Back to the Stone Age I: Addendum
This added section, which goes between the discussion of Machiavelli and the discussion of reason and tradition, is intended to sketch out a few operating rules for how conservatives should approach a question.
2B Coherence and Casuistry
Most conservative movements and initiatives fail and fail badly...
Failure is often the result of betrayal, either by the self-declared leaders or by the rank-and-file who are generally so confused and illogical that they follow corrupt leaders over the cliff. Eager for the conservative equivalent of "40 acres and a mule," conservatives pursue phantoms like a right-to-live amendment or a constitutional limitation on terms of office, without stopping to wonder if such legal and political reforms are possible or even desirable.
In their confusion, conservatives often pursue contradictory dreams. The same conservatives who say they long to restore the old republic turn into statist authoritarians when they think they have a chance to turn their dreams into reality. Howie Philipps, founder of what became the Constitution Party, was once asked how, if he were elected president, he would make abortion illegal if Congress rejected his legislation. He answered that he would impose a ban on abortion by executive fiat, a statement reminiscent of the ultra-left Shirley Chisolm who had earlier made an equally Quixotic bid for the White House.
It was almost amusing to listen to conservatives defending George W. Bush's ruinous military adventures. These people had spent their lives prating about balanced budgets and fiscal restraints, but, with "one of ours" in the White House, they threw all caution to the winds. Amazingly, they blame Obama entirely for Bush's gross malfeasance, without pausing a moment to look at the voting record of their heroes, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.
If you accept a principle as fundamental, you also must accept the policies it entails. "He who says A," observed Lenin, "must say B." If, to take a very minor example, you regard the Department of Education as unconstitutional and pernicious, you cannot rejoice when a neoconservative bully is put in charge or when an uneducated Republican President wants to impose some new program such as No Child Left Behind. Instead, most conservatives, when their candidate gets elected, turn out to be merely Republicans.
For decades, conservatives had argued that the Congress was constitutionally empowered to take a major part in foreign policy decisions. This was a point relentlessly hammered by James Burnham, the most important conservative at NR. With the election of Ronald Reagan we learned that Congress had no authority in questions of war and peace. In the 1980's Sam Francis and I were constantly running into old-guard conservative leaders who claimed not even to remember when they advocated any level of congressional responsibility in foreign policy. It was about then that we began to hear the President referred to constantly as the "commander-in-chief," as if he were a military dictator authorized to rule us all under martial law.
There are more basic principles that are far more significant than Congressional powers, but here too conservatives are typically confused and illogical. They say marriage is an institution ordained by God, but then they push for governmental regulation of marriage; they say they believe that governments, like households, must balance their budgets, then in a panic vote for unlimited spending on the US war machine; they say they believe in states rights, but turn on a dime to support federal projects that deprive the states of the power to govern themselves. He who says A must say B, and if he does not, he must be prepared to be defeated, constantly, by political enemies who can see beyond the end of their noses. Let us call this the principle of coherence.
Principles must be distinguished from simplifying ideologies that reduce all the complex interactions of human life to a few clichés like "power to the people" or "free markets and free minds." Ideologues, whether Marxist or libertarian, think that all the problems of our society will be solved if only the principles of Karl Marx or Ludwig von Mises are enacted into law. In fact, there is a vast and complex array of principles and assumptions that are mostly true most of the time, but reconciling conflict among these principles requires three other operating rules: hierarchy, relevance, and casuistry.
For the sake of this discussion, it is not important whether we agree with any of the principles I am going to bring up. Let us suppose, as most conservatives do, that freedom of religion is a basic principle guaranteed by the Constitution. (It goes without saying that as a principle this is nonsense, though as a matter of prudence it is often useful.) What about religions that practice cannibalism, human sacrifice, or the burning alive of a dead man's wives? Well, those things are obviously illegal and disgusting. Take the offensiveness down a notch: What about polygamous religions (Islam and traditional Judaism) or religions that require public sacrifice of animals, female circumcision, the use of psychotropic drugs, ritual prostitution, acts of terrorism. At the lowest level, what about a religion that permits cows to wander the streets without being molested?
