Friday, February 10, A.D. 2012

Abortion as a Sacrament

Last month before the March for Life, I was thinking about an idea that I have encountered in recent years that abortion is a sacrament for the Left. Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life notes that Ginette Paris published the book, The Sacrament of Abortion, in A.D. 1992, wherein she supports abortion as a pagan affirmation of life. I was surprised that the idea has its origin on the Left, but I should get used to the perversity of this world. Although the prophet Isaiah proclaims, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!,” one must not forget that the wicked delight in wickedness.

Upon reflection, however, I think that the Left’s position is remarkably consistent given human nature. Consider sacrifice and its place in human society. Sacrifice is pretty much a universal human phenomenon. Man gives up something dear to his gods. Crudely, this act is seen as a transaction wherein the sacrificer seeks to appease divine anger or curry divine favor. The more philosophical understanding is that by sacrifice man makes clear to himself and to everyone the proper order of being, where lesser goods are given up for greater ones. The act of sacrifice to the gods demonstrates vividly to the human soul and to the human community the appropriate hierarchy of the world; it is an impressive (as in impression making) act that proclaims the community’s ranking of values.

Among sacrifices, none is greater than offering human life, especially the life of a child who represents the very continued existence of the human community of which he is part. We find stories of child sacrifice repellant, and we are quick to condemn the practitioners of such acts as evil and demonic. However, from their point of view, they are offering their most precious good to the divine. In the scripture, we read of the Moabite king:

And when the king of Moab saw that the battle was too sore for him, he took with him seven hundred men that drew sword, to break through unto the king of Edom; but they could not. Then he took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt-offering upon the wall. And there came great wrath upon Israel; and they departed from him, and returned to their own land.

The king killed his son and successor to gain divine power. It is obvious from the story that he did not want to do this for its own sake. He did it to prevail in battle and to save his kingdom, and it appeared to have worked. We on the Abrahamic side of the story might conclude that his murdering his son would only have pleased demons, and the great wrath was not a divine force but a Satanic one. Nonetheless, from the Moabite point of view, offering one’s own child to the gods was the most powerful offering because it was the greatest sacrifice possible. What more can a loving father give than his own child? Child sacrifice, seen in this light, is the supreme act of submission.

We have this in our own heritage with Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac. Of course, the Lord saved Isaac at the last moment, but there can be no doubt that the test of Abraham demanded the most from him that God could ask. As Christians, we further see the extreme expression of sacrifice in the crucifixion of Christ, and I propose that the sacrifice on Golgotha is the archetype for all sacrifice. Every sacrifice, whether burnt, blood, or living, of fruits, beasts, or human beings, of enemies, friends, or children, is an imperfect attempt to copy the sacrifice of Jesus the Christ—“the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”—whose peculiar metaphysical status makes the crucifixion an eternally significant event that connects time and space to that which is beyond being. Consider, for instance, how the author of the letter to the Hebrews contrasts the temple cult to the sacrifice of Christ.

What, then, does this talk of child cacrifice have to do with abortion?

I believe that the positions and goals of the “Left” are the logical consequences of modernity. By that, I mean that the shift in world views that occurred in the late medieval period and Renaissance has been playing itself out over the past seven centuries, and the “cutting edge” of this development is, unsurprisingly, the “progressive” Left. The end of the Middle Ages saw the rise of nominalism—a philosophical doctrine that denies that essences exist in the world. The Franciscans who created this theory did so from a certain kind of piety, thinking that formal ontological realities limited the power of God. They thus conceived God as an omnipotent and unrestricted will, disconnected from and superior to anything known and, therefore, to knowing. This fundamental change in thinking about God revolutionized everything else, including the West’s understanding of nature and of mankind. Will has become the most important reality. Indeed, it is the only reality in quite a few philosophical currents. Having discarded the divine will, atheists keep only the human will, or perhaps will as such, and the will remains the touchstone for all other considerations. This change is the origin of all modern philosophical movements, almost all of which deify the will and discard any restraint upon the will. As with the original nominalists’ theology, the elevation of will corresponds to a diminution of truth. For truth is a restriction upon will, and the glorification of will necessarily accompanies a demotion of the intellect. For if we admit that there is reality apart from will, then the will’s freedom and scope become limited as there would be truths independent of the will. In summary, modernity is fundamentally an idolatry of the will.

I do not know if we should blame this aberration on the medieval nominalists or on Augustine who ensnared the West with the will’s tangle, but I do think that the reduction of reality to the will underlies all modern madness from the Cartesian mastery of nature to liberalism to utilitarianism to nihilism to Marxism to fascism to feminism to postmodernism to all the insane -isms that afflict men’s minds. Contemporary political thinking remains a prisoner in these fetters.

One obvious problem when everything is reduced to will is how we manage conflicting wills. One possibility is the Darwinian world where the stronger overcome the weaker. Think of Nietzsche’s will to power and the struggle of wills that we call life. Then, there are the ways of liberalism, where society attempts to maximize the ability of each will to exercise its power. Classical liberals seek to manage such conflicts loosely by instituting general rules of fairness, whereas egalitarian liberals want to engineer a society wherein each will has an equal ability to manifest its power. For why should one will be considered more important than another? If will is the fundamental reality, then everything else such as talent, intelligence, fortune, and discipline are irrelevant in discussions of justice. A just world is one of equal outcomes that allow equal opportunities to exercise power. Biology, consequences of decisions, and considerations of social stability cannot have any standing in this court of justice; for they are external to will and the Left is therefore uncomfortable with them. Nature must be reconstructed to agree with our choices, not the other way around. Something is willed; it therefore must be.

