Fish or Cut Bait
President Obama's speech on Afghanistan was everything we have a right to expect from one of his speeches. It was vapid, dishonest, puerile, and--most of all--confused. Speaking grandly of an exit strategy he never defined, he did not once address the more serious question of an entrance strategy. What possible reason did we ever have for going in to that awful place, except to kill people we don't like? I'll give Obama this: The man never disappoints; he always lives down to my lowest expectations.
So do the Republicans. While many peacenik Democrats were at best luke-warm or even critical, Lindsey Graham. John McCain, and even Karl Rove all jumped on Obama's war wagon, thumping their little tin drums for more blood. Their only complaint is that it has taken so long to fall 10,000 soldiers short of General McChrystal's request. To a man, the GOP'a leadership appears to think that General Petraeus should be left to run the war--and the world, if necessary.
Rumor and perhaps more than rumor has it that McChrystal actually wanted far more than 40,000 but agreed on that figure as a compromise. It is not enough, far from it, to insure victory (whatever that means.) If he does not have a clue as to why we went in, how can he possibly devise an exit strategy? So the pointless killing goes on.
Obama took weeks to do what we all knew he would do even before he began holding his never-ending sequence of meetings: Come up a day late and some thousands of soldiers short. Like every other bureaucrat and neighborhood organizer today, Obama thinks that talking and posturing actually accomplish something. He probably still believes in Headstart, Cap and Trade to reduce Global Warming, and the Tooth Fairy. At least the Tooth Fairy--or one of her reps--actually pays off, though, because of uncontrolled government spending, she has to increase her rates evry few years.
The meetings were entirely useless. What, exactly, does a man of his low caliber and lack of experience have to contribute to a discussion of any defense policy? He never served a day in the military, cannot apparently read a balance sheet, and has a knowledge of history that is only matched by his command of the English language. (Even his Chicago accent sounds more like a Dan Akroyd rip-off.) We need a constitutional amendment requiring military service of anyone in the federal chain of command, and combat duty, if it were possible, of any presidential candidate. Yes, that means my wife shall have to give up her dream of redecorating the White House to eliminate all the residual bad taste of the Kennedys and Clintons and Obamas, but we are prepared to make any sacrifice, pay any price, tell any lie if it will advance the cause of freedom and democracy.
Does President Obama have any desire to protect this country? His Department of Homeland Security is again proposing to amnesty millions of aliens who have illegally invaded our country, and his Secret Service cannot even keep a Pakistani gate-crasher out of the White House. Perhaps Tareq Salahi just wanted to discuss the theology of Jihad with a former student of the religion of peace.
Even the Left has lost patience with the Prince of Peace Prizes. Like LBJ, he ran on a peace platform against the War Party, only to deliver more carnage. What did we expect? Obama isn't the President, not really. He is like the actor (played by Richard Dreyfus) hired to stand in for the dictator in Moon Over Parador, except the ham actor did a better job of playing the part. The day he named Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff, he had sold his pacifist soul to the Zionist devil.
The problem with Obama and his administration is not that they are either pacifists or militarists but that they are as clueless as Robert McNamara or Jimmy Carter. My entire adult life I have watched American foreign policy and defense gurus lead us into debacle after debacle. Whether in Southeast Asia, Central America, or the Middle East, these people, time after time, rush headlong into a conflict without pausing to consider what their objectives are or what victory requires. Inevitably they think they can win on the cheap. The result is always the same: massive slaughter, a rise in anti-Americanism, and failure.
I am not now nor have ever been an isolationist. America is the greatest power in the world today, and any American government must play its cards, as world power, in the interest of the American people--as opposed to the interest of arms manufacturers or the Israel Lobby. Although the elaboration of any policy would require great knowledge and experience and considerable prudence, there are only two possible winning strategies: We can either mind our own business or build a great empire.
If, as it appears, our Yankee Puritan heritage prevents us from following the wise policy of benign neutrality advocated by George Washington, then let the megalomaniacs pursue their dreams of empire. But if they do, let them freely acknowledge what they are doing, without taking refuge in such cowardly evasions as wars to end wars, spreading democracy, or building an "imperium." They want an empire because it feels good to make everyone else cower and because there is so much money to be made. For most American politicians, greed and libido dominandi are about the noblest motives of which they are capable. Some just want access to Congressional pages and the chance to go on TV.
