A Credo for Authentic Conservatives and Other Sane People
by Thomas Fleming
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I. The Politics of Human Nature.
Morality and politics are a reflection of and extension of our nature which is not infinitely perfectible or subject to reinvention. This is not to say that social, cultural, and technical improvements are not valuable, only that they do not override the basic facts of life.
A Human beings are not born as rootless individuals but as members of a network of relationships rooted in genetic kinship and marriage. Our natural responsibilities to other humans, while they may vary in degree and type from one society to another, are proportional to this relationship. Thus I owe more to a mother, sister, wife, daughter than to an aunt, cousin, sister-in-law, or niece, and owe more to an aunt, cousin, sister-in-law, or niece than to an unrelated person.
B Males and females are different, physically, mentally, and emotionally, and, although there is a great deal of overlap in these qualities, these differences are at the basis of differing sets of responsibilities.
C Sexual “dimorphism” (B) combined with genetically based responsibilities constitute the natural foundation of the single most indispensable human institution, the family.
D In any society larger than an extended family, the bonds of love and friendship (Greek philia, a love that unites parents and children but also genetically unrelated friends) are indispensable to maintaining order.
E. Human beings under most circumstances quite naturally seek to survive, thrive, and propagate, but they also protect the ability of their family members and friends or social allies (socii) to do the same.
F Survival and propagation require a steady and insured access to basic elements—food and shelter at the minimum. Thus they must, in their families, have a sufficient economic autonomy to maintain their existence and provide for the next generation. Thus, while it is idle to speak of “natural rights,” we do have natural necessities and duties that require us to have a home and an income, whether that income is in the form of food or of symbolic bits of metal or paper with which we can secure food and shelter.
G Marriage and family are natural institutions fulfilling human needs; and, since each presupposes a hierarchy of authority, not only society itself but also social and political authority are natural, in the sense that they are the outgrowth of human nature and natural necessities. Thus there has never been a state of nature, much less of natural equality. In the most nearly natural human societies of which we have any knowledge, females defer to males, children to parents, young to old.
H The origins of the commonwealth, then, are much as Aristotle, Cicero, Thomas, and Althusius supposed: a progression from the “dyad” of the marital pair to the extended family to the village or tribal community to that confederation of different lineages, tribes, villages that is the commonwealth. Each society, of course, has its own history, but the general outline is clear enough.
I Since the commonwealth is an extension of marriage, family, and community, and since it exists, at least in part, to provide for the needs less perfectly supplied by lower forms of association, it can be viewed as relatively legitimate whenever it assists families and communities in their never-ending quest for food, shelter, and stability, but when it deprives these lower associations of the necessary economic autonomy to survive and propagate, takes away homes, or interferes in the relations between parents and children, husbands and wives, promotes adultery and abortion [Nota bene: I am not saying tolerates], it is acting illegitimately. Such infractions do not necessarily render a government illegitimate, but a systematic pattern of abuse—e.g., the liberation of wives and children, seizure of private property, confiscatory taxation—the legitimacy of such a government must fall under suspicion of acting tyrannically, far more so than when it merely deprives citizens of such civil rights as the franchise, jury duty, etc.
J From these considerations flows the principle of subsidiarity, which is often misstated or misunderstood. Although the word is of fairly recent origin–the first use I can find refers to it as “Well-known”–but the idea is not. Since authority flows from the primary institutions (family and kinships) to intermediate (community, tribe, village, province) to the commonwealth or state, the higher levels of authority should not invade the lower provinces and drain them of their energies. While some transfer of authority and responsibility is inevitable in a complex society, the village or town, in principle, should not be invading the authority of the household except in extreme cases, e.g. murder and harsh violence, and even then it is better to turn to some intermediate institution, such as a family council. Similarly, the state (in the US) or province should not meddle in the internal affairs of the village, city, or town nor the national state in the affairs of the province. Of course, every commonwealth has its own history and biases. For example, states mean a great deal in the American and German traditions, but not so much in England. The Roman Empire, though it was made up of provinces, was more a confederation of city-states than anything else.
Another name for subsidiarity is federalism, but both terms have been abused to mean a top-down power structure in which the rulers at the top generously concede some authority back to the lower levels of association. Such was the so-called “New Federalism” of conservative Republicans, and such is the concept of subsidiarity that Pope John XXIII seemed to have in mind. These neo-federalists and neo-subsidiarists may well be well-intentioned, but their unitary understanding of sovereignty–going back to Bodin and Hobbes–deprives families, communities, and provinces of their existential authority.
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1 Comment by Chesterbelloc on 26 June 2009:
So now that we have justified subsidiarity in natural terms, what about as Christians? For every passage in the New Testament justifying our natural ties to kin, there is one telling us to make a radical commitment to Christ above all. Loving our enemies as opposed to vendetta, because even the pagans love their families, etc. Charles Maurras pointed this out, and in between the lines of his writing you can read “Christianity in its authentic form is just radical Jewish individualism and we need Catholicism to dilute that to preserve France”. What can a conservative, who is also a Catholic, say in response? I don’t believe what Maurras says, but it seems that we have to address it when defining conservatism.
2 Comment by Thomas Fleming on 26 June 2009:
First off, I must say frankly that what this or that person thinks of the New Testament is of no concern to me. Passages ripped out of context by non-scholars with an axe to grind can be made to yield any result. Maurras was a bright man but a disturbed egocentric whose opinion I would not think twice about. His anti-Semitism unhinged him to some degree.
In brief, the answer lies in a careful consideration of 1) the context in which the apparently radical statements are being made and 2) the teaching authority of the early Fathers and of the tradition. The Christ who says he did not come to change any jot or tittle in the law was not referring to dietary codes but to the basic principles of the old Law. When Paul repeats the statement that “vengeance is mine, saith the lord,” it should not be interpreted as a repudiation of vengeance as something evil,for then how should it belong to the Lord? Rather, vengeance has been entrusted to the ruler, whose sword is a terror to the wicked. Yes, even pagans love their families and a Christian bishop is supposed to do that and more, but he cannot fall short of the pagan or Jewish standard. I said earlier that I was describing the City of Man, not the City of God, but the City of Man is the indispensable foundation, for us humans, on which the City of God can be erected.
It is not that early Christians were never confused about some of these issues: They can be quite difficult. Some made an experiment with communal property and/or celibacy, and it was not for some time that Christians understood that the monastic ideal was not for most of us. Yes, some of Christ’s statements, ripped out of context, can be made to sound like a repudiation of marital and familial responsibility, but why does he work his first miracle at a wedding, if there are to be no marryings or giving in marriage? Just as the OT can only be interpreted in light of the NT, so even the NT needs the clarifying work of the Holy Ghost, whom Christ promised to send to explain everything to us. That is the role of the Church. Maurras and others like him do not have the right to an opinion, any more than an anti-Christian professor on a website has a right to tell us whether or not we should shoot an abortionist.