If there are aspects to most of "the world's great religions" that so offend our sensibilities that we wish to ban them, religious freedom cannot be an absolute or ultimate principle. Then, you will ask, is religious freedom a bad thing? Not necessarily, but even if it is a good thing, it is a lesser good than other principles, such as "Thou shalt do no murder." There is, thus, a hierarchy of principle.
Let me take a frivolous example. I have a good Catholic friend whose car sports a bumper sticker, "Life is too short to drink bad wine." But this same lady would probably drink pretty poor wine, if the only alternative were jumping on the water wagon. My friend is rather elderly and lives on a limited budget. She is as generous as she can be to her Church and her family. If she really pushed the No Bad Wine principle to the limit, she would spend too much money at the wine store or, as I do, at Wine.com. Obviously the importance of wine comes second to Church and family, but is it so far down on the list that she is sinful if she wastes money on a drinkable bottle of Bogle cabernet?
The obvious answer is no, because we do not all devote all our resources to family and the Church. We have to eat and dress ourselves, and part of being human is to like wine, music, and poetry. The Church is superior to all these lesser goods, but it cannot monopolize all our energies and money. In deciding this question, we have to consider relevance. We used to have an ex-Moonie working for us in fund-raising and public relations. When I asked him why, in describing our programs in a brochure, he put the most recent program, the Center on Religion and Society, first, he answered that religion trumps both the family and culture. Ultimately, it does, but one can get carried away. The Center, run by Richard John Neuhaus, was on the periphery of our interests and often at odds with the older, more significant programs. The oldest program and the one that absorbed the largest share of the budget was and is Chronicles.
Religion may be the most important part of our lives, but it cannot teach us science or feed our family. A farmer or shopkeeper who spends his time like a monk will surely fail, and a think tank that does not properly base its priorities on its stated purposes and the bottom line of budget, will end up very confused.
There is a tendency for many conservative Christians, when confronted with a problem, to ask, "What would Jesus do." Now, the Imitatio Christi is an important part of a religious life, but it is not always relevant. For example, if by pious friend ran out of wine at a party and asked the "what would Jesus do" question, the answer would be "turn the water into wine." She would face similar problems if she applied the same question to a food shortage or the need to leave a ship. We cannot all walk on water, and we cannot always go directly to God for solutions to life's petty problems.
Jesus knew all this, of course, and it is easy to see in the Gospels that He was perfectly willing to rely on ordinary means when they were appropriate, such as picking grain on the Sabbath, kicking the bankers out of the temple, and advising his disciples to self a second garment and use the money to buy a sword for self-defense. Sects and heresies have been founded on a refusal to read the Bible in toto, rather than picking out selected passages on which to base a new religion.
We can turn to more serious questions. Obviously, Christians regard fornication and therefore prostitution as a bad thing, but is a Christian commonwealth therefore required to ban prostitution? In the Christian Age (from Constantine to the Renaissance), for the most part, rulers were content to restrict or regulate commercial sex.
The most obvious counter-argument to moralistic rigor is that of prudence: Puritanical legislation encourages both contempt for law and the abuse of power by an ever-expanding government. But there is another principle, one that I regard as deeper, and that was summed up by St. Thomas in his principle that the commonwealth does not exist to force people to be virtuous but to foster conditions that are propitious to the cultivation of virtue. A giant state determined to crack down on erotic passion is probably the very opposite of a virtue-encouraging commonwealth.
In the Christian Age (otherwise known as the Middle Ages) a routine distinction was made between the authority of the Church and the authority of secular rulers. It was deemed inappropriate for a king or emperor to have much to do with regulating morals, marriage, and family. That was the job of the Church. On the other hand, war and statecraft were the province of the ruler. So, just as the bishop and his priests presided over marriage, they routinely acknowledged the secular ruler's right to defend the kingdom and punish criminals. Even heretics, once condemned by the Inquisition, were turned over to the secular power for punishment.
At the extremes, the division was clear, but there was a very fuzzy area at the center: When bishops received secular wealth and authority from the emperor, surely he should play some part in their selection and elevation? On the other side, the Pope was head of the Catholic Church but he was also the ruler of what became known as The Republic of St. Peter. Long before Popes routinely donned armor and personally led armies into battle, they were the commanders-in-chief of armies, which they sent into battle.