If they are Hell-bent on creating an empire, fine, let them do it or at least try to do it, but they shall need to raise taxes, reinstitute the draft, and be prepared for the terrible bloodshed that might slake their lust for blood. Some people don't actually want to be ruled by the United States and some of them even understand that all this talk about peace and democracy and human rights are simply code words for American imperialism. And some of them even are crazy enough to fight back, when they are attacked. If someone else is doing the aggression, we call the resisters, "freedom fighters," but when it is America stomping on them, they are terrorists.
If we are going to pretend to be Romans, let us act like Romans the Romans who were lenient in victory and offered the benefit of a better legal system and higher culture to most of their conquered peoples. But, if a Gallic chieftain raised a little rebellion, Julius Caesar and his successors were absolutely merciless in slaughtering and enslaving the rebels. It took several generations for the Gauls to calm down and give up their language and their bloodthirsty gods, but in the end they were probably better off--until the Germans invaded and Rome was too weak to repel the invaders. Empires bring in rewards, but the cost is high. If our own imperialists want to carve out an American province that stretches from Israel to Iraq to Afghanistan, let them do it, but not on the cheap. Imperial conquest requires much money and many lives.
The question is, therefore, whether to fish or cut Bait. I have been saying this same thing for 40 years. The insight flashed in my mind when I received a personal reply to a letter I'd sent my congressman, complaining about the extension of the Vietnam War to Cambodia. My congressman, L. Mendel Rivers, something of a friend of my father, was chairman of the House Armed Forces Committee and the biggest warhawk in the Congress. His reply shocked me at the time. He said, in essence, "I agree with you. If we are not determined to win this war, then we should not be fighting it." I disagreed with Mendel's militarism, but for all his many weaknesses he was a real American statesman. It was a dying breed then and an extinct species today. That is only one of many reasons why we cannot entrust even a brushfire war--much less a grand imperial strategy--to the American political class today. They will never learn how to fish, but they are too afraid of knives to cut bait.
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@47 CM Collins:
I, too, picked up TJF's irony. But what I've learned to do, is to take a good writer's irony and run as far as I can with the side of it that most catches my fancy.
Here is a perfect example of why limiting the Presidency to people who have served would not necessarily lead to less wars.
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/12/07/the-debate-over-afghanistan
The author is a Marine who served in Iraq. Like I said, for every Smedley Butler there is a Ralph Peters or John Guardiano.
I never even hinted that limiting the presidency to veterans would reduce the frequency of wars. The point was to avoid having a clueless commander-in-chief. Even this would not screen out a little Jimmy Carter. A law degree does not prevent incompetents and crooks from becoming Federal judges, but it is a reasonable minimum requirement for people who have the power of life and death. Note, by the way, the context:
"What, exactly, does a man of his low caliber and lack of experience have to contribute to a discussion of any defense policy? He never served a day in the military, cannot apparently read a balance sheet, and has a knowledge of history that is only matched by his command of the English language.... We need a constitutional amendment requiring military service of anyone in the federal chain of command, and combat duty, if it were possible, of any presidential candidate."
Being able to read a balance sheet does not keep your accountant from ripping you off, but you would not want an accountant who could not read one? Am I missing something? Or to get closer to home, a medical degree does not exclude incompetent and evil physicians, but on balance one prefers a heart surgeon who has been to med school.
No you are not missing anything. My posts weren't necessarily aimed at you. I have just heard it suggested by many before that people with military backgrounds would be less cavalier about sending in the troops. There may be some truth to this but it is no guarantee. That was my point.
As far as competence, I think people who have served in the past are better equipped to “get” certain things about the military and its culture, but it doesn’t necessarily make them have a better grasp of grand strategy. Theoretically what a President like Obama who has never served could bring to a discussion on defense policy is some sort of ability to speak on behalf of the people apart from the military culture of generals or the hack culture of foreign policy wonks. (Ha ha I know, but I did say theoretically.) But the system did not intend for such a cipher to win the Presidency based on a mass popular vote that was never intended either. The President, again theoretically, is supposed to be a wise and prudent statesman chosen by an elite Electoral College.
