Back to the Stone Age II E
What is the alternative to respect for responsible authority? If we assume that all foods, recreations, forms of music, and manners of life are equal, then Liberals are right to demand social, political, and tax neutrality on traditional sauerkraut and on every other issue that might involve government control, including same-sex marriage, abortion, and the celebration of holidays—so long as we observe the non-aggression principle.
Admittedly, Libertarians are sometimes hard-pressed to defend seducers, pornographers, dope peddlers, and abortionists as non-aggressive purveyors of desired services, but thank heaven—or some other place—for Walter Block and people of his stripe, because they do not hesitate to defend the indefensible and in so doing reveal the moral, spiritual, and intellectual vacuum at the heart of their ideology.
If we are not spoiled children, porn addicts or heroin users, we know that human life involves hierarchies of values of better and worse, superior and inferior. It may not always be possible to establish such a hierarchy or, once it is established, to find consensus, even among reasonable people of good will. Even to admit the possibility of aesthetic and moral hierarchy opens up the charge of snobbery, but so be it. In a culture where all values are inverted, where "bad" may be a term of praise and "gay" be appropriated by depressing sociopaths, opprobrious epithets can be liberating.
When I ridiculed a youngish conservative friend of mine for listening to disco music on his earphones, he made the inevitable libertarian response: "I like what I like. What gives you the right to dictate musical taste." I made my inevitable response, namely, that is what Jack the Ripper's mother told people who disapproved of the way he treated his sister's dolls. Defend, by all means, your bad taste with the best arguments you can muster, but do not try to defend your right to have bad taste. Even in pop music, one can distinguish between Carl Perkins and Elvis and between Elvis and the Bee Gees, and the Gibb brothers and Kanye West.
There is one obvious flaw in the Libertarian theory of subjective value. Naturally, having no taste in food, music, or literature, they insist that taste is subjective but they change their tune when it comes to their own hobby, namely economic theory. Libertarians have no problem in denigrating anyone who adheres to what they regard as a false economic theory, whether traditionalist Catholics or Marxists, and what is sauce for the economist's goose should be sauce for the aesthete's gander. If Mises is righter than Hayek and Hayek righter than Marx or Samuelson, then it is possible that Brahms is better than Sir Arthur Sullivan, who is better than Sir Elton John.
Of course, the Libertarian will respond that what he believes in is pure science—despite the obvious fact that in real sciences, they are not still debating the phlogiston theory or phrenology. Economics is only scientific to the extent it can be quantified and abstracted, but as soon as economists begin using the language of right and wrong, "ought" and "ought not," as soon as they start recommending one policy over another, they have entered the realm of ethics.
Besides, even classical liberal economists have a better theory than their rivals—as they certainly do—how have they come to the rational conclusion that scientific economics trumps good taste in wine or music? The opposite seems obvious to me. We all eat, most of us drink, and even I can "whistle every air from that infernal nonsense Pinafore, while only a small number of people can read a balance sheet much less study theories of exchange. In any sensible hierarchy of value, one would ridicule anyone who was a whizz at Austrian economics but eat at McDonalds and preferred Gershwin to Gluck. To call such a person an "idiot savant" would be a compliment.
But, supposing that we could construct a hierarchy of aesthetic and moral values, that hierarchy would not lead, necessarily, to a policy of social encouragement or government subsidy. In some cases, it is because some superior activities are comparatively trivial or of no social significance. It would be hard to justify tax support for my preference for Haydn over Beethoven or Virginia ham over Swedish sweet ham, but it would not be too difficult to draw up an argument in support of teaching traditional music or literature or morality in schools funded by the community. Wise rulers and creative societies have always subsidized the arts that elevate man above the beasts.
Our problem today is not that government funds the arts, but that it supports evil, stupid, and destructive arts, because neither our people nor our rulers are wise or even very human. A wholesome-minded dictator would eliminate pop music along with public education and most of what passes for literature and journalism in a country where the designated poet at the next presidential inauguration was chosen precisely because he is A) Latino and B) Cuban. We are not likely to enjoy the blessings of a philosopher-tyrant—any tyrant we get will reflect the degraded character of our people--but no good can come from any discussion predicated on the vacuous and puerile assumptions of classical liberalism.