Conflicts between the two swords, of Church and Empire, were frequent, but at lower levels we continue to face conflicts of principle. Some may be easily settled by the principles of hierarchy and relevance, but some are far more complicated. Suppose a young husband with a pregnant wife has enlisted in the army. He now owes obedience to the King or country, but what if his home is threatened. Is he justified in deserting in order to protect his wife and child? At first glance, most of us would probably agree that the circumstances justify desertion. But what if he is not only a soldier but a commander and that the fate of the kingdom rests on his shoulders. Suppose the Turks are at the gates of Constantinople or Vienna. What, then? Remember, he has embraced the career and code of ethics of the professional soldier, sworn loyalty to his king. It is not so easy, and I should never presume to make the disastrous error preached by Immanuel Kant, that there is always a higher duty that one is bound to follow.
In the older tradition, going back to St. Thomas, Cicero, and at least to Aristotle, these complications were more seriously evaluated, and it was understood that they had to be evaluated, case by case, taking account, first, of the general moral principles involved, and second, of the peculiar circumstances. Because these dilemmas are special cases, the moral reasoning is known as casuistry. While casuistry can be misused, it is an important and necessary corrective to the "terrible simplifiers" who would have us believe that a few ideals, such as liberty, equality, and fraternity, are sufficient to guide us in making moral, social, and political decisions.
We seem to have gone far afield from the subject at hand, but actually not. While my friend Sam Francis would have sneered at the word casuistry, he was nothing if not a political casuist, weighing the consequences of legislation and policies in an effort to find pragmatic, least-bad alternatives.
Entries(RSS)
"In fact, there is a vast and complex array of principles and assumptions that are mostly true most of the time, but reconciling conflict among these principles requires three other operating rules: hierarchy, relevance, and casuistry." (end quote)
I agree with all of yours above. I'll just add with regard to the quote above: although case specific, sometimes synthesis is not desirable and vice versa. When hierarchy, relevance, and casuistry are automatically synthesized then it's a truism, I'm asking, but think so. Sometimes it's not 'automatic' and as you point out above reality mandates the evaluation of such matters. Again, in conformance that is hierarchy, relevance, casuistry in their performance.
When we find synthesis happening whether our intellect or sensibility deems it desirable or not, and we simply notice it, would it then be a truism? E.g. women are fundamentally social beings man are fundamentally life style beings, neither have a choice in that matter since it's rooted in their biology.
So casuistry therfore is always a part of the synthesis of the two: hierarchy and relevance because many similar things are not the same, and, may same things are not identical.
Herein is where these matters may look or sound complex but simplify in their result. While conversely as you indicate above, those who would oversimplify to start, falsely, end up with very complicated, convoluted results instead. It's a treadmill for them, since then they hearken back to the falsely simple start, the very thing that brought about the frustrating complications.
I think you've touched upon the three ingredients in every truism: hierarchy, relevance, and casuistry. If so I'll add: perfect! (If I'm wrong or it's irrelevant, oops, I'll stand corrected.)
"Failure is often the result of betrayal, either by the self-declared leaders or by the rank-and-file who are generally so confused and illogical that they follow corrupt leaders over the cliff."
Dr. Fleming,
Very well said. I would also add the abence of mercy. We all know of friends who have remained mad at each other for years over the slightest disagreements. Dumas and Death are good things to think about in this regard as is casuistry because where justice and mercy meet is not always easy to discern and far from an exact science in specific instances of human conduct. Especially in the difficult field now called "human relations" which includes marriage, families, friends, neighbors, city, state and federal laws.
I must admit that I admire some of the old anarchists but I have my doubts about their ideas of human freedom. The levels of human freedom they aspire to are very similar to trying to farm with horses today, such efforts require a very high level of culture to sustain. Our cultural resources are simply too depleted for such a human scale. For our age, we must be content with keeping the mob at the door.
In their confusion, conservatives often pursue contradictory dreams. The same conservatives who say they long to restore the old republic turn into statist authoritarians when they think they have a chance to turn their dreams into reality. Howie Philipps, founder of what became the Constitution Party, was once asked how, if he were elected president, he would make abortion illegal if Congress rejected his legislation. He answered that he would impose a ban on abortion by executive fiat, a statement reminiscent of the ultra-left Shirley Chisolm who had earlier made an equally Quixotic bid for the White House.
