Back to the Stone Age, I B
That afternoon, as Paul and I were gassing on about the evil neocons, one of us said something like, ""If they are neoonservatives, what are we then, paleolithic conservatives or palaeocons?" In my recollection, I was the first to utter the word, though I believe Paul also claims credit. I won't dispute the point. It hardly matters.
I do know that Chris Kopff and I in those days used to joke about the different types of conservatives who longed for different periods of history. The neocons liked the 50's while the fusionists preferred the period before the New Deal. Neoconfederates went back to the antebellum South, Russell Kirk had his heart in the 18th and 19th century England, Kopff and I looked back to classical antiquity, while Walter Burkert, the world's expert on Greek religion, had argued in his book Homo Necans, that the first great breakthrough toward human civilization came in the Paleolithic age when primitive hunters quit eating each other and developed the ritual of animal sacrifice. As Kopff and I used to joke, Burkert was, in this sense, the ultimate conservative.
From the beginning, there was a fundamental divergence on the meaning of palaeoconservative. Paul—and his neconservative enemies—thought we were claiming to be the authentic heirs to the postwar conservatives at The National Review. There was obviously some truth in this. Unlike the neocons, we had not signed onto any of the social revolutions that had hit America since roughly 1970—feminism, homosexualism, the marriage—or more properly the divorce--revolution, open immigration, globalism, global democratism, what is now known as multi-culturalism, and the civil rights revolution—to name only the most obvious.
As a student, I had not only sympathized with the civil rights movement but had openly associated with some of the leftists associated with the very red Highlander Folk School. I even took part in a few marches and sit-ins, but, while I continued to believe in a system of equal rights under the law, I was completely opposed to unmerited claims to social and economic equality. All these claims undermined the traditional authority of state and local governments and increased the powers of Washington over the lives of everyone.
Nonetheless, as sympathetic as I was with the good work that NR conservatives had done in resisting the revolution, I had never found either the magazine or its ideology either interesting or satisfying. The early Bill Buckley had displayed both courage and charm, but he had never thought through what it was he believed. I was grateful for the opportunity to write for NR and thought well of many of the magazine's regular contributors and editors, such as Jeffrey Hart, Chilton Williamson, John Simon, and Florence King, but I never felt at home in its pages. When Bill, typically in an unsigned article, attacked us for agreeing with him on immigration, I was not terribly surprised or disappointed.
I was more impressed with the disgruntled American liberals between the two World Wars: H.L. Mencken, Albert Jay Nock, and even John T. Flynn. The wrote better than most NR contributors, and while they claimed to be liberals, they were more reactionary, partly because they were better read. When Gottfried and I were working on the second edition of The Conservative Movement, I wrote the chapters on the Old Right and the Libertarians, though I later decided to take my name off the project, partly because I was now a character in the book and partly because I was uncomfortable with Gottfried's somewhat relaxed approach to fact-checking.
In those years, I was working on The Politics of Human Nature, and it seemed to me that the revolutions of my own time had gone well beyond the French and Russian revolutions and had adopted as their object the elimination of mankind both as the mammalian species that had evolved over a million years and as the creature made in the image of God. It seemed to me then—and it seems even more clear today—that whatever practical good conservatives might hope to do in shaping a political debate, our real mission was to resist and if possible roll back the progress of what C.S. Lewis had so fittingly called The Abolition of Man. There were, in other words, far bigger fish to fry than the size of the Federal budget or the absurdities of Fritz Mondale and Michael Dukakis.
What Palaeoconservatism Is Not
Before attempting to say what palaeoconservatism is, I should say a little about what it is not. Palaeoconservatism is not a movement, and if it were, I should be the last person in the world to join. In this I have to confess that Russell Kirk was right in avoiding group identification, though I was disappointed when he refused to join the John Randolph Club, giving me his usual answer to such requests: "I am a lone wolf." Part of Kirk's reluctance stemmed from our inclusion of libertarians, whom he derided as "chirping sectaries," a phrase from Edmund Burke he had been applying to them for decades. I think he would have agreed with the Marquis of Halifax that a party is at best a conspiracy against the nation. I should add to Halifax's insight that a political movement is only an unsuccessful party.
The only movement I am willing to belong to is historic Christianity, and the only ideological creeds I profess are the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed. I know there are people who claim to belong to some kind of palaeoconservative movement, but when I read some of what they write—though they are generally decent enough people—I remember Marx's rueful statement, made late in his long career of plotting and sedition, that whatever he was, it was not a Marxist.
Ideological movements are almost always based on what the leaders hate: men, white people, the rich, Jews, foreigners, Catholics, the bourgeoisie. When movements join forces to collaborate, hatred is always the cement. In the 1980's American Nazis joined with various Klan groups, despite the obvious problem that the KKK had been traditionally an instrument of American nationalism. Nonetheless, both groups disliked blacks and Jews, and that was sufficient common ground on which to take a stand. At The National Review, traditionalists (who believed in tradition and the social order) made common cause with classical liberals, because both groups saw big government as an enemy of what they cherished. As a practical matter, however, free markets always trumped culture and tradition, if only because businessmen are always happy to pay people to tell them that greed is, after all, not just good but the ultimate good.