Questions of tax policies and subsidies cannot be reduced to the oversimplifications of Marx and Mises. Other principles intervene: not only the principle of hierarchy but also the deeper question of what we live for. Can parents really be neutral on even pop-cultural questions when they see the morals and tastes of their children being corrupted? As a child, my parents forced me to take piano and violin lessons, though I did not have one scrap of dexterity much less talent. In my elementary school in the socialist state of Wisconsin, I was forced to take part in regular singing classes that had us louts warbling on pitch in four-part harmony by the fourth grade. God bless my communist piano teacher and those German and Swedish socialists who tortured me into being a lover of good music.
My children grew up with a piano in the house, and they all took music lessons, which I paid for. We took them to concerts and bought recorded music. Yes, they all got sucked into one form or another of pop music, as I did in my teens, but even there they had distinctive tastes.
Well, so what, asks our friend Ludwig von Steinbrunnen, returning (like the communist ideologue he so much resembles) to the only argument he has? You spent your money on what you like and the parents of inner-city Utes bought their kids ghetto-blasters and centuries worth of R&B and hip hop. What can one say to such people except that they have to choose whether they wish to be regarded as fools or liars?
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It's funny, I was just beginning to think about ridding myself of all the CDs of canned music and garbage noise I accumulated in my younger and stupider days, and this article appears.
Not much I can add at this point except to say that I would gladly tax-support symphony orchestras and big band groups, along with bluegrass and real folk musicians if some dictator would actually shut down the pop music industry. I would do the same for decent dress shoes if the tyrant would punish all those malcontents who deign to walk the streets in tennies or flip flops.
Any good chefs out there needing a subsidy?
Dr. Fleming--You, friend, speak my mind. Do you know of the contention that the word gay was adopted because of its association with the demimonde generally and prostitutes, in particular? Water over the dam, indeed.
The libertarian cultural argument is if nothing else tempting rhetoric these days, insofar as cutting of the funding of our philosopher-tyrants (nice one, by the way!) seems a pretty effective way of mitigating the damage that they do. After all, while parents may not, in the formal sense, have the "right" to corrupt their children's minds (correct me if I am wrong, but "right" seems to imply something deontologically good), they do have the right to be left alone in the way that they choose to educate their children.
It is undeniable that "[w]ise rulers and creative societies have always subsidized the arts that elevate man above the beasts." Yet when our rulers are anything but wise and our societies are anything but creative, how can we call them out without either 1. marginalizing ourselves, or 2. making common cause with the libertarian who would bomb an historic row house, put up a skyscraper and call it a victory for capitalism?
By the way, to what extent are "libertarian" and "classic liberal" really interchangeable? I'm under the impression that the latter at least have better aesthetic sensibilities and are generally blind to the damage their ideas do (partly because their heyday was before the advent of mass communications and high-speed transport to execute their dastardly ideas), whereas libertarians celebrate it entirely. (See Lew Rockwell's "Yea Wal-Mart!" and Jeffrey Tucker's "McDonald's as the Paradigm of Progress" for two textbook examples.)
Ray,
Good to read your posts. A couple of things about libertarians that I admire is their love for freedom and their tenacity in defending it. The thing I dislike most about them is their inability to understand or wonder aboout why the violent hellish voices of the revolution can only be stilled by that silence of the heart --- the restless heart --- that is restless until it rests in Him. In other words they are a profane bunch whose end is arrogance, power, knowledge and selfishness. In the Spanish Civil War they were the first to be allied with and therefore, slaughtered by, the communists.
The thing I remember most about a dinner I once had with the late Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, was his insitence that democratic equality is the very basis not of liberty, as is commonly believed, but the total state --both fascists and communists -- "Where the two extremes of the godless meet" as he put it..
He understood government by law was upheld in old monarchies, restrained by a noble elite. "Aristocracy, not democracy, gave us liberty." said Mises ( But who remembers what the hell he said or observed, afterall, it's practice that makes us perfect in revolutionary theory)
We of course have no Aristocracy left, perhaps a few wealthy pretenders but nothing authentic, so most libertarians and classical Liberals have become the useful idiots of the two party duopoly, or what Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn called, the godless extremes where the middle meet.