If you accept a principle as fundamental, you also must accept the policies it entails.
I had a discussion about this with a couple of acquaintances on Sunday evening. I said that a modern dictatorship, even the most benign dictatorship (Franco's, for example), would still be marred by "war crimes" and the like because it was by definition an extraconstitutional form of government.
The plain reality is that no healthy society can be shorn of a constitutional arrangement. In practice, this constitution is never just one written document, but is rather the summum of the laws, decisions and customs that the society's highest institutions are charged to uphold. (Let us not cite Louis XIV and "royal absolutism" as an exception. This rule was anything but arbitrary: the Sun King knew full well his constitutional prerogatives and limits and saw to it that they were upheld absolutely.)
When idealists (I refuse to misappropriate the word "Crusader" for such people, not wishing to do injustice to the memories of the likes of Godfrey de Bouillon and Baudouin de Boulogne) complain of custom and tradition tyrannically standing in the way of their puristic utopias of love and freedom (whatever they mean by that; personally, I like that in French there are two words for "liberate": libérer and affranchir; the utopian sort, ripping people away from their roots, more nearly falls under this latter), they fail to understand that law and custom, though they do not claim to offer all solutions to man's problems, are often the only things keeping people from unjust tyrannical interference in their lives and business.
Take these away and you create a world where the powerful can not only do almost anything to the powerless, but claim that it is for the good of these latter.
Worse, and more to the point, you will end up creating a society where the powerful destroy themselves in their orgy of unaccountable vice and the powerless, unbound by either customary scruple or force, do literally anything and everything... and the society is destroyed in a matter of generations.
The appropriate response is that country in which access to abortion, euthanasia, suicide, et c. are constitutionally guaranteed rights is a country that is constituted of something rotten, and on a level that goes much deeper than any piece of paper or court decision. I have heard it said that England does not "have" a constitution; England IS her constitution. In the end, this is how we have to see ourselves in America, and elsewhere, as well.
Instead, most conservatives, when their candidate gets elected, turn out to be merely Republicans.
I think that's your cue, Dr. Wilson!
Puritanical legislation encourages both contempt for law and the abuse of power by an ever-expanding government.
Dr. Fleming, this is a wise statement and one that is fully applicable to prostitution and brothels. Here's a thornier question that spins my head: is it applicable to abortion? In reading the discourse that Simone Veil (a deputy of the center-right!) gave in France in 1974 when she presented her act to legalize abortion-on-demand, we see this was exactly the argument she made in favor of legalizing abortion (supposedly something like 300,000 clandestine abortions were taking place in France each year); she made little or no appeal to feminism or to a natural "right to choose."
We can scream that abortion is murder all we like, but we can also scream that prostitution destroys the soul. How to respond to such an argument? Or is there a response? I would be the first to acknowledge that the Catholic clergy put too much priority on the legislative question of abortion, but priority or not: is a Catholic (which Simone Veil is definitely not, even in name) permitted to hold any opinion other than that it is just and desirable that abortion be illegal regardless of the particular or social circumstances?
Not to be frivolous, but a drinkable bottle of Bogle cabernet need not be all that expensive.
Yes, that was precisely the point. It's roughly $10-12 around here, but for an elderly person on a fixed income it is not cheap.
Nicholas raises a question that I have more or less answered. Consequentialist arguments have some use but only if backed up by more serious moral arguments, such as the argument from Aquinas I have invoked. Abortion and prostitution are, in any case, not comparable. Abortion is obviously not murder in a legal sense, but it is certainly a homicide committed against the one person it is a mother's duty to cherish at the risk of her own life. Whoremongering may eventually corrupt a man's morals, but a drunken sailor who picks up a girl-for-rent can hardly be equated with a woman who kills her child. But even as a consequentialist argument, Veil's plea for legalized abortions falls flat: Most obviously, because the mother is committing a mortal sin for which her death is an entirely appropriate penalty. Less significant is the apparent fact that more women now die of botched abortions than before Roe v. Wade, simply because there are more of them.
More important than any of these consequences is our understanding of what the function and purpose of the commonwealth. When ambitious and competitive men attempt to coerce virtue, the result is almost always tyrannical.