Dr. Fleming, I have started and read part of Martin Van Creveld's book on the nation-state. What book(s) on the genesis of the modern nation-state would you suggest I read instead?
Anonymous@39:
Certainly a draft would improve the overall quality of the military and the quality of life for our worked-to-death troops. But only if our leaders didn't take the new manpower into more and more wars - a big if. The generals may be the most visible opponents of a draft, but the real roadblock is that our politicians just can't admit, to themselves or anyone else, that they have got us overcommitted. Asking for a draft would mean admitting to, among other things, their ineptitude at strategy and geopolitics.
As for getting those "bright, talented, free-thinking, outspoken and creative people" into uniform, though today's college kids strike me as less anti-military, less rebellious and perhaps even less selfish than those of the 60's, (they surely couldn't be more selfish) it's funny how all that free-thinking creativity gets put to use when the prospect of getting shot at looms.
Liked your idea to let sergeants be sergeants. Mine were truly salt of the earth, even the ones I didn't like, I realize now. But I had to break out into a rueful smile when I read in your next paragraph about the draft army being filled with the outspoken. If sergeants ever get back to being their natural selves, outspokenness .... just might taper off a bit.
I don't think the Constitution is at all relevant to the system we have today, and to act as if it were, invites unending disaster. You bring up the Electoral College, which was a clumsy mechanism designed to prevent direct democracy, but direct democracy is precisely what we claim to have, though the reality is a government of lobbyist-controlled demagogues. I am far from proposing any solution, including a benevolent military dictatorship, but I do think it is probably a bit much to believe that a man without military experience of any kind would do a good job during a war. Lincoln was a disaster, as was LBJ (though he served as shipyard inspector). Wilson did not have a long enough or challenging enough war to worry about. He let the generals run the campaign, which was wise of him, though his decision to enter the war can be viewed as a grave mistake.
Part of the issue is knowledge of military affairs, part of it is the experience of risking one's life and seeing your friends die, and part is simply the character that develops from combat or the frontier. So long our "leaders" are namby-pambys who have read all the wrong books and never confronted risk and danger, we shall be badly led, but then, as the saying goes, we get the leaders we deserve. A nation of risk-averse ignoramuses who believe that affirmative action action rights the wrongs committed by our evil ancestors has found its perfect expression.
I should respond both to Henry Taylor and Mr. Chan. Walter Jones (like his colleague Congressman Duncan) has written for Chronicles and spoken at a Rockford Institute event. He is one of the few politicians I am not ashamed to have met, though his Freedom Fries stunt at first took me by surprise: He made the mistake of trusting the President of the US and the leader of his party.
The rise of the state, ancient and modern, is a subject on which a great deal of ink has been wasted. The chapter "In the Beginning" of the Politics of Human Nature surveys some of the theories on the origin of the state, in the sense of an organized political community. Much of the work on the modern state, it seems to me, is highly confused and suffers from a lack of detailed knowledge. There are, I have concluded, two principal lines of development: The first is the evolution of communes in Italy and then Northern Europe; the second is the creation of centralized nation-states in Spain, France, and England. I believe, however, that the second line is strongly influenced by the first. There is, so far as I know, no credible overall book on this subject or even a major part of it. The best approach is to take one important aspect. My own method has been to study the Tuscan republics--Lucca, Pisa, Siena, Florence--in detail and to try to see how early institutions (the councils of good men, societies of merchants and shipowners) get transformed into the super-corporation that Machiavelli calls the state. Florence, being the largest,most complex example with the longest history, is correspondingly the most intricate and puzzling story. If you would like some bibliography, I'l be happy to make suggestions. Until 20 years ago, there was only a book or two in English. Now there is much more, but ultimately most of the best stuff is still in Italian (e.g. Volpe's still controversial Istituzioni communali...)
Thank you.
"My own method has been to study the Tuscan republics–Lucca, Pisa, Siena, Florence–in detail and to try to see how early institutions (the councils of good men, societies of merchants and shipowners) get transformed into the super-corporation that Machiavelli calls the state."