Movements and their members suffer from the good old American vice of doing good. Every American reformer or political intellectual seems to have a plan or project for improving humanity, and when the plans go awry and create incredible mischief, as classical liberalism, prohibition, and feminism have done, then some new do-gooder comes along with another plan like state socialism, drug legalization, or the Men's Movement. Like Jefferson Davis, speaking for the South, palaeoconservatives can say, "All we ask is to be let alone." Sam Francis used to ridicule this attitude as unrealistic and defeatist, but what is the alternative? Perpetual war for perpetual peace? Armed revolution? Terrorism? Davis was a trained and battle-hardened military officer. He knew the men of the South would have to fight for the right to be left alone, but like most sensible people he had better things to do with his life than to join crusades.
My personal motto, borrowed from Hank Williams, has been for at least three decades: "Why don't you mind your own business, 'cause if you'd mind your own business, you won't be minding mine."
If palaeoconservatism is not a movement or a party, then is it an ideology? Not at all. An ideology—as opposed to a philosophy—is a system of ideas adopted to protect or advance the interests of a particular class or group. Classical liberalism, as Marx knew, was an ideology to protect capitalists; feminism is an ideology that allegedly aims at equal rights for women as a subset of humanity; environmentalism protects ordinary people from the pollution caused by capitalism, socialism is supposed to empower and support the working class, and so on and so forth. Of course, in reality, socialism empowers and enriches only the leaders of Marxist parties and labor unions at the expense of everyone else, feminism helps a small set of leftist women, predominantly lesbians. One of the final stages of the revolution against human nature is the coalition of environmentalists, vegetarians, animal rights activists, and population control fanatics that seeks to gain control over all the world's resources, dictating not only what we can eat and produce but who shall live and who shall not.
Members of an ideological movement are trained and disciplined like attack dogs and required to memorize the movement's slogans and arguments, and if a rational opponent goes through their panoply, defeating one after another of their positions form A to Z, the ideologue, upon giving up Z, retorts, "Yes, but what about A." This technique was first explained to me by an Alexandrian Greek who had debated many Communists, but it applies equally well to libertarians, racialist reductionists, and Dittoheads.
My late friend Russell Kirk was, thank Heaven, no intellectual, and he hated the very word ideology. Our mutual friend, Erik v. Kuehneldt-Leddihn saw this as a weakness in Anglo-American conservatism. In fact it was a great strength. The weakness in the political thinking of Edmund Burke and his disciples was not their rejection of ideology but their aversion to philosophy (including the natural philosophy we call science) and their sentimental attachment to historical myth, like England's Glorious Revolution or the doctrine of American Exceptionalism. (More on this in later chapters.)
I tried to set forth some of this in a brief article for the Spectator, in the days I could still write for English publications. An editor—I don't know if it was Frank Johnson or his deputy Stuart Reid—gave it the fanciful title, "Tories Back Wrong Philosopher." I thought the title was quite funny. Peter Stanlis, the author of the excellent and seminal study of Burke's thought, Edmnund Burke and the Natural Law, did not, though he was kind enough only to open up once on the subject, at least in my presence.
A few years before coming to Chronicles, while I was still living in McClellanville, South Carolina, I was corresponding with Thomas Molnar about some things he had written. We later became friends, and I learned a great deal from him, but nothing more important than his insights on the fatal pattern of revolution and counterrevolution that had infected not only political thought but political action. Along the way, those who oppose the revolution, not only create in their reaction a whole new set of problems but embrace the psychology of revolution.
I am not doing justice to my friend's analysis, but under Molnar's influence I concluded that counter-revolutionaries end up as revolutionaries, albeit on the other side. Another friend, Robert Nisbet, showed in his best book (The Sociological Tradition) how utopian socialism developed as a reaction to the social devastation caused by the French Revolution. If Robespierre was mad, Fourier and Comte were even madder, and Marx still more insane. What could be worse than Marxism? If you can ask that question you have not read anti-Marxist libertarians like Ayn Rand.
If palaeoconservatism is neither a movement nor an ideology—both of which are surrogate religions—then, you may ask, is it a philosophy? Not at all. There are, of course, philosophers and political thinkers who have inspired and informed palaeoconservative thought. I might just mention, first and foremost, Aristotle, Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, Althusius, David Hume, Edmund Burke, and, on a lower level, Fitzjames Stephen, Henry Sumner Maine. But most people who regard themselves as palaeoconservative have never read Althusius or Maine, and whatever a philosophy is or should be, it is not for must of us a means of grappling with the social and political world in which we find ourselves.
I find it more useful to think of palaeoconservatism as an approach or style of political thinking and acting. It shares many of the concerns of earlier conservative thought—a respect for order, a love of personal liberty, and a willingness to learn from tradition, but it is both more coherent and a good deal more skeptical of propaganda and political mythology. Though perfectly willing to make compromises with political realities, palaeoconservatives are not willing to surrender their principles or their loyalties or their integrity for the sake of a job in Washington or a column in The New York Times. It was probably Sam Francis who first pointed out to us what should have been obvious, that despite our pious rhetoric about the good old days of The National Review, palaeoconservatives had quickly evolved well beyond anything imagined by Whittaker Chambers, Frank Meyer, or William F. Buckley, Jr.
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I used to embrace the term paleoconservative I think partially for the same reason that Jesse Helms and his supporters embraced "Senator No" which was supposed to be a term of derision. Likewise Ron Paul and his supporters embraced "Dr. No." There is something emotionally satisfying about owning and embracing the charges of your opponents.
