides to enter an intelligence service and spends his life lying and misrepresenting himself, he cannot easily be absolved.
Socrates' arguments against civil disobedience are, I think, irrefutable. Perhaps we should take them up. I'll also double check what St. Alphonsus, usually a safe guide. says. Our Summer School is starting, though, and my time is pretty tied up.
I mentioned St. Alphonsus to a professor friend of mine the other day, quoting your line about how, for 300 years, all seminarians read his work. Now it's Germain Grisez he replied. Any thoughts?
"Now it’s Germain Grisez he replied. Any thoughts?"
I guess being a Saint doesn't carry as much weight as it once did around the seminary.
However much one may disapprove of the sanctuary movement, it is not in most cases against the law to aid illegal aliens. It's against the law to hire them or to smuggle them across the border, but obviously the people who do that are not motivated by any doctrine of civil disobedience but by a desire to make money. It is not against the law in most instances to provide them with food, shelter or legal aid, which is what the sanctuary movement does. And some jurisdictions have specific laws to protect those who have crossed the border illegally. Where, other than in very exceptional cases, has the sanctuary movement violated the law? And if they haven't, how can they be accused of civil disobedience?
The same thing can be said about most demonstrations, large or small, supporting amnesty, opposing abortion or war. The vast majority of these are not illegal and involve much less illegal activity even at the margins than the average celebration of an NBA championship. Massive disobedience to segregation laws in the 60s led, for better or worse, to the repeal of these laws. Massive civil disobedience in the 80s to prevent abortion led to no such results, but massive civil disobedience in eastern Europe hastened the downfall of Soviet Communism. It's hard for me to see such a mixed situation as "an unmitigated evil". But I guess we can just label mass law breaking that we approve of as large scale conscientious refusal. Let's refrain, however, from labelling as civil disobedience activities which do not even violate the law.
A confession: I'm ignorant of any serious knowledge of St. Alphonsus or Grisez. In fact I only learned of St. Alphonsus via reading, at the library, one of Dr. Fleming's books.
So I'll narrow my question: I wonder if someone competent might offer a thumbnail sketch of St. Alphonsus' and Grisez' way of analysing the moral questions raised by the current discussion, including but of course not limited to, the distinction between civil disobedience and conscientious refusal?
Also, a defense: I meant and mean no offense to anyone, past or present, with these questions.
Finally, and this may be off topic, but I wonder what response, if any, I should take to my state's recent commitment to use state funds to reimburse human egg donors for their, as the Wanderer termed it, "donations"?
Let us stick to the point. We are speaking about civil disobedience and not about lawful demonstrations, and when there are warrants, arrest orders, deportation proceedings against illegal aliens, to shelter them is to break the law. To arrange a movement whose object is to frustrate immigration law is to engage in a criminal conspiracy. I do not know why segregation laws were overturned, but as a reformed demonstrator I do not believe that I had much to do with it. The press and the political class wanted the outcome, and they would have manufactured any circumstances necessary. While most abortion protests are simply misguided or foolish or demonstrations of self-importance, there are protestors who have violated good laws by trespassing, by destruction of private property, by violence, and by murder. The minute one begins to argue from consequences--well, the demonstration may have been illegal but look at the results!--we take the path of rebellion. If you are prepared to take responsibility for what happens--the upsurge in abortions in Rumania that followed the murder of Ceascescu, for example--then you may have a morally defensible position, but I am not in a position to say that the overthrow of communism was an unqualified good.
I don't have much of any opinion on Grisez, since I find his work unreadable and his reasoning fuzzy, infected throughly with modernism. It is small beer compared with Thomas and Alphonsus, and it is a sign of the times that such a lightweight has replaced the serious tradition of moral theology. .
The only people I would permit here to sketch out the differences between Grisez and Alphonsus would be licensed theologians with an old-fashioned education.
Thank you.
