Politics - Opus Publicum

January 31, 2018 Politics

The Economist on Deneen on Liberalism

This week’s edition of The Economist contains a review of Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed, a work that hasn’t quite (temporarily) captured the public’s imagination in the way Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option did last year. (Perhaps too many people are reading Jordan Peterson.) The Economist, which has never shied away from its roots as a defender of classical liberalism, is surprisingly kind to Deneen’s book, even going so far as to acknowledge liberalism’s failures in recent years. Where The Economist takes umbrage with Deneen is with respect to his decision to lump many different iterations of liberalism under one roof. According to the anonymous reviewer, Deneen’s “lumping” leads him to conclude that liberalism “lies in freeing individuals from constraints.” On the contrary, “liberalism contains a wide range of intellectual traditions which provide different answers to the question of how to trade off the relative claims of rights and responsibilities, individual expression and social ties.”

The Economist then goes further. By “lumping” many different types of liberalism together, Deneen fails to acknowledge liberalism’s capacity for self-reform. Here the reviewer rattles off a short list of liberal crises, most of them economic, which were redressed by targeted legislation and political reform. However, The Economist does not take notice of how these reforms to “correct” or “temper” liberalism have given rise to a century-long quarrel among liberals over the defensibility of these reforms. Take, for instance, early 20th century progressive legislation which, among other things, targeted trusts that placed restraints on trade; unsavory labor conditions, including child labor; and urban degradation brought on by industrialization. Today, many of these reforms and the more radical reforms they inspired are challenged by libertarians as not only illicit encroachments by the state on free enterprise, but economically unsound. Moreover, social reform legislation, such as the civil-rights laws of the 1960s, have been used to push more radical agendas that leave many deeply worried that the triumph of liberalism is the triumph of ideology over religious and moral truth.

It is hard to imagine liberalism reforming itself at this late stage to meet the concerns of its more virulent critics, a population that is likely to expand in the coming years as wealth disparities continue to increase, social and communal ties break further down, and liberal ideology further displaces any and all competing interpretations of reality. The Economist takes it on faith more than anything else that liberalism can continue to reform itself and is silent on how any and all reforms may cause deeper rifts between various liberal camps over such touchy subjects as the role of government in the economy, the place of public regulation to enforce private values, and international relations.

At some point the harder point will need to be made by liberalism’s critics that the problem with liberalism is not merely its internal incoherencies, but the fact that it is plain wrong. However, to do so means taking a step most critics of liberalism are unwilling to make, and that is a step in favor of the truth of revealed religion over the novelties of Enlightenment thinking. That is far easier said than done. Look, for instance, at that great historic bulwark against liberalism, the Catholic Church. For over 50 years, it has become a matter of course in Church circles that liberalism is not only here to stay, but that it represents a positive good in human history. To return to the trenchant critiques of liberalism offered by numerous popes and churchmen from the 18th century onward is seen as nothing less than a giant leap backwards into the “kingdom of darkness” which Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau were said to have freed us from. And even if some soberminded Catholics are inclined to believe the Church has tilted too far in favor of liberalism since the Second Vatican Council, their hope remains for a gentle compromise between the Church and liberalism rather than what those with eyes to see know is coming, namely an irrevocable confrontation.

September 5, 2017 Politics, Reading

Lilla on Liberalism – Prologue

Mark Lilla, whose attitude and intellectual posture generate equal parts admiration and annoyance for more than a decade, is never short of things to say. Whether its dismantling the cult of Derrida and introducing Americans to the “European” Leo Strauss in the pages of The New York Review of Books or chronicling the deep theologico-political problem afoot in contemporary France, Lilla rarely fails to bring his erudition to bear. Unfortunately, he sometimes brings his obnoxious arrogance as well. For instance, his review of Brad Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation was an unfortunate blend of generalizations and dismissals even if Lilla’s observations on narratives of decline wasn’t entirely off the mark. And that’s the thing: Lilla is seldom off the mark entirely; he just sometimes overlooks (or omits) arguments and facts unhelpful to his positions. Consider, for example, his brief book The Stillborn God. Ostensibly a critical history of the intersection of religion and politics in modernity, the work is guilty of the “slight oversight” of leaving out the Catholic Church.

Now Lilla returns with a bit of political soul searching, The Once and Future Liberal. Lilla, who self-identifies as a liberal in the largely American sense, believes that liberalism has foregone a vision of the common good in favor of tethering itself to identity politics. At the same time, it is also a critique of the individualism of contemporary liberalism, specifically where politics is bound up with the self and what is good for the individual based on his preferences, whims, orientations, etc. The Once and Future Liberal is as pithy as it is powerful; it is a call to action, nay, repentance for American liberalism, one which will no doubt be difficult to hear at this juncture in history.

Not being a liberal in any sense whatsoever, I approached Lilla’s work with integralist, but not unsympathetic, eyes. It is rare that any political, social, or religious movement comes to terms honestly with its own failures in the hope of building itself back up. While portions of Lilla’s book contain obvious finger pointing, it is not unfair finger pointing. Liberal elites within the Democratic Party and society at large should be held accountable for the bad ideological bets made since the collapse of the New Deal-Great Society project in the 1970s. The question now is whether there are liberals with Lilla’s knack for self-criticism and imaginative rethinking who are willing to take up his call for a refreshed liberalism.

In the next four web-log posts, I will consider Lilla’s argument in The Once and Future Liberal on a chapter by chapter basis, including the Introduction. Are there important details Lilla omits from his work? What, if any, lessons can Catholics faithful to the Church’s social magisterium take away from Lilla’s observations? And, above all, is Lilla’s hope for liberalism renewed even desirable at this stage in history? Or does his critique ultimately point beyond itself to what comes after liberalism?

August 8, 2017 Catholic Social Thought, Politics

John Zmirak’s Silliness Continues

At this point there is little use highlighting how out-of-step John Zmirak is with the Catholic Church’s social doctrine. For years, Zmirak has attempted to blend his idiosyncratic form of the Catholic religion with secular liberalism, choosing to side with the latter when any conflict presents itself. In a recent piece for The Stream, a garbled mess of hysteria and hyperbole, Zmirak once again takes umbrage with Catholics who, following the timeless teachings of the Church, oppose liberalism. For reasons which are difficult to discern, Zmirak opens his salvo by attacking the “Tradinista!” collective which, if you haven’t heard, went belly up months ago due to petty infighting and intellectual incoherence. By the close of his article, Zmirak conflates the positions of these wannabe socialists with those advanced over at The Josias. Perhaps someone should have informed Zmirak that The Josias, through its editor Elliot Milco, never had much time for the inanities of the “Tradinista!” project.

Zmirak’s confusion does not end there. One of the focuses of his piece is this idea that Catholics who reject liberalism—including integralists and those who follow the Church’s traditional doctrine on religious liberty—believe that the stae, the Church, or Church and state acting in concert should actively persecute non-Catholics. Nothing could be further from the truth. Regardless of what one thinks about the status of Dignitatis Humanae, it has never been maintained that the spiritual or temporal authorities should coerce non-Catholics into accepting beliefs against their will. The issue comes down to whether or not an individual or religion has the right to promulgate error. When Catholics speak of coercion, it is the coercion necessary, for example, to stop Mormons spreading error door to door or prevent Muslims from publicly rejecting Christ.

As for the Church’s right to coerce baptized Christians through penalties, Zmirak panics at this suggestion—but why? Has no one told him what excommunication is? Does he know nothing of the suspension of priests and bishops from their duties for certain infractions? The Church’s denial of the sacraments to Protestants and others who reject Catholic teaching is a form of coercion, arguably the most powerful form available. While I doubt that Zmirak would advocate for the Church to remove all ecclesiastical penalties from the table so as to not be accused of coercing anyone, it seems that he has not thought his position through with much rigor.

Or maybe he has. It’s not out of question that Zmirak knows that he is appealing to some of the basest prejudices of his readers in order to advance his private cause against those who take Catholicism more seriously than liberalism. By leaving the impression of angry mobs armed with pitchforks and torches marching toward the local synagogue in his readers’ minds, Zmirak may be trying to shame his opponents into walking back their ideas or, at the very least, making certain compromises with the liberal order. Thankfully, that is not going to happen. What Zmirak fails to understand is that illiberal Catholics (whatever their particular affiliation) did not set out on the hard path of resistance only to abandon the fight at its earliest stage. The Catholics Zmirak has no time for are the very sort who take the Church’s teachings seriously and will not forego the instructions of reason and revelation simply to get along with a socio-political ideology which, odds are, will recede into the darkness in the centuries (if not decades) to come.

Zmirak may not want to accept this, but it matters not. He can continue to pander to the lords of this world; the rest of us have business elsewhere.

June 25, 2017 Catholic Social Thought, Political Economy, Politics, Uncategorized

#ActonU 2017 Has Come and Gone

For reasons unbeknownst to me, I was not automatically extended a scholarship to attend this year’s Acton University event in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Maybe next year. Much to my surprise, Acton did extend an invitation to Elizabeth Bruenig, someone who has never been shy about her association to the Christian Left or hesitant to critique the free-market ideology promoted by the Acton Institute. In a live-streamed panel discussion also featuring Acton head honcho Fr. Robert Sirico, Bruenig offered an eloquent presentation of her socio-economic views, including her skepticism that economic liberalism—if not liberalism as a whole—can provide a clear pathway to ameliorating poverty. Sirico, as he is wont to do, opened up the discussion by noting that to the extent there were disagreements to be had, they were disagreements over matters of prudence, not principle (or, in his words, dogma). No doubt due to time constraints, Bruening was unable to call Sirico to task for this oft repeated, but rarely defended assertion. For as several writers have noted over the years, including Thomas Storck in an excellent article on Acton and Catholic teaching, it is doubtful that Sirico’s brainchild fully upholds the Church’s social magisterium.

What Acton does accomplish with remarkable success is leading Christians (mostly Catholics) down the path of liberalism—if not libertarianism—while artfully dodging criticism by appealing to its alleged internal diversity. So, for instance, when Acton is confronted with the fact that it heavily promotes the heterodox “Austrian School” of economics, including offering several lectures on the topic at Acton University, Actonites opine that nowhere in the Institute’s mission statement does it claim to adhere to Austrianism despite borrowing Austrian-based concepts such as “human action” (a.k.a. the “science” of “people do things”) in its statement of principles. The silence is deafening when Acton and its adherents are asked why they do not teach other schools of economics in its lectures or unmask the shortcomings of Austrianism, of which there are many. Instead, Acton hides behind the claim that they promote “sound economic principles” without openly revealing where those principles are drawn from or discussing the numerous critiques of those principles that have long been in circulation.

And this, dear readers, is only one of many reasons why Acton’s “university” is nothing of the sort. It is not a place of learned disputation or the free exchange of ideas; it is a four-day long indoctrination program meant to provide a highly biased presentation of the Christian social tradition as fully compatible with capitalism and liberalism. Equally appalling is the fact that Acton endeavors to distort the thought and image of some of the modern Church’s greatest leaders, including Pope Leo XIII. In a course entitled “Abraham Kuyper, Leo XIII, and Modern Christian Social Thought,” Acton Senior Fellow Jordan Ballor brings together the social thought of a professed heretic in Kuyper with a pope who condemned economic liberalism, rejected the idea that the state did not owe particular duties to the Catholic Church, and promoted the social kingship of Christ. Leo XIII had nary an ecumenical bone in his body when it came to Protestantism and, in 1900, condemned Protestant proselytism toward Catholics in Rome.

As it currently stands, there is no counterweight to Acton’s propaganda machine. Because the Acton Institute supports capitalist interests, it is a well-funded enterprise that has achieved a global reach. By providing forums and funding for research projects that fit within its liberal vision, Acton claims to furnish important research on poverty, human flourishing, and the economy without having to submit such work to the usual channels of peer review and criticism. Moreover, too many Christians of a conservative bent remain enthralled by Acton’s claim that it stands as a bulwark against the excesses of the contemporary liberal state, including centralization, heavy handed regulation, and onerous redistribution schemes. While of these problems do exist, both in the United States and abroad, the way to address them is not through centuries-old liberal ideology, but rather the timeless truths of reason and revelation which the Church, as the pillar and ground of truth, has always taught.

So the question remains: Will Catholics follow the easy and seductive path of liberalism, one which holds out the hope of peace in this world and material comfort, or the narrow path taught to all men at all times and in all places by Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Holy Church? That question, though always pertinent, has taken on greater importance at this juncture in history where an increasing number of persons, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, are beginning to see that the promises of liberalism are empty declarations backed by false principles. Where will these disenfranchised souls turn? Acton would have them double down on the liberal project, even against their own self-interests—temporal and eternal. Holy Mother Church, on the other hand, would have them come to know the truth and work for the restoration of all things in Christ, a project which will only succeed once liberalism in all of its guises has been overcome.

June 20, 2017 Politics, Uncategorized

It’s Raining in Grand Rapids

The New York Review of Books has a new essay up by Sue Halpern reviewing a recent documentary on Julian Assange. Proactively titled “The Nihilism of Julian Assange,” Halpern—through frequent references to the film—isn’t a big fan of Mr. Assange. In fact, she appears to downright despise him, which only makes sense since Assange, much to the chagrin of the Left, helped cost Hillary Clinton the American Presidency through a series of calibrated leaks. When Assange was releasing documents that embarrassed conservatives and exposed American misdeeds at home and abroad, he was a hero, a man of principles that risked all for the greater good. Now Assange is an unprincipled monster, an opportunist who keeps company with toxic nationalists like Nigel Farage, neo-Nazis in Australia, and allies of Russian president Vladimir Putin. As her praise of Edward Snowden reveals, Halpern is all for leaking classified material, just as long as it helps the “right causes.”

This is not surprising. Over the years, (in)famous leakers like Assange and Snowden have been praised or demonized across the political spectrum. When their work shows how liberal democracy is being compromised, then praise be; but if their work—specifically the work of Assange—apparently undermines the democratic process, then there are not enough condemnatory phrases in the English language available. While sideline legalists have various opinions on what, if any, laws a leaker like Assange has violated, it’s doubtful that his work will stop anytime soon. What’s unclear at this point is if that work will continue to assist the political Right or provide some new cover for the Left. Maybe it will be a bit of both. Either way, democratic legitimacy will continue to be bruised as those holding the reins of power are shown to be the hypocrites, opportunists, and unscrupulous careerists many already suspect.

And why is this a bad thing? Only those still wedded to a belief that liberal democracy has been anything other than a manifest failure should want to see it stand; those with eyes to see are starting to anticipate its long overdue demise. The worry in the air is, “What comes next?” And this is something leakers like Assange cannot assist in answering. The gulf between providing shocking intelligence and proposing a way ahead is radically wide. Assange and other leakers can unsettle the foundations; it is up to those exhausted by the Enlightenment’s lies to start writing the next chapter of the West. And to do that in a manner which is detached from the tenets of liberalism will be an impossible task so long as people insist on keeping some vestiges of the liberal order. Such reformist impulses are understandable, but betrays an absence of nerve and a lack of vision.

This a point missed by secular anti-liberals who believe the imminent plane can be transformed without reference to the transcendent. Talentless to the core, they advocate for steady-to-progressive reform that will meet their personal needs rather than accord with any higher conception of right. Whether motivated by fear or some base desire, those committed to a secular worldview have nothing to propose but ideas that will fail under all circumstances. No commitment to change, no longing for what must come after liberalism, can be actualized if it is motivated by little more than what makes us anxious in this life. Indeed, that is a pathway back to liberalism, as Leo Strauss demonstrated in his review of Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political. Fear, specifically fear of a violent death, becomes the basis for liberalism—an order that makes no demands while providing living space for frivolity, distraction, and discussion. Death is the foreclosure of existence-as-entertainment, not the pathway to eternity.

June 20, 2017 Catholic Social Thought, Economics, Political Economy, Politics, Uncategorized

#ActonU is Upon Us Again

It’s that time of year again, when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops promotes the anemic Fortnight for Freedom (FFF) and the Acton Institute, headquartered in my hometown of Grand Rapids, MI, holds its annual Acton University gathering. Acton University, as I have discussed before, is less of an academic experience and more of an indoctrination program where (primarily young) Christians can drink deep from the wells of liberalism. Although Acton University is ecumenical in nature, the Acton Institute itself is mostly run by Catholics and targets a Catholic audience. In recent years, has begun pulling in more Eastern Orthodox propagandists, likely because Orthodoxy, unlike Catholicism, lacks a strong social magisterium. That is not to say the Orthodox Church hasn’t spoken on matters such as democracy, the relation between church and state, and economic liberalism; it’s just that Orthodox Christians, particularly in America, are fond of ignoring teachings which does not fit snugly within their personalized worldviews.

The FFF, as most know by now, has been a failure. Since its inception, the United States has, inter alia, legalized same-sex marriage, compelled religious institutions to violate the moral law, and further marginalized Christianity from public life. Some, of course, rejoiced at the election of Donald Trump on the questionable belief that he would serve as a protector for Christians, both at home and abroad. That hasn’t happened, at least not to the extent expected. Instead, Trump has opted to aggravate the sorrowful conflict in Syria while targeting Chaldean Catholics for deportation and death on highly questionable grounds. The position of the Catholic Church in the U.S. has not improved since Trump’s election, and pandering to the empty promises of liberalism, such as “religious freedom,” won’t do a damn bit of good.

Don’t tell that to the Acton Institute, which leans heavily on largescale donations from economic liberals to advocate for an unholy union between Christianity and capitalism. The strategy of Acton University is rather simple. First, without regard for the deep-rooted methodological and philosophical disagreements at the heart of the economics discipline, Acton sells the heterodox “Austrian School” of economics as a “science” in a highly disingenuous manner. Second, with this misinformation in place, Acton’s next step is to selectively latch onto Church teachings or the private opinions of select theologians to convince those in attendance that rather than condemning core elements of capitalism, such as usury and unjust wages, the Christian tradition affirms the free-market system without regard to core questions of justice. For Acton, the only injustices worth focusing on are those allegedly perpetrated by the government when it imposes environmental, social, and labor regulations.

Orthodox and Protestants are likely more susceptible to this raw nonsense than Catholics, though that’s not saying much given the large number of Catholics ready, willing, and able to flush away magisterial documents such as Rerum Novarum, Quadragesimo Anno, and Pope Pius XII recently translated address on the 50th anniversary of Rerum. If they pay any mind to the social magisterium, it is usually focuses on more recent iterations such as John Paul II’s Centesimus Annos, and even then they must apply a strict hermeneutic of selectivity in order to avoid the hard truth that the document does not baptize the global capitalist order. As for the stern (albeit sometimes confusing and imprecise) statements of Pope Francis against capitalism, well, they are reduced to little more than the “private views” of a man yet to be enlightened by the tenets of “economic science.”

It is probably too much to hope for the Church to step in, investigate Acton’s errors, and demand that those Catholics who participate in or promote those errors cease immediately. We are long past the point when the Church can be bothered to redirect the faithful so that they do not lose their souls. However, dare we hope that small, but noticeable, shifts in the international order in recent years might inspire Catholics both old and young to rethink any attempt to fuse liberalism—specifically economic liberalism with its indifference toward moral and justice—with the Gospel? Might not the recent “rediscovery” of integralism, with its emphasis on the authentic and proper relationship been the spiritual and temporal orders, spur Catholics to call out liberal projects like Acton University and submit them to withering criticism? Much has already been written against Acton’s diabolical enterprise; a great deal more remains to be done.

June 13, 2017 Catholic Social Thought, Law, Politics, Uncategorized

Excommunicating Carl Schmitt

A recent article appears in Telos, “Carl Schmitt and the Nineteenth-Century Catholic Reaction on Original Sin,” by Brian J. Fox seeks to upend the narrative that Schmitt, despite his decades-long estrangement from the Church, was hewn to an orthodox Catholic worldview during his Weimar-era writings. Fox, who combs through Schmitt’s private journals and other writings, believes that Schmitt, contrary to the Catholic reactionaries he leans upon (Maistre, Bonald, and Cortes), had little regard for Catholic orthodoxy as it pertains to human nature and original sin. Rather, Schmitt drank from the well of Gnosticism, leading the controversial jurist to adopt a radically dualistic worldview which, according to Fox, is at the heart of Schmitt’s secular authoritarianism. While Schmitt superficially shares the pessimistic view of human nature espoused by someone like Donoso Cortes, when it comes to the state, Schmitt fails to appreciate its imperfect constitution, contrary to Catholic teaching.

What this means for the ongoing use (and abuse) of Schmitt’s oeuvre by the Left and the Right isn’t clear from Fox’s piece. Even if he is correct in his assessment of Schmitt’s anthropology and its connection to his apparent authoritarianism, it’s unlikely that the Left—who have never had much time for any religious element in Schmitt’s writings—will pay it much mind. As for the Right, many of whom would also prefer not to think of Schmitt in expressly religious terms either, a “de-Catholicized” Schmitt is probably an attractive figure. The impulse toward authoritarianism still remains strong, especially in pluralistic socio-political states which are unlikely to unify around any transcendent conception of the state and man’s final end. That human beings are an unhinged, murderous, and self-destructive lot is apparent from history; there’s no need to bring revelation into the discussion.