But over time I have become less convinced that this is a wise idea. Perhaps partially because I have become less oppositional as I have gotten older, but also because I have been fighting these internet battles for years, and I have come to realize that the term is only meaningful to a few well informed people who are familiar with the intricacies of intraconservative factionalism. I have repeatedly been amazed at how people I consider very tuned in either have no idea what I am talking about or are only vaguely familiar with the idea. And then it is usually only something they understand in contradistinction to neoconservatism. (In fact, it is probably more likely that the term will have meaning to informed neoconservatives and PC enforcing fanatics than it will to people who are partially on our side.)
I don't think the term is harmful. I just think that it is really primarily meaningful as a kind of ingroup jargon or a broad not that (neoconservative) but this (paleoconservative) distinction.
More and more I describe myself as a traditionalist conservative. While not as precise, it is a distinction that is meaningful to a broader audience.
I believe I saw somewhere Chronicles described as "Your home for traditional conservatism" or something like that. I'm not sure if that is new, but I think it is a good idea.
Dr. Fleming, I am interested in reading about Dr. Molnar's thesis - which of his books would you recommend for this or as an introduction to his thought in general?
Also, I just read a notice on Eugene Genovese's passing. Is a tribute or perhaps even an extended profile of the esteemed historian by a Chronicles contributor in the works?
"The only movement I am willing to belong to is historic Christianity, and the only ideological creeds I profess are the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed."
I'm with you on this one Dr. Fleming; however, the Devil is in the details. I think the world would be a much better place if we could resolve the divisive theological issues among Christians, particularly among the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. I also believe that we have a better chance to do this than to resolve critical political issues and fix our secular government. After all, many, if not most, involved in reuniting Christianity will be praying and fasting while looking to the Holy Spirit for guidance. After this is finished, we will be in a better position to address political differences.
Dr. Fleming,
With your family's permision I would like to donate a small stained glass window to the chapel of the village in where your dry dones are laid to rest with the simple inscription:
In honor of Tom Fleming who loved God and often praised Man with the words,
"Why don't you mind your own business,
'cause if you'd mind your own business,
you won't be minding mine."
Prof. Wilson, who knew him well, is working on our friend's obituary.
To Red, I would say I dislike even the appearance of movements--names, slogans, etc--and I don't care what anyone calls anyone, including racist, Communist, fascist, so long as we can agree on what the terms mean. A short way of defining Palaeoconservatism is that it is the approach taken by the editors and writers at Chronicles and a group of friends, colleagues, and readers.
We once sponsored a meeting called, "Healing the Schism." There were more people on the stage than in the audience. People don't wish to resolve these issues, because they help to define their identity. For the most part, the Orthodox/Catholic split is ethnic and political. The theological divisions range from miniscule to non-existent. I have listened for hours to the partisans of each side explaining why the other is wrong, but I have rarely met a rabid Catholic or Orthodox partisan who really knew what the other side actually teaches, and in many cases they do not know what their own side teaches.
Every time I say something like this, someone brings up the all-important dispute over the filioque. To quote Cedric the Entertainer, "Don't get me started..." Serious men on both sides agree on the basic question of the part played by the Holy Ghost in the Trinity. Charlemagne championed the insertion--against the will of at least one Pope--because, apparently, he had heard that Palestinian monks used it to clarify certain issues. These days, it would appear to be a non-issue, especially since John Paul II, if I am correctly informed, instructed or advised Eastern Rite churches not to insert it.
Each side, when it has had power, has committed aggression against the other. For many centuries the Catholic side was politically and militarily stronger and naturally pushed around the Orthodox, but if we go back farther and examine the conduct of the Byzantine Emperors, we find the mistreatment/murder of Popes Vigilius and Martin, the systematic attempt to eliminate icons and impose monophysitism or monotheletism.
Just as the Catholic/Protestant conflict in Ireland is really ethnic conflict, so are most of the big Orthodox/Catholic clashes. I, respecting both great Churches, have no dog in the fight. Catholics have been the aggressors in recent centuries, but these days it is mainly the Orthodox who have the biggest chip on their shoulder. But, since there are no serious theological divisions--the Orthodox complaints about Western rationalism (especially in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas) are particularly hilarious in view of the enormous contribution made by the East to the creation of rational theology, there are no issues to resolve. As James Burnham used to say, where there no solutions, there are no problems.
As I said, the Devil is in the details. If the various Churches cannot resolve their "miniscule to non-existent" differences with the help of the Holy Spirit, what chance is there to resolve political differences? I know only that Christ promised that the Devil would not prevail against His Church. The Devil seems to be winning everywhere else.
I think JPII described the historic division before his death as two lungs of the same body. And you younger fellows need to listen carefully -- When you can hear the death rattle, a guy needs all the air he can get.
Dr. Fleming, what about the disciplinary and moral divisions? Apart from the issue of the primacy of the Pope, the Orthodox clergy, for the most part (Russia may be a partial exception), do not seem willing to make definitive pronouncements condemning contraception or remarriage without annulment as contrary to Divine Law. In fact, as I understand it, the consensus among Orthodox is that the Bishop may grant permission to marry a second and even a third time if he judges the circumstances appropriate.
That seems like a very real theological hurdle.