Thank you , dr Fleming , for this series of articles : they offer a very interesting
and solid presentation about "(paleo) conservatism".
Thank you. I shall have finished putting up the rough draft of the introduction this weekend, and we then proceed to specific chapters on: freedom and individuality, human nature and family relations, the politics of national interest (race, immigration, trade, foreign policy), and who knows what else. I am, it goes without saying, open to suggestions.
When questions and comments are irrelevant, however, I shall not be responding. I'll let them stand, however, except in cases where they have derailed the discussion. A Norwegian troll, for example, wants proof that there are more abortions now than before Roe v. Wade. I am not going to answer the question because, first, any person who knows how to do research on the internet can pretty easily find the evidence, second, it should be obvious to anyone that if you vastly increase the incidence of some risky behavior, the number of accidents will increase no matter how many precautions are taken, third, that abortion is regulated less strictly than veterinary procedures, and this leads to more problems than in better regulated medical activities, and finally and most importantly, because it has nothing whatsoever to do with the question athand.
All that makes sense.
I think my problem is this: my gut feeling is that legalized abortion is an almost inevitable outcome of an immoral general public policy, i.e., one that sanctions broken families and contraceptives. But if that be the case, can or should a moral (at least moral compared to ours) society treat it as de jure murder? And if not, how to square that with the question of legal personhood? In France the logical justification for legalized abortion is to deprive an infant of legal personhood until some weeks after contraception. If that reprehensible notion is removed, then logically abortion should, legally, de jure, be considered murder.
There are in fact some who would like to see both abortionists and the women who use their services executed for murder. What are we to think of such a proposition?
Or is the deliberate extrajuridicial taking of a human life intrinsically related to some perverse devaluation of family that I'm not quite seeing? But myself, I tend to worry about mundane questions regarding my own family and friends far more than I am disgusted about a woman I don't know, across the country, killing a kid I never heard of.
Nevertheless most of us feel a lot more shock hearing about Susan Smith's children than we ever do about any single abortion case. Why is this the case? Is it just a wrongheaded reaction?
Or (as is often the case), is my gut feeling just wrong?
... thinking again, that seems to be probing perhaps just a BIT too deep into one nook of the consequentialist versus deontological approach to a law. But even in a future installment, I would be interested in hearing about it... it does at least touch on the theme of moral quandaries and areas in which the best approach to legislation and obligations (to punish or to be clement?) is quite unclear. And it's one a lot of conservatives misunderstand drastically (c.f. "right to life" movements).
If what you are saying is that the ordering of the descent into today's morass is, first, contraception, then abortion, I'm sure you are correct.
Griswold v Connecticut, the 1965 supreme court decision decriminalizing contraceptive use, assuredly had the effect of relegating, if not denying, the personhood of the unborn. Prior to that, for instance in the 1914 arrest of Margaret Sanger for illegal distribution of birth control information, prosecutors charged her with "inciting murder and assassination". In another case a few years later, the judge could and did find that a woman had no "right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception."
Along with Brown v. Board of Ed., the Civil Rights act, and the 1965 Immigration Act, legalizing contraception was one of the grave and possibly mortal wounds sustained by the Republic, in the dark, as it were. All of these things passed over the heads of the majority of unsuspecting Americans, who were given little opportunity to think about and debate the consequences ahead of time, and moreover happened in the days when we still believed in our leaders and in the righteousness of our system.
A question: was the Comstock Law, which was the foil against which activists like Sanger, Goldman, et al, railed an example of Dr. Fleming's dictum "When ambitious and competitive men attempt to coerce virtue, the result is almost always tyrannical"?
The discussion of abortion is irrelevant to the argument being presented here, and it would be very naive to think that permissive views of abortion grow out of law or public policy. Opposition to abortion, infanticide, sodomy and other unnatural sexual acts was a Christian peculiarity from the beginning. As Christianity gave way to one or another form of Christianism, so too did the Christian understanding of sex and life gtr replaced by the neopagan alternative, but that is not now the topic of discussion.
