Author: J. Arthur Bloom

J. Arthur Bloom is the blog's editor, opinion editor of the Daily Caller, and an occasional contributor to the Umlaut. He was formerly associate editor of the American Conservative and a music reviewer at Tiny Mix Tapes, and graduated from William and Mary in 2011. He lives in Washington, DC, and can be found, far too often, on Twitter.

Felix Morley on maintaining a Republic

The conclusion of The Power in the People, published in 1949:

The United States has developed a civilization of its own, and no apologies are needed. This civilization owes much to Europe, but it is different from that of Europe. Owing something also to Asia and to Africa, the American way of life is nevertheless basically dissimilar from anything those continents have produced. In this country men have stood alone, unfettered by status, unhampered by the State, contracting with each other in an essentially free Society. So standing, men have grown strong, and have prevailed. They have prevailed because it is only when Man stands alone that he rises above himself, hears the still small voice of conscience, and hearkens to the Authority of his Creator. Then, paradoxically, he is no longer alone. “And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.”

The American civilization is neither mature nor fully stabilized. Its pains, therefore, are those of growth, not dissolution; of strength, not weakness. This civilization will continue to grow as long as it is based on the assumption that people are generally honorable and trustworthy, simply because of their humanity.

That is what most Americans mean when they loosely use the word “democracy.” Of course, a faith in human goodness is not at all the same thing as democracy, which, as an abstraction, means the “rule of the people” and, as a political system, means the unrestricted majority rule that our Constitution so carefully forbids. But a belief that Man is honorable for himself is Christian and liberal and inspiring. It is democratic to the extent that it opposes the privileges and restrictions of status. And for a civilization based on that belief there will be a bright future, so long as the people retain the power that is in them.

Because it has a faith in the individual, American civilization is hostile to any seizure of power from the people, and is particularly hostile to the seizure of this power by centralized government. From the assumption that Man is honorable comes the conclusion that self-government is desirable. To assist self-government the American is expected willingly to accept the conventions and reasonable regulations of a free Society. But he is also expected to oppose resolutely all arbitrary government by the State. The power is in the people. They must retain it. (more…)

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John Zmirak: On a mission from God to get people to stop reading writers he doesn’t like

This is one of the strangest twitter arguments I’ve been in for a while, going off of John Zmirak’s latest column in the Stream criticizing Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig. Zmirak’s claims are so bizarre and detached from reality that I had to suggest that perhaps there’s a certain careerist imperative behind his constant mendacity toward anyone who won’t get with the tea party Catholic program. I (probably deservedly) earned a block for that, but it really must be said.

Zmirak claims Gabriel Sanchez, of all people, is aligned with the left because he read about Bruenig on his blog:

Nevermind that Sanchez and I have both been rather strongly critical of the Christian socialism she’s peddling. These integralists — I’m not one, for the record, but I find them interesting — are accused of allying with the left:

This isn’t even remotely accurate; a cursory look at their blogging home over at The Josias should yield plenty of evidence of that. Other than dissenting from unrestrained laissez-faire capitalism integralists more or less defend the type of order embodied in the old European monarchies, which leftism arose to destroy.

But if cooperating with the left is an offense worthy of permanent enmity from our brave correspondent, isn’t he guilty of the same thing, as a “liberal”? To say nothing of the irony that he argues in the same way Bruenig does; by hyperbole, smears, and anathemas.

He keeps digging. I think it would be news to every single one of these people that they are “integralists”:

I pointed out that the “Benedict option” and integralism are basically opposites; the latter built on the Aristotelian notion of the body politic, the former a kind of severance from it. That’s not important to him:

Later he calls Deneen a “leftist opportunist wannabe Clinton Vatican ambassador.” Sanchez has responded here:

Zmirak and Hilton’s inability to get a joke is secondary to the more troubling reality that Catholic neoliberals/libertarians seem largely incapable of making fundamental distinctions between principled positions which they happen to have no sympathy for. This became clear to me last night on Twitter when, after alerting me to his article, Zmirak proceeded to conflate Catholic integralists with so-called radical Catholics such as Patrick Deneen, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Artur Rosman. (Rod Dreher, despite being Eastern Orthodox, was thrown into the mix as well.) Had Zmirak taken the time to actually read my Front Porch Republic article, he would have noticed that I set forth all of the distinctions for him. Hilton should have realized it, too, though I have no evidence that she actually read anything beyond Zmirak’s article. Although it is true that integralist and radical Catholics are deeply critical of liberalism, their reasons are sometimes, maybe oftentimes, significantly different.

