Conservatism

A question for conservatives about religious liberty and unjust wars

The political right in America seems to have decided that “religious liberty” is a banner they can rally around. With Kim Davis’s jailing, they have their first hero.

But what is this new thing we claim to value, and what are its limits? Consider a Romanian Catholic infantryman from Ohio, on the eve of the 2003 Iraq invasion, who receives this letter from his bishop:

Because such a moment of moral crisis has arisen for us, beloved Romanian Catholics, I must now speak to you as your bishop. Please be aware that I am not speaking to you as a theologian or as a private Christian voicing his opinion, nor by any means am I speaking to you as a political partisan. I am speaking to you solely as your bishop with the authority and responsibility I, though a sinner, have been given as a successor to the apostles on your behalf. I am speaking to you from the deepest chambers of my conscience as your bishop, appointed by Jesus Christ in his Body, the Church, to help shepherd you to sanctity and to heaven. Never before have I spoken to you in this manner, explicitly exercising the fullness of authority Jesus Christ has given his Apostles “to bind and to loose,” (cf. John 20:23), but now “the love of Christ compels” me to do so (2 Corinthians 5:14). My love for you makes it a moral imperative that I not allow you, by my silence, to fall into grave evil and its incalculable temporal and eternal consequences.

Humanly speaking, I would much prefer to keep silent. It would be far, far easier for me and my family simply to let events unfold as they will, without commentary or warning on my part. But what kind of shepherd would I be if I, seeing the approach of the wolf, ran away from the sheep (cf. John 10:12-14)? My silence would be cowardly and, indeed, sinful. I believe that Christ, whose flock you are, expects more than silence from me on behalf of the souls committed to my protection and guidance.

Therefore I, by the grace of God and the favor of the Apostolic See Bishop of the Eparchy of St. George in Canton, must declare to you, my people, for the sake of your salvation as well as my own, that any direct participation and support of this war against the people of Iraq is objectively grave evil, a matter of mortal sin. Beyond a reasonable doubt this war is morally incompatible with the Person and Way of Jesus Christ. With moral certainty I say to you it does not meet even the minimal standards of the Catholic just war theory.

 Thus, any killing associated with it is unjustified and, in consequence, unequivocally murder. Direct participation in this war is the moral equivalent of direct participation in an abortion. For the Catholics of the Eparchy of St. George, I hereby authoritatively state that such direct participation is intrinsically and gravely evil and therefore absolutely forbidden.

What would today’s defender of religious liberty say to this soldier? Should he quit? Should he be allowed to sit this one out? Should he be jailed for insubordination? Why, or why not?

It’s worth noting that if a government only waged just wars, this conflict would not arise. It also seems untenable to allow soldiers to abstain from certain wars based on religious convictions and still keep their jobs. (Update: Some have pointed out the U.S.’s relatively generous standards for conscientious objectors, however, that status is usually only granted to people who object in principle to all wars — the Selective Service Act is written this way — not just certain bad ones.)

I have doubts that most of the supporters of religious liberty for Kim Davis would support it in this case, but maybe I’m wrong.

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Here’s the plot behind ridding public life of offensive symbols

Alexander Hamilton may have been a big government imperialist but, as the first Secretary of the Treasury, he shouldn’t be taken off the $10 bill.

Wait…step back one second. Remember all the hubbub over the U.S. Treasury’s decision to replace Hamilton’s visage with that of a woman’s?

Perhaps you don’t. In our hysterical age, the media moves from one outrage to the next, rarely stopping long enough to allow real contemplation on the injustice du jour. The capriciousness is akin to a porn addiction that soothes the brain by beguiling it with feelings of moral superiority and pity.

Not long after cultural feminism scalped Hamilton off the 10 spot last spring, the next wave of intractable wrath came in the form of the Confederate Flag – the flag of the Army of Northern Virginia to be specific. Because some shit-for-brains in South Carolina shot up a prayer meeting and had posted pictures of himself online holding the flag, the symbol had to be removed from the state capitol. That act of courage (inanimate objects kill people after all) snowballed into the Confederate Flag being purged from all venues of respectable American life.

Now we’ve reached the next Houdini-like act of disappearance. President Obama, in a swipe at white colonialism, unilaterally changed the name of Mount McKinley back to its local designation: Denali. The act is meant to appease the native population, who never took to the moniker of the twenty-fifth president. The peak was unofficially named McKinley by a gold prospector in 1896 but Congress made it official in 1917 to honor the assassinated head of state.