Much of the NT takes for granted the social and political conditions of the Mediterranean world in which Our Lord lived and in which the writers grew up. This was a world of kinfolks, villages, and city-states knitted together by the sovereign authority of the Empire, not the world of the Pentateuch.
3 Comment by robert on 26 June 2009:
“Yes, even pagans love their families and a Christian bishop is supposed to do that and more, but he cannot fall short of the pagan or Jewish standard.”
It it is important here to distinguish between the new and old pagans. I can do no better than post the following remarks of the greatest English writer and historian of modern times. He writes
concerning the New Paganism that we are all now experiencing:
“It is exceedingly important that we should judge rightly and in good time of what its effects are to some extent, and our children will come very strongly under their influence. Those effects are already impressing themselves profoundly upon the Press, conversation, laws, building, and intimate habits of our time. . . .
“New Paganism, should it ever become universal, or cover whatever districts or societies it may become general, will never be what the Old Paganism was. It will be other, because it will be a corruption. . . .
“The Old Paganism worshipped human things, but the noblest human things, particularly reason and the sense of beauty. In these it rose to heights greater than have since been reached, perhaps, and certainly to heights as great as were ever reached by mere reason or in the mere production of beauty during the Christian centuries.
“But the New Paganism despises reason, and boasts that it is attacking beauty. It presents with pride music that is discordant, building that is repellent, pictures that are a mere chaos, and it ridicules the logical process. . . .
“The Old Paganism was of a sort that would be open, when due time came, to the authority of the Catholic Church. It had ears that at least would hear. . . .
“The Old Paganism had a strong sense of the supernatural. This was often turned to the wrong objects and always to sufficient objects, but it was keen and unfailing; all the poetry of the Old Paganism, even where it despairs, has this sense. . . .The New Paganism delights in superficiality, and conceives that it is rid of the evil as well as the good in what it believes to have been superstitions and illusions.
“There it is quite wrong. . . . Men do not live long without gods; but when the gods of the New Paganism come they will not be merely insufficient, as were the gods of Greece, nor merely false; they will be evil. One might put it in a sentence and say that the New Paganism, foolishly expecting satisfaction, will fall, before it knows where it is, into Satanism.”
4 Comment by F. Roger Devlin on 26 June 2009:
“The Roman Empire, though it was made up of provinces, was more a confederation of city-states than anything else.”
Would you care to expand upon this extraordinary statement a little farther? Would you apply it to age of Caracalla, or of Diocletian?
5 Comment by Thomas Fleming on 26 June 2009:
Thanks for the opportunity to clarify. The Roman Imperium lasted a long time and changed greatly, from the days before the First Punic War, when they had gained control over Italy until the late Republic, when she ruled Spain, Greece, N. Africa, and the Middle East, then the Principate–a republican system managed with monarchical authority–until the militaristic command structure adopted in response to crisis and invasion, from Septimius Severus until Diocletian’s establishment of the Tetrarchate. In the latter phase, there was increasingly centralization of authority, but if one can generalize about 800-900 years, one can say that the Roman system was to rule through autonomous civitates, e.g. a Greek city-state, and where such institutions did not exist, as in Gaul for the most part, they felt compelled to construct them, complete with theaters, stadia, town councils, etc. Under Trajan, for example, a system of allowances for veterans’ orphans was set up to be administered by the municipia in any way each town saw fit. There was enormous latitude and autonomy until fairly late, especially in areas that were not subject to barbarian invasions, which made a command structure seem imperative, though it was that command structure which seemed to have sapped the energy of the provinces. Even so, recent researches indicate that as the armies withdrew, the locals did in fact try to continue governing themselves and fighting off the barbarians. They were vastly outnumbered and had lost the use of arms, but some seem to have had the will to resist, and their resistance actually bought themselves some liberty. Southern Gaul, for example, held out for some generations against Franks and Burgundians, and even as they were absorbed, they maintained their own institutions–landholding remained Roman and absolute, as opposed to the contingent grants given by barbarian rulers. This is an important subject, I believe, because it illustrates (as does the history of the Holy Roman Empire and even the Byzantine Empire) that empires that promote healthy local control and self-defense are stronger than those that do not. I should add that this is far from being an original ideal of mine: It is pretty main-stream, though not necessarily universal, among historians of the Empire. The negative side is that in times of disruption, local authorities might rebel against the center, as happened in Gaul and Britain more than once. These were not nationalist uprisings but bids for power made by the local elite in tandem with army commanders. Byzantine Emperors, thus, had to be careful about how big a province was or how good a general was sent to defend it.
6 Comment by Sempronius on 26 June 2009:
I wonder if the citizens of Veii,Alba Longa,Laviniun,Tusculum,Capua,Corinth,Numantia,and Carthage felt themselves members of a confederacy?
7 Comment by Chesterbelloc on 26 June 2009:
Thank you for all the insights. I suppose we can say in summary that subsidiarity is necessary for a healthy, self-confident society. Only a society like that of the early Empire, with large family networks and a confident culture, can sustain celibate clergy who live out the more radical aspect of Christianity and travel abroad as missionaries. Natural society and the supernatural go hand in hand, defying Maurras, as well as the liberal Christians who mandate that we must abandon our natural affections for abstract principles.
8 Comment by Thomas Fleming on 26 June 2009:
Yes, excellent summary. As for the list of victims of Roman aggression–except for Corinth–they asked for what they got. In seeking dominion over others, some peoples are successful, others are not. Why not cry over the Iriquois and the Souix, the Romano-Galls conquered by the Franks, the Balkan Roman citizens conquered by Slavs and Bulgars, the Slavs oppressed by the Madyars. Certainly by the time of the Social War, when the Italian allies rose up and demanded equality, the Latin peoples stayed loyal–as most of the Italians stayed loyal when Hannibal was rioting his way across Italy. The question at hand is not man’s undoubted inhumanity to man–and here Augustine is quite duplicitous about the Jews who treated their subjects worse than the Romans ever did–but the elements of a just social order.
9 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 26 June 2009:
Under Part I could be added the systematic importation of aliens to rob our posterity of their birthright.