Therein, we see how abortion is a sacrament. For one sacrifices his children to his highest god, and there is no higher authority or power in the modern world than the individual will. Abortion is our society’s form of child sacrifice where babies are killed on the altar of the ego. There is no higher authority than the will; there is no greater good than the will’s current object. Abortion is simply a powerful manifestation of this belief. It is an affirmation in the superiority of the will over instinct, tradition, morality, and nature. The sacrificing priests of old both represented and taught the community through their sacrifices, and contemporary women and abortionists do the same in our society. Hear, all ye nations, the will is most supreme. Choice is sacred.

Posted by Joseph on Friday, February 10, A.D. 2012
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Wednesday, October 5, A.D. 2011

Leftist Self Mastery

Earlier in the week, a commentator on View from the Right expressed an insight that I really appreciated. The post, “The truth that liberalism prohibits, even as it exploits it,” concerned a reader’s puzzlement concerning leftist promotion of homosexual “marriage.” Another reader then provided the following gem (with Auster’s comments bracketed in bold, as is his custom):

S. writes:

. . . The liberal psychologist Jonathan Haidt has done fascinating research into the moral psychology of liberals and traditional conservatives. He acknowledges that even many liberals find homosexuality deeply repulsive. He claims that liberals typically react by assuming that they are the one with the problem, and that they need to overcome their “bigoted” reaction by repressing the natural reaction of disgust. They see this as virtuous because they are allowing their “rational” egalitarian impulses to overcome their “irrational” and “bigoted” moral impulses. I think this partly explains the recent push towards the normalization of ever more bizarre forms of sexual expression like transsexuality. The more disgusting some deviant behavior is, the more the liberal can practice the virtues of tolerance and non-discrimination by accepting and promoting it. If the behavior is truly perverse and revolting, it is a heroic act to tolerate it and accept it, an act of liberal supererogation, as it were. [LA replies: That’s a new variation on Auster’s First Law! Under liberalism, the more vile and perverted an act is, the more virtuous it is to tolerate it.]

In the traditional morality of virtue, one attempts to exercise control over one’s baser desires and animal passions. One eventually learns to tame these passions, thereby achieving the kind of self-mastery that is necessary for spiritual development. The liberal, on the other hand, achieves a different kind of self-mastery. He learns to control and suppress his natural moral passions, so that he can forge a society in which all people are free to indulge their baser desires without fear of social censure.

LA replies:

Excellent comment. It’s often been said that liberalism inverts traditional morality. You have shown more precisely how this is the case. The traditionalist, in order to become a better person, restrains his baser behaviors. The liberal, in order to become a better person, restrains his belief in morality.

S. replies (before he saw my bolded response to him making the same point):

This phenomenon dovetails nicely with your theory that in a liberal society, the worse a designated victim class behaves the more forbidden it is to criticize it. The more obvious it becomes that some minority group is transgressing the bounds of decency and morality, the more heroically virtuous it is to tolerate their transgressions and to punish those who speak the truth.

S. continues:

Come to think of it, this phenomenon may lend some measure of credence to Steve Sailer’s “status competition” theory of liberal insanity. In any group of people with shared values and norms, there will be ideas about virtue and vice. Those who most embody the virtues will have enhanced social standing. Hence, in liberal society, the more tolerant and permissive you are of vile and revolting behaviors, the more you distance yourself from the benighted non-liberal and the more you demonstrate your virtues to your peer. If you can accept even outrageous offenses against decency and nature, you are the liberal version of Aristotle’s great souled man, able to expect much and receive much.

S. demonstrates in this comment how a degenerate form of Kantian morality perverts human nature. From what I have witnessed of our upside down contemporary world, I believe that S. analyzes finely.

In case you were wondering about Auster’s First Law of Majority-Minority Relations in Liberal Society, you may wish to read “Clarifying the First Law.”

Posted by Joseph on Wednesday, October 5, A.D. 2011
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Tuesday, September 27, A.D. 2011

Moral Greed

On George Michalopulos’ site, Monomakhos, readers have been arguing about yet another confusing and boring topic involving ecclesial politics in the O.C.A. I sometimes attempt to follow these discussions for the interesting tangents that appear in the threads. Just so, comments in the recent post about Bishop Melchizedek referred to the Pokrov crew. Pokrov is a web site that publicizes accusations of clerical impropriety. It claims to be “a resource for survivors of abuse in the Orthodox Church.” Though such a ministry seems beneficial, the witch hunting tendencies of Pokrov remind me of the politically ambitious district attorneys who ginned up sexual abuse cases against the childcare industry decades ago in order to appear as protectors of the people. Commentator Helga wrote:

My experience of reading “Pokrov” is that they are attention-seekers who feed off of strife and upheaval. . . .

Also, Pokrov seems to glory in creating scandal where none exists . . .

My friend Andrew coined the condition that the Pokrov women suffer “moral greed.” It consists in eagerly anticipating scandal so that one may exercise outrage and disgust. For it is in railing against whatever abuse or “social injustice” the morally greedy encounter that they find their happiness and self actualization. It is Manicheism for the Lifetime Channel, though the fastidiousness of these righteous ones curiously only applies to a narrow spectrum of proper behavior. The hypocrisy and prelest of the Puritans of yore have been passed down to their post-Christian heirs who manifest that old hallowed sanctimony in The Vagina Monologues, Shantytowns, and P.E.T.A. antics. With Pokrov, it is not as bad. The Pokrovettes are more like Nancy Grace in a Russian shawl.