Believe it or not, the term was well-known enough to be a correct response on Jeopardy! a few years back. The category was "Retronyms." (That means "a new name for an object or concept to differentiate its original form or version from a more recent form or version," as defined by Wikipedia - e.g., acoustic guitar, landline phone, Star Trek: The Original Series.) The clue was something like "The rise of the neoconservative movement led to this name for real traditionalists like Pat Buchanan." I believe someone did correctly answer with "What is paleoconservative?" Whoever wrote the clue appeared to share Dr. Gottfried's interpretation of the term.
Nicholas, your answer is, alas, a perfect illustration of rabid Catholic partisanship. Let's put the shoe on the other foot. I understand that it is a consensus among American Catholic bishop that any marriage can be annulled if the right paper work is filed and payment made. I understand that it is permissible for Catholic priests and bishops never to allude to the evils of contraception. There are priests and bishops who teach that it is not only right to allow your country to be taken over by aliens but who say it is justifiable, even necessary to disobey immigration laws in order to give sanctuary to illegal aliens. The current Catechism, I have heard, comes close to condemning capital punishment as immoral and unnecessary, and many many priests and bishops and catechists take the extra step of saying this has always been the universal teaching of the Church. Then what about the numerous bishops who have protected child molesters, thus enabling them to damage more lives? The ancient proverb applies: Physician, heal thyself--and thy church.
One does what one can do. Laymen do not have the responsibility for cleaning up the Church or healing the divisions. It is not my place as a scholar and writer to make the world a better place, and if, by lifting my finger, I could, I would not. That is the role for the Creator and his Son and the Church that so imperfectly represents their will on earth.
I don't give the proverbial tinker's dam for finding political agreement. On the contrary, I want to help people of conservative instincts to clear their heads about what they believe, what they must believe in order that they can either stay out of politics or take part only on their terms instead of selling their souls, every four years, to a McCain, a Romney, or some posturing Third Party candidate who has less chance than I do of making a difference, much less of winning an election. Let us name no names so that we shall not get sucked into an entirely fruitless argument over the imagined merits of some poor devil like Alan Keyes whose only profession in life is getting paid to lose elections.
I wish more would adhere to the adage
"All change isn't progress and all progress isn't forward"
I understand that it is a consensus among American Catholic bishop that any marriage can be annulled if the right paper work is filed and payment made.(The United States has the honor of more than half of all annulments granted in the entire world) I understand that it is permissible for Catholic priests and bishops never to allude to the evils of contraception.( That would take courage or is it Faith? Especially since in the United States that would be called warring against women or is it whoring with women? I can't keep it all straight. All I know is somebody needs to pay up for it. ) There are priests and bishops who teach that it is not only right to allow your country to be taken over by aliens but who say it is justifiable, even necessary to disobey immigration laws in order to give sanctuary to illegal aliens. ( Again, somebody needs to pay the bills!) The current Catechism, I have heard, comes close to condemning capital punishment as immoral and unnecessary, and many many priests and bishops and catechists take the extra step of saying this has always been the universal teaching of the Church.( As my old Catholic Milton professor ( God Rest His Soul) once said, "Who can put their trust in an institution that does not believe in the death penalty? And then asked " What are we to do? Place our hope in AIDS at the penitentiary ?) Then what about the numerous bishops who have protected child molesters, thus enabling them to damage more lives? .... The ancient proverb applies: Physician, heal thyself--and thy church. (Oh, Come Holy Ghost .. How Long O Lord, How Long? )
Intellectuals tend to rationalize themselves out of existence. Food for thought while they're still here. The problem is they tend to want to take as many of us with them as they can (for our own good of course). Food for thought while we're still here. That's why I like to read Chronicles. I always knew you weren't an intellectual Dr. Fleming. Just an admirably learned scholar and a gentleman with a sense of humor.
Dr. Fleming, point well taken. But I'm not talking about abuses. My question is simply this: is there a substantial conflict between what Catholicism teaches and institutionalizes de jure with respect to divorce and remarriage, and what Orthodoxy teaches and institutionalizes de jure with respect to divorce and remarriage? If there is, that is an issue that has to be cleared up. (As a rabid Catholic partisan - and please be assured that I like that term applied to me somewhat tongue-in-cheek - I know which way I would lean.)
Laymen do not have the responsibility for cleaning up the Church or healing the divisions.
No, but you held a seminar on "Healing the Schism" because you cared, because your station in life has put you into contact with Orthodox believers (far more than it has me) whom you have rightly come to love and to wish for spiritual unity with. At least that's why I imagine you did so; I can't think of any other reason. Is it not logical and natural to want to seek to understand, without judging, exactly what this division is and what, in the interim it means for what if anything we can or cannot share with the people we love?
I have less of a personal interest in the matter. I'm not close friends with any Orthodox. I am, however, fascinated by the institution of law and of legal technicalities, and to a fault: few non-lawyers have the stomach to discuss certain topics without flinching, and some of the topics of conversation I have introduced have provoked memorable reactions. (For example, "How do you consummate a gay marriage?" Two of my J.D. friends continually tell me I really should be a lawyer; I retort that after all the lurid tales they've related about the Bar from Hell, what kind of sick sadists must they be to wish that life upon me?) But I break the law all the time. Just ask my friends what joke I told them at the wedding last weekend (yes, that kind of joke is a penal offense where I live).
We appreciate your efforts to educate us, Dr. Fleming. You are very good at what you do. After all of the years I've been reading Chronicles, I no longer get too concerned about politics. I guess that I'm in the opt out category. I'm more concerned about the state of my soul than who the next president will be or who (mis)represents me in the House and Senate. We're stuck with the world we have and have to muddle through. I do think I would try to make the world a better place if I could. I try to do that for my family as best as I can.