10 Comment by Sempronius on 26 June 2009:
By the way,though this belongs in Part I of this topic as it regards authority;what do you think of Plato’s seven titles to authority outlined in his Nomoi or Laws?If I recall correctly,and in no particularorder,they are:parents over children,the strong over the weak,noble birth,master over slave,the wise over the ignorant,elders over the young,and finally sheer luck,by which he meant the drawing of lots for public offices.
11 Comment by Sempronius on 26 June 2009:
The above was meant to be addressed directly to Dr. Fleming.
12 Comment by Fr. David A. Bosnich on 26 June 2009:
As for defining conservatism, we could do no better than to quote the Russian poet Afanasy Fet: When, in the drunkenness of crime/The crowd goes forth in violent rage/And evil genius through the mire/Drags name of prophet and of sage/My knees are bent in one desire/My head is bowed towards the page/Where clear and open for all time/They wrote the message for their age/I call up their majestic shades/In the dim church where tumult fades/In clouds of incense learn and glean/And forgetting the mob and its vulgar noise/I give my ears to the noble voice/And take full breath of all they mean.
Fet was a close friend of Eastern Catholic philosopher Vlaidmir Solovyov. I do not know if the late Russell Kirk read Russian poetry, but he certainly would have approved of this one.
13 Comment by Robert on 26 June 2009:
Father Bosnich,
“In the dim church where tumult fades
In clouds of incense learn and glean,
And forgetting the mob and its vulgar noise,
I give my ears to the noble voice.
And take full breath of all they mean.”
Very monastic and true. There is a time in any clash when victory or defeat is recognized by the wise leader and preparations for occupation or retreat are made. Daffodils of early spring might mark the deserted farm where gardens and families were once raised, or they may bring the hope of a new spring to present occupants as do the early Robins. In either case, “the dim church where tumults fade”, (as do the daffodils) represent the monastic life that is concentrated on the remaining things from both the past and present of human events, and the eternal present in the mind of God. Thank you very much for this poem.
14 Comment by J Meng on 26 June 2009:
You say, “Survival and propagation require a steady and insured access to basic elements—food and shelter at the minimum. Thus they must, in their families, have a sufficient economic autonomy to maintain their existence and provide for the next generation. Thus, while it is idle to speak of “natural rights,” we do have natural necessities and duties that require us to have a home and an income, whether that income is in the form of food or of symbolic bits of metal or paper with which we can secure food and shelter.”
Are you splitting hairs about the definition of a right? I ask this since you seem to loathe the word. According to Rev. E. Cahill in his book, The Framework of a Christian State, he defines right: “A right means something that is due to a person to complete, as it were, and round off his personality. It is defined by the philosophers as a moral power which a person has and which other persons are bound to respect, to do something, or retain something, or exact something from another…”
As regards property as a means of sustaining one’s life, Cahill says that the desire of it is a fundamental instinct of human nature. Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum teaches that “The practice of all ages has consecrated the principle of private ownership as being pre-eminently in conformity with human nature, and as conducing in the most unmistakable manner to the peace and tranquillity of human existence….the authority of the Divine Law adds its sanction, forbidding us in the severest terms to covet that which is another’s (implied right)…” In Rerum Novarum and Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno, the principle is laid down: “The right to possess private property is derived from nature, not from man.” According to medieval teaching, this right is for the efficient and peaceful working of society. Of course, this natural right to private property is opposesd to the communal ownership of property.
So, it seems that rights are born of necessity with regard to property by which one grows crops and raises animals to sustain his own life.
15 Comment by robert m. peters on 26 June 2009:
Dr. Fleming,
Your words @ F:
“Thus, while it is idle to speak of “natural rights,” we do have natural necessities and duties that require us to have a home and an income, whether that income is in the form of food or of symbolic bits of metal or paper with which we can secure food and shelter.”
Mr. Chesterbelloc @ 7,
Your words:
“Natural society and the supernatural go hand in hand, defying Maurras, as well as the liberal Christians who mandate that we must abandon our natural affections for abstract principles.”
I focus on “natural rights” from Dr. Fleming and on “abstract principles” from Mr. Chesterbelloc.
If, in fact, anything like “natural rights” and “abstract principles,” from which these “natural rights” would seem to flow, exist, they exist as the cool shade cast by the tree of responsibility, duty and obligation which are themselves the tools with which we glorify God, honor our parents, love our wives, children and friends, edify the Church and serve our communities. If there is not tree anchored deep in the soil, well full with strong branches and functioning leaves, there can be no shade from the burning sun. Contrarily, were there no sun, there would be no concept of shade, only utter blackness and no tree and no life.
Modernity/post-modernity has come to so enjoy the shade that it has made the shade into an idol and has thereby embraced the idea and executed it with violence, beginning with the French Revolution, that the shade must be emancipated from the tree which holds it hostage. So, the history of the West, since the Jacobins, has been a felling of the forest in the quest of freeing the shade from the trees.
What we have now is a barren clear cut, full of rotting logs, decaying stumps and weeds, briers and vines and no real shade, only in our vain imaginations as the sun beats down bright upon us.
As we focus of the credo of conservatives in terms of subsidiarity, we might do so in light of the reality or unreality around us.
We can run around looking for shade under weeds which bring us to itch and which prick us, which is what the masses seem to be doing; we can find the stump of an ancient tree, count its rings as they rot away and in sentimental nostalgia lament the loss of what once was and wish upon a star for what might someday again be, which is what most of us conservatives seem to be doing; or we can scour the wasteland amongst weeds, brambles and vines and find a seeding, a sapling, struggling out of the ground and there take our stand as the gardeners with dominion, the role for which we were created; and we can nurture that tree and defend it with tenacity. Since a sapling is vulnerable and since trees grow slowly, it will be the work of a lifetime or more, into the next generations. One day, however, the tree will be large enough – let’s make it an oak tree – to begin to cast a real shade again. We will need to come to understand that the tree has quite a different purpose for the shade than do we. We understand it to be a cool place to relax – to sleep in the sunny after noon, to picnic under or to muse. It is a weapon for the tree. With it, the tree smothers out the weeds, the brambles, the vines – robs them of their light. For tree’s enemies, the cool shade is the shadow of death. The shade becomes the nursery, Kindergarten and thriving place for the acorns cast forth from the tree which we and the generations after us have defended and nurtured. There is a danger, however, for the acorns in the shade of the parent tree: fall too close to the parent, in the darkest and longest lasting part of the shade and be smothered like the weeds, not unlike human children smothered by parental “love”; fall too far from the parent, out of the reach of the shade, and be consumed by the weeds which never give up their encroaching quest. Fall, however, it just the right place and become yourself a shade-casting tree, beginning the reconquest of the barren wasteland – the march of the trees.