Dr. Fleming, I don't claim that the overthrow of Communism was an unqualified good, but I certainly don't consider the disobedience to law involved in its overthrow to be an unmitigated evil. And the vast majority of demonstrations against abortion involve attempting to dissuade pregnant women from killing their children. Thousands of lives have been saved and hundreds of clinics shut down since Roe v. Wade by these tactics. Apart from the massive instances of trespass in the late 80s to mid 90s, the instances of law-breaking by abortion protestors have been relatively few.
Law breaking by opponents of US immigration laws (other than the illegal aliens themselves) is so uncommon as to be almost unheard of. It is not a criminal conspiracy to use legal means to try to impede the enforcement of immigration laws, anymore than it is to try to impede the enforcement of drug laws. It is also not a criminal conspiracy to try to impede or prevent abortion by legal means; this was decided by the Supreme Court itself in the Scheidler case. This sort of rhetoric comes close to the DHS and SPLC condemnations of "extremism", "hate speech" and "terrorism". We'd be wise to avoid encouraging something which can so easily be used against us.
I have been late to this discussion and would like to repeat the question @33:
Is there a part II?
Also, I am still trying to wrap myself around the distinctions being made between civil disobedience and conscientious resistance. I have missed the clues from many of the references to ancient cultures, sadly, since I am mostly ignorant of them. However, being partly a product of my own time, I immediately saw the reference to the American saint King and thought it must be because his duty to his movement became larger than his duty to his immediate family, for example. But I think that is a weaker argument than what is being offered, or is it related? Not all of the activities of the "civil rights movement" were wrong, either.
A different point: If multi-culturalism has made it easier for a central authority to dominate the natural people, then it would take a cultural healing for any real progress to be made. I wonder if in history any examples of this abound? Do we have a cultural instinct? Or, to use language itself as an analogy, when fragmented people, usually imported slaves, are forced to work together, they form a pidgin language (which is not actually a language). However, the natural instincts of man cause the next generation of these people to form a creole language from this pidgin, where it hadn't ever existed before (it wasn't learned from tradition). Do cultures emerge similarly?
The variability of how much race matters is illustrated by historical events. Look at how the soldiers of European nations, who were rivals back home in Europe, came together for mutual defence during the boxer rebellion (yes, I know, the Japanese did too). Also, during WWII, a few German U-boats are said to have sailed into the Pacific, and when one of these docked in the Philippines, the crew were outraged at the treatment of British prisoners of war (fellow whites) by the Japanese (orientals). Meanwhile, the Brits and Germans were happily killing each other off back home in Europe, and fuming with ethnic hatred against each other. Race matters in different ways in different situations.
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The least you can say about sanctuary movements is that they are subversive to society, and the same could be said for anti-abortion movements that engage in civil disobedience. That's the problem with these movements, and with the 'civil rights' movement of the 50's and 60's, and whatever other movement you can think of which uses similar practices. We should also throw in crackpot religious movements like Jehovah's Witnesses and other cults which try to separate one from loyalty to community, kin and tradition. That's another form of subversion, and it is equally evil. The cumulative effect of all this in the long term has been devastating, and it's one of the main reasons our civilisation is dying. As a society, we are subverting ourselves into oblivion.
This is not the third posted article but section III of an ongoing article.
I repeat: I am not the author of the conventional distinction between conscientious refusal and civil disobedience. A moral person may or must refuse to carry out a government's commands if his ethical and religious tradition requires it. Of course, an immigrant from an alien culture cannot expect his host society to accommodate itself to a tradition it finds bizarre. Refusal for conscience's sake should be, I think, always the expression of a communal ethic and hardly ever--perhaps never for ordinary mortals--an individual decision. Civil disobedience, by contrast, is an individual decision to violate an otherwise good law for some higher purpose.
It is easy to make the statement that the Civil Rights Revolution accomplished some good. I am sure that some individuals are materially better off, but I am far more certain that this movement destroyed whatever vestiges of decency, civilization, and fairness our society had managed to maintain. If you want to know what the Revolution accomplished, just look at the video of Michael Jackson's funeral or listen to "Rev." Al Sharpton's speechifying against the white people who did not fully appreciate the genius of this pedophile pop performer. Mr. Jackson is now, once again, the most popular man in America. "Dr. " King would be so proud.