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Higher learning at an all-time low

In so many words, I say college is dumb and people who go are stupid over at Taki’s Mag today. An excerpt:

At a more general level, American universities have become far too lax regarding admissions. Many of the students I attended university with were spoiled, listless, and just going through the motions to graduate in between keggers. They weren’t challenging themselves to think more broadly about the world. For many it was a struggle to make it to class Friday morning after getting sloshed. Should the government really be picking up the tab for what amounts to a four-year Oktoberfest?

If you still aren’t convinced that college does more harm than good, consider the damage done to mental health. According to a recent survey by the American College Health Association, 54 percent of college students say they have felt overwhelming anxiety within the past year. In a recent Atlanticcover story, psychologist Jonathan Haidt and constitutional lawyer Greg Lukianoff detail how college administrators and professors are combating increased anxiety by suppressing unpleasant or controversial thoughts from the greater student body. Students are no longer engaging with ideas that are contrary to their own. Instead, they are shunning anything that is uncomfortable. This includes harassing professors, forcing speaker cancellations, and vandalizing the property of those who refuse to give in to political correctness. With this amount of thought policing on campus, it’s no wonder students are more anxious than ever.

Read it here, and then tell your friends in college they are wasting their time (all the while decreasing the supply of degrees in the marketplace and thus boosting your own value).

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Same-sex marriage is not the “law of the land” in Kentucky, and Kim Davis is right

UPDATE 10:10 P.M. CST – Now that Kim Davis has been arrested and the Kentucky Governor, AG, U.S. Senators and House of Representin’ DeceptiCONS cannot locate shining armor, creedal vows to become a Knight of St John or a Rosary, Ms Davis’s white martydom is a fait accompli. One of the protagonists of this essay have responded by proclaiming that Kim Davis groupies (she is now our Michael Brown) will “withdraw” form “public squares” (can you you name ONE and tell us the last time a “we” gathered in it for anything other than a spring or fall concert featuring a retired Bangles singer?) and that we have “no end game and don’t care [if we have one]”. Oh, and furthermore, “Kim Davis is a bad martyr for the cause of religious liberty”. Oh really? That’s strange, I have a 4 volume set of Alban Butler’s “Lives  OF THE FATHERS, MARTYRS and OTHER SAINTS” a stirring, day by calendar day record of the titular’s day to day life and death, many times in martyrdom. The funny thing is that God has this knack for choosing the least likely candidates for saints and martyrs. e.g. two days before St Stephen the apostle was martyred, Saul of Tarsus assisted in his public calumny, then conspired to have more drastic action taken if Stephen became what I call a Truth recidivist, then watched and encouraged his mock trial and subsequent stoning. 2 days after this, Saul of Tarsus, the man who would be martyr maker king, became Paul the Apostle. It’s a good thing the American Conservative wasn’t publishing then, readers may have snickered and ignored the “convert” (that’s what Ms Davis is) Saul and proclaimed him “a bad martyr for religious liberty”. I might ask the question, pray tell, just who IS a GOOD martyr for religious liberty? The TV heretics who want you to know that God loves you and wants you to live in a bigger house surrounded by newer and more expensive cars?

Mandeville, LA – Rowan County Kentucky Court Clerk Kim Davis refuses to issue “marriage licenses” to homosexuals and she is right to do so, and worthy of your [re]publican and Christian defense, despite the reigning “media” authorities of our time insisting that she “enforce the law.” Who is actually a St. Benedict or a Benedict Arnold here? I humbly submit certain conservative writers are in Red Coat uniform, and here’s why.

SCOTUS Justice Potter Stewart famously quipped about pornography and the Miracle, 14th Amendment.

“…under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, criminal laws in this area are constitutionally limited to hard-core pornography. I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”

Actually, Stewart’s judicial voyeurism aside, the Miracle Amendment doesn’t say ANYTHING about porn and neither does the First Amendment unless Congress has decided to ban the sale of Debbie (Wasserman Schulz) Does D.C. videos in Schulz’s hometown of Coconut Grove, FL — as they probably ought to. Inquiring minds following Davis’s stint as the judgement porn pariah of the week, might want to know this, seeing as how Ms Davis may be the only county clerk, elected or bribed into office, that IS obeying the law these days.

OK, what does any of this have to do with homosexual marriage licenses that are now the “law of the land,” and Mrs. Davis?