Thanks, Ray, for the agreement and for the possible clarification. At three different periods of my life, I knew many homosexuals, and the better I knew them, the sadder they seemed. Some tried to lead normal lives, but they were afflicted by demons. One of my best teachers was a very decent man, but he drank heavily every day and the more he drank, the less control he had over his impulses. I do remember on one occasion him begging me to get him away from two teenage hustlers. Assuming a ferocity I should have had trouble backing up, I succeeded in driving the punks (another word whose meaning has been lost) away.
Nicholas wonders of one cannot distinguish between classical liberals and libertarians, the former for having aesthetic taste and the latter for having none. Yes, but one might equally single out the classical liberals for their classical education, their decent moral lives (for the most part), their general sanity, but these distinctions do not amount to differentiae. As I have said repeatedly, conservative liberals of the 19th century often made the most acute criticisms of the liberal tradition, as it developed. Nonetheless, to the extent that liberalism insisted on individual freedom of choice and tended in the direction of subjective value, that ideology is the poison-root of the problem and libertarianism in its various forms only the unpalatable fruits. An extreme case is JS Mill, a radical individualist Utilitarian and yet a deeply learned man who celebrated the classical tradition.
"Nonetheless, to the extent that liberalism insisted on individual freedom of choice and tended in the direction of subjective value, that ideology is the poison-root of the problem and libertarianism in its various forms only the unpalatable fruits."
In the hellish chorus of "who is to say?" there are always a few in every age who rise to answer. Unfortunately for the 20th century those who spoke up usually hated the neighbor they could see, more than those they could not see. Which should give us some insight into the big whopper St John noticed when Christians say, "I love God, but hate my neighbor." When archaeologists dig in our rubble they will be forced to conclude ,beyond a scientific certainty, --" these people lived unconsumated lives.
Unwept, unhonored and unsung....
Not to be too much of a devil's advocate, but it seems to me that classical liberals were not so much focused on creating a liberated individual as they were on limiting government interference in life, something that conservatives should value as much or more than libertarians. There is much to be said for an economy free of the depredations of rent-seeking interests and politicians. In fact, such is far more valuable to genuine communities than to the supposedly sovereign individual, who in fact has never existed.
On the political plane, I agree, liberals were focussed on protecting people from government, but many of them were equally interested in protecting individuals from other "oppressive institutions" such as an established church, aristocracy, and in extreme cases (JS Mill) marriage and even gossip. In practical politics, unfortunately, they had rather naive expectations about the effects of laissez-faire capitalism and the capacity of ordinary people for rational thought and independent judgment. The worst aspect of liberalism is on the level of ethics and political theory. As one intellectual historian summed it up, their emphasis was on the ability of reason to solve problems, the universality of all ethical judgments and propositions (this is very clear in Kant above all), and in the supremacy of the autonomous individual. Many of the English Liberals were wise and practical men--I need only name Maine and Fitzjames Stephen-who took very conservative positions on democracy and understood the overriding importance of traditional institutions. The movement qua movement, however, especially in the highly popular and influential form in which it was crystallized in Godwin's Political Justice, was a raging and destructive fire that destroyed the old order, well deserving Marx's dismissal: They have destroyed every bond between man and man and replaced it with the cash nexus.
Thank you, Dr. Fleming, for your response.
I suppose it might be true but not particularly helpful to observe that libertarians aren't so much direct descendants of the liberals as they are revivalists, analogous to the way Renaissance Hellenists tried to emulate the ancient Greeks (and eventually Greek paganism), if such an observation has any truth to it. On the other hand, neo-pagans are easy to ridicule for their romanticism (I think Aristotle himself would have been appalled), and by analogy the libertarian becomes that much easier to ridicule - and that, in my book, is a worthwhile pastime. (I wonder how even J.S. Mill would react to the belching, the bloated guts under white t-shirts, the blue jeans, the sneakers, the bad food, the ugly landscapes that libertarians tout as a victory for liberty. But Dr. Fleming would probably respond that the liberals themselves were directly responsible for libertarianism in a way the ancient Greeks were not responsible for the follies of later centuries.)
I had in mind American advocates of free trade and refusing bankers their customary control of government---Jefferson, John Taylor, Calhoun. I believe that they understood the reality of community, though it is true they disputed some forms of traditional control over the individual's mind.