The trees will once again march across the barren landscape if we as the gardeners who have been given dominion will take up the tools which Dr. Fleming has outlined in A-H. Hopefully, we will leave a warning which will be heeded by future generations that the cool shade of “rights” is inextricable from the strong and towering tree of duty, obligation and responsibility to God, to family, to Church and to community.
16 Comment by Gerry T. Neal on 26 June 2009:
Dr. Fleming, thank you for writing and posting this excellent statement of basic truths about real life. I especially liked how you explained the principle of subsidiarity by means of the flow of authority from basic institutions to the higher institutions of society.
17 Comment by Mark Higdon on 26 June 2009:
The Decalogue implies several God-given human “rights” via negative injunctions. “Thou shalt not” murder (take a life), steal (take property), covet (dispose oneself to take unjustly), etc. This negative articulation is not arbitrary. How could it be, since God Himself dictated His Commandments?
Therefore, to define any “right” in the affirmative risks speciousness. Indeed, we might reasonably infer rights from the Decalogue. But if so, we infer them from specific responsibilities that alone were spelled out for us by God.
What of the affirmative Commandments? In re our relationship to God, our duties to Him are spelled out. To speak of God’s “rights” would be silly, because it would suggest that mere humans are capable of violating them. We can take nothing from God. He needs nothing from us. He deserves everything. Case closed.
Our duty to honor our parents is also spelled out affirmatively. Do they have a “right” to our honor? The commandment does not state it thus; only that we have a duty to give them honor. The clear implication is that, by honoring our parents, we honor God, as is our duty: our Divine Father who gave us life via the cooperation of our earthly parents.
Politically, the word “right” is extremely problematic. Typically, many “rights” start with a want. The want becomes a need. The need becomes an entitlement. The entitlement becomes a “right.” There is no logic in this process. Nor is there any scriptural or theological foundation to it.
If only most bishops could grasp that.
18 Comment by robert m. peters on 26 June 2009:
Mr. Higdon @ 17
I agree with you. I got into a discussion just last week over Jefferson’s line in the Declaration, “We are endowed ….” I pointed out that God is the Creator of life, but that we have no “right to it.” This is one of the several weaknesses of the “Right-To-Life” folks.
We honor our parents because God commands it. Not because it is their right.
One of the points of my “tree analogy” supra is that the cool shade of “rights” is merely a by-product of the solid tree of duty, obligation and responsibility which we have, i.e. I have some expectation not to be stolen from because God has said, “Thou shalt not steal.” When I speak of “expectations,” I use it term in the sense of “I expect the law of gravity to work.” I do not have a right to the proper functioning of the law of gravity, however.
19 Comment by Robert on 26 June 2009:
#18 Mr Peters,
As usual I appreciate your comments. Obligations and duties, work and leisure, virtue and vice, law and custom, civility and rudeness, etc. are much more helpful in discovering freedom amd tranquility for the individual than abstract rights thrown against the wall of reality like a mud ball splattering every which way. Anarchy and liberty are poor substitues for exercising citizenship in my opinion, but usually better than the beast that such abstractions tend to create.(Witness the crazy inhuman acts always associated with such endeavors) That human beings keep repeating such utopian searches and experiments for a heaven on earth is at least some evidence of things unseen — “Thy Kingdom come” Or as you said,”the cool shade of “rights” is merely a by-product of the solid tree.” Agreed.
20 Comment by Mark Higdon on 26 June 2009:
“Umbrae,” “penumbrae,” “cool shades,” etc: Excuse me if I just go by what God said.
21 Comment by robert m. peters on 26 June 2009:
Mr. Higdon @ 20
I too “just go by what God said.” I was once a student of forestry and still live best when I live in the woods. It is certainly not my intent that my metaphors and analogies detract from what God has said or the important purpose of this thread, quite the contrary, in fact.
22 Comment by T. Chan on 26 June 2009:
#18.
Mr. Peters, what if right is merely a correlate of law? While we do not have a claim against God with respect to our lives, we certainly have a claim against other human beings. So in so far as we are commanded to honor our parents, we owe it to them, and they are entitled to it from us, and hence they have a “right” to it.
23 Comment by T. Chan on 27 June 2009:
Dr. Fleming, will you be adding something about the notion of the common good? It seems that the Aristotelian/Thomistic/”classical” notion of the common good, which is derived from the social nature of man, should serve to separate conservatives from those who hold to rival notions (for example, the common good being nothing more than the sum of individual goods).
24 Comment by Thomas Fleming on 27 June 2009:
In the matter of rights, there are many problems with the word, which can either refer to that which is right or normative and that which is a claim on someone else. The notion of a natural right as claim is foreign to most ancient philosophy, foreign to Thomas, foreign to the Christian tradition. It can be deduced, perhaps, from the Epicurean argument for a state of nature and social contract, but what has that to do with Christian thought–or with reality?
When Rothbard and I used to discuss these questions, he would always suggest that the ancient notion of obligation could be converted to one of rights, and I have written about this elsewhere. As a strategy for saving rights theories from the evils that generally attend them, such an approach might have uses, but, I would ask, why should we be saving a theory that is manifestly untrue and runs counter to Christianity?
While some duties may be convertible to rights, it is a dangerous step. To go, for example, from the duty of parents to take of children to the rights of children to be taken care leads to children’s rights. To go from the Christian obligation to practice charity to the rights of bums to claim our income leads to socialism.
The Decalogue does not, in fact, imply any notion of rights, though one can twist the commandments to produce them. Apart from the insistence on the priority of God over other supernatural beings, there is scarcely anything unusual about the 10 Commandments, and I have never understood why Christians should make such a fuss. Yes, they are traditionally used as a means of organizing catachesis–and very useful they are, too, for that purpose. But, does anyone think that Egyptians and Sumerians, Greeks and Romans, did not require children to honor their parents, or forbid adultery, theft, and covetousness? The wisdom literature of most higher cultures contains similar prohibitions, and Greek moral philosophy goes a great deal further in the direction of Christian philosophy. There is absolutely no philosophy or right in the Decalogue, and it seems a little perverse to read the unChristian Locke into the OT. I am not at all saying, by the way, that laws and customs of specific societies do not confer rights.
By the 19th century, the language of rights had been so triumphant that we find even Catholics trying to make good use of it. I don’t have the text of Rerum novarum before me and no time to look it up, but I would suggest to you one of two things–or both are at work. 1) The text is in Latin, and English right is ordinarily used to translate ius, with quite unfortunate results, in the case of St. Thomas. In this case I don’t know. 2) The Pope, who was a close student of Thomas, may have begun with the Thomistic conception which then became contaminated with later thought. In any event, please keep the distinction between those actions that are right by nature and according to divine law and those things we claim from others. I entirely agree with the Pope that, for example, possession of private property is a right in nature without any idea of subscribing to the notion that anybody owes me property. Of course, if I have a legal title to property, it is wrong, both in nature and according to divine law, for another to take it away.