Dr. Fleming, count me in as another who is intensely interested in this discussion.
Firm principles and a clear account of first things is, to my mind, the surest safeguard against succumbing to the whims and fashions of the mass culture. I do not know what good it will do, the truth is that there is no philosophical conservatism in America anymore. There is only a movement of ideologues who spend every waking hour of their meaningless lives within the even more meaningless bubble of electoral politics.
As far as I am concerned, this discussion is for the benefit of generations yet to lead.
People tend to 'put' their 'faith' in what they've preconceived or have been taught. Ok. Sometimes since it's based on tradition it's better of course than if left to their own more limited lights. In reality and also in the advanced teachings of tradition faith only can exist even as a 'word' or a truth because there are some things we cannot know by our own wills alone, thus faith. So then we must indulge ourselves in the first virtue courage and strap on a pair to stand within the question (faith) itself. Do that (face death and not care one way or the other) it leads to wisdom. Which transcends itself because the greatest wisdom sees what can't be known, l'est into the face of God HIMSELF. No one's ready for that, usually not even in heaven, which may be why it traditionally has 7 levels? Anyone here faced death? Much less looked into the face of GOD? ... Ok, no problem eternity has all the time in the world. Let's then keep picking the fly doo out of the pepper. At least it's civilized and we get to keep saying 'when lord, when?'
Writers are strange people. If they are any good, they pretty much do what they do, almost by instinct. They become very prickly when prodded into doing something else or redirecting their efforts. They have to do it all the time, though they don't have to like it. I hate doing my Daily Mail column, because I am too old to care much about current political controversies, which waste my limited time and energies, and even this series is something I have undertaken, under prodding, as a service to my organization. Whatever else I may do with the rest of my life, one thing I can promise is that it will not be an effort to heal a schism that has never had much to do with theology. Some day, you all might take some time to read the invectives exchanged by Nicholas I and his far more learned Byzantine opponent Photius. Part of the rift stems from the action of an iconoclastic emperor who stripped Rome of tax revenues in Byzantine Italy. The next issue was control over the Balkans. Theology only provided slogans.
Young Nicholas is not reading my response with care. My little parody of his argument was written to suggest, 1) That he had cited no authoritative sources for his opinions and 2) that the Orthodox do in fact claim that the West has fallen into numerous heresies. On the specific issue of marriage, how is the toleration of bogus annullments a less serious breach of Christian moral theology than what is alleged of the Orthodox? How is Catholic Marxism--the theology of a majority of bishops--not a serious danger?
One difference between the two churches is our tendency to dogmatism and their tendency to a sort of sloppy laissez-faire approach. We over-define and they go too far in toleration. The simple answer to your question is that you don't know enough about Orthodoxy to raise these issues. Catholics who do--and I can cite Fr. Hugh Barbour--are much more favorably disposed to the Eastern Church.
But enough. Let rem tene be our motto.
I hope I can live up to Mr. Bourne's and Mr, Van Sant's expectations. I should become clear very quickly that my object is not to create yet one more "new paradigm"--when conservatives started quoting this idiocy of Mr. Pinkerton, it was apparent that they had nothing meaningful to say--but to sketch out some necessary foundations for looking at all ethical questions, ethics defined as having to do with human behavior including social and political behavior. I thought about titling this, A Guide For the Perplexed, but that title has been taken.
This from my a good friend of mine who runs a worker house ;" I am not particularly a big fan of government social programs. Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, founders of the Catholic Worker movement, were opposed to the initiation of the Social Security system. They knew that it had its roots in Bismarck's Prussia, and its purpose was to destroy bonds of family and kinship, to break up transgenerational extended families, and thus make more obedient worker-soldiers available for the greater glory of the Prussian state.
The general arguments around Catholic social teaching are usually pitched in the form of "we need major social programs" versus "we need to cut the budget so we can cut taxes and this will create more prosperity which will lead to less need for social programs."
To listen to some people talk, these are the only choices, but that is, as they say, a "damnable lie of the devil."
Catholics defending the Republican conservative political platform say that some things in Catholic teaching are required and some are "prudential." That statement by itself is so incomplete as to qualify at most as a half truth. While the application of some Church teachings may be subject to prudential judgement, the nature of the authority of the Church's social teachings is not a matter of prudential judgment. The social teachings were taught by Popes in encyclicals, They derive from apostolic origins and the Bible. The lives of saints and martyrs witness their truth and their continued relevance. The Church's social teachings are clearly and without any ambiguity infallible and authentic teachings of Church's magisterium throughout history. It is our common Catholic duty to assent to these teachings -- without exception -- and to practice them. Indeed, it is the particular competence -- and duty -- of the laity to put the Church's social teachings into practice."
Here are a few reasons my firend mentioned above says " we love the poor in the abstract and hate them in particular."
In most areas it's illegal to sell along public right of ways (sidewalks, roads, rest stops on the highways and toll roads, etc.) Where legal, such high prices are charged for licenses and bizarre requirements are enacted as to make street vending for all practical intents and purposes illegal.
✙ It's illegal to practice small scale itinerant trades without "proper licenses" which often have expensive prerequisites so that they function as barriers to market entry rather than protections for the public.