Lusting after power and prestige has often accompanied social reformers and crusaders for progress, from the Gracchi to that patchouli smelly girl on campus who refuses to shave her armpits lest she capitulate to the phallocracy. Whether these folks pander to the masses or score self righteous street cred among fellow radicals, many who claim to seek the betterment of mankind are simply competing for status and gain among their peculiar peers. Even a brief sojourn with leftist activists will teach you all that you need to know about the character type. True love of virtue and true charity for mankind are much rarer, and the bearers of such qualities typically improve the world without making their chief focus the shortcomings of everyone else.

There is obviously a need for muckraking in this fallen world, and the weak will always require champions on their behalf. However, there is a temptation that follows such good work, wherein one aquires a taste for righteous indignation and thereafter greedily sets off in search of offenses to fight and victims to protect. As such, we should be thankful for the good work that Pokrov has done. We must not tolerate clerical abuse. Consider the Roman Church’s problems from the past few generations; disease was allowed to fester, and the rot damaged many lives. A “watchdog” for clerical abuse performs a good service for the Church. However, the overreach and hysteria of Pokrov demonstrate that even well intentioned paths might lead to peril. There are predatory clerics, but there are also predatory laymen who realize what power they can wield through false accusations. Pokrov enthusiastically enables such folks, and their mission may have perverted them by making them hostile to traditional hierarchy and authority in the Church. They label Orthodox monasticism cultish, and they have whored themselves out to modernists who despise traditional Orthodox praxis and doctrine.

In the midst of those who truly labor for justice there is a mighty crowd of busybodies who have discovered a guise for their vice that earns them praise, respect, and money. Among them are mediocre, passive aggressive souls who nevertheless seek status and dominion over others. They lack the typical traits of leadership that result in such, but they have tasted a parasitic form of power by bringing down the exalted and proud. And they hunger for more. They are the high priestesses of slave morality.

Posted by Joseph on Tuesday, September 27, A.D. 2011
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Tuesday, July 26, A.D. 2011

Breivik a Monster?

Yesterday, I wrote about the futility of worrying about Anders Breivik’s besmirching contemporary conservative causes in “One of Us?” Commentary from the entire political spectrum has condemned Breivik as a monster, and I want to examine that charge. Is the Norwegian killer a monster?

Leftists generally do not have the right to accuse anyone of being a monster, having dismissed, as they have, morality and ethical principles. When the nihilistic Left criticizes anyone in moral terms, one must ask if their ethical worrying is simply an attempt to manipulate the masses who maintain some sense of moral reasoning. Are pleas to consider ethics simply persuasive rhetoric for them? Of course, there are Leftists who have not abandoned the ethical tradition, but I have often experienced moral outrage by relativists who at other times in their freethinking eschew any sense of right or wrong. Maybe, their inconsistency is not in bad faith; perhaps, they are just contradictory. Ad hoc emotionalism does appear to be the guiding light for many leftist wayfarers.

Even among Leftists who do maintain some sense of morality, I have noticed a tendency to excuse wrong doing by transferring guilt to the “system” or culture at large. As I wrote yesterday, Leftists go to great lengths to excuse Mohammedan terrorists by attributing blame to Western bigotry, insensitivity, or inhospitality. Should we expect the empathetic, Scandinavian Leftists to exonerate Breivik’s murder by pointing to the social stresses that large-scale third world immigration has induced in the indigenous Norwegian population? Will they expiate his guilt on the hallowed altar of multiculturalism? As diversity giveth; so diversity taketh away. Certainly, they must dedicate themselves to understanding the killer. They must surely see how the ignominy and pain at watching his own nation disappear before his eyes triggered his lashing out at the entrenched, oppressive powers—the elite, in their multicultural privilege, who bask in universalist self-righteousness but cushion themselves from the unpleasantries of population displacement. Perhaps, the Norwegian government could establish institutions for dialogue between the state’s officials and the dispossessed Norwegians who feel marginalized by the cultural transformation of the past few decades. Maybe, they could even work a critical examination of Scandinavians’ self chosen genocide into the educational curriculum.

Such is how the Left deals with perpetrators of terror when they are Mohammedans, Africans, or members of some aggrieved “Other.” Will Norwegian Leftists show the same sort of apologetic cottoning with the rightwing terrorist? The Scandinavians have been so thoroughly corrupted by liberalism, they might just do so. Perhaps, excusing the “Other” has less to do with anti-white, anti-Western resentment and more to do with the nonjudgmentalism and moral agnosticism that develop deep within liberalism. I do suspect otherwise. Leftist tolerance of malefaction may be due to fear.

As I noted yesterday, Leftists repeatedly absolve Mohammedans, Hispanics, blacks, and leftwing radicals of wicked deeds. With the latter groups, the explanation might be tribal. The Left overlooks the beam in its own eye as well as exonerating the misdeeds of groups that empower the Left. Yet, in what sense do Mohammedans serve Western Leftists? Why would British feminists excuse honor killings and female genital mutilation in London? Why would West Coast homosexualists support increased immigration from societies that stone homosexuals? Why would American Jews make excuses for Hamas and Hezbollah? Do Leftists hate the white West more than they love themselves and their own causes? Perhaps, but I wonder whether democratic cowardice lies behind these appeasements.