25 Comment by Thomas Fleming on 27 June 2009:
This came in from Brock H as a comment on my earlier column:
“Scott Richert @54:
I just finished Human Action last month. A very tough read for an uneducated youngster like myself. I personally found that it was only the popular CONVICTIONS many (but not all) Christians experience, which Mises questioned and dismissed into the realm of subjective valuation, not the faith in its entirety. As for his direct references to Christianity you read in Socialism, I’ll take your word for it, of course.
Dr. Fleming @55:
After rejecting Marxist, Keynesian, and Chicago schools of economic principles, the Austrian school was where I recently arrived. What do you recommend, if none of the above?
My response: I am not an economist and take little interest in the subject except as a branch of moral and political philosophy–which is how Smith, Mises, Hayek practiced it. Mises and Hayek may be completely correct (except, obviously, where they disagree with each other) on the details of their analysis of how markets work and yet be completely wrong about human nature, as they appear to me to be. The parallel is evolutionary biology. I have no trouble in studying and using the work of Darwinists and sociobiologists while at the same time regarding their theory of the universe and man with the contempt I generally reserve for children and primitives.
26 Comment by Edward on 27 June 2009:
You wrote about this extensively in The Morality of Everyday Life, and in it you point out that if people do indeed have “rights,” meaning claims upon others, then government is immediately brought to the forefront of our social relations. For instance, if a child has “rights” in some abstract sense then he obviously has them whether his parents care for him properly or not. If they do not care for him properly, however, he still maintains his rights and therefore requires government to enforce them, many times over and above the authority of his parents.
This example demonstrates that rights are by nature alien to our particular obligations, which is why they serve as justification for greater government control over our very lives. Indeed, Locke sees them as the very raison d’etre for government itself.
27 Comment by Thomas Fleming on 27 June 2009:
Another roughly conceived and crudely expressed set of principles:
II Society is Natural. Man is a natural being but in his own mind at least he is not an exclusively natural being. In most human societies including those of the progenitors of our civilization (Greeks, Jews, Romans, and the Germanic/Celtic/Slavic barbarians), man has aspirations beyond getting and begetting. Men have usually seen their own social and cultural order as a reflection of a supranatural order. For the Greeks, the originators of viticulture, music, bee-keeping, etc. were gods or divinely inspired heroes.
A Man’s nature is art, which is another way of saying we are social and cultural beings as well as natural beings. Thus it is not enough for a commonwealth not to make war on property and income and marriage. In living together with our fellows, we naturally pursue these supranatural ends, but together not as individuals.
B It follows that in a healthy society these higher instincts toward worship and toward the crafts that represent and elevate reality—poetry, painting, music—are not stifled but nurtured.
C But since neither religion nor “the arts” are purely individual enterprises, we cannot properly speak of “freedom of expression” or freedom or religion.
D Since we are born both into families and into communities where cooperation is required for our survival and propagation, our natural egotism, which leads us to seek our own good, is and must be balanced by a concern for the common good in which we share. I say “is,” because it is a fact—demonstrated by Axelrod’s game theory studies as well as by history and experience—that raw egotism is destructive not only to society but to the egotist. Another way of putting this is that while we may often prefer to speak in the first person singular—of the “ego”—we also have to speak in the first person plural—the “nos.” Every “nos” implies a set of “egos” and every “ego” a “nos.” And, there are multiple “nos.” When I say “I,” I am implying a set of we’s that include my parents and children, my colleagues and/or friends, my fellow-citizens (though that concept in America is rather weak, so weak as to have hardly an meaning these days.) Since there is no “I” that does not imply a “we”—since I am defined, in fact, by “we,” then nothing could be more fatuous than to speak, as liberals and libertarians do, as if society does not exist except as a random collection of competing individuals.
28 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 27 June 2009:
Is there any other conservative magazine, site or forum in which one can participate in such elevated and elucidating discourse? I tip my hat to the participants, and offer Dr. Fleming & co. my thanks for providing this resource.
29 Comment by Mark Higdon on 27 June 2009:
@24 “The Decalogue does not, in fact, imply any notion of rights…”
If this comment was directed at what I said @17, I point out my use of scare quotes around the word rights in my opening sentence.
My statement in the second paragraph–”Indeed, we might reasonably infer rights from the Decalogue. But if so, we infer them from specific responsibilities that alone were spelled out for us by God.”–is the better articulation of my main point. I added that such inference, even if reasonable, does not make for good politics or policy.
I think I am in fundamental agreement with TJF: If God had intended to confer “rights” upon us, He would have used the word.
30 Comment by Chesterbelloc on 27 June 2009:
Mr. Peters
I am curious what cultural “saplings”, outside of our family obligations, you see as particularly important to protect.
31 Comment by Michael Morow on 27 June 2009:
“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
— Sandra Day O’Conner, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992).
“Our long national nightmare is over. Our constitution works.”
Gerald F. Ford, August 9, 1974
“I know a wind in purpose strong–
It spins against the way it drives
What if the gulfs their slimed foundations bare?
So deep must the stones be hurled
Whereon the throes of ages rear
The final empire and the happier world.
(The poor old Past,
The Future’s slave,
She drudged through pain and crime
To bring about the blissful Prime,
Then–perished! There’s a grave!)
Power unanointed may come–
Dominion (unsought by the free)
And the Iron Dome,
Stronger for stress and strain,
Fling her huge shadow athwart the main;
But the Founders’ dream shall flee.”
– Herman Melville, The Conflict of Convictions (1860-1)
32 Comment by Robert on 27 June 2009:
Todard at @28 … I agree.
Mr. Worrow@31… my thanks for the poem.
“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
— Sandra Day O’Conner, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992).
“Since we are born both into families and into communities where cooperation is required for our survival and propagation, our natural egotism, which leads us to seek our own good, is and must be balanced by a concern for the common good in which we share.” Tom Fleming quoting from the Tradition
One must wonder what Justice O’Conner could have meant by this libertine notion of individualism. Our prisons and mental hospitals are full of folks pursuing their liberty. Did she ever qualify these remarks with some recognition of the common good and the perennial tradition expressed by Dr. Fleming? The ancients thought it more important to think correctly than to think for ones self. Selfishness in our tradition is the dragon and the Father of Lies who one should always pray to be delivered from, even a “primitive” like Beowulf knew the difference between the inspirations of Meade Hall and the inspirations of the cold beast. Or to put in familiar language, it is by losing ones self that the abundant life is discovered. Which may be why his story endures while other, less noble men, have been lost to the tides of time.