. The proliferation of coercive credentialing in general raises political barriers to finding and doing work and lowers compensation.
✙ It's often illegal for poor people to practice trades out of their houses.
✙ Laws forbid people from making non-hazardous foods (like jams, pickles, and baked goods) at home and selling them to the public.
✙ Poor people who own cars can't drive people around and charge for the service. It would likely be illegal to use a van to establish a jitney service (a type of transit, common elsewhere, where a van or small bus drives a route but deviates around the route to pick up fares dispatched from a central location). Transportation has serious political barriers to market entry.
✙ It is generally illegal to grow vegetables in your back yard and then sell them in your front yard.
✙ The government's "war on people who use drugs" breeds crime in low income areas and makes crime pay much better than honest work and entrepreneurial activity.
✙ The common political practice of rewarding friends and punishes enemies (known as "rent-seeking") reduces economic opportunities for all, keeps people out of the market, and is a non-market process driving the centralization of wealth.
Now let's consider how government makes the lives of poor people more hard and miserable and prevents people from helping them.
✙ In many areas it is effectively illegal to be homeless. This is accomplished with laws forbidding loitering, sleeping in public, etc.
✙ Begging is often illegal.
✙ Zoning laws prevent people from adding small apartments (garage, attic, basement, back-yard) that would increase the amount of rental housing and thus moderate rental prices.
✙ In most areas it is practically impossible to establish a boarding house, which was always a traditional place for poor people to live.
✙ Economic redevelopment programs, using eminent domain, have attacked poor neighborhoods across the country, destroying millions of units of low income housing. This non-market, politicized process has driven up the price of housing, especially at the low end. It has taken property for the poor, cheated them by paying cheap, non-market, court-dictated and politicized prices for the property, and then given that property at low prices to persons with privileged access to politicians.
This is great so far. I would buy the book now and wait for it to be published, if it were possible.
I recently bought a copy of The Conservative Mind and am considering reading it now, in order to have a better understanding of the history of conservatism in general before this book gets published.
I agree with Red Phillips. I also have rejected the word 'paleoconservative' in favour of 'traditionalist', though lately even that word has come to seem like a mere label to me. Labels are things I find less and less palatable as time goes on and I at least get less stupid, if not wiser.
It seems that what has been conceived here is something that has been needed for a long time, a book that doesn't create an ideology, isn't philosophical, but just clarifies whatever it is we believe in, and for me, sometimes I dont quite know what that is, or can't articulate it since it's more instinct than intellectual knowledge or understanding, with no contextual historical understanding to back it up.
'Grandpa told me....and his dad hated foreign wars and I suspect he may have sympathised with America First....and his grandpa was at Chicamauga...and my dad was disillusioned by Korea'...as good a base as that is to start from, we need more, especially since we get nothing out of modern education.
This book may be useful to more people than just the readers of Chronicles. It also seems to be coming along at a timely moment, since it appears that some perilous times and momentous changes are looming on the Western world's horizon. The present may not benefit much, but the future may profit.
To clarify, when I said, "I think the world would be a much better place if we could resolve the divisive theological issues among Christians, particularly among the Catholic and Orthodox Churches," I was using the rhetorical "we." That is a job for the bishops, guided by the Holy Spirit. (I also recognize that theology is often used to hide the real, more worldly issues. It's the Devil doing what he does best.)
Robert, my friend, thank you in spades! This entry in this stream is to me more valuable than any other, including Dr. Fleming's posting that got it started. As a probably only quasi paleoconservative, it gives me courage to become demi.
Ray,
Thank you. I admire many types of people, some are quite poor and some extremely wealthy. Yet, I have never found these two qualities alone as defining a type I could admire or despise.
Dr. Fleming,
Thanks for this series. Your encapsulation of the differences between tory, liberal, classical-liberal and socialist will be copied to my hard drive for repeated future reference.
I wonder if you could offer your thoughts on the fact that clergy are allowed to marry in the Orthodox Church. Reason being, aside from any intrinsic interest; my eldest son is attending a Ukrainian Orthodox-run school and my wife is confused and not a little scandalized by the presence of married priests, one of whose daughters is in my son's class. I am at a loss for what to say to her and anyway, your thoughts on this whole marriage and the clergy issue are bound to be illuminating. If I may, I'd like to invite Father Steven to chime in. Thanks in advance.
After I left active duty with the U.S. Navy and joined the reserves in 1976, I started subscribing to National Review and the New Republic in order to discover if I was a conservative or a liberal. I then started subscribing to Chronicles when I discovered it and dropped the NRs. I read Kirk's The Conservative Mind and have read and reread most of his other books, too. I try to read as many of the books the Chronicles staff recommends as I can manage. I probably have more books in my library marked "to read" than marked "have read." I've read many of those books more than once. (I try to read Brothers Karamazov and Faulkner's The Bear every year.)
Raised a Roman Catholic, I left that Church after Vatican II while I was a Midshipman. I became an Orthodox Christian in the early 90s when I developed a friendship with another recent convert to Orthodoxy. (Ironically, we met as a result of a program I co-hosted on a Washington DC radio station on the topic of women in the military. It aired the morning we started bombing Iraq to kick off the first Gulf War, which we also covered that day. Stranger still, I later went to work for the DoD and got to meet the young Navy pilot who was shot down and became the most famous POW of that conflict, when, after his release, he was assigned to the agency where I worked.) That, briefly, is how I got to where I am today.