Certainly the causal arrow points from the rot within people to the rot in law and policy, not the other way around. What sticks out in reviewing the history of the law and attitudes towards abortion and contraception is just how far we've slipped within living memory. From the finding that merely disseminating information on contraception was tantamount to inciting murder and assassination, to dismissing its actual practice as simply a matter of privacy, is a breathtaking decline. And then the "privacy" gambit is used to excuse an even worse evil.
Certainly the causal arrow points from the rot within people to the rot in law and policy, not the other way around.
This raises the question of where are we supposed to find the balance? If law is also an important teacher, it would seem some evils could be stamped out by repressive law.
Not being an expert, I'm guessing the difference has to do with whether the law in question attempts to eradicate an evil custom or practice or attempts to purify the vice-prone nature of man. Accordingly, a converted Christian ruler could rid his realm of human sacrifice and even, if the population will tolerate it, public manifestations of old Pagan cults, but not bar fights and private non-Christian worship.
But then I find myself questioning just how applicable this guideline could be in the modern world, and why it might not be. Is it just that mass communication and the "democratic" process change the stakes? Let's start with the fact that a government of genuinely Christian men has not a snowball's chance in hell of being elected in contemporary Holland. And even if, by some fortuitous accident, it is so elected without the changing of the present composition or general political views of Dutch society, HOW could said government ever hope to follow the line of eradicating an evil custom without invoking so much wrath as to threaten their lives?
Say, for example, they tried to arrest the recognition of same-sex marriages and prohibit same-sex couple adoptions, without criminalizing sodomy in-the-house or taking children away from the same-sex couples that currently have them. But the evolution of the attitude of society toward this sort of thing, in both law and in men's hearts is totally unprecedented in history; indeed, one can scarcely fathom what if anything a reversal would resemble. Hearts first? Laws first? Revolts and bloodshed first? And it's not just this one issue, either: it's EVERYTHING related to societal breakdown all at once...
Mr. Moses,
I don't know if this is helpful in any way, and if I am not actually answering your question please forgive my digression. I’m not sure if I have the right answer, but you ask questions I’ve long pondered. For the longest while I thought the “top down” approach made sense. Pass the moral laws where possible and enforce them in order to regulate society. Obviously this made me more or less a fascist, although I didn’t recognize it at the time. The more I’ve pondered, the more I believe that this tactic not only doesn’t work from a purely practical perspective but also leads to the bloodshed and general disruption you suggest.
Civil law, it seems, cannot practically stretch much further than the moral frame of the society it governs as your example of the Dutch points out. My thought is that if you go back to where all of this started, it’s not as if Constantine jumped into office and suddenly codified Christian morality upon the pagan world. It was an organic development over centuries that led to Christendom. There were advances, setbacks, and rallies all along the way. Sadly, as many have noted, it is so much faster to destroy a culture than to build one.
I don’t think, practically, that there is much that can be done other than striving to be a good moral person in an evil society and to raise good moral children. This is much harder than it sounds, even heroic in some cases, but it is the only basis for true change to take effect, albeit very slowly. It may be my children’s great-great-great-great-great grandchildren that see the fruits of my labor, but I’m okay with that.
It’s the same with so many Catholics I know who are eager to right the wrongs done after Vatican II by doing wrongs themselves. A unilateral imposition of the Latin Mass upon the entire Latin Rite would not solve any problems despite the opinion of a legion of bloggers and lay apologists. It helps to consider that no great movement in the Church ever began by anyone seeking to start a great movement in the Church. St. Gregory the Great, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Benedict, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Francis de Sales, St. John Bosco . . . etc. These folks didn’t set out to create any Catholic movement – for the most part they focused on their own personal holiness and at whatever practical problems were in their immediate life that they could address. For Gregory it was who was going to pick up the garbage in the streets of Rome. For Don Bosco it was who was going to help the impoverished boys. For Benedict it was where could he find some peace & quiet to better worship God. But the people came to them, and the movements and orders were formed around them, sometimes even in spite of their efforts. Like St. Bernadette said – we are simply broom sticks to be used as God wills and then set in the corner when our job is done.