33 Comment by Brandon Zaffini on 27 June 2009:
This was interesting to read. I agree with the outcome or result of your argument– which would lead to the principle of local self rule and an acknowledgement of local/familial spheres of authority– but i’m not comfortable witht the assumption that “rights” don’t exist and are incompatible with Christianity.
I quote above from Mark Higdon.
“Therefore, to define any “right” in the affirmative risks speciousness. Indeed, we might reasonably infer rights from the Decalogue. But if so, we infer them from specific responsibilities that alone were spelled out for us by God. What of the affirmative Commandments? In re our relationship to God, our duties to Him are spelled out. To speak of God’s “rights” would be silly, because it would suggest that mere humans are capable of violating them. We can take nothing from God. He needs nothing from us. He deserves everything. Case closed.”
I’m not sure I follow this argument. You say “He (God) deserves everything.” Could it not be said that God has the “right” to everything then?
And why would it follow that God having rights would mean they could be violated– especially when your very next sentence stated that “we can take nothing from God?”
Here’s how I understand it: God deserves and owns everything– regardless of how hard we may try to deny this. Our finite and arrogant denial of God’s glorious dignity can not in any way rob God of His dignity, however. In other words, we can not steal from God because we belong to God. We can be GUILTY of robbing God of His glory (by not living toward that end), but we can not truly rob God of his glory– since in his sovereign wisdom He is using our rebellion FOR His glory.
In other words, God does indeed have the right to an acknowledgement of His glory from his creation– and He will indeed receive this acknowledgement. We may deny all we want, but our denial will just work toward a greater display of His glory at the end of time; our punishment will be a greater display of God’s glory by displaying His justice, for example.
We can be guilty of stealing from God, yet rob Him of nothing.
Man also has rights, based on our dignity found in God. Genesis 9:6. “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.”
Notice that life is valuable because we are made in the image of God. Life is a right because of our dignity found in God.
Next consider Genesis 1: 26-28: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth’ Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”
Did you see that? Again, the basis of property and the freedom to enjoy and “have dominion” is inevitably tied to our dignity in God.
These “rights” are protected in the ten commandments (those “negative injuctions”), but they have their basis in the dignity of man as a creature made in the image of God. I don’t know how you can possibly maintain that we are commanded to acknowledge the right others have to property and life– yet somehow they really don’t have the right to property and life?
How can we possibly acknowledge this right then?
I think Jefferson’s line in the declaration of independence is essentially correct. Men have in fact been created with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness– or life, liberty and property.
The idea of liberty (or liberty under the law) comes through very clearly in the creation account (Genesis 2:16-17)
34 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 27 June 2009:
Dr. Fleming, may I raise for discussion a problem in relation to subsidiarity, which I do not believe equates to federalism? It smacks of an administrative device rather than a true federal principle. As usually described, subsidiarity says that certain powers should be exercised at certain levels because they are appropriate there. Who decides? This amounts to a prudential and utilitarian defense of dispersed power. It suggests a higher authority that permits or assigns certain functions to lower levels. That suggests Renaissance absolutism and rationalism, which you so rightly condemn here and in your great books. It seems to me the Medieval teaching (Athanasius and I believe Acquinas implicitly) and your own wisdom in regard to human nature and the origins of community suggest a very different basis. True federalism bnegins in the organic human community and spreads outward, federating at successive levels. Legitimate authority moves from the bottom up, which is the only way it can work if we take it as a given that the human family and community by natural
law are entitled to self-preservation. This inevitably calls for what our American forefathers described as consent of the governed. Subsidiarity becomes only a well-intentioned amendment to absolutism which ultimately leaves the natural human community without authority.
35 Comment by T. Chan on 27 June 2009:
Dr. Fleming, I was going to speculate as to some connections between a proper conception of the common good and subsidiarity, but perhaps now if I might add to Dr. Wilson’s comment–it seems to me that it is proper is for authorities in charge of “lesser communities,” from the family all the way up to the civitas, to directly foster the development of the virtues, while the authorities of greater communities (provinces and federations and such) properly care for the interests shared by those lesser communities making up the greater community, like defense.
I also think that contemporary Catholic formulations of subsidiarity (such as the one offered in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church) do admit of the interpretation that Dr. Wilson finds problematic. Perhaps this is only a prudential recognition of the dominance of the nation-state, and not necessarily the ideal which would be advanced by the Church? I myself am not sure that this charitable reading really works.
I think one reason why a better understanding of subsidarity is obscured to Catholics is because we are no longer able to distinguish between imperfect and perfect communities. We do not think that this difference should guide our political arrangements. As a result of the consolidation of economic power by a few and the interdependence that this generates, we do not know believe that a civitas should be mostly self-supporting. This in turn has contributed to our failure to grasp the human scale. Why shouldn’t the focus of our identity and citizenship be the nation-state, rather than something more local?
36 Comment by Robert on 27 June 2009:
#33″Subsidiarity becomes only a well-intentioned amendment to absolutism which ultimately leaves the natural human community without authority.”
It seems to me that the source of authority in the long sweep of cultures and the ages is always from the divine. In the western culture for the last two thousand years, it has had its source in the Incarnation and the institution established by Him to keep and teach this revelation. Once this authority is rejected as false or in need of a reform that dilutes or contradicts the original deposit then the consent of the governed or the sense of the faithful becomes the source of authority for communities. This experiment has always been successful in proving that men are in need of the divine.
37 Comment by jack bailey on 28 June 2009:
I believe that all the points in the “Politics of Human Nature” as stated are self evident and have been transmitted from the generation to generation for ages. The fact that we need to write them down means that we are not sure that everyone gets them.
38 Comment by Thomas Fleming on 28 June 2009:
I believe that Dr. Wilson is perfectly correct in criticizing the use of subsidiarity by most Catholics in our lifetime. That is why I chose to describe the principle in more or less Althusian terms, as a source of authority that radiates from the primary organic union of male and female up to the commonwealth. Obviously, each society expresses this principle in different ways, just as each society has its own version of family and kinship, but the principle is as universal as the laws of nature. Indeed, it is a law of nature. I shall have to insert in part I a brief statement on Natural Law, that it is not simply an operation of right reason but an organic law of our moral and social nature. But, it should be noted, that the rather more restrictive term federalism is susceptible to exactly the same abuses. I rarely use the term subsidiarity in my own writing because of this problem.