Democratic societies throughout history tend to aim for the lowest desires—that of the lowest common denominator—which politically translates into the quest for material comfort. A society that seeks mammon is not usually successful at cultivating courage in its citizens. For courage demands the sacrifice of material comfort and, occasionally, even of life. Commercial liberal republics thrive economically but likewise suffer the stifling of the citizenry’s thumotic reflexes. Americans appear to have bucked this trend for some time, but our greed has probably made enough of us craven to the extent that we would shirk from any real sacrifices as a society. Could the present American populace win the Second World War? I wonder. Appeasement toward “evil doers” might originate in the consequent cowardice; Leftists might think, rather foolishly, that giving in to bullies will mollify them. Thus, the Left makes excuses for those whom it fears.

The Left does not fear conservatives. For all the rhetoric of the white enemy within, our government, media, and educational elite know that they have vanquished traditionalists in every fight and in every realm. Momentary political setbacks are simply delays in the inevitable progressive march of Hegelian history. When the hagged harridan in charge of Homeland Security expresses worry of homegrown, white supremacists, we hear the same disingenuity of the Hollywood loudmouths who worried about Republican and theocratic repression during the Bush years. If those weasels were truly worried about rightwing American oppression, then they would not have been so obnoxious and openly traitorous. Their nonsense was transparently dishonest. They would have otherwise fled to Canada, or they would have ended up in the slammer or “disappeared” faster than an inconvenient Clinton administration official.

The Left’s fear of the conquered Right is therefore falsely affected. The Alinskyites know that the bourgeois Right is too focused on law, order, and holding the social fabric together as the Left tries to rip it apart. They know that the morality, patriotism, and familial dedication of conservatives forces them to play by gentlemanly rules while the Left finds itself free to cause whatever chaos and strife that will garner it more power. This will not last, however. Given the forthcoming social breakdown in Western societies, we should expect more rightwing terrorists like Breivik. As civilization crumbles, the Right will be less and less convinced that pouring buckets from a sinking ship is a good idea. The Right’s energy will not go into keeping the wreck afloat but in securing life rafts for its communities. Once the Right comes to grips with the civil war that has been foisted upon them, they will start to think in terms of war. Such martial reasoning has not historically been very appreciative of the value of human life, especially in pre- and post-Christian societies where the light of the gospel is unknown or faded, and then Leftist rhetoric about rightwing danger will finally match reality. How, then, will Leftists respond? The Weimar Republic gives us a precedent.

It will be an ugly catastrophe, but I do not see how we can avert the disaster, barring some miraculous cultural rebirth. For generations, Leftists have sought the transvaluation of all values. Their ceaseless attacks on morality have produced a generation that casually accepts consequentialist ethics, if any ethical system at all. Breivik evidently wrote that he considered his planned actions atrocious but necessary. Therein, we see the inverted moral reasoning of our age—a reasoning that, moreover, quickly surfaces in men’s minds during war. If Breivik’s murders of young Norwegian socialists lead to the revolution that will save Europe, then one hundred lives seem like a small price to pay according to our modern moral calculus. For the Jacobins judged liberté, égalité, fraternité worth thousands of aristocratic heads. Likewise, Sherman did not seem to have many qualms with his scorched earth, total war tactics to hasten Union victory. Marxists weighed the proletariat paradise of the future worth millions upon millions of necessary sacrifices. Éamon de Valera did not hesitate much to build an Irish Republic on the foundation of violence. The Allies found burning Dresden’s residents and carpet bombing German civilians acceptable during war. Truman did not apologize for his decision to drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities. Ernesto “Che” Guevara was a mass murderer, but he killed in the name of la revolución, and his image remains a staple of leftist chic to this day—a hero to millions. More recently and closer to home, half our citizens find infanticide justifiable for matters of personal convenience. Utilitarianism is everywhere, and it supplied the moral framework to Breivik’s decision. If he is a monster, then contemporary Western societies are full of monsters, and they revere many such monsters as heroes. Far be it from me to exculpate Breivik in the typical leftist manner. His moral reasoning is flawed, like the society that produced him. Yet, his decision to act against the destruction of his people is one that I cannot criticize; it is his methods that warrant condemnation. Conservatives who criticize him must ask how they can fight back in a civil war without destroying their souls. For wars are inherently evil, even if they must be fought.

Leftists have waged relentless internal wars against Western regimes, transforming Western societies into perverse shadows of their former order. Conservatives, for the most part, have refused to call their foes what they really are, pretending, instead, that they dealt with well intentioned political opponents who disagreed over matters of policy. And they have lost, their victories’ being mere tactical retreats in the war that they never recognized. Gramsci has won from the grave; the destruction rolls along. Yet, it cannot continue. Nature always has her way, and social ruin will lead to, well, ruin. At some point, the guards of the citadel will realize that the tower has already been taken by the barbarians, and they will alter their strategic position. The resulting collapse is not something that I wish to witness. Despite the pain, however, it will be good to see the perfidity of the postmodern, nihilistic world engulfed in flames. If we must find ourselves in a battle, let us pray that we comport ourselves with honor and according to God’s immutable laws. Let us also hope that the survivors of the holocaust retain what they can of our civilization’s beauty, wisdom, and grandeur in order to rebuild the West on the ashes.

Posted by Joseph on Tuesday, July 26, A.D. 2011
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Tuesday, June 7, A.D. 2011

The Preferential Option for the Poor

R.R. Reno has a short but insightful column in First Things about how our society is failing the poor: “The Preferential Option for the Poor.” “Social justice” Leftists readily support material assistance to the poor but often fail to see how our society’s increasingly debased culture causes far more harm to the American underclass than material want. Reno notes,

The social reality of contemporary America is painfully clear. By and large, the rich and powerful don’t desire more wealth nearly as much as they desire moral relaxation and the self-complimenting image of themselves as nonconformists living a life of enlightenment and freedom in advance of dull Middle America. Meanwhile, on the South Side of Chicago—and in hardscrabble small towns and decaying tract housing of old suburbs—the rest of America suffers the loss of social capital.

I must admit that I often feel frustrated by my liberal friends who worry so much about income inequality and not at all about moral inequality. Their answer is to give reparations. Are we to palliate with cash—can we palliate with cash—the disorder wrought by Gucci bohemians?

No. Progressives talk about “social responsibility.” It is an apt term, but it surely means husbanding social capital just as much as—indeed, more than—providing financial resources. In our society a preferential option for the poor must rebuild the social capital squandered by rich baby boomers, and that means social conservatism. The bohemian fantasy works against this clear imperative, because it promises us that we can attend to the poor without paying any attention to our own manner of living. Appeals to aid the less fortunate, however urgent, make few demands on our day-to-day lives. We are called to awareness, perhaps, or activism, but not to anything that would cut against the liberations of recent decades and limit our own desires.

Want to help the poor? By all means pay your taxes and give to agencies that provide social services. By all means volunteer in a soup kitchen or help build houses for those who can’t afford them. But you can do much more for the poor by getting married and remaining faithful to your spouse. Have the courage to use old-fashioned words such as chaste and honorable. Put on a tie. Turn off the trashy reality TV shows. Sit down to dinner every night with your family. Stop using expletives as exclamation marks. Go to church or synagogue.

In this and other ways, we can help restore the constraining forms of moral and social discipline that don’t bend to fit the desires of the powerful—forms that offer the poor the best, the most effective and most lasting, way out of poverty. That’s the truest preferential option—and truest form of respect—for the poor.

Reno’s advice is nothing but the consensus of Victorian social reformers who realized that squalor originates from vice and not simply from a lack of opportunity. Redistribution of wealth is but a scam that empowers and enriches bureaucrats who oversee the money exchange; it will do nothing to alleviate the woes of the poor because the vicious character of the underclass is the leading cause of its poverty.

Reno’s main point has been a theme of National Review writer Jonah Goldberg. Goldberg often notes how the sleezy and irresponsible lifestyle of the Hollywood set—with no apparent negative consequences—is ruinous to the hordes of poor Americans who get their values and mental content from trashy mass culture. Pop diva X can get knocked up unwed, leave her boyfriend, have multiple sexual partners, shoplift, and participate in the drug culture while remaining rich and famous. Seeing such over and over again on television, Crystal, LaShanika, and Candy, like millions of their fellow morons in the American underclass, think that they, too, can eschew traditional morality and standards and still live out their dreams. They do not realize that the rich can afford such dysfunction because their wealth, their families, and their friends provide rescue boats that the poor do not have. American pop culture has mocked common sense propriety for several generations now. The standard American social ethic has become non-judgmentalism (except when it comes to being judgmental about recycling, smoking, and others’ judgmentalism, of course). The less intelligent, less educated, less self controlled masses are left without proper models for behavior and are instead fed fare such as rap videos, daytime talk shows, and reality television. Is it any wonder that the lower class is such a mess?

The Republic and The Laws both note the importance of civic education and of stories where good men prosper and bad men suffer defeat and ignominy. Our collective cultural propaganda machine often sends the opposite message. Several months ago, I was discussing the perversities of the Jersey Shore with a group of adolescents, all of whom were from middle class or wealthy families. These teenagers sincerely admired the people on the show and thought that it was appropriate to live the way that “Snooki” and her associates lived. When I asked how such behavior affects life, they pointed to the show and said that such a lifestyle can lead to success. They were unable or unwilling to acknowledge that the media shield the people whom they exploit to make money from the consequences of their actions. Behavior typically associated with the Jersey Shore cast is a quick way to ruin even according to hedonist standards, not to mention that it reduces its practitioners to bestial slavery to the appetites and to a life of exile from transcendence. If only the Athenian Stranger could behold the chaos of contemporary America! Indeed, he foresaw it. The wise know, and the foolish fail to learn.

Posted by Joseph on Tuesday, June 7, A.D. 2011
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Wednesday, June 1, A.D. 2011

Neofeudalism

The blog Throne and Altar posted a neofeudalism manifesto last month that I found interesting. Bonald follows a long line of Roman Catholics in modernity who attempt to articulate a third way in social economic arrangements besides capitalism and socialism. I heartily agree that we need to think beyond the framework of a sickly society, though I have reservations about Bonald’s diagnosis of our political disease.

Bonald argues that the distinction between public and private is flawed and contributes to social and economic disorder. I would say that there are various meanings of public and private that people frequently confuse, and yet the various meanings do have a place in a well regulated society. For example, contemporary Americans customarily confuse public in the sense of government owned with public in the sense of the social space wherein people interact in commercial and non-familial matters. Consider the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that regulate “public” institutions like private businesses, schools, and places of “public accommodations.” Compare such with previous orders and legislation that concerned “public” institutions like the military, public schools, and government offices. There is a real distinction between those senses of public, and the collapse of both into one betrays creeping totalitarianism to my inner liberal.

I would argue that an essential characteristic of totalitarian societies is the flattening of social space and social commitments. Aristotle teaches that politics involves many levels of community, from the family household to the most complex level of social organization. Each level has its own integrity and its own set of rules and responsibilities. The totalitarian state, by contrast, reduces all politics to the state, leaving no room for loyalties or duties to other social relationships. Such is perverse and begets inhuman disorder.

Instead of abolishing the concepts of public and private, I think that we rather need to articulate better the various levels of society and what is demanded at each level. Recognizing and respecting the different social levels are important, but the correct management of each level is much more difficult to decide, of course. We ought to aim for the good in all things, and every level of social organization has its own proper orientation to the good. I recommend Yve Simon’s A General Theory of Authority, which has some insightful analysis about the relationship between pursuing private interests and aiming for the common good. For both are needed, and both must relate in a well ordered society. Just because sinful human beings frequently err in these matters does not mean that we should abolish the distinction between the private and the public. The Republic demonstrates rather well what such a simplified correction of human tendencies demands and what violence toward our nature is necessary to fulfill the identification of the public with the private.

Bonald’s larger point remains a sensible one, though. The individualism rampant in our society chisels away at our sense of obligation and duty toward anything and anyone besides ourselves and the favored and freely willed objects of our affection. It is interesting to me how this creeping individualism coexists so well with creeping state totalitarianism. For the latter uses the former to justify accumulation of power, and the former finds the latter to be an excuse for dereliction of duty. They are remarkable opposites sides of the same demonic coin. Instead of a republic of generous free men, we are becoming selfish slaves to bureaucratic despotism. How Madison, Adams, and the gang would be horrified!

Posted by Joseph on Wednesday, June 1, A.D. 2011
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Monday, May 16, A.D. 2011

Auster on the Germans

There have been some threads on View from the Right about the German political class’s condemnation of Chancellor Merkel for stating, “I am pleased that we managed to kill bin Laden”:

“German chancellor criminally charged for expressing delight over bin Laden’s demise”

“Debate on Germany”

“What Merkel actually said”

“A reader replies to Kleine-Hartlage”

The threads explore the postwar German character and how the leftist obsessions of contemporary denazified Germans threaten Europe just as Nazi ideology and aggression threatened Europe in the twentieth century. I commented, though it may not mean much without the thread’s context:

I have enjoyed reading the thread on Germany, though I thought that Daniel S.‘s comment set a bad tone for the discussion:

“If this is all that remains of Germany, then the quicker it disappears as a nation the better. One is almost tempted to say that they deserve to be swallowed up by the very Muslims they grovel before and for which they use their court system as an agent. I have as much contempt for modern Germany as I have for modern Britain.”

I have a friend who says the same thing about Europe in general. The obvious problem is that a significant number of Germans (as well as Brits, Danes, Italians, Canadians, Australians, Americans, and so on) are not deluded, suicidal morons, and yet they must suffer the demise of their nation along with the foolish majority.

I also finally found a blind spot in Kristor’s moral imagination! Kristor writes:

“That’s really interesting. PC is just like the old Deuteronomic Law. Neither of them allow for remission of sins. Both turn in upon themselves, in ever more rococo legalisms that cannot actually be lived. But Liberalism is even more hopeless than the Law; for liberals have no Day of Atonement.”

What Kristor forgets is that there is such a leftist Day of Atonement. It is called Election Day. By electing socialists who redistribute wealth and establish privileges for the least among us, Democrats purge themselves with hyssop, and they shall be clean. It is the only way to atone for their being whiter than snow.

Europe greatly interests me. I do not share the common American view that “over there” is far removed from us. I maintain a colonial perspective; Europe is the homeland. It is the source of our civilization, language, and blood. For all its faults and folly, I cannot dismiss it just as I cannot dismiss America. For I see myself as part of it. The last few centuries of separation do not define America and Europe, and we are very much part of a larger whole—that of Western Civilization. Our fates are intertwined.

I also refuse to consign German identity to the hellish period of the last century. Two decades in the last century do not define Germany, and the revolting defeated Deutschen of the last few generations are as emblematic of the Germans as the Jersey Shore cast is of the Italians. Our age of decadence will eventually pass away, and hopefully nobler representatives will replace the not so Last Man. Yet, we moderns or at least we homines americani have difficulty with our long term memory.

Perhaps, as a Cincinnatian, it is easier for me to see German civilization beyond the twelve year reign of the Third Reich. For Midwesterners are well acquainted with German American republicanism, with its commitments to civic engagement, public duty, and the common good. My travels in Germany and Austria accord with the impressions of some of Auster’s commenters, too. German cities are like decent American cities—clean, well tended, and hospitable to a middle class, industrious lifestyle. If you can get past their idiotic leftist views and knee jerk ethnic and cultural self hatred, which I attribute to denazification and postwar demoralization, the Germans are generally quite pleasant people. They are not the humorless cannibals, perverts, and black leather wearing Sprocketsliebhaber of our popular imagination. Moreover, the more mountainous and more Catholic the area, the better the Germans. Bavaria is one of my favorite places in the world.

Posted by Joseph on Monday, May 16, A.D. 2011
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Friday, May 6, A.D. 2011

A Glimpse into the Abyss

The genial and insightful Mark Richardson, of Oz Conservative, must have a particularly strong stomach in order to treat the objectionable so soberly and seriously. Read, for example, his exegesis of Ellen Lewin’s Lesbian Mothers: Accounts of Gender in American Culture in “How does Professor Lewin think women step up to personhood? A clue: not through heterosexual marriage.” It is a marvel to me that Richardson can maintain rational apatheia while trudging through such rank and foul spiritual sludge.

It’s interesting to see how liberal autonomy theory plays out in Professor Lewin’s book. For instance, she argues that there is a difference between being a good mother in a marriage and in a divorce. Being a good mother in a marriage is not so good because it is merely a “natural attribute” (not something self-determined). But if a mother gets custody in the courts, that is a “self-conscious achievement” and “evidence of skill” in “protecting the integrity” of her family:

Mothers who face actual or potential custody challenges use strategies of appeasement, support, and autonomy in the course of protecting the integrity of their families. The claim to being a “good mother,” a key element of feminine gender identity in American culture, is transformed from a natural attribute into the product of self-conscious achievement . . .

In this situation a competent mother is one who accedes to enough of her husband’s demands to discourage a custody challenge but not so much that her concessions can be turned against her. Being a “good mother” is thus transformed from a state of being, a natural attribute, into evidence of skill, rewarded by the father’s failure to gain custody or, better yet, by his failure to pursue it at all. [pp.177-178]

As for divorce being a step up for women, this is how Professor Lewin puts it:

These convergences between lesbian mothers’ coming-out stories and the divorce stories of both lesbians and heterosexual mothers point to a telling contradiction in American culture. Marriage is seen as a special kind of success for women, but it also imposes a loss of autonomy and personhood that threatens to compromise the individual’s quest for accomplishment and individuality. As observers of American culture have noted since Alexis de Tocqueville described his impressions in the mid-nineteenth century, individuality and the related concept of privacy are such core dimensions of American culture that conditions or behavior that might be interpreted as dependency seem questionable if not shameful . . .

. . . Both coming out and divorce shift women’s status downward in the eyes of the society as a whole, yet the women who experience them view them in many respects as steps up. At the core of both coming-out and divorce stories is the theme of increasing autonomy and competence, and both kinds of accounts tend to focus on discovery of one’s “true” self. In these respects, as Kath Weston has observed, they constitute odysseys of self-discovery; at the same time, they demonstrate a concern with achieving adulthood and autonomy which is a particular consequence of the infantilization that both marriage and heterosexuality can impose on women. [pp.43, 45]

The logic of the argument is that in a marriage women are dependent on a man, that this makes married heterosexual women infantile, so that divorce and/or lesbianism represent a step forward toward an adult, autonomous life.

I have several friends and acquaintances who share Richardson’s remarkable virtue, but I cannot understand it. I can tolerate a considerable amount of stupidity, vice, and confusion, but at a certain point, I simply recoil from what my primeval instincts sense as miasmic filth. As such, my less noble soul only abhors Lewin and creatures like her. I know that I should weep for her confusion and concern myself about her lost path, but I cannot. I just want her far away from me. I, therefore, might come under Whittaker Chambers’ condemnation of Ayn Rand when he complains, “From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: ‘To a gas chamber — go!’” It is not that I harbor exterminationist zeal for ridding the land of Lewin’s revolting insanity; it just troubles me mightily that I share the same world as her. For I have long realized that, deep down, my psychological framework is far more similar to the Leftists whom I despise than my fellow wayfarers on the Right. That pit at the center of ideological self righteousness is darkness, which is simply hate—a hatred so strong that no pleas of Christian love, understanding for shortcomings, or reminders of shared humanity soften its intense disgust with its object. In the abstract, I might entertain those finer calls, but, at best, I just want to remove myself from the occasion of demonic sin by ceasing to think about such matters.

By contrast, Richardson displays an almost heroic soul in his ability to confront such sickness while remaining a decent man. I marvel at such folks.

Posted by Joseph on Friday, May 6, A.D. 2011
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Thursday, May 5, A.D. 2011

Soft Bigotry of Mo’ Expectations

Last month, Auster commented on the government and media reactions to the killings in Afghanistan that followed Terry Jones’ burning of the Koran in “Why a Florida pastor has blood on his hands for mass murders committed by Afghan savages on the other side of the world.” Among such reactions was that of craven Senator Lindsey Graham, who stated the following on Face the Nation:

I wish we could find some way to hold people accountable. Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war. During WWII, you had limits on what you could say if it would inspire the enemy. . . . Any time we can push back here in America against actions like this that put our troops at risk, we ought to do it.

Graham baffles the mind, and he is a Republican from South Carolina, for goodness’ sake. One woman has properly castigated the spineless nematode; watch citizen Ann Barnhardt’s video response (rated PG):

Having relished that red blooded American answer to Graham’s nonsense, let us return to Auster, who offers an explanation of why people would blame a Florida preacher for the savagery of Afghans on the other side of the world:

As I have often written, the liberal order articulates the world through a “script” in which there are three characters: the white liberal, who embodies the non-discriminatory virtue of the liberal regime; the white non-liberal, who discriminates against nonwhites and who must be crushed by the white liberal; and the nonwhite/non-Westerner, who either is discriminated against by the white non-liberal or is non-discriminatorily included by the white liberal. In the script, furthermore, only the white liberal and the white non-liberal are moral actors, with the first representing good and the second representing evil. The nonwhite/non-Westerner is not a moral actor, but is simply the passive recipient of the white liberal’s goodness or of the white non-liberal’s bigotry. The reason that the nonwhite/non-Westerner cannot be a moral actor is that his very function in the script is to be the recipient of either good non-discrimination or evil discrimination. If he were a moral actor, then his own actions would have to be judged; specifically, his bad actions would have to be judged. But to judge his bad actions would be to discriminate against him. And since the central purpose of liberalism is to eliminate all discriminatory treatment of nonwhites/non-Westerners, moral judgement of nonwhites/non-Westerners must also be eliminated. Therefore nonwhites/non-Westerners cannot be seen as responsible moral actors.