For starters, the SCOTUS is not a legislature, it is a body that reviews the acts of a singular legislature (perhaps you’ve heard of it, its called Congress). AND according to its charter (Article III of the U.S. Constitution) this body only has power to settle controversies arising under the Constitution or between States involving that legislature or the Constitution. We are now wading into factual territory that Constitutional imbeciles and rookie anarchists dare not swim for the obvious reason that facts ruin good Facebook posts and blog screeds written by neo-Christian “optionists.”

In the Obergefell “decision” the SCOTUS had no plenary power to make or enforce law in any of the states that were either a party to the suit or engaged in actions with a party to the suit. The SCOTUS purported to “strike down” the legally enacted laws of those 31 states and therefore made “gay marriage” “legal.” This is the equivalent of the SCOTUS saying that Kentucky cannot have a law licensing drivers, but the court cannot say that KY must have a law licensing drivers of the SCOTUS’s choosing and neither does the Constitution. And there ends the argument, in its cradle and no “Benedict option” or “win-win” compromise can rescue it regardless of the author’s good intentions.

Pseudo-legalists are by now ready to quote Brown vs Board of Education to me and say (sic) “Mitter Chur, that ith eggthactly what the Thupreme Court Did in Brown and we are all better oth for ith.” Wrong. Elevating 9 lawyers from 2 law schools to make all moral and municipal decisions for 309 million people is not only wrong, it is antithetical to the reason we have a federal compact to begin with: the enumeration to the General government of certain powers that the ratifying parties possessed full, sovereign, jurisdiction of a priori for those SPECIFIC purposes and no others (this is the reason, BTW,  Patrick Henry insisted there be a [10th] Amendment attached to the Constitution BEFORE ratification).

Back to our story’s anti-heroes: In whose “better way” [Anderson] or “Benedict option” [Dreher] world did KY or VA or GA or LA or AR et al enumerate municipal, marriage laws (or divorce laws) to Congress? Where!? When?! It is actually the demonstrable case that those states did the exact opposite, very loudly and in front of a watching, blogging and judgement-porn hurling world. Does this legal, moral and traditional act, nay, expression of self-government matter or doesn’t it? It seems that every time there is a controversy that requires the martyrdom of a few Facebook friends or seats at the annual pancake dinner head-table, we are told to “do what’s right” and surrender.

But what’s at stake here is more than just the conscience rights of bureaucrats, and even more than marriage. It’s the historic understanding of constitutional government, which we are once again being asked to give up.

What does American history say? I will spare our subjects the useful condemnation their words words would recive from Orestes Brownson and instead impart the more secular clarion. The loudest and wisest voice among the Founders, warning of exactly this, was John Taylor of Caroline County. In 1808, Taylor wrote a series of newspaper editorials that defended and exonerated the term [r]epublcan from “it’s the law of the land” pansies who tried to hijack it, buckling under the soft pressure of dubious Yankee tariffs and manipulation into fielding standing armies, insisted the Constitution granted no such power to abuse — moreover even if it did, it should be ignored. In Spirit of ’76 # VI, Taylor wrote:

“The doctrine “that nations ought to stick by their governments,” right or wrong, is apocryphal where the sovereignty of the people exists. Are governments the best judges of national interest? No. The most honest? No. How are the degrees of liberty and tyranny graduated? From free discussion and national will down to passive obedience. “

The “national will” is today for “gay marriage” but there is nothing “national” about compulsory acceptance of sodomy, no more than there could be compulsory acceptance of “forms” of incest, provided “the court” said so. We’ve already volunteered to accept polygamy in the West. How so, you ask? Well, if the accepted terms of marriage before the time of Henry VIII were in effect today, marriage would be sacramental and thus any subsequent “re-marriages” would be … go ahead, you fill in the blank for me ____________.

The laws on the books in KY say there is no “gay marriage” to be licensed because the state doesn’t recognize it. in 1794 when they ratified the Constitution they didn’t recognize it. When they were forced to “ratify” the 14th Amendment in 1869 they did not “recognize” nor did they “enumerate” to Congress their municipal power over marriage or divorce in that ratification. So exactly which “law of the land” are Ryan Anderson and Rod Dreher insisting Mrs. Davis “enforce”? And if she will not accept the terms of this extortion, must then, “resign”? To do what precisely, become part of the damaged-soul herd meandering toward the cliff Our Lady prophesied at Fatima?