The abortion example is pertinent. The problem is not primarily the law, as I once thought, but in the fact that the mother wants to kill her child, as Dr. Fleming often points out. Having a society that can no longer coerce the darker parts of human hearts, I can only ensure that my own daughters are morally equipped to never condone or even consider such an evil act and that they pass this down to their own children. From a cold and calculating perspective, if the ones who kill babies do, in fact, kill their babies, then my side will win by default. Naturally the same argument holds for other current moral issues.
And when the current house of cards topples, as it must someday, the strong ones will be the ones to do the rebuilding. I don’t think it’s our job to do the toppling. We just have to do our best to survive in the current conditions and be standing by with bricks and mortar at hand when the time comes.
Mr. Cornell, thank you for your response. Quite insightful.
Civil law, it seems, cannot practically stretch much further than the moral frame of the society it governs as your example of the Dutch points out. My thought is that if you go back to where all of this started, it’s not as if Constantine jumped into office and suddenly codified Christian morality upon the pagan world. It was an organic development over centuries that led to Christendom.
Clearly, yes. But it's not as though the efforts of Constantine were for nothing in this organic development. Surely law is one of the organic means by which a society expedites its positive evolutions?
The abortion example is pertinent. The problem is not primarily the law, as I once thought, but in the fact that the mother wants to kill her child, as Dr. Fleming often points out.
On the other hand, there are far fewer abortions (and maternal deaths) when abortion is illegal. If the force of law can act as a dissuasive force in some cases, should it not be used? Or is it simply wrong to separate the dissuasive power of the law from the societal conditions that render such a law possible? I suspect it is a pointless mental exercise to try to conjure up a hypothetical case of an abortion-free but otherwise libertine legal and social regime.
It's a mind spinning exercise. Surely the repressive power of law is not for nothing, or else we would have anarchy. Perhaps the key is just that law is cannot be divorced from the rest of the custom in which it grows up, and (to a lesser extent) vice-versa.
Gentlemen,
There was an article of March 12, "Revisiting Freedom and Virtue" over at the Front Porch Republic that remains available online and of course the original essays by Brent Bozell and Frank Meyer back in 1962 in the pages of National Review. The libertarians have won the argument in terms of "expanding freedoms" by eliminating old laws from the books that grew (some like weeds) from the old liberal order. It is strange reading Frank Meyer's arguments today because they could not find a hearing today in any conservative journal I know of except perhaps Chronicles. 50 years ago consevatives were still talking about a Divine Order, the precedence of virtue over freedom in the cultural order,whichsupported the political order and so many other propositions that cannot be found today since the neo-cons moved from the McGovern campaigns. Of course it is all a moot point because we no longer live in a Post Christian age,it is now Anti-Christian. Not every good is an arduous good as the freedom lovers believe, and not every government is a federal government as the Empire now teaches. I suspect, however, we are moving too far afield.
"On the other hand, there are far fewer abortions (and maternal deaths) when abortion is illegal. If the force of law can act as a dissuasive force in some cases, should it not be used?"
I heard Dr. Fleming and Paul Youngblood discus this on the Radio Show as I painted my deck on Friday (something I hope I don't have to do again for a long, long time - painting the deck, that is, not listening to the show). The case was made that removing the issue from the federal level, where it was poorly decided in an unnuanced fashion by the Supreme Court, and placing the issue at the State Law level would be effective. In this fashion, those communities that still have some shred of decency left would further restrict abortion and even those communities that espouse "Chicago Values" would likely make things somewhat more restrictive than the open-ended and poorly worded Roe v. Wade allows. Ironically, it was Pro-Lifers who defeated this effort because they want the issue solved as a Federal Law completely outlawing abortion everywhere.
Or, as Mr. Reavis said, "Not every government is a federal government." Amen to that.
"they want the issue solved as a Federal Law completely outlawing abortion everywhere."
This is because federal law allows abortion everywhere. Liberalism was designed for an elite people. Not so with conservative impulses which in many ways are more reactions rather than a planned or thought through ideaology. The normal reaction to the abnormal stranger ( or friend from the government) coming to your house and telling you how things will be in the future is resentment and reaction. State's rights are a real danger to the duopoly. That is why they are so desperate to keep a solid hold on public education, on painting state's rights advocates as hate mongers and keeping abortion legal as part of the comprehensive solution for social security and other federal programs. Allowing people to do whatever they want and then promising whatever they want are two related aspects to one problem.