"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.

"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.

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.

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.