Catholics, by and large, have little use for Schmitt at this juncture in history. To some, Schmitt is an embarrassment: a (temporarily) excommunicated opportunist forever sullied by his association with the Nazi Party. To the extent that Schmitt’s works reflect an authentic Catholic outlook, it is an outlook now deemed to be “outmoded” by virtue of the Second Vatican Council’s teachings on religious liberty and the Church’s relationship to the modern (liberal) world. Schmitt’s preferred political thinkers, despite being faithful Catholics, are connected to the same shopworn anti-liberal sentiments that produced Pius XI’s Syllabus Errorum. Even more conservative Catholic writers are unlikely to repair to Schmitt due to his perceived aversion toward natural law, not to mention his secularized decisionism. Now that Fox has arrived to posthumously excommunicate Schmitt from the Catholic intellectual fold, the chances of Schmitt ever being assumed back into the Catholic socio-political tradition are growing slimmer.

Perhaps that’s not a bad thing. After all, given the confusing mess of secular-born ideologies that have been passed around as true expressions of the Catholic social tradition in recent decades, there’s no need to muddy the waters further—even if the dirt is coming from the Right. That doesn’t mean, however, that Schmitt can’t still be useful in a general sense. His instinctive anti-liberalism (which also manifested itself as anti-socialism) and penetrating critiques of liberal legal theory can still be useful tools for those of a certain bent to put to bed the lie that human beings are naturally good, and so too is any political system predicated upon that erroneous belief. And regardless of the origins of his pessimistic anthropology, Schmitt knew better than many today the dangers of liberalism, of the eternal “discussion,” and the promotion of life-as-entertainment, devoid of risk, commitment, and an ever-ready belief that there is more to existence in this world than what Leo Strauss called the joyless pursuit of joy.

January 31, 2017 Church, Politics, World

Reeling Forward

During a bout of insomnia last night, I felt compelled to reread Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard Commencement Address, “A World Split Apart.” Several passages jumped out at me, particularly the following.

Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counterbalanced by the young people’s right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.

And what shall we say criminality as such? Legal frames, especially in the United States, are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also certain individual crimes. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency with the support of thousands of public defenders. When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorist’s civil rights. There are many such cases.

Before you assume that I intend to directly connect Solzhenitsyn’s penetrating observations with the ongoing uproar over President Donald Trump’s recent executive order temporarily banning the citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, grant me a moment to explain myself. The Trump ban, which many have argued is not only imprudent but ultimately ineffective for thwarting terrorist attacks on American soil, may or may not survive a legal challenge; what has certainly not survived, even in Solzhenitsyn’s time, is our collective capacity to confront evil. Obviously a vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists per se, that is, they do not wear suicide vests, gun or knife people at random, or set off homemade explosive devices in public places. That does not change the fact, however, that all Muslims profess religious error and that these errors, like all errors, pose a danger to all societies at all times and in all places. While the political situation today demands tolerance, it is always tolerance of some evil, not a tolerance of some good. However, even tolerance has its limits, particularly when confronting a false religion that has spread violence, misery, and immorality over the globe for more than 1,000 years.

This reality is ignored by the good liberals and deluded Christians of our day. The only thing that seems to matter is the “rights” of Muslims in positive, legal sense, not the fact that Islam itself is inherently dangerous. In an effort to (weakly) combat such claims, liberals will point to the history of Christianity, claiming that A, B, C, etc. atrocity was carried out by Christians and therefore Christianity is no less (and may even be more) dangerous than Islam. What’s missing from this analysis is a fair reading of what the Church actually teaches and, from there, an evaluation of whether or not this-or-that action, carried out at some point in history, comported with Church teaching. Tomorrow, I could go out my front door naked, covered in peanut butter, flinging sacks of dog feces at people in the name of Buddhism, Hinduism, Rastafarianism, and so forth, but that doesn’t necessarily mean my barking-mad behavior has any connection whatsoever to those or any other extant religions on the planet.

Islam, on the other hand, has a long and storied history of aggression toward non-believers with periods of relative calm coming at the expense of non-Islamic persons. The Christians of the former Byzantine Empire were not all forced to convert by the sword, but their continued existence depending upon living as second-class human beings under the Ottomans and watching as their church degenerated into an ethnic enclave, cut off from the wider Christian world. In more recent times, we have witnessed the Islamic State (ISIS)—a highly organized politico-religious movement that has managed to hold significant ground in Syria and Iraq precisely because its iteration of Islam is attractive to other Muslims—carry out one of the bloodiest persecutions of Christians since the days of the Soviet Union. People protest and call it an aberration without bothering to look back over centuries upon centuries of similar actions carried out in the name of the false Prophet Muhammad and his dirt deity Allah.

Even if it were possible, by the waive of a magic wand, to distinguish the “good Muslim” from the “bad Muslim,” that is, the terrorist, the liberals of today would opine that that such wand-waiving violates the terrorists’ rights. Where is the due process? What laws are being cited and what is their proper interpretation? Is there not a way for the text of the Constitution—or any other foundational document—to be read upside down, sideways, and inside out to protect these poor terrorists from being singled-out a priori and prevented from carrying out their terrible acts? If you think such questions would not be asked, then please let me encourage you to peruse social media; the idiocy that is now running wild is astounding.

Of course, terrorism and the scourge that is Islam is not our only challenge today. And, truth be told, it may not be our biggest problem. Returning to Solzhenitsyn, it must be acknowledged that our “[s]ociety appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence,” especially now, in the digital age, where “pornography, crime, and horror” come packaged together in a single streaming video from any number of online “adult” websites. Consumerism, and the destructive capitalism which feeds off of it, is no longer condemned by Christians, even Catholics, but rather propped-up by churchmen and “think tanks” who believe, without reason, that “human flourishing” is not only an end in itself, but can be secured materially rather than spiritually. As perverse as their theology is in parts, can any of us blame the ISIS fighter for looking upon our works, our empire of smut and entertainment (or smut-as-entertainment), and feeling nothing but revulsion—the sort that easily elicits violence?

The promise of liberalism, which many believe was renewed in 1989 with the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, rings hollow today, and yet those intoxicated with liberal ideology still control the machinery of society. In fact, liberals now control the machinery of the Catholic Church, meaning that the truth of things, the very truth of life and what it is for, must now take second place to securing an unimaginative, prepackaged “living space” in this fallen world. We clamor on about rights without reference to obligations, rarely contemplating the doom we have secured for ourselves in exchange for transient pleasures, many of which are not even available to those consigned to destitution and depravity by an intrinsically immoral socio-economic system.

Ours is not merely “a world split apart,” as Solzhenitsyn said, but a world gone mad. The United States in particular is not “a shining city upon a hill” but rather—to paraphrase Carl Schmitt summarizing the counterrevolutionary thinker Juan Donoso Cortes— “a ship that reels forward, piloted by a crew of drunken sailors, who dance and howl until God decides to sink the ship so that silence can rule the sea once again.” When that day comes, no doubt there will be some of us, perhaps many of us, standing before the Throne of Christ weeping about our rights.

January 23, 2017 Economics, Politics

The Concept of Progress

The concept of progress, i.e., an improvement or completion (in modern jargon, a rationalization) became dominant in the eighteenth century, in an age of humanitarian-moral belief. Accordingly, progress meant above all progress in culture, self-determination, and education: moral perfection. In an age of economic or technical thinking, it is self-evident that progress is economic or technical progress. To the extent that anyone is still interested in humanitarian-moral progress, it appears as a byproduct of economic progress. If a domain of thought becomes central, then the problems of other domains are solved in terms of the central domain – they are considered secondary problems, whose solution follows as a matter of course only if the problems of the central domain are solved.

– Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political

In an unintentional manner, Schmitt summarizes well not just the concept of progress generally, but — unintentionally — the ethos of think-tanks such as The Mises Institute, The Cato Institute, and even the Catholic-backed Acton Institute. It is the ethos of the so-called “Washington Consensus” that emerged after 1989, the consensus which gave us the World Trade Organization, NAFTA, and a global investment regime that erodes national sovereignty in the name of economic improvement. “Spread the wealth” via “free trade” and everything will fall into place: peace, security, stability, “human rights,” etc. How quickly has that dream, that myth, unraveled in the wake of the terrible realization that human souls cannot be placated with “stuff” and a life infused with meaning, even demonic meaning, has more power to move mountains than the wealth of every global elite combined.