And yes, Mr. Bailey, these are kindergarten principles, but if we cannot find common ground at this level, we shall never find it. I remember my old friend Thomas Molnar, who after reading my first book, The Politics of Human Nature, wondering if it was really necessary to go into so much detail and footnoting simply to prove that men and women are different, that the family is natural, that it is wrong to deprive natural and basic forms of community of the power to make decisions. The shock and horror with which that book was greeted by many people who opened it made my point. What Cicero and Thomas could take for granted and then build on, is not the opposite of received opinion since the days of Descartes.
39 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 28 June 2009:
Granted, gabble about “rights,” especially “individual rights,” has been infinitely destructive. Yet we are postulating that there is something in the nature of Creation and in our human nature that makes it rightful that we preserve and procreate ourselves. Is this not to say that “Man is endowed by Nature’s God with certain unalienable rights”? I know no other way to express it. Is this not what C.S. Lewis was describing in The Abolition of Man? This avowal by no means invalidates, in either principle or practice, the natural hierarchies that Dr. Fleming has described. It certainly did not do so for our forefathers who made the statement. They were defending the self-government of genuine communities and their natural hierarchies against the claims to authority of rationalistic central power. Nor does the statement validate the claim of some people on the existence of other people, which is what is meant by blather about “rights” since the American Founding was corrupted by decayed Puritanism and European ideologies. Certainly natural communities can sometimes be oppressive, but centralised power is always oppressive. This is why I seek to establish the basis for a genuine federalism. I do not believe that an appeal to the authority of the head of the Church answers the necessity. Bob Dole thinks it is federalism when the U.S. government tells the States to do something rather than doing it itself. In the same way, subsidiarity becomes merely a grant from an absolute authority, not az defense of human community.
40 Comment by Robert on 28 June 2009:
” I do not believe that an appeal to the authority of the head of the Church /”
Who is appealing to the authority of the head of a Church? The Pope has litle authority in the way you use the term, Dr. Wilson In fact he would be better served to throw his encylcals in the Tiber River as to think anyone is listening. This fact ,however, has nothing to do with his authority to teach. It is as if one pointed to a southern slave owner who abused his slaves and say he had the authority to do so. Or because he lacked the authority to do evil, the Southern culture was corrupt and should have been invaded by nice Northerners. I was simply discussing the sources of authority in human relations and found it not in some arbitrary collection of “free people” living in proximity to each other.
41 Comment by Thomas Fleming on 28 June 2009:
I do not see how Jefferson’s pernicious language can be turned to any good use. We know where his views and language come from, and while each of us, at one time or another, has attempted to take the sting out, that exercise is of little value these days. With the benefit of hindsight, we know where the argument is headed. I cannot speak for Lewis, who is a wise essayist but far from being a serious or disciplined philosopher. If you are referring to his invocation of the “Tao,” then I would say, no, he is not at all speaking of rights but of a natural law accessible to all cultures through the agency of the Logos by whom our world was created.
But, I would add, that I have not postulated either Creator or Creation so far in this discussion. I am only speaking of what we can observe of man as a biological being and man as a social being in history. If we wish to turn to religion, then we should use the language of our religion, which has never been, properly, the language of rights. Christ did not go up on the mountain and proclaim, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they have been endowed with unalienable rights.”
42 Comment by Thomas Fleming on 28 June 2009:
To Mr. Zaffini, I can only say that a case can be said to be closed only when the best authorities over a long period of time have agreed on something. In the case of natural rights, this is not only not true but the opposite of the truth. Quoting translations of the Scriptures in which rights are not mentioned and then making up a political theology to connect them is not even part of a serious discussion, much less a conclusive refutation. What Mr. Zaffini does prove is that American Christianity is really Americanism with a Christian veneer. This became very clear when Catholics, who should have known better, cancelled their subscriptions to the Wanderer, because of columns that stated the Church’s historic position.
43 Comment by robert m. peters on 28 June 2009:
Dr. Fleming,
Your words @ 42:
“Quoting translations of the Scriptures in which rights are not mentioned and then making up a political theology to connect them is not even part of a serious discussion, much less a conclusive refutation. What Mr. Zaffini does prove is that American Christianity is really Americanism with a Christian veneer.”
The core text for last Sunday’s lesson in my class:
Galations 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
One of my students said, “This proves that Christ did away with slavery.”
My response was that if this text proves that Christ did away with slavery then the couples class (male and female), which I was teaching and in which the young man was sitting, could not possibly exist, since all of us in the room claimed to be “in Christ.”
44 Comment by Chesterbelloc on 28 June 2009:
I think one can say that every person has both natural duties to fulfill, and natural authority to exercise. Some duties and authorities are common to all, but a person’s circumstances and talents naturally give him or her particular duties and authorities. “Sine auctoritate nulla vita”
This seems to be more realistic than a single set of abstract rights that apply to everyone.
45 Comment by Allen Wilson on 29 June 2009:
I would appear that, in any case one can think of, it is possible to make laws which are based on a concept of duties and responsibilities rather than rights. For instance, it would be possible to pass laws which lay out the way in which parents who fail in their duty to take care of their children properly should be dealt with, all without creating any ‘right’ of children to anything.
46 Comment by Chesterbelloc on 29 June 2009:
@45
It does seem like a better way of dealing with any issue. Rather than making abstract speeches about Iraqi human rights, we can recognize that we have at most a slight duty to assist reformers within their country, and no authority to invade their country or starve their children with an embargo.
Or, as Dr. Fleming said, we may have a duty to give charity to the homeless in our community, but they do not have the authority to take our property. When you speak of abstract rights in this case you are on the road to socialism.
47 Comment by Thomas Fleming on 29 June 2009:
A brief statement of Natural Law in the older sense.:
G One way of understanding our natural necessities is to view them as clauses in the Natural Law, which is far from being a set of abstractions deduced by right reason in an exercise of rationality. Natural Law is a law of nature, the law of our moral, social, and political nature. Most of its provisions can be learned by a long-term process of observation and induction. Men marry, beget children, and assume responsibility for wife (or wives) and children. This is close enough to being universal to give us indication of the law. On the other hand, we can also discover some parts of the Law by observing what happens when it is breached: Murderers are routinely killed, either by a government or by the victim’s relatives or friends; thieves lose their property; adulterers are beaten or killed, etc. While the Natural Law is not perfectly observed by men, one might make a rough statistical approximation. It is the norm on which most cultures and nearly all higher civilizations converge.
48 Comment by Thomas Fleming on 29 June 2009:
II E E Education, then, does not mean a government-controlled system by which children are liberated from the religion, morality, and culture of their parents, nor is it some scheme adopted by eccentric parents in order to produce some peculiar sort of person. Education is the means by which a healthy society turns bestial little savages into members in good-standing of the society, men and women who will take the place of their parents’ generation. Real education, thus, is by definition a conservative process by which continuity is secured. Education is also to be distinguished from job training, vocational education, or professional schools. A man may be a skilled plumber or neurosurgeon and yet remain a barbarian. Education is the collective enteprize by which a society or culture preserves its identity.
49 Comment by robert on 29 June 2009:
Dr. Fleming,
It is at least some evidence of how far we have fallen that we must resort to anthropological studies about man as an animal –who breeds, begets, raises the young, protects his own from predators, his useful tools and property from invasion and other activities which he shares with the animal kingdom. Yet, the “rational animal” as known by Aristotle or Shakespear is rather unique in that he is a little higher than the animals but lower than the angels. Evidently we are at a stage in cultural development or decline where we must first rediscover what makes us an animal before we can take up the larger question of what makes us men.
If we carefully consider the human soul in its nature, we see two different regions in it: the one belongs to the sensible order, the other to the supersensible or intellectual order. The sensible part of the soul is that which is common to men and animals; it includes the external senses and the internal senses which comprise the imagination, the sensible memory, and the sensitive appetites, whence spring the various passions or emotions which we call sensible love and hatred, desire and aversion, sensible joy and sadness, hope and despair, audacity, fear and anger. All this sensitive life exists in the animal, whether its passions are mild like those of the dove or lamb, or whether they are strong like those of the wolf or ox. Above this sensitive part common to men and animals, our nature likewise possesses an intellectual part which is common to men and angels, although it is far more vigorous and beautiful in the angel. By this intellectual part our soul towers above the body, and this is why we say the soul is spiritual. True intelligence which alone deserves the name of “intellect unqualified”, is a faculty which, if it not be hindered as a result of insubordination on the part of the lesser faculties, its appointed handmaids, will fly straight to the mark. It does not think. It sees. The catalyzing of this power to see, which everyone bears within himself, whether he be aware of it or not, is the aim of spiritual life in every man.
Marco Pallis, Private correspondence
50 Comment by David Wihowski on 30 June 2009:
Dr. Fleming, Thank you for taking the patience to clearly and simply present this topic. It is something I will refer to often. We know it, it is basic knowledge, but in our culture we need it before us always. We are like the losing football team who thinks fancy plays and tricks will make them a winning team; they need the coach to remind them to get back to basics.
You cannot live a day, nay, hardly an hour, in our culture without encountering someone who assaults these basics from some idealogical viewpoint. This has been a most valuable article.
51 Comment by Michael Kenny on 1 July 2009:
I was taught subsidiarity as being the basis of Catholic social and political thought but I was also taught that most of the rest of what Americans call “conservatism” is contrary to Cathoilc social teaching for the reasons Dr Fleming sets out in point F. Equally, the Catholic principle should not be confused with Margaret Thatcher’s hijacking of the name to cover her policy of undermining the EU in the interest of US hegemony.
52 Pingback by Some articles for your consideration | Conservative Heritage Times on 2 July 2009:
[...] You can find out about Chronicles new credo for “conservatives and other sane people”. [...]
53 Comment by Frank on 2 July 2009:
Reply to Dr. Fleming: I like the approach of what you describe as neo-federalism provided it results in a great deal of decentralisation. In many parts of the world definable national boundaries exist, so it seems reasonable that some would prefer this neo-federalism while others with a fuzzier national identity might prefer federalism.
Also, modern economies of scale are also larger than those of the past, so it’s expected that larger societal units would now exist and require a greater degree of management than in the past, though of course that loss of roots and trusting of strangers is partly what’s made modern societies so dangerous.
Reply to Robert @ #3: Surely it’s possible for that same “Old Paganism” to arise again as well. It’s arguable that ties to the old have been lost, but to say the characteristics you cite praise of are impossible to recreate is bold and in need of explanation.
54 Comment by Frank on 2 July 2009:
Truly decentralisation serves the best interests of the state, so I don’t see the need to fend off state encroachment with the federalist/subsidiarist approach even if I’m fond of most of the results of that same approach.
55 Comment by robert on 2 July 2009:
“It’s arguable that ties to the old have been lost, but to say the characteristics you cite praise of are impossible to recreate is bold and in need of explanation.”
Frank,
This is a good question. The ancient definition was of a creature who had life in two worlds: his body was rooted in the earth and his soul swept out across the horizons to a world beyond. His name was man. Aristotelian man and Platonic man. The two were integrated in the Incarnation. Doubting Thomas and St. John were both satisfied when the Word was made flesh. This unity has been lost and perhaps recoverable as you say.
More thoughtful men than myself — Joseph Cambell, Aldous Huxley, Mircea Iliade and many, many others — seem to think the Christian revelation is now inadequate and another path through the enuui and hate of modern life must be found. If there own efforts are any evidence of the difficulty in men revealing God,the task would seem rather hopeless — Although consistent with their beginning principle that men create gods and not God creating men.
My own thoughts on the matter were vividly displayed recently when a dear mentor and friend of mine (and myself) visited Chartre Cathedral. The labryinth on the floor was being occupied not by pilgrims immitating life’s pilgrimage through earth to heaven, but by a coven of witches dressed in red receiving power from the summer solstice and engaging in group hugs in what in a happier age was a symbol of the Holy City. I think these new adventures will become more prevalent and more sadistic before Christians can regroup and return to the God of their Fathers. Joeseph Cambell for instance was born and raised a Catholic and what he found in other religions he was unable to see or love in his own. But this is mere opinion, men are not given the power to know the future and we can all thank God for that.
56 Comment by Bill Rolen on 4 July 2009:
Your credo mimics the C of CC Statement of Priniciples, written by the late Sam Francis. Except our Statement embodies racial realities while omitting esoteric and pedantic dramaturgy.
57 Comment by Thomas Fleming on 5 July 2009:
Curioser and curioser. I know nothing of the Citizens’ Council’s Statement of Principles, though it is not strange that two men who first met about 1969 and collaborated on many projects together should have common views. Sam Francis, however, did not agree with me at all on the topic of subsidiarity and despite the many warnings of his friends, he very foolishly associated himself with the know-nothings and con artists who pretend to lead the Great White Race to victory. I understand why people are frightened into joining the C of CC. I am sorry for them, but it is a sign of spiritual emptiness.