It seems to me that of these three, only Jefferson can be properly regarded as a Liberal, and that because of his disdain for religion and tradition. Free trade was an economic theory advocated by liberals, but it does not define the movement. All three statesmen, it seems to me, insofar as they were liberal were merely expressing the common opinion of educated people. Burke was perhaps more liberal than any of them. Insofar as we are still interested in them, however, they were distinctive an not at all liberal, in their defenses of regions, states, and communities. Of the "founding" generation, the strongest liberals were Paine and Franklin, men of a rather different stamp.
In fairness to the libertarians I would add there is not much else out there in the political realm to choose and they are used and abused by the duopoly. They are useful when the GOP wants tax cut but not so much when the banks need a bail out. They are good when you are attempting same sex marriages in our National Cathedral but not so good when you are fighting immigration or rallying the country for more war.
Their feeble minds are controled by an ideology more than any mind was ever controled by the Nicene Creed. The Christian revelation only answers the most serious questions men and women have about life and death and does not propose to answer all questions like Sharia for the Moslems or the Old Testament for the Jewish people. Although given the false ideas about freedom which surround all of us today, the Church will of necessity become more and more powerful in the daily lives of Americans as she will soon be the only oasis of vitality and light left when the religion of government is no longer affordable and available. Their is a good reason her symbol is the Cross and her manner of praying is on the knees.
Dr. Fleming, quite right about Paine and Franklin. What would you do with corrupt immigrant Scots like Hamilton and James Wilson, who are often touted as conservatives because they mouthed distrust of "the people" as they filled their pockets at the expense of the community? It seems to me they were rationalists, more "liberal" in your sense than Jefferson. The same may be said about John Adams. It is seldom pointed out that Adams became a Unitarian, whereas Jefferson at least adhered to the forms of the church. Not even to get into Honest Abe.
James Wilson got what he wanted after his death----- He had money tied up in a federal law suit that the State of Pennsylvania would not honor. He wanted first his money and to get that he needed a strong federal judiciary to put the states in their "proper places" that is at the service of every Tom, Dick and Harry bureauctrat with the initials FED., before or after his name --elected, unelected or otherwise. The Fed is mighty big business today, to the point that" if you ain't Federal, you ain't nothen."
Thank you Dr. Fleming for this terrific piece. I suppose I don't have to say I 'love' it; that's not a principle it's a given, love/hate two sides of one coin. As a dear friend of mine once said, 'except the love side is larger (somehow), it's a miracle.'
Well I arrived at- 'the group is all, and any individuality we may possess to express is thanks to it, etc.' [excuse me, I'm counting], 35 years ago in consciously knowing so to articulate it, and I would aver we all know it always unconsciously, since it's the truth.
Then there's the matter of the male/female dynamic. Of necessity She is inevitably social; and he of necessity is inevitably lifestyle. This means that He must carry his state wherever he goes in consideration of them both, him & her, i.e., the society in its inevitable hierarchy & its lifestyle = State.
Mr. Reavis, James Wilson also, while he was a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was personally active in bribing members of the Georgia legislature in the notorious Yazoo fraud, the first big criminal scandal in U.S. history. He is still honoured by "Federalists" as a great statesman for his advocacy of central power.
"He is still honoured by "Federalists" as a great statesman for his advocacy of central power."
And we all know where that leads, or if we don't know, can just look around to find out. Poor old Chuck Hagel thought if you left the farm and homeplace in Nebraska to fight for your country in Vietnam, then come back home with shrapnel in your chest and two purple hearts on your chest, then start your own businesss and "make it work", then represent your native home at the national level for more than a decade, etc. He thought that such centralized power would recognize, or at least respect his rather local opinions about God and country,.... Boy was he stupid.
Mr. Wilson, what about country music, not the likes of the garbage they play on the radio, but more of the likes of traditional artists such as Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, or Dwight Yoakam?
Svar, I was thinking of traditional country singers such as the ones you mentioned as being at least close enough to real folk music that they could pass. Perhaps I should have said, 'real folk music and real country'.
Of course much may be left up to the tastes of the tyrant, but that's what you get when you live under a tyranny.
