Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Democracy and Leadership at 100
In 1924, Irving Babbitt completed Democracy and Leadership, which was his most directly political work.
Babbitt, who taught at Harvard, had written books on higher education and French literature. In Rousseau and Romanticism (1919), he went for unifying root causes in the trends in modern thought that he had identified. In Democracy and Leadership, he brings them to the most direct application.
The great distinction of Rousseau in the history of thought, if my own analysis be correct, is that he gave the wrong answers to the right questions. It is no small distinction even to have asked the right questions.
— Democracy and Leadership, p. 24.
Babbitt had not repudiated religion; he recognized the importance of ideas that religions had promoted. He saw that traditional moral judgement was not going to be sufficient in the modern world; eventually, we get into situations that the notes of our ancestors do not cover, and we must be able to discern for ourselves. However, he questioned whether recent intellectual developments were going to improve our ability to meet such challenges.
As against the expansionists of every kind, I do not hesitate to affirm that what is specifically human in man and ultimately divine is a certain quality of will, a will that is felt in its relation to his ordinary self as a will to refrain.
— p. 28.
The “will to refrain” is the cornerstone of Babbitt’s moral imagination. His outlook has been described as conservative. To understand it properly, understand that its opposite is not liberal, or even progressive, but expansive. The person with an expansive outlook has no will to refrain. The slogan “Yes, we can” is intrinsically expansive. The conservative says, “Perhaps we can, but should we?” While the reactionary expects every new idea to send the world to hell in a bucket, and the expansive expects every new idea to be good simply because it is new, Babbitt calls for critical examination of new ideas against a set of standards.
One’s choice may be, not between a democracy that is properly led and a democracy that hopes to find the equivalent of standards and leadership in the appeal to a numerical majority, that indulges in other words in a sort of quantitative impressionism, but between a democracy that is properly led and a decadent imperialism. One should, therefore, in the interests of democracy itself seek to substitute the doctrine of the right man for the doctrine of the rights of man.
— pp. 271-2.
Already in Babbitt’s time, the sloppiness with the meanings of words had begun that would see the word liberal drained with all meaning. Babbitt devoted an entire chapter to the distinction between true and false liberals. By the mid-30s, the proper meaning of liberal was to be inverted in the public mind: where the root of liberal is liberty, a person who advocated increased state coercion became known as a liberal. Recently, the word conservative has similarly been emptied of meaning. Reading Babbitt, one understands how absurd it is to have expansive and completely unprincipled persons nominate themselves champions of conservatism. Many of the persons who claim to be conservative are really just would-be authoritarians.
A leading class that has become Epicurean and self-indulgent is lost. Above all it cannot afford to give the first place to material goods. One may, indeed, lay down the principle that, if property as a means to an end is the necessary basis of civilization, property as an end in itself is materialism.
— p. 229.
Babbitt was not offering what many intellectuals of his day wanted to hear, and he received opposition from Ernest Hemingway, Harold Laski, Sinclair Lewis, H. L. Mencken and Edmund Wilson, among others. Much of this opposition is superficial, demonstrating a failure to understand what Babbitt was saying — in some cases, it appears the critics were only reading for keywords. Lewis claimed that Babbitt would only consider the work of authors who had been dead for over a thousand years; what Babbitt actually wrote was that Lewis was lacking in the standards that would make his work worth reading.
For the conscience that is felt as a still small voice and that is the basis of real justice, we have substituted a social conscience that operates rather through a megaphone. The busybody, for the first time perhaps in the history of the world, has been taken at his own estimate of himself.
— p. 225.
The problems Babbitt identified a century ago are still with us, because we have never addressed the ideas that are their root causes. His writing is still relevant today.
Well, I Wish You Had Taken Some Algebra
The state of California has been debating the proper math requirements in junior high for about three years no, with some districts having started the discussion years earlier. The evolution of the issue is outside my scope today; you can read more here and here. The net is that California middle schools are getting algebra back.
The change has clearly hit some nerves. The Los Angeles Times published a letter by one Barbara Rosen, writing:
In all my years of undergraduate and graduate studies, I can’t remember ever thinking, “Gee, I sure wish I had taken more algebra in high school.”
Unless one is a math or science major, this extra high school course has no value except to weed out students who are not STEM majors.
As I read the news and look at what is happening in our country, I suggest to those who decide admissions requirements at the University of California that the system would be better off requiring more courses in world history, government and those that teach critical thinking. Those skills might help students a lot more in the voting booth (and hence the future of our country) than advanced algebra.
Speaking of critical thinking, Algebra 1 is not advanced algebra. But let’s press on to the bigger picture issue.
In a 1998 Wall Street Journal article, June Kronholz documented the fact that, for many students, algebra is their first encounter in formal education with abstract thinking. Abstract thinking is a cognitive skill that citizens need to be effective, in the voting booth as well as the work environment.
I recognize that abstract thinking does not come easily or naturally to everyone. For starters, