Politics

Pope Francis ticks off both the left and right

Reprinted from the Press and Journal

I’m not Catholic, but man do I love this pope.

Ever since Jorge Mario Bergoglio, otherwise known as Pope Francis, was confirmed as the Vicar of Christ in March of 2013, he’s been boggling the minds of religious and political observers.

Born to Italian immigrants in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Francis grew up in a lower-middle class environment in a country about as politically clean as the mob. He came of age in a place very much removed from stable public order. This upbringing led to become the head of the Jesuit order in Argentina at a time of dictatorship and domestic strife.

It is from this background that the Pontiff learned the importance of giving the needy a voice in human society.

All this and more make Francis a fascinating character.

His tenure as Bishop of Rome has been spent reaching out to the margins of society – the poor, the diseased, the lost and forgotten. Not long after being confirmed, he was photographed kissing the head of a disfigured man, an act of profound grace. During his recent trip to Washington, he snubbed a bunch of congressmen to visit a homeless shelter.

The caritas Francis has spread has not come without controversy, however.

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The historical legacy of American Socialism

The recent book The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History by Jack Ross, a contributor to this blog, is a must-read for anyone interested in the meaning of American socialism. The books starts in the nineteen century with the early socialists of America, some more close to Marx and others more similar to Bakunin. What seems to be the center of the book is American social democracy, but when Ross speaks about social democracy, he doesn’t refer to the Keynesianism of liberals like Paul Krugman, but the populist Jeffersonian decentralism of Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas.

Both Debs and Thomas are central to history of American socialism. The book refers to Debs as biggest champion in American history of the cause of free speech. Being imprisoned for a political speech in the context of World War I, there are few politicians that could match his anti-imperialism and conviction, and Ross mentions a possible kindred spirit in the present, the conservative libertarian Ron Paul.

Debs was a five time presidential candidate, a man who came from a prosperous immigrant family from Terre Haute, Indiana but who gave his life to the cause of workers and peace. Ross mentions that if Debs had been the presidential candidate of the Populist Party, history could have been very different; if the socialists would have gotten the endorsement from the unions, they might have been able to become an organization similar to social democratic parties in Europe. Ross makes clear his admiration for Norman Thomas, a Presbyterian minister opposed to both the New Deal and World War II, who ran six times for president as a candidate of the Socialist Party of America. Like Debs, Thomas was an anti-imperialist whose commitment to peace made him an ally of the Old Right.

Both Debs and Thomas were patriots in the most profound sense of the word; like the early socialists, their cause was a new American revolution against the oppression of capitalism, but their desired model was very different from Marxian European Socialism.

Why socialism failed to take root in the United States is question that gnaws at the edges of the book. While there is not one answer, Jack Ross thinks that the early days of the Socialist Party were crucial to their tragic future, because despite the fact that Eugene Debs was a true hero for the working class, the Socialist Party could never build a strong alliance with national labor organizations. I think there is some truth to that but the question of race is very important; the ties of socialists with racists and even with the Ku Klux Klan in some regions generate a strong problem with minorities in the days of Debs despite that he and an important part of the leadership of the Socialist Party were anti-racist. Also the question of Zionism made some Jewish socialists change their anti-interventionist position.

The text attempts to refute the Popular Front narrative that has been common in the history of the American Left — the role of communism and especially the Communist Party USA were overstated in the historiography of the Cold War. Though the Popular Front realignment was due largely to communists, it is very hard to think that this explains why some radicals support the Democratic Party today. Socialism was misunderstood in the context of Cold War as a synonym for communism, despite that in the American tradition they were particularly opposed to one another.

The attempt to defend the historic American social democracy is complex, because today social democracy is synonym of left-liberalism and identity politics. Maybe Milwaukee could be an interesting example for the history of American socialism, a city with a history of mayors from the Socialist Party which were efficient and transparent in the way to govern — the last one was Frank Zeidler, elected in 1948. John Norquist who called himself a fiscally conservative socialist was elected in 1998 as a member of the Democratic Party. I think that while Norquist never hold the fame of Bernie Sanders, he would probably had been closer to a more populist vein of the socialism that the Socialist Party used to represent.

On the legacy of American socialism, Ross points three groups that emerge from the break-up of the Socialist Party of America: the Schatmanites of SDUSA, the reformers of DSOC and the radicals of SPUSA. While Schatmanites were fundamental to the development of neoconservativism and very hard to identify as socialists, you can hear prominent neocons like David Frum supporting universal health care and a hike of the minimum wage. However, if non-interventionism is what used to be the principal characteristic of the American socialism, that makes them, definitively, something else.

DSOC, now DSA, is very small and despite having prominent members like Cornel West it is still part of left-wing of the Democrat Party, and it’s not event as prominent as some other progressive groups. The SPUSA still participates in some elections, but shows weaker and weaker results; their last elected member Karen Kubby was a councilwoman from Iowa City, who switched parties to the Greens, a relatively a quite common choice for members of the SPUSA.

The possibilities of development of socialism in America despite the odds were very exciting. The book relates that in the beginnings of the last century there was even a proposal of members of the Socialist Party to form an independent socialist republic in Texas. But the most clear possibility for the development of American Socialism was if Martin Luther King would have survived and run as a third party candidate in 1968.

King’s politics were close to Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas, but obviously being a prominent Afro-American leader he could rally the support of minorities. Without King the third party effort of the People’s Party failed. In the 80s the Citizens Party was born out of the Barry Commoner presidential campaign but its form of liberal reformism never became powerful. In 1984 the Green Party was born. The Green Party, despite being identified with the Keynesianism of Ralph Nader, was born in the legacy of the New Left. In the 80s socialists and anarchists founded the Left Green Network, whose purpose was to drive the party to the left, among them was the social theorist and eco-anarchist Murray Bookchin. Under his influence the Left Green Network developed a decentralist platform fighting for change at the local level, but with time the Left Green Network’s priorities fell off in favor of the more liberal wing of the party that was more focused on the national level.

I think Ross’s book fails to mention the importance of one of the Green Party founders to the history of socialism in America, Howie Hawkins was a member of SPUSA that became an ally of Murray Bookchin, but also was key into drafting Ralph Nader as the Green Party candidate. While the 2000 Nader campaign caused a backlash against the Green Party for allegedly being a spoiler, party insiders had said that the organization wasn’t as strong as in the early days of the party. The Green Party failed to become a biggest threat to Democratic Party in the next election, the liberal wing decided to choose as presidential candidate an unknown lawyer David Cobb in 2004, against Nader who was supported by socialists and anarchists and even some libertarians and paleoconservatives.

Nader running as an independent didn’t help in the party building, but neither did running a weak candidate like Cobb. In 2008 Nader built a relatively similar alliance running as an independent, while greens choose Cynthia McKinney a popular black congresswoman, but with Barack Obama as the Democratic Party nominee both Nader and McKinney showed poor numbers. In 2012 they ran Jill Stein, a physician, and got numbers far from the ones of Nader in 2000. Stein, unlike Nader, never showed interest in making inroads with the paleoconservative or libertarian vote and was in search of progressive supporters. The Green Party has evolved from libertarian municipalism of the 80s to the liberal reformism of the 90s to eco-socialism today. Though eco-socialism is a term connected to Murray Bookchin, I think today eco-socialism has in more in common with state interventionism in the name of ecology. The Green Party has embraced identity politics, which could be a problem if as in the past there is need of the votes from what used to be the Old Right. Though decentralism is still on their platform, they focus a lot more on the presidential campaign.

Ross mentions that the Old Right and socialist left had a lot in common, and I agree. Their foreign policy was the biggest common cause, Bill Kauffman goes as far as to suggest Pat Buchanan is the second coming of Eugene Debs. The text fails to mention that Goldwater speechwriter Karl Hess was also a former member of the Socialist Party, but unlike the neocons he went leftward in the context of the Vietnam War. But the text mentions something often forgotten, the fact that after his presidential campaigns Norman Thomas started to sound closer to Peter Kropotkin, denouncing state bureaucracy and calling for the development of mutual aid. In those days he sounded closer to eco-anarchists like Murray Bookchin or Christian anarchists like Dorothy Day. But even with libertarians there is still some room for an alliance, in the 2014 election Howie Hawkins the eco-socialist candidate of the Green Party for Governor of New York opposed the Keystone XL Pipeline on the grounds that it violated property rights.

A curious fact is that Jack Ross was a writer of The American Conservative, and I think he could be defined as a heterodox left-conservative, but his book could make the radical left think again in their own tradition. Today the possibility of America having a president who calls himself a socialist is real. Few journalists predicted Sanders’ success, the liberal left is tired of the corporatism of the Clintons, and Sanders’ message is resonating with a public tired of the merger of Wall Street and Washington. But neither Debs nor Thomas would had been proud of Sanders, who is not only much more bureaucratic than them, he is also a supporter of the American Empire.

Ross points that socialists are like prophets, and he is right. The historic antiwar activist David McReynolds said on the 100 year anniversary of the Socialist Party that the victory of socialism in America was not going to be when someone who was part of the socialist left is in a place of power — a sly reference to the neocons. Likewise, a victory for Bernie Sanders could easily be less the vindication of American Socialism than its defeat.

I don’t know if America will see a character like Debs or Thomas again. Ralph Nader was closer to the Old Left in speaking about a broad left/right alliance against the corporate state and the importance of the concept of community activism. But Ron Paul was even closer because in making foreign policy his priority he was able unify libertarians, conservatives, progressives and socialists against the American Empire, and like Debs and Thomas he want a Republic. I think that the book shows that not only the New Left had a lot in common with the Old Right but actually the Old Left had also a lot in common with the Old Right, a call for a Jeffersonian decentralist Republic, and whether one calls that libertarian, conservative or socialist doesn’t make much difference. The socialist left in America had strong democratic convictions and was opposed to all totalitarian forms of socialism. Though today there is still a caricature of socialism as a synonym of Soviet communism, but the youth is not interested in buying it.

There is a long noble history of American socialism, men and woman who choose to believe that they can build a new country, based on the ideals on which the old one was founded. We may need to rediscover it, as the socialism we’re most familiar with is much more pernicious. America has in the last century started to live under a kind of socialism, the state socialism of Bismarck, proper to a military empire like the ones between World Wars. Later, in the context of Vietnam War, Murray Rothbard described a “nixonian socialism,” and since Reagan, neoconservativism can be understood as right-wing social democracy. If conservatives have been vital for the triumph of some forms of socialism, maybe they could be a factor in bringing about a future for the more positive kind. Maybe the descendents of the prairie socialists are supporting Donald Trump but I think they could be waiting for a new Eugene Debs.

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White plight

The Southern Poverty Law Center is going to have an aneurysm over my plea to consider the struggle poor whites face in America. The piece is (where else?) over at Taki’s Mag today. An excerpt:

The racial privilege status of white trash makes them unattractive to the media because being penurious and pale-skinned is not respectable. While poor minorities are viewed with dignity and sympathy (as they should be), the same doesn’t apply to Caucasians. The white working class is, as Baptist minister Will Campbell put it, “the last, the only minority left that is fair game for ethnic slurs from people who would consider themselves good liberals.” Since the Progressive Era, the U.S. government has made it a goal to forcefully equalize society between races, classes, income scales, and gender. But to Campbell, “poor whites have seen government try to make peace between various warring factions but they have not been brought to the bargaining table.”

The result is pockets of despair in many parts of the country, most predominantly the South. And while it’s true that poor whites have always existed in America, the callous disregard for their difficulty we see by blue bloods in the Acela corridor is new. People like Kim Konzny have been stripped of dignity and left to fend for themselves without the assistance of the media or Washington elites. Unlike impoverished blacks who hold tight to faith and community, they are without an honorable sense of identity. If they cling to the Bible, they are seen as brainless, flat-earth bumpkins. If they somehow succeed in getting out of the trailer, they are demonized and told they’ve earned nothing because of “white privilege.” If they try to stick with their own kind, they are called neo-segregationists.

 

Read the whole thing and look for me listed somewhere on the SPLC’s Hate Map. I’ll be kickin’ back in short-shorts and combat boots with an Old Milwaukee pounder in one hand and four fingers down with one proud in the other. Boy howdy!

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Things Michael Gerson doesn’t think are worth being called racist over

Rarely does a conservative columnist state it so plainly as Michael Gerson does in his piece about why Ben Carson should vote for a Muslim president:

What gain or goal is worth the cost of breathing life into bigotry?

Here are some things Michael Gerson doesn’t think are worth that cost, because of his self-fulfilling prophecy that “declaring war on demography is like declaring war on gravity”:

  1. A secure border
  2. Preserving the two-party system
  3. A well-assimilated immigrant population

Lots of people have argued the Iraq invasion was racist, being a war of aggression waged against a Muslim nation with at least the secondary purpose of bringing their government up to 21st Century standards. When Gerson was in meetings of the White House Iraq Group, did he think it was worth the slings and arrows?

We don’t get to decide what bigotry is, the world in 2015 is full of people who do that professionally. Since Gerson is ready to elect a Muslim president of a Brazil-ized America, there is very little conflict between them. The ones who aren’t up for a policy of, ‘invade the world, invite the world, then consider the merit of ideas based on whether someone, somewhere, will call them racist,’ have a harder time finding their views represented in the Washington Post.

Sorry, Kim Davis should face some repercussion for not fulfilling her duties

Author note: While I find much to agree with in Mr. Church’s sentiment here, I can’t fully embrace ignoring the law without consequences. I guess traditionalists are right about Kant and his epistemological head games focused on non-contradiction: they rot the brain. Perhaps mine is rotten too. I’ll let the readers decide.

Much ink has been spilled on the ongoing plight of Kim Davies, the Kentucky county clerk who is currently incarcerated for refusing to issue marriage licenses.

First Things editor R.R. Reno praises her resoluteness to “quietly following the dictates of her conscience.” Author Luma Simms also celebrates Davis “acting in accordance with God’s moral law which is now written on her heart as a convert” to Christianity. National Review’s Charlie Cooke is adamant that Davis breaking the law and intones that “[she]does not have a leg to stand on.” Rod Dreher blogs, “even though my heart is with Kim Davis, my head says principle matters” and that “if we grant individuals the right to defy any law they like without consequence, as long as they claim religious liberty, the rule of law ceases to exist. “

The liberal media is having a field day over impugning Davis’ intransigence against complying with the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision. Back when California outlawed same-sex marriage, the Grey Lady herself endorsed government officials defying the law. But let’s forget about the hypocrisy of the liberal media for a moment. The question at hand for Christians is this: What’s the proper role of civil disobedience in the face of a hostile government?

I love a good poke in the eye of authority as much as the next guy. But, like Dreher and Cooke, I see that the law must have consequences. I’ve praised the defiance of some Southern counties refusing to issue marriage licenses altogether. That movement, small as it is, represents a dropping out of public requirement. But like Kim Davis, the perpetrators have to face the consequences of their choice. And for the Kentucky county of Rowan, the chickens are coming home to roost.

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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…