Mr. Jacobi - a married candidate can be ordained as a priest in the Orthodox Churches; however, an unmarried Orthodox priest cannot marry. A married priest cannot become a bishop. I'm not sure when the Catholic Church first made celibacy a requirement for all priests, but that was not always the case.
The simple answer to your question is that you don't know enough about Orthodoxy to raise these issues.
Apart from rem tene I suppose another good - and more specifically 'paleoconservative' (I myself hate that word, but it will have to do) - motto might be that "Talk is cheap." Since I'm usually the one in the room arguing that not everyone has the right to an opinion, I'll have to cede this ground.
(... even if I wish I could get a straight answer about the question from a less flaky source than what I've heretofore had...)
Mr. Moses,
I just didn’t want to see you left dangling: writing as a member of the Orthodox Church, Timothy Ware states in his 1964 book The Orthodox Church that “Orthodox Canon Law, while permitting a second or even a third marriage, absolutely forbids a fourth. In theory the Canons only permit divorce in cases of adultery, but in practice it is sometimes granted for other reasons as well.” Interestingly, the Catholic writer Donald Attwater makes the point that the fathers at the Council of Trent worded the canon on the absolute indissolubility of marriage in such a way so as “not to annoy the Orthodox.”
Mr. Terenzio, thank you for that perspective. I am familiar with Ware and have read that book (and found it quite good at the time), but for reasons I will not go into here, I suspect that Ware might not be the most reliable source on such matters.
Dr. Fleming wrote: "I thought about titling this, A Guide For the Perplexed, but that title has been taken."
Hope Dr. Fleming discusses E.F. Schumacher's "A Guide For the Perplexed." Though not about East or West, it has shaped my traditionalist understanding of religion, science and the world, applying the perspectives of Great Chain of Being and appropriate knowledge to the world.
For me, traditionalism, following Schumacher, begins with the view that man is placed below something higher and above many things lower, and that different tools are necessary to look upper (spirituality) and downward (science). Be pleased if Dr. Fleming could respond, in familiar with Schumacher's fuller explanation.
As for explaining conservatism, good luck, Dr. Fleming. You'll need it!
Mr. Terenzio appears not to understand that the Orthodox were primarily concerned with limiting the number of remarriages permitted to widows or widowers. Different theologians gave different answers, but even widowed Emperors got into trouble for getting a fourth marriage. And, young Nicholas, your remarks on Callistus Ware are very disturbing. It's like saying, "although I don't want to go into it, I suspect that so-and-so should not be trusted with children." It is morally reckless to play fast and loose with a man's reputation. This discussion is entirely irrelevant to the point at hand.
I have no intention of discussing Schumacher, whose works have never interested me much, since I reached similar conclusions in my teens. I have many friends who admire him, but what I have read did not interest me. I also have to intention of defining conservatism, as these first two pieces should have made quite plain. As I explained in a response, I am using "palaeoconservative" as shorthand for a style of moral, social, and political thinking share by a diverse group people that includes/included myself, Sam Francis, Clyde Wilson, Christian Kopff, among many others.
Mr. Van Sant,
Thanks for that. I don't know if this will help my wife feel less scandalized, but I like having something more to make explanations with than simply "when in Byzantium..." .
On another subject: what a comprehensive perspective on the military your long career must afford you. Hope we get to meet at a Rockford function some day.
Dr. Fleming, as Chronicles is subtitled A Magazine of American Culture, perhaps you could define or explain what you mean by American Culture. This occurred to me as I was reading an essay by Stanley Jaki (“Science, Culture, and Cult” reprinted in The Limits of a Limitless Science). He writes:
For nothing short of a cultural awakening would be produced once the fact is granted that the term cult, which lies at the very basis of the word culture, is [an] irreducible term. Culture I define as the ensemble of procedures, mental and physical as well, strongly or weakly symbolic, that can be described as a cultic action. This definition, in itself descriptive, perhaps even behavioristic, becomes an epistemological definition as soon as one takes the cultic action for what it truly is, a form of worship. Worship is more than reverence or preference. Worship is adoration, a service, a total subjection, a complete surrender to something or somebody else. The foremost manifestation of such act or attitude is, of course, religion. (Pp. 192-193.)
Do you agree with this definition? If not, how would you define culture? And how would you define American Culture, especially as it exists today? (I.e. in your opinion, what is our American “Religion”?)
Mr. Helfman, I too liked Schumacher's book because it got me thinking about serious things and provided a structure for me. When I was a teen, I was not thinking very much about serious things. I think I picked up A Guide for the Perplexed because it was recommended by James Schall in his book, Another Sort of Learning. Unlike Dr. Fleming and the other contributors with better minds than mine that write for Chronicles and post on this site, I need some help separating the wheat from the chaff, which is why I subscibe to Chronicles in the first place. I have mentioned Schumacher's book in some of my past posts, so Dr. Fleming may be aiming his remarks at me, too.
My own perception is that America wants everyone else to adore, service, totally submit, and completely surrender to America.
You're welcome, Mr. Jacobi. My perspective on the military is not all that comprehensive. I believe the expansion of the role of women in the military has been a failure and I think that allowing homosexuals to serve openly will make things worse. Under present circumstances I would not recommend joining the military to anyone, even my worst enemy. I once, years ago, attended a Chronicles hosted event in Washington and even got them to pay for my dinner afterward because my friend who introduced me to Orthodoxy was one of the participants. Dr. Fleming did not participate in that event. I hope to attend some in the future, if only to meet Dr. Fleming. I have family living in Wisconsin not far from Rockford, so maybe I can get over that way on my next visit home.