Dr. Fleming,
I think any such inquiry would include case studies such as the rise and organization of the mafia, the State of Virginia, Florence, and the early Church. It might reveal, if one had eyes to see the principles, if any, of how human communities are born, flower, grow to maturity and then begin to hear the death rattle from a distance . The problem is that such studies are always incomplete and lead to some half-baked idealogy such as
"the means of production determined their ends," or " they held all things in common" and the most popular fraud " the social contract." I think you are correct in wanting to see things developed from the ground up, but so many abiding truths fall into the mix, it is almost impossible to conclude --- not because of skepticism but because of the vastness of the human soul -- or so it seems to me.
"I don’t think the Constitution is at all relevant to the system we have today, and to act as if it were, invites unending disaster."
That may be true, but to concede to the enemy that the Constitution really is a dead letter seems to me too much like giving up.
The Japanese in WW II knew how to attack, dig in, and fight to the last man. They lost. Well-meaning conservatives who continue to invoke the Constitution as anything but a once-and-future political system are like the anti-abortion movement that insists upon invoking the imaginary "right to life" and compares Roe v. Wade with Dred Scott. They lose before they even begin to fight. When even the best people make this mistake, there is absolutely no point even in voting, much less taking an active part in politics. The Constitution, as interpreted by the US Supreme Court, is the enemy of our liberty and our religion. That battle was lost before I was born. To do anything in politics one has to know where we are now, where we want to go, and the possible roads to get there. Endless talk about restoring the republic belongs in the same historical scrapheap as the Gold Standard, Separate but Equal, and the Indirect Election of Senators.
Dr. Fleming, what will happen when the whole rotten system implodes under the stress of massive unfunded entitlements? We won't go backwards to the Jeffersonian Republic yet the current system, however resilient, can not be sustained either.
"The Constitution, as interpreted by the US Supreme Court, is the enemy of our liberty and our religion. That battle was lost before I was born"
Somewhat relatedly, I'm currently reading Bill Kauffman's Life of Luther Martin. It's an enjoyable read. A number of the Anti-Federalists seemed to understand that the Constitution itself contained within it the seeds of its own destruction.
As for me, I don't know what else there is to do except advocate for what I think makes the most sense and vote accordingly.
"Dr. Fleming, what will happen when the whole rotten system implodes under the stress of massive unfunded entitlements?"
Martial law.
Dr. Fleming, thank you for your response! If you could please put up a bibliography for Florence, perhaps to accompany a Machiavelli post, I'd appreciate it very much, and other readers would undoubtedly benefit as well.
Mr. Toddard wrote:
"Somewhat relatedly, I’m currently reading Bill Kauffman’s Life of Luther Martin. It’s an enjoyable read. A number of the Anti-Federalists seemed to understand that the Constitution itself contained within it the seeds of its own destruction."
I read it recently as well. Kaufman really has an axe to grind, but in so doing, reminds us how much we all do.
I think we should have stuck with the Articles of Confederation. The anti-Federalists have been proven right in almost every respect. And I agree that the Constitution "contained within it the seeds of its own destruction." It is not in any way self-enforcing. But it is what we have. I really don't see how it helps to give up the moral or rhetorical high ground of pointing out that it is being systematically ignored and subverted and really should be followed. I don't have much confidence that we are going to "restore the Republic." I think there is a greater likelihood that the whole thing will implode like the USSR or we will wind up under martial law, but I don't see the drawback of foot stomping about the Constitution being ignored.
I think we should all try to understand that there is not such thing as a perfect and probably not even a good constitution. One of the big problems with patriotic attachment to the Constitution is that it displaces our attention from how people actually live and make decisions and transfers it to a theory or piece of paper. The men who drafted the Constitution (or the Articles) were not geniuses. They were practical and usually commonplace people who had lived through strife and war. For the most part they were ward-heelers, that is, public men who were looking out for the interests of themselves and their constituents. Sitting down in Philadelphia, they hammered out a series of compromises that protected the various interests that had sent them there--big states and small, slave-holding and free, agricultural and mercantile interests, coastal and back country. It would be very naive to assume that such an agreement could bind their successors very long, and the illusion that it could prevented some otherwise fine statesmen from facing reality. One of the best thinkers among the framers, John Adams, had a son who made up his mind to break the Union--and the Constitution--in order to subjugate the South. If the South had got out then, during the ridiculous debate over Missouri, she might have stood a chance. By 1860 it was simply too late.