Pater Edmund Walstein, on the other hand, who blogs over at Sancrucensis, is an integralist, but his reading habits are off the reservation:

This is the defender of liberalism here, telling people who they shouldn’t be reading! Twice, in one conversation, he’s denounced people for their reading habits. I can dig the great books as much as anyone, but this is crazy. Also like Bruenig, there is no good-faith attempt to understand his interlocutors first.

The other big thing they have in common is their vociferous defense of the secular state, and I think it’s at the heart of why these two writers are so vitriolic all the time. Zmirak’s deal, the one he’s built basically his whole career on, is that he’ll police his own camp in exchange for the chance to win in the arena of democratic competition. If, like Zmirak thinks, we can ‘win’; take the White House, cut the corporate tax rate, overturn Roe, and restore the American empire to greatness, then this growing movement of doubters is worse than unenthusiastic, they’re faithless recusants. Of course, it never works out the way he says it will, and the main ones who benefit from this arrangement are the ones making the deal. Unfortunately for him it’s looking less and less fair and less and less appealing. That probably means we can expect the nastiness to get worse. Power, or even the prospect of it, seems to do that to people.

Readers probably don’t need me to tell them that I think the original recusants had the right idea.

*****

It seems appropriate to leave this bit of Maistre here:

… when man works to restore order he associates himself with the author of order; he is favored by nature, that is to say, by ensemble of secondary forces that are the agents of the Divinity. His action partakes of the divine; it becomes both gentle and imperious, forcing nothing yet not resisted by anything.  His arrangements restore health. As he acts, he calms disquiet and the painful agitation that is the effect and symptom of disorder. In the same way, the hands of a skilful surgeon bring the cessation of pain that proves the dislocated joint has been put right.

Frenchmen, it was to the noise of hellish songs, the blasphemy of atheism, the cries of death, and the prolonged moans of slaughtered innocence, it was by the light of flames, on the debris of throne and altar, watered by the blood of the best of kings and an innumerable host of other victims, it was by the contempt of morality and the established faith, it was in the midst of every crime that your seducers and your tyrants founded what they call your liberty.

Guys like Zmirak are all Vendee, no King. And we know how that ends.

Update: Zmirak seems to have deleted all these tweets. Good thing they’re saved here!

Guest hosting The Mike Church Show Wednesday 3/18

Mike’s been kind enough to have me back on to fill in for him Wednesday, listen in if you’re a Sirius XM subscriber. The show runs from 6-9 AM, on Patriot 125. I will update this post with a schedule of guests as I firm it up.

Update: The guest list for Wednesday, starting at 6:30, will be attorney Ian Smith on the state of challenges to Obama’s executive amnesty, Betsy Woodruff and Ellen Carmichael on the Glenn Beck/Grover Norquist feud and the Catholic vote, Phil Magness on he and Bob Murphy’s much-heralded debunking of Piketty, Trevor Burrus on the raisin cartel, closing out with a half-hour jaw session on Hillary Clinton’s various scandals with TheDC’s own Vince Coglianese and Chuck Ross.

The problem with TNR’s Pope Francis cover story

Here’s a very long piece at the Daily Caller disputing points factual and theological:

As a “vertically integrated digital media company,” the investment fund known as the New Republic still produces dead-tree editions to keep up appearances. Once the flagship magazine of American liberals — the white ones, anyway — it also must keep up appearances in an ideological sense despite the billionaire CEO Chris Hughes, the spouse of a failed Democratic congressional candidate, taking the company in a more capitalistic direction. For example, the cover story in this month’s issue is a tissue of misrepresentations by a self-styled Christian socialist about conservative and traditional Catholics.

Read the whole thing here.

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Are the 21 Coptic martyrs pro-Israel enough for Ted Cruz?

Amen, senator.

Ted Cruz apparently said at CPAC this week that “the president needs to stand up and defend the beheaded Coptic Christians in Egypt,” and he’s been mentioning them frequently for the last week or so.

At the In Defense of Christians Summit he trolled last September, one of his last lines was, “If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, then I will not stand with you.”

It’s no secret that the Copts have some issues with Israel, and representative of the Coptic Patriarch was in the room that night. Was he one of the ones Cruz believes was “consumed with hate”?

At the very least, the junior senator from Texas has contradicted himself. Which one is it? Does he stand with the Coptic Church, regardless of its politically inconvenient relationship with Israel, or are the 21 Coptic martyrs simply a useful prop to criticize the administration and call for ever more aggressive military action in the Middle East?

I think we all know the answer, but let us hope we are wrong. Cruz’s IDC line is basically straight out of the John Hagee playbook, who’s said before in interviews that “if you are not for Israel and the Jewish people, you either are biblically ignorant or you’re not a Christian.” They are both Baptists, and as we were reminded last week by a blog post at some Montana hate preacher’s website that went viral, Baptists have significant differences with Coptic Christianity.

There’s some evidence Hagee and Cruz are close; not long after the IDC provocation, Ted Cruz’s father, a twice-divorced former Catholic-turned-Baptist preacher, headlined at the San Antonio-based church of John Hagee, chairman of Christians United for Israel. He also has some odd beliefs about Jesus and the end of the world:

In Hagee’s latest, Four Blood Moons, he advances the theory that a series of lunar events that started on April 2014 means that “in these next two years, we’re going to see something dramatic happen in the Middle East involving Israel that will change the course of history in the Middle East and impact the whole world.”

Hagee keeps saying this stuff; CUFI keeps separating itself from the rapture-ready bestsellers. On Monday I asked David Brog, the Jewish executive director of CUFI, whether Four Blood Moons was informing any of Hagee’s or the activists’ thinking about the crisis in Israel or Russia.

“Absolutely not,” said Brog. “Outside observers don’t give evangelicals credit for being able to hold two different ideas in their heads. There’s often confusion, when it comes to evangelical support for Israel, because evangelicals, like a lot of Jews, believe that we may be living in a messianic time. Of course, in the Jewish case, no one ever says—‘Ah, that’s why you support Israel, you think you’re going to bring the messiah.’ It’s black letter Christian theology that the date of the second coming was set eons ago.”

A politically necessary dodge, to be sure, but frankly it strikes me as complete nonsense given how politically active these people are; ‘We’re not trying to bring about the end times, we just want to bomb Iran.’ Later in November Hagee, and the younger Cruz appeared together at the Zionist Organization of America dinner, where the former called the president “one of the most anti-Semitic presidents in the history of the United States of America.”

Obama can’t be worse than Nixon on that score, but at any rate, it’s far from the worst thing Hagee has said:

Now, before we go any further, let me note that I consider myself a supporter of Israel and believe my record bears that out. I was the first to publish this expose by Edwin Black on the Palestinian Authority vetting acts of terrorism for whether they qualified as martyrdom operations, and had the author on the radio when I was subbing for Mike Church to talk about it afterward. I brought on an Orthodox Jew and Israeli citizen to help edit my section at the Daily Caller, and have published a founder of the Wiesenthal Center. It would be difficult for me to run a more pro-Israel opinion page. Maybe Robert Spencer would say I should stop publishing moderate Muslims too, that would be one way I guess — he goes after me whenever I publish one — but I refuse to do that.

However, I also hew to George Washington’s warning about entangling alliances, and sure am put off by the creepy theopolitics and political litmus tests of Christian Zionists like Hagee and Cruz. What seems beyond question to me is that it is going too far for a professed Christian to claim, in political apologias for the state of Israel, that “Jesus did not come to earth to be the Messiah.” It really says something about the state of the Christian right that a man like Hagee can state what seems to me a clearly heretical idea such as this and still be treated with respect.

As for Cruz, we should insist that he clarifies his position. Does he think the 21 martyrs had it coming, being part of a church that fails to recognize Israel as the hope of Middle Eastern Christians, as he has suggested they should?

Some may object to my bringing this up, that I’m politicizing the murders, or gainsaying both Israel and Ted Cruz at an important time, or that unity and deference are called for in the face of tragedy. Indeed, one could interpret the U.K.-based Coptic Bishop Angaelos’s worries that way, as expressed to TheDC’s own Ivan Plis:

While touched by the “immense amount of concern” he had received for his slain brethren, he said he was “very wary of them being used to make a political point” by those unfamiliar with the Copts and their church.

What Ted Cruz is doing here is trying to make a political point, and the most charitable spin one could put on his IDC provocation is that he was “unfamiliar with the Copts and their church.” To my mind, asking these questions is very much in the spirit of Bishop Angaelos’s concerns.

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