I'm not asking you to continue this particular thread, but when your Summer School is done I hope you will return to the matter of conscientious refusal/civil disobedience. It seems to me that today we are in a situation that does not fall under either definition: 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?
Another way to put the matter is that law no longer means what the early Greeks meant by nomos, the inherited ways of real, functioning societies; today's "laws" are really instruments of power - arbitrary and constantly changing - which are used against us by an elite hostile to our interests.
I am not saying that private persons have the right to violate otherwise good laws in the name of what they imagine is a higher purpose. But collective resistance to leftist social engineering would not fit that description.
They are a great many assumptions here, or, perhaps questions that would need to be answered first. The Left has, as you say, reengineered society and uses government in a thousand unimagined and possibly illegitimate ways? But which actions of government infringe on a decent person's moral liberty? Does government compel you to send your kids to a public school or require immoral young women to seek abortions? While the scale of the abuse of power may be unprecedented, the abuse itself is hardly anything novel. Secondly, what do you mean by collective action? It seems a deliberately vague term that might refer to the secession of South Carolina in 1860 or the secession of the colonies in 1776 or to members of black or white nationalist groups who murder out of a shared conviction that it is the right thing to do. I think you are being rather too optimistic in assuming that there is some level of society where one can take one's stand. That was probably true in the 1860's but it has never been true in my lifetime, and with each passing day one is more aware of the complete and hopeless decadence of the majority of the American people. Any individual or group action against authority, unless it springs from an authentic, historic, legitimate political community, is no better than terrorism. The problem, though most conservatives today fail to realize it, lies not in the government but in the people. The handwriting was on the wall in the 1860's--as prescient people like Henry Adams and Owen Wister realized--and was written as high as a skyscraper by the 1920's. What are we going to do today? Herd suburbanites into concentration camps and recondition their minds? Who will give the order? Who will carry it out?
Looks like I started something.Dont know whether thats good or bad.
It appears that Dr. Fleming believes we should retreat to the catacombs,and there,nourished by the turnips from Scott Richert's vegetable garden,outlast our enemies.Respectfully,I have my doubts.From a purely practical point of view;if Leftists,who do not respect traditional norms,assiduously undermine legitimate regimes,while paleos refuse to repay them in the same coin,then the practical advantage is surrendered.And if you surrender the practical advantage,then the validity of the moral/political system from which the surrender is derived,is diminished.Didnt Aristotle place politics at the very top of the practical sciences?
If I am not mistaken,F.Roger Devlin's last comment touches upon this.
Couldnt extraordinary circumstances and provocations give rise to legitimately extraordinary responses?Is there no room in traditionalist thought for a latter day Machiavellico,or perhaps a Senatus Consultum Ultimum?Even the primitive Romans countenanced dictatorship when the Res publica was threatened.Did the whole world come to an end at Appomattox?
As for the decadence of moderns,I believe it has been overstated.Not because moderns do not exhibit many signs of failure,but rather,because of a tendency on the part of paleos to romanticize the past.No,our ancestors were not all little versions of Manius Curius Dentatus or Publius Decius Mus.In all irony,this may provide us with a little faith in our present, and in our future as well.(I'm reminded of a phrase by Alcide DeGasperi,the fisrt post-war Italian Prime Minister-and Christian Democrat to boot-who,responding to all of the wild talk by the Allies about what to do with post-Fascist Italy stated:Italy needs medicine,not surgery).
But,however decadent moderns may or may not be,it would be a grave error to locate our current crisis solely in the people's foibles.Those "authentic,historic,legitimate" political institutions have failed in their own right.Precisely in their inability (unwillingness?) to maintain their power and do their duty.Without proper leadership even human prodigies can only do so much.Just as,withou modern weapons,Leonidas and his famous 300 would be decimated by the police of a small modern town.You just cant blame everything on pornography.Also,recall what Plato,refering to Alcibiades,said about bad regimes:The very best are corrupted the most.
Mention has been made of 1776 and white nationalists murdering blacks.Well,if I recall,Tories were tarred and feathered with impunity,and Southerners have been known to lynch blacks in order to maintain law and order.And lets not forget the "White Terror" in France.
I dont think we need concentration camps for suburbanites.How about martial law in our "cities," and a state policy of re-colonization by white refugees?I dont know who will give the orders or who will carry them out.But I sure know who wont.And it is truly a pity.
I am thinking neither of murder nor of mass reeducation. Relevant examples that come to my mind include homeschooling and women in the military. No, thank heaven, our government does not yet compel us to send our children to their schools. But it would not be farfetched to worry now about what to do if this changes. Homeschooling is illegal in Germany by virtue of a 1938 law; parents have been jailed for trying to protect their children from pornographic materials used in elemenary schools there. Do you believe organizing passive resistence would be morally wrong in such a case?
Or again, we will never know how many men have left or not joined the military because of their policies on women. The number likely includes some of our best men. They acted individually, without fanfare. What if such men had been able to join together? What if there had been mass resignations back in the Seventies? A kind of collective conscientious refusal that would also have functioned as a political weapon in defense of the natural order?
You see, when you stated your unqualified opposition to civil disobedience, this is what I thought you meant. Please clarify.
A further clarification: such collective action might not BEGIN within existing political structures, but would likely end up operating there if successful. Think of Solidarity in Poland - a workers' movement that became a party fielding candidates for office after the revolution.
Sempronius,
Why act so coy? You love to stir the pot and like the good chef that you are it brings out the flavor and aroma of good stew. Here is one description of decadence by John Henry Newman in his Historical Sketches VOl. 2 that I find rather pointed and relevant to our little inquiry, it is also rather supportive of my Benedictine bias, Scott's vegetable gardens and the deep hearts core heard once upon a time on the Lake Isle of Innisfree.(Newman is describing to his reader why a Roman noble like St. Benedict would leave the University to go live in a cave.) Enjoy.
"The social fabric was overgrown with the corruptions of a thousand years, and was held together, not so much by any common principle, as by the strength of possession and the tenacity of custom. It was too large for public spirit, and too artificial for patriotism, and its many religions did but foster in the popular mind division and scepticism. Want of mutual confidence would lead to despondency, inactivity, and selfishness. Society was in the slow fever of consumption, which made it restless in proportion as it was feeble. It was powerful, however, to seduce and deprave; nor was there any locus standi from which to combat its evils; and the only way of getting on with it was to abandon principle and duty, to take things as they came, and to do as the world did. Worse than all, this encompassing, entangling system of things, was, at the time we speak of, the seat and instrument of a paganism, and then of heresies, not simply contrary, but bitterly hostile, to the Christian profession. Serious men not only had a call, but every inducement which love of life and freedom could supply, to escape from its presence and its sway.
Their one idea then, their one purpose, was to be quit of it; too long had it enthralled them. It was not a question of this or that vocation, of the better deed, of the higher state, but of life and death. In later times {375} a variety of holy objects might present themselves for devotion to choose from, such as the care of the poor, or of the sick, or of the young, the redemption of captives, or the conversion of the barbarians; but early monachism was flight from the world, and nothing else. The troubled, jaded, weary heart, the stricken, laden conscience, sought a life free from corruption in its daily work, free from distraction in its daily worship; and it sought employments as contrary as possible to the world's employments,—employments, the end of which would be in themselves, in which each day, each hour, would have its own completeness;—no elaborate undertakings, no difficult aims, no anxious ventures, no uncertainties to make the heart beat, or the temples throb, no painful combination of efforts, no extended plan of operations, no multiplicity of details, no deep calculations, no sustained machinations, no suspense, no vicissitudes, no moments of crisis or catastrophe;—nor again any subtle investigations, nor perplexities of proof, nor conflicts of rival intellects, to agitate, harass, depress, stimulate, weary, or intoxicate the soul."