'He thought that such centralized power would recognize, or at least respect his rather local opinions about God and country,.... Boy was he stupid.' (end quote) ... Mr. Reavis re: your posts and also about the Fed which is the case, made me realize it goes back to Rome. First it's true too that all politics is local to those making the decisions (from power) regardless of how decentralized. Say we were all instead sovereign city states and lets say Hagel hailed from the sovereign city of Austin. The dominant ruling clique in Austin if Hagel wasn't "in" could truncate him as well. Decentralization is preferable among a people similar enough that community is possible, as well as acceptable rulership possible then as well, even though inevitably in any form of governance the advantage is to the observer. But harkening back to ancient Rome for example, we now find that Caesar and his scribe in chronicling his army's conquest of the Celts (essentially all of Europe) I suppose naturally enough Caesar cooked the history in depicting the Celts or Europeans as barbarians. They were anything but, having roads and trade routes linking all of Europe, and traded as well with Rome. Their mistake was to pay Rome in gold coins as it turns out we now discover Europe at the time was very wealthy having it is estimated around 800 active gold mines. It's why they didn't bother yet to make their own wine importing it all from Rome. They also didn't bother to write much down yet, they still, like for example many groups at that time, were of an oral tradition. There were Celtic exceptions like the Druids who had to read hundreds of books and spend 20 years in apprenticeship prior to being admitted as a Druid. Plus the Celts or Europeans were decentralized, and women, unlike in Rome, or Greece for that matter could attain high status own property and so forth. So Caesar looking for a feather in his cap in jockeying for his own position in Rome went in after their gold, conquering 10-Million of them at the time, slaughtering one million, selling another million into slavery and returned to Rome with the treasure from slave sales and billions in gold. My point is that the Celts were civilized at the time and no threat to Rome as 'barbarians' and Rome and Caesar knew that. In other words from our point of view today in terms of how the Celtic people lived at the time they were the good guys and decentralized and enormously prosperous. But it seems we're stamped or imprimatured since those times, with the annoying realization that without a severe centralization [ourselves] we can fall prey to others who in their own centralization choose subsequently to conquer. The Celts real sin was that they were worth the plundering and then sadly too decentralized to prevent it. But thanks to Caesar and his scribe it's yet depicted as if 'civilized' Rome and its centralized power, bestowed its blessings upon 'barbaric' Celtic Europe, and, only of late is the other side of that 'story' being glimpsed. Prior to the Roman invasion, and if unwitting about that eventuality historically, people like us or with our sensibility would rather have been Celtic or European than Roman. That subsequent imprimatur about the need for 'centralization' and subsequently over-centralization, i.e., can't have too much of a 'good thing'. just keeps running its course and if we look at it in a balanced fashion it seems to trace in the West right back to Julius Caesar. Of course after the illustrious 'Julius' and his choosing also to attack Pompey in causing Rome's civil war, ending the Republic and ushering in the dictatorship of emperors: well, can't have too much of a 'good thing', it got all the more centralized. -?-
Mr. Yurick,
Thank you for your comments. I don't know about the Celts being civilized long before they ever met Romans and Christians. The most modern book I have read in the last twenty years was Evelyn Waughs biography of Edmund Campion and even that was a pretty secular look at holiness as far as I was concerned.
My education about the Romans began with "OMNIA Gallia in tres partes divisa est" and was considered reactionary even at that time which was at least a hundred years ago. The Geeks gave our tradition a love of wisdom, the Romans gave us law and the Incarnation, hope. The idea of giving God's creation a superior gene pool through the Celts was not in favor at the time I studied Western civilization and of course today the very idea of civilization is out of favor because civilzations rise and fall upon what a people believe and cultivate. When a people believe nothing, create nothing and cultivate nothing but vice and its consequent visciousnes things began to fall apart.
I asked my son who studies the new theory about genes and race etc. being offered in support of various views about apes and man, 'how much differnce genetically between a man and a chimp?" he said about 5% . And then added"but that is like saying the differnce between the earth freezing to death or burning up in a blaze of glory is only a few miles toward or away from the sun" Thes things are very complicated and people who think they know about it, should not be trusted. Put your trust in God, not the princes of this world. ( Or something to that effect )
" The Geeks gave our tradition a love of wisdom, the Romans gave us law and the Incarnation, hope."