(I tried to submit this as a reply to your original reply, but I'm not sure where it will end up.)
In saying that EFS does not interest me. I was making no judgment on the. value of his work. Chinese history happens to interest me less than, say, the petty history of Charleston. We are what we are. If there is anything I don't like about him it is not the man but the fans who have made him a guru. Chestertonians have the same effect on me except that I enjoy GKC. I stay away from gurus--Marx, Strauss, Voegelin, etc. when I detect the gleam of adoration in the eye of one of my own readers, I instinctively do something silly to disabuse them.
When someone asks or tells me about a writer he admires, I only wish to know the idea or quality I am being asked to judge. Is community of scale the question? I prefer to discuss it in terms of this or that historical community. Having a rooted antipathy to crowd, big cities and empires, I don't need to read a book to explain the virtues of smallness. Had I recalled Mr Van Sant's affection for EFS, I should have been more careful not to appear dismissive.
The problem with Nicholas' remark is that it was and is undocumented and it raised a specter if who knows what grotesque failing on Ware's part. Even if your allegation is true, I fail to see how it undermines the man's reliability as an authority on the Eastern Church. We all have screwball ideas from time to time, but in this case we'd have to have specific citations and context to pass judgment on your entirely irrelevant and distracting charge. I should add, for the record, that while I am warmly respectful of the Eastern Church, I do think Western converts have written far too much about it. Ex Protestants have many axes to grind and tend to turn Orthodoxy into another sect only with better music and lots of incense. I also think Ex Protestant Catholics are all to chatty about their conversions and far too prone to become more Catholic than the pope.
But let us talk no more about religion until we reach that place in the argument. Even then I shall not be expounding on the texts of Fr Jaki, a man whose vanity reached such heights that he excoriated me for robbing him of his middle initial in a cover blurb. "E.O. Wilson got his initial," and it cut no ice when I pointed out that Wilson did get a first name. Ironically, jaki's article argued that Darwinism destroyed civility. Wilson was, as always, extremely polite and kind. And, by the way, cultura is not derived from cultus but from a cluster of words whose primitive means refer to the tillage or care of fields. Similar attention to the gods is if course cultus, but if he said what is alleged above he needed to get a bigger Latin dictionary.
Typing on an iPhone I make countless errors including the omission of a not. Bed ward I Wilson was not given a first name when I paired him with Fr Jaki
I can always rely on Dr. Fleming to get me back on track. Thank you for your gentle response. I detect that there may be some future discussion of Chronicles and American Culture. I will post no more, for now, and be more patient.
It would be sad to lose Mr. Van Sant's contribution: They are sometimes amusing, often informative, and almost always very wise. My friend Nicholas should worry less but, on the other hand, it is good to think before your fingers do the talking.
Thank you for the reassurance. Had I more time and opportunity and inclination I should be happy to explain my thought process in further detail. Hélas ! it is too much fun to write/talk about oneself, and paradoxically very draining at the same time.
About the word paleoconservative: there is the socio-philosophical sense you have discussed thus far. Will you be touching on the socio-psychological dimension? By which I mean frame-of-mind in terms of day-to-day life and place in society? (We talked a little bit about that back on the threads concerning "Uncle Sam's Harem" in the wake of Sarah Palin's nomination, but nothing really full-blown.)
The stand of church between a man and a woman although possibly prudent when it began is as moot now as anyone's making that similar mistake. Live with it, reality. The Romans to deal with this concern, the inevitable value of family to any society had their temple to the goddess Vesta from about 700 BC to AD 400. In the temple the eternal flame of the Roman family's hearth was kept burning. It was a sacred honor to be such a priestess and the Vestal Virgins usually chosen from nobility for their beauty did the work as the priestesses in the Temple each for 30 years, usually entering from 10 years of age onward as novices for ten years, priestesses for another ten (there were never more than six as such), and then priestess-teachers of novices for the last ten years. The penalty for losing their virginity during this time was severe. But it served socially as a counter balance to the looser sexual activity of the city, in reminding families hey you may be making some sacrifices yourselves but without the family we don't exist as a society and the Vestal virgins are making a sacrifice of their entire lives for us all. That the Christian Church like the Judaic got hands on between a man and a woman is obviously a power gambit. Again, with barbarians overwhelming Rome at the time of its fall and afterward it may have been a prudent necessity to do so. However it was a Christian emperor prior to Rome's fall which had already done away with the Vestal temple and its purpose. There's an old adage, never get between a man a woman. Full circle, in that it comes back apparently to bite the church-?-once its usefulness in that regard has passed its expiration date? Nuns, fine making their own sacrifice for us all like the Vestals, but the rest of it? What happened to if you were minding your own business you wouldn't be minding mine?
It all goes on Dr. Fleming with or without you or me, or anyone. Although with a scholar such as you, I at least think it's preferable. God be praised, which is akin to knock on wood, unless it's more too. I think so. It's instinct certainly and just like conscious thinking tandems the unconscious thinking or instinct in the hierarchy, I pick-up at least, it's appropriately more than that too. God be praised. I get from your writings even when necessarily academic, you do, too. But if not I respect that as well. Good.