On Luther Martin, he was the typical ward-heeler of the day. He was a fine lawyer, apparently, and defended two of the most dangerous men of the day, Samuel Chase and Aaron Burr. Although supposedly a principled opponent of centralized power, he defended Chase, the abuser of judicial privilege and later turned against Jefferson. Perhaps it was his alcoholism. From the perspective of 200 years, he seems like just another halfway decent politician, some principles and perhaps more vanity and self-seeking. I have not read Kaufman's book, though I did open it and plan to read at least part of it. WK, however, is not really an historian but an essayist and a sort of libertarian polemicist who sometimes gets carried away by his admiration of the virtues of some imagined hero. His attempt to elevate the crook of all crooks, Martin van Buren, to the lofty pinnacle of principled politics was, in a word, was a heroic exercise in historical creativity. I hope he has been more objective about Martin.
Mark Schaeber@46: "That would depend on who the alleged “beneficiaries” are."
Obviously the wrong people have been benefitting, and in the wrong ways, from bad policies, foreign and domestic. Ideally, of course, people should be able to benefit from the results of their own toil, independent of any government policy, the way my grandfathers did, one as a tailor and shopkeeper, the other as a woodsman and farmer, neither one ever taking a dime of Social Security. But given my own thankless experience in the botched Viet Nam war, it was probably inevitable that some ambivalence should creep into my voice when the conversation turns to examples of true empires, empires which unleashed their dogs of war in unabashed pursuit of gain and glory, and rewarded them with the tangible fruits of their victories, i.e., land, loot, women, profitable sinecures. This emotion - call it conquest envy - becomes harder to stifle (speaking for myself, though I doubt I'm the only one) the louder the accusations of evil American imperialism grow, especially since these accusations have grown inversely with the benefits of military service, compared to the gold standard of the original G.I. bill, which did positive wonders for millions of WWII vets.
Yes, the president's speech attempted a magician's trick, a tedious, by-the-numbers amateur bit that he found on the dustiest shelf of the pawnshop of political ideas, where it was left in hock in 1968 by a tall, sad clown with a huge nose. In LBJ's day, the act of creating the illusion that we could have everything we wanted (that is, everything he wanted) at home, while conducting a foreign war, was known as promising the people "guns and butter"; BHO has renamed the act "dismantling (the Taliban) and rebuilding" (America). Unfortunately, he has even less of a grasp of military realities than Johnson, while being more popular and more skilled at PR than the Texan, a potentially disastrous combination. He also does not have Johnson's maniacal stubbornness, nor his ability to terrorize anyone who disagreed with him, - egad! I just realized I miss the man! - nor does he have to face the solid, "silent majority" of Americans who remembered the savor of total victory and expected nothing less.
Whether these personal and historical differences, along with his nickeling and diming of his generals out of ten thousand troops while publicly announcing our quitting time, have cost an opportunity to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban for good, and whether that was what should have been done; or whether he has avoided getting Johnsonesque numbers of Americans killed for nothing, is a question it will take years to answer.
Regarding the discussion of constitutionalism going on here, I used to try to imagine what an new constitution should look like if a new political order should be established (obviously we would need a new one since the old one is defunct, and it would have to come on the heels of a political revolution of some kind or it would be pointless). I came up with lots of ideas, not all of them cooky by any means. However, several years ago, it dawned on me that none of that matters because the people have no virtue any more. No constitution would be any good for a society such as ours.
So, what would work? Well, we could still draw one up just so it would be there I suppose, so that maybe some article of it might be useful to someone fighting for his property, etc., in some future court case. At least that would be something.