Actually as Dr. Fleming would remind us, it was the Athenians who are said to have given us a love for wisdom. But as my spelling error indicates, today it is the geeks who provide us with the lost yearning for Wisdom, as when we pray:. "Oh, Give me the strength, Lord. Give me the strength!"
The notion that the Celts are a civilized people in their own right and not insofar as they borrow from others can be easily dispelled by a sufficiently meaty visit to Scotland and Ireland. Let's just say I set foot in old Eire Catholic and Green. I came back still Catholic but now Orange. The one Irish (as opposed to Irish-American) friend I have is a pro-British Catholic from Galway. He's said that if you ask in a low enough voice, probably around 10 percent of Hibernians would discreetly agree that separation was a mistake and retaining a united Ireland as a home country would have had a salutary effect on the 20th century history of the island. When I've thrown it out there, the arguments I have heard AGAINST that position are vacuous enough to convince me that my friend knows what he's talking about.
Freedom is grand, but it ain't everything. Watching a Celtic people try to be civilized without Latin literature and English Common Law is as pitiful as watching an American try to talk intelligently about Western history without speaking even a modicum of French. Let's face it: all are not created equal.
Nick,
In America the foreign langauage that should be taught in order to understand things is not Latin, Greek, French, Italian or German but Neo-Conservativism.
PS . St Patrick did what he could to run the snakes out of Ireland but unless the country was conquered by the Romans, history tends to demonstrate they will return. Ireland never was. Dr. Wilson refers to the Hibernians as " the shanty Irish" and I am willing to accept this so long as the shanty has a crucifix. Otherwise it the shanty is often occupied by dangerous snakes like James Joyce
In America the foreign langauage that should be taught in order to understand things is not Latin, Greek, French, Italian or German but Neo-Conservativism.
Good one. I guess from certain positions it's easy to forget that Life on Planet Earth is not quite the same as it is in Life on Planet PNAC.
PS . St Patrick did what he could to run the snakes out of Ireland but unless the country was conquered by the Romans, history tends to demonstrate they will return. Ireland never was. Dr. Wilson refers to the Hibernians as " the shanty Irish" and I am willing to accept this so long as the shanty has a crucifix. Otherwise it the shanty is often occupied by dangerous snakes like James Joyce
Another good one. I confirm: the de-Catholicized Ireland of today is a ghastly, freakish fright. Don't take my word for it; go see for yourself. (Unless you're one of those types who absolutely must believe Ireland is truly the land of Ford, Wayne and O'Hara in oil-like Technicolor.) May/June/July 2007 was one of the three most illuminating holidays of my life.
Mr. Moses--I'd love to hear more of your impressions of de-Catholicized Ireland. I've been there twice, 22 and about 16 years ago, respectively, with dear friends who either aren't Christian or are vehement ex-Catholics (who can be very proprietorial about their personal experience and knowledge of the church but will not countenance anyone else's observations about it). It was gorgeous, especially the first time, during which we avoided cities larger than Ennis in Co. Clare. The second time we were confined to Dublin, save for a daytrip. My friend, who'd not been back in about 30 years, and I attended Dublin Friends Meeting, and as we walked there, she spied down a narrow side street a sign proclaiming, "Condomerie". "Well," she said, " I see things really HAVE changed!"
Well, there's the obvious things: the contraceptives, the open queers, the (not always pretty) girls prancing around like whores, the boys who act like weenies and who can't think of anything except another beer at the bar with their mates. Hang out with young people and you're guaranteed to be offered cocaine at some point. Even the music in the bars is less old-style community-impromptu than it is 70's Greenwich Village hipsterdom.
But there are other, more subtle weirdnesses. This is a country famed for its openness, and what I saw was rather... paranoia. Crime is on the rise. Nobody trusts their neighbors. Public houses are closing down at an alarming rate - the sense of community just doesn't exist.
My switching of sympathy from Nationalist to Loyalist (well, I kind of exaggerated, but still) came after seeing the Marxist rhetoric of a lot of the IRA propaganda in Belfast, and conversing in Falls Road bars with Nationalists who... well, were NOT particularly sympathetic folk to banter with. Admittedly I've never lived through a war, but it seems as though despair - in the guise of either half-baked inarticulate ramblings or in the form of the senseless juvenile hedonism I described above - is rampant throughout a large swath of Irish society.