Mrs. Davis rightly claims obedience to “the law of God,” and is right to do so because without acknowledging His law there can be no recognizable law afterward. It is to the benefit of both the sodomite and the heterosexual that the governing authority not legally recognize or endorse their sinful perversions; but, since it does solemnly recognize them at Dreher and Anderson et al’s insistence, this of course means “Benedict option” fortresses might be filled with adulterers and homosexuals; seeing that few moralists St. Paul might recognize as pious would be publicly accepted, praised and defended. I suspect Dreher and Anderson might have wished that a poll be taken among Herod’s subject’s as to whether St John The Baptist should pretend he was not privy to Our Lord’s sermons on adultery or the Old Covenant’s law that He “came to fulfill” and thus, he were free to compromise a “win-win” deal for Herod and the polygamists in waiting (for licenses).

Error has no right to our minds or to control our moral affairs, says St Thomas Aquinas. In fact, we have been blessed with abundant, Christian guidance on moral questions such as these so as to prevent erroneous and Facebook inspired popular conclusions, to wit:

“We do not, indeed, attribute such force and authority to philosophy as to esteem it equal to the task of combating and rooting out all errors; for, when the Christian religion was first constituted, it came upon earth to restore it to its primeval dignity by the admirable light of faith, diffused “not by persuasive words of human wisdom, but in the manifestation of spirit and of power,” so also at the present time we look above all things to the powerful help of Almighty God to bring back to a right understanding the minds of man and dispel the darkness of error.”

The “darkness of error” has now left the SCOTUS building and has gaseously spread into the homes and offices of the erstwhile Christian press corps, who now perform due diligence on error’s behalf ostensibly because error must not be allowed to make us erroneous i.e. defy the “law of the land.”

The actual “law of the land” requires us, with complete Faith, Hope and Charity, to not ice “wedding” cakes, take “wedding” photographs or issue “marriage” licenses to or for anyone, ourselves included, who may find themselves on the wrong side of well known, yet ignored, moral theology. You don’t need to build a wall or “option” a town to do that, you just need to pray for humility and fortitude. Just ask St Jane de Chantal…

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The 1% would still rule under a Bernie Sanders administration

Much ado has been made about the presidential campaign of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.

The self-styled democratic socialist is scaring the pants off libertarians and conservatives who see his rise in the Democratic primary as a legitimate threat to the country. “Bernie Sanders Is The Most Dangerous Man In America,” declares libertarian activist Christopher Cantwell. Pundit and internment-defender Michelle Malkin thinks Sanders’ “socialist odor” stinks, and would be a bad scent for the nation. Historian Tom Woods is dedicating an entire e-book to why Sanders is wrong for America.

Progressives are just as intrigued by the Sanders surge as conservatives, if not more. “Hillary Clinton can’t afford to ignore Bernie Sanders any longer,” contends Princeton professor Julian Zelizer. The septuagenarian senator is not only out-polling Clinton in New Hampshire, but is drawing massive crowds across the country. Even comedian Sarah Silverman is feeling the Bern: she recently introduced the senator at an L.A. rally, declaring he “is not for sale.”

I admit it: At first I was piqued by the independent senator’s quixotic bid for the White House. Sanders refuses to have a Super PAC – an infinite spending machine meant to provide a vehicle for the wealthy to invest dollars and gain favors. He is against open borders, saying that without national boundaries there is “no United States.” He speaks openly and passionately about the struggle working-class Americans face as they are falling behind in an increasingly competitive economy. Plus, my family hails from Vermont, and the Green Mountain State is one of the best in the Union.

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Rise of the stoics

I tie Walker Percy, Harper Lee, gay marriage, and southern resistance all together in my latest Taki’s Mag piece. An excerpt:

Percy was careful to separate Southern stoicism from Christianity. Where the Stoic watched carefully over the rights of the underclass, he did so not out of love for human dignity but to retain heritage and tradition passed down from before. Christianity actually welcomed integration of public schools. “The Christian is optimistic precisely where the Stoic is pessimistic,” Percy wrote. With the forcing of same-sex marriage on the nation, it appears now that even Christian Southerners are forced to push back on federal overreach.

Nonparticipation is one of the few remedies left to take in a country where majoritarian impulses rule. As public life becomes secularized, faith is forced into private life. As much as I admire the social cohesion that defines a country and its people, it’s becoming increasingly clear that in America, anyone with a conservative Christian mind-set is no longer welcome to express their views. The only course of action left to take is a retreat in the form of opting out.

Read the rest here, before the Southern Poverty Law Center demands it be disappeared.

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