The liberal script explains why Jones, who burned a piece of paper with ink on it that he owned, has “blood on his hands,” but the Muslim Afghan mob that invaded a UN compound and murdered 12 UN employees do not have blood on their hands. The Muslims are not moral actors. The Muslims are simply the victims of Terry Jones’s discriminatory act against them. Jones, the white non-liberal, is a moral agent who is responsible for his evil actions. The Muslims are not moral agents and are not responsible for their actions.

Auster regularly repeats his theory of the Left’s denying moral agency to certain groups of people, and I think that he is correct. For the theory explains the infantile manner in which the West’s ruling class treats the Other. However, I think that his theory is only a form of a larger pattern wherein Leftists reject or ignore the possibility of moral or immoral behavior by those whom their noblesse obliges, regardless of the ethnicity involved. We routinely see vice excused while blame gets shifted to “the system” or to “the unjust power structure.” All the while, Leftists employ the language of morality to make their case. In doing so, they are either quite confused, devilishly inconsistent, or simply belittling to the lesser whom they, as civilized, educated people, cannot expect to act as moral agents. If the third is true, then Leftists do not reject morality as such, and so they do not argue foolishly or dishonestly when they make moral claims for their position. It simply means that they reserve the moral realm for themselves and for their interlocutors, while the mass of humanity under discussion is treated simply as pegs in a machine without agency or freedom. They discuss men the way they would discuss animals rescued from a dog fighting ring—as mere passive beasts corrupted by malignant forces.

Speaking of dogs, one of Auster’s readers links to another insightful analysis by David Greenfield, “Muslims and Moral Handicaps.”

When a man teases a dog on the other side of a chain link fence—we blame the man for provoking the dog, not the dog for being provoked. Animals have less of everything that makes for accountability. And so don’t hold them accountable. Instead we divide them into categories of dangerous and harmless, and treat them accordingly.

Our response to Muslim violence in Afghanistan, supposedly touched off by a Koran burning in Florida, uses that same canine logic. The Muslims are dangerous and violent, so whoever provokes them is held accountable for what they do. Don’t tease a doberman on the other side of a chain link fence and don’t tease Muslims on the other side of the border or the world. That’s the takeaway from our elected and unelected officials.

But the Muslim rioters are not dogs, they are human beings whose moral responsibility is being denied by treating their violence as a reflexive act. Their violence is not unconscious or instinctual—it emerges out of a decision making process. There is nothing inevitable about what happened in Afghanistan. If Muslims had some sort of hair trigger, then why was the violent rioting confined to a very specific part of the world. For the same reason that the reaction to the Mohammed cartoons took so long. And why was it directed at the UN and not the US. The Koran burning was not the cause of Muslim violence—but a rationalization for existing violence that would have occurred anyway for reasons having nothing to do with Terry Jones. And by treating Muslims like the ‘Morally Handicapped’ who have no choice but to kill when something offends them, we are not doing any favors for them or us.

It is far more insulting to treat Muslims as if they have no ability to control themselves and have no responsibility for their actions—than it is to burn their Koran. That is an assessment that even many Muslims would agree with.

To blame Jones for their actions, we must either treat murder as a reasonable response to the burning of a book, or grant that Jones has a higher level of moral responsibility than the rioters do. There are few non-Muslims who could defend the notion that burning the Koran is a provocation that justifies bloodshed. And virtually no liberal would openly concede that he believes Muslims are morally handicapped—but then why does he treat them that way?

This is perhaps why there is such a double standard on the Left for the Israelis; maybe it is not simply due to multicultural relativism wherein Westerners refuse to judge non-Westerners for failing Western standards. Leftists sympathize with Palestinian Arabs even when they behave atrociously, but they indulge their righteous anger when the Israelis act the least bit aggressive in defending themselves. What might be unspoken is that Leftists see the Israelis as truly human, and thus worthy of moral reprimand, while they find the Palestinians perpetually innocent regardless of their actions because they are seen as less than human. One may rationally take offense when a man spits at him; no sensible person waxes indignant when a camel does so.

Posted by Joseph on Thursday, May 5, A.D. 2011
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Wednesday, April 27, A.D. 2011

An Old Bench

Happy Bright Wednesday! Christ is risen!

The Associated Press published a story a few weeks ago that made me smile. U.S. District Judge Wesley Brown, a Kansan at one hundred and three years old whom President Kennedy appointed to the federal bench, exemplifies old school values as he continues to work every day:

Of the 1,294 sitting federal judges, Brown is one of 516 on “senior status,” a form of semi-retirement that allows a judge to collect his salary but work at a reduced case level if he chooses. They handle almost a quarter of federal district trials.

And no one alive has logged more service than Brown, who took senior status in 1979 but still worked fulltime until recently. In March, he stopped taking new criminal cases and lightened his case load a bit. He still takes his full share of the new civil cases.

“I do it to be a public service,” Brown said. “You got to have a reason to live. As long as you perform a public service, you have a reason to live.”

Brown gets a ride to the federal courthouse at 8:30 a.m. every workday from the assisted living center where he lives. Until he was in his 90s, he climbed the stairs to his fourth-floor chambers. He works until about 3 p.m. presiding over hearings, reading court filings and discussing cases with his law clerks who handle the legal research.

We hear so many tales of public workers who fleece the body politic, it is refreshing to see men with true civic dedication. Read his story on N.P.R., “Federal judge, 103, still hearing cases in Kansas.” Many years, Judge Brown, many more years to you!

Posted by Joseph on Wednesday, April 27, A.D. 2011
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