The rest of it seems to be settling in sprawling housing developments that call to mind a nice tidy Martha Stewart landscape from Middle Suburban America - albeit with a heck of a lot more cussing and blasphemy. (One might add that apostasy since the early 1990s has been at least as rampant among the middle-aged as it has been among the young, and what I saw seemed to corroborate that.)
Overall - and this was in 2007, right before the financial crisis struck the Celtic Tiger down - there was a complete lack of interest in "greater things" and certainly no sense of some "angels' wings" lifting up a playful, naïve but believing people they way they seem to in clichéed portrayals of Irish communities. I think if I had to speculate on the why, I'd say that, behind the veneer of economic prosperity, without the fuel of the Church and Her motor oil of Greco-Roman culture, Ireland has only Anglo-Saxon legal and industrial infrastructure and raw Celtic blood.
I love a good party as much as the next man, but this was just WHOOF.
Nick:
Let's not forget that it was the introduction of modern day global oligarchic capitalism with its attendant materialism that accelerated the corruption of Ireland and its people. If you do go to any online addition of Irish newspapers, you are very likely to see a photo of the vacuous and lascivious Kardashian reptile staring back at you. The Celtic Tiger was a Paper Tiger at the end of the day with multinationals taking advantage of cheap labor and land which accelerated a property boom fueled by foreign banks and corrupt politicians. The government bureaucracies and benefits skyrocketed and Dublin real estate was as expensive as London's. When the inevitable crash occurred, instead of acting like true Irish patriots, the venal politicians loaded all the bad loans onto the backs of the Irish people which will have to be paid off by future generations. But let's be honest, any country infected with the same modernistic and atheistic viruses eventually succumbs unless there is a strong countervailing ethos (perhaps Poland?). The strong Catholic faith in Ireland was also undermined by the pernicious misapplication of Vatican II 'reforms (I am not a traditionalist but let's call a spade a spade) which led to widespread apathetic apostasy; and the clergy sex abuse scandals aggravated by an incompetent/complicit/corrupt hierarchy. Bottom line, when the Irish started to believe that they could create heaven on earth, they ceased to believe in the heaven hereafter.
Mr. Mulvey's assessment is basically correct, but one caveat:
There were some deep spiritual problems in "Catholic" Ireland long before Vatican II basically made nonbelief more or less acceptable (we may have slightly divergent views on that subject, but it's not important). Clericalism was the order of the day throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. I don't know what exactly brought it about - I have heard the influence of Jansenist French priests is supposed to have something to do with it, but the timeline of the problem doesn't seem to corroborate that point of view. What Catholicism in Ireland did seem to have in common with Jansenism was a tendency to seek to impose popular piety and right-living on all the faithful. It is one thing to forbid public indecency or to restrict scandalous speech; it is quite another to flail certain things over the heads of ordinary people without putting them in their proper context. In the wave of neo-Thomism many have lost sight of the truth that, despite the importance of law, religious faith is not about following W, X and Y precept and then Z will follow: it needs to be made "one's own" to resist the tide of sugar-sweet materialism. Indeed, the friend I mentioned earlier has gone so far as to say that, on a deep level, "Ireland was never 'really' a Catholic country!"
(In particular, I suspect they were too insistent on making thundery pronouncements concerning precepts of sexual morality, and I think this tendency has carried over somewhat into the Irish-influenced Americanized Church and its offspring in the post Vatican II worldwide Church. Please note that I am not apologizing for prostitution or sodomy or even fornication, much less shilling for cohabitation or for the recognition of "gay marriage," but I will posit that on a grand scale there is a right and a wrong way of dealing with vice and that in the modern era we have swung fairly far in the wrong direction - understandably, perhaps, given how disgusting the other side has become, but certain things are in themselves less worrisome than we might think.)
Your summary of the economic "progress" of the island is spot-on. I will add (and my aforementioned friend shares my view on this point) that independence from Britain was a disaster for the development of the country's infrastructure and industry due to the loss of automatic investment and, later, the de-coupling of the punt from the pound (given the dependence of the Irish economy on the British economy, this could only have been in the service of a purely ideological Europhile fantasy). Try comparing the Irish rail network today with the rail network at the beginning of the twentieth century; it's enlightening! (And having driven on the island, I can tell you firsthand that the dismantling of the railroads had nothing to do with ameliorations in the quality of motor transport.)