Even so, we'll never have such a thing anyway, and the best we can hope for is a breakup of the union and a fall back to state constitutions as they currently exist, and perhaps one or more regional governments with constitutions modeled on state constitutions. That wouldn't be a step forward in constitutionalism, but at this point even a sideways step might help.
God help us if the social crusaders get a voice in drawing up any new constitution. In order to prevent this, it would be best just to leave the issue alone and not try to introduce innovations, and just fall back on those of the states, as bad as they may be.
"One of the best thinkers among the framers, John Adams..."
Dr. Fleming, have you read Adams' Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States?
It has been at least 20 years since I read Adams seriously. I looked at the Defense back then. What impressed me about JA were his sharp legal mind, his dogged plowing through history looking for examples, and his passionate attachment to his native soil. He was not a brilliant original thinker. Hardly any American political thinker could make such a claim for himself, but he was a shrewd country boy with a justifiably skeptical understanding of human nature and its limitations. American political wisdom at its best, it has always seemed to me, is the common ground between Adams and Jefferson.
Constitutions are written by the winners, and it would probably be a futile exercise to draw one up in the abstract. What one could do, however, is to lay down basic principles which, if observed, would be conducive to a decent life and a legitimate moral and social order. This is what I attempted to begin, some months ago, in taking up the foundations of a conservative world view. If there is any interest in reviving that conversation, we could combine it with the assault on the neopagans and anti-Christians by taking up the question, by no means simple, of the proper relations between religion and a commonwealth.
I would certainly be interested.
Dr. Fleming,
Per your request, I would be very interesting in seeing a bibliographic post for the Italian communes.
" If there is any interest in reviving that conversation, we could combine it with the assault on the neopagans and anti-Christians by taking up the question, by no means simple, of the proper relations between religion and a commonwealth."
This would be another great conversation to begin. The view that Christians have a moral right or obligation to impose or baptize the unwilling soul is as repugnant as the current view that Christians should have no say at all as to what goes on in their res publica. There are two kinds of idiots talking about this issue today --- secular libertarians inspired by what remains of a degraded Protestant theology and Neo-Modernist Catholics like George Weigel and the late Father Neuhause. If the Chronicles editors could not help in putting this conversation back on track within the Christian Tradition, they should shut down, give their donors list to the poor and retire to a life of penance and prayer or at least a thirty day retreat with the spirtual exercises of St Ignatius given by a mean,cranky, old Jesuit who hasn't slept or taken a full meal in days.
"the question... of the proper relations between religion and a commonwealth.”
I've never understood how banning the practice of religion from public property (esp public schools) can be squared with the 1st Amendment. It states clearly that "Congress shall make no law... prohibiting the free exercise (of religion)". I understand the separation of church and state argument, but I don't think an honest person can sincerely argue that a prohibition against the establishment of a state religion somehow empowers the state to prohibit the free exercise of religion. It seems sensible to me that when a clear, enumerated restriction on gov't power ("Congress shall make no law... prohibiting the free exercise (of religion)") butts up against a vague, implied, contrived ideal (the absolute separation of church and state, contrived from the prohibition against the establishment of a state religion) that the clear, enumerated restriction should trump the contrived, vague ideal.
As for the ubiquitous championing of the Constitution amongst the New-Old Right/confederated republicans/decentralist/localist/traditionalist conservative right, I understand what Dr. Fleming is saying, but still think it's important to emphasize the Constitution for a number of reasons. First, because the people who will most likely be swayed to our side are self-identified "conservatives", and they - the Fox News Right - generally believe that patriotic, conservative Americans revere the Constitution. They believe that THEY revere the Constitution. I think it's important to teach them what the Constitution means, and to demonstrate the stark contrast between their 'reverence' for the Constitution and its treatment by the politicians they elect to support and defend it. They need to be made aware that they actively support the destruction of that document that they flamboyantly revere. Also, if one believes we should work towards establishing the Rule of Law, how can one do that without referencing the Constitution? Americans generally believe that the Rule of Law is ideal. How can they be made to understand that we are living under a lawless, corporatist oligarchy - one that precludes that Rule of Law they believe is ideal - unless we contrast the government laid out in the Constitution with the one we're stuck with? And lastly, the government defined in the Constitution is (for us on the right-right) as close to the ideal gov't as any that has ever been defined. Though it is imperfect - that Constitution enabled the system we have now to usurp it - it is not without worth. Amendments are needed to make it less susceptible to the machinations of corporate elites, and to curb the power of the supreme court etc, but it is as good a starting point as we have, I think.
I am really interested in what an effective check on judicial abuses= would look like. Perhaps an Amendment allowing state nullification of Supreme Court decisions and congressional acts short of Constitutional Amendments, and another re-establishing the U.S. as a confederated, voluntary Republic in which peaceful secession is an explicit right of the states. Joe Sobran made a good point about the value of secession when he wrote: "Peaceful secession was a state’s ultimate constitutional defense against Federal tyranny. Without it, the Federal Government has been able to claim new powers for itself while stripping the states of their powers. Lincoln neither foresaw nor intended this when he crushed secession. But today the states are helpless when, for example, the Federal Courts suddenly declare that no state may constitutionally protect unborn children from violent death in the womb. If even one state had been able to secede, the U.S. Supreme Court would never have dared provoke it to do so by issuing such an outrageous ruling, with no support in the Constitution."
It's hard to discuss what should be done, I guess, without straying into dream-world territory that has no connection to or bearing on the real world.
EDIT: I should have written "for most of us on the right-right" instead of "for us on the right-right".
There is interest in reviving that conversation.
Fish or cut bait have been followed with much interest and
appreciation. Please continue with relations between religion
and a commonwealth topic. Thank you.
Dr. Fleming your Fish or Cut Bait essay and its comments are
educating and interesting. Please continue in accordance
with your @73 proposed question "religion and a commonwealth".
Robert, are you suggesting that "Neo-Modernist Catholics like George Weigel and the late Father Neuhause" are the ones who advocate "the view that Christians have a moral right or obligation to impose or baptize the unwilling soul?" I assume that because I don't think you are suggesting it would be the secular libertarians who believe that?
Actually Weigel and Neuhaus worship at the alter of the liberal democratic state. Far from imposing anything, they are staunch defenders of pluralism and tolerance as the highest virtue.
I don't know of anyone who wants to baptize unwilling souls, but I am not convinced that religious pluralism and tolerance can be found in the Bible. I would welcome a discussion on the proper relationship between church and state.
(quote) This is what I attempted to begin, some months ago, in taking up the foundations of a conservative world view. If there is any interest in reviving that conversation, we could combine it with the assault on the neopagans and anti-Christians by taking up the question, by no means simple, of the proper relations between religion and a commonwealth.(end quote)
I too would certainly be interested.
Red Phillips,,
"Robert, are you suggesting that “Neo-Modernist Catholics like George Weigel and the late Father Neuhause” are the ones who advocate “the view that Christians have a moral right or obligation to impose or baptize the unwilling soul?”
Not at all,(No serious Christian has ever held that position since the crucifixion) their position seems to be that in matters of religion the state is not competent to decide truth from falsehood, snake oil from crude oil, peyote nuts from coconuts, or a nativity scene from a nudity scene. Their position seems to be that Catholics should follow the teaching magisterium of the Church in matters of faith and morals except when the application of these principles disagrees with a strong neo-con desire. It is what some folks call a very "nuanced position" or what the old timers once called "talking out both sides of your mouth." But heck, I don't want to miss all the fun by doing the set up. Let's wait for Dr. Fleming's future posts on the subject.
Having read the article referenced in comment #52, I must give Dr. Phillips and Mr. Toddard credit for the thankless job of trying to speak conservative sense into the people at American Spectator.
As for the next time a draft is instituted, would women be drafted too?
"If there is any interest in reviving that conversation, we could combine it with the assault on the neopagans and anti-Christians by taking up the question, by no means simple, of the proper relations between religion and a commonwealth."
I am interested, and would especially appreciate any comments on the recent Manhattan Declaration.
In closing, I promise to take up the Church/State question. In an indirect manner, I have lightly touched upon the theme in today's post on Christmas. After a follow-up on Scrooge, I plan to briefly describe the serious mistakes of the "Manhattan Declaration" and then get down to basics/