Mr. Moses,
Your words:
"...I will posit that on a grand scale there is a right and a wrong way of dealing with vice and that in the modern era we have swung fairly far in the wrong direction - understandably, perhaps, given how disgusting the other side has become, but certain things are in themselves less worrisome than we might think."
There is a balanced way, which should be reflected in the Church, which is the way of our Lord: His wraith in the form of the curse and the law is working its way through fallen creation and working out fallen creation as, simultaneously, His caritas in the form of grace, mercy and redemption is working its way through fallen creation and working out fallen creation. In the Godhead, wrath and caritas are in balanced equilibrium; however, far too often in the Church, not focused daily on the Christ, they become false dichotomies which take us off the straight and narrow. On the one hand, the Church and we sinners who make Her up embrace an institutionalized coercion which decays into Phariseeism and Puritanism; on the other hand, rather than live out the Gospel of Christ we preach the gospel of "love" and decay into the therapeutic "church" offering up the disembodied, Gnostic "Christ" as a grief counselor. The latter seems to be in full march in the 21st century.
Thank you, Mr. Moses, Mr. Mulvey, and Mr. Peters. You encourage me to ask you to expand on your comments more often.
I second what Ray Olson said about the gentlemen mentioned above. Always good to read their thoughts and comments.
(Note: Old Ray knows better than to ask me to expand on anything.)
Dear Robert--With you, who needs to ask? Or, I might add, ever tell you shut up or pipe down? Not me! You always tell me something I want to know, it seems.
Ah, ha,ha,hah !!!! You are a gentlemen and a scholar !!!.
It is a good blog. I told Tom that one time after a few shots of Kentucky's finest and bored with my flattery he said, "Yes it is a good blog and compliments are nice but donations even nicer."
Now, Dat's de way of the Irish too, you know.
I too am loyal to Rome's contribution after the Church. However Julius Caesar was a rather bad sort as Cicero knew in siding with Pompey during Caesar's civil war, until after they lost and Caesar pardoned Cicero. Archaeologists today are finding irrefutable evidence that the Europeans at that time referred to in aggregate as 'Celts' were a lot wealthier, more civilized, and peaceful where Rome and Italy were concerned than an opportunistic Caesar had made them out to be. Caesar was more than less one could begin to say the neocon of his day.
Revisionist historians face an uphill task, and in this case in particular, not the least because the words "wealthy, civilized, and peaceful" have taken on a much more abstract connotation that they once had, and "civilized" in particular is prone to a slew of abuses.
Further, it is much less useful to project accusations of "neoconservatism" onto imperial designs of past centuries than it is to accuse neoconservatives of "imperialism." And actually, they do not desire a sovereign supernational empire in the sense that was understood by the Caesars, the Tsars and the Kaisers, or even the 19th-century Parliamentarians, but their half-assed apery of the glory days is amusing, as is their denial of charges that they are playing out of their league.
Let's stop diluting the meanings of words. There's enough confusion in the world as it is.
You make I suppose a point worth considering, except Julius Caesar, was a rogue and aberration in his time. Perhaps some of the confusion today in fact stems from the legacy of having to accept his own Autobiography 'as if' history. Well that's then a part of it [history]. If so the confusion though as a result, from perceiving it as the whole (instead of a part), wouldn't be panned out and ameliorated by those perhaps waiting in the wings, allegedly more qualified, to replace the now dated hegemonic neocons. But rather perhaps repeated let's hope at least in a more diluted format? ... Why would the initial inclination be to repeat? ... Well, the mindset would remain that power is about who gets to be 'perceived' by history et al., as 'the good guy', which is always a consequence of imbalancing toward the authoritarian. Caesar won. So perhaps that was actually the correct move, at least for Rome. But that context (of lack) is Not the context now, in Fact. http://www.keshefoundation.org
Humor: When Pandora opened the box in realizing her mistake and closing it again, then only hope remained trapped inside. Noticing this Zeus permitted the largely Greco-roman Church to be built upon it. tickle-tickle. Oh, so then where are we emotionally...right back to 50 B.C. ... You see (or don't?) what's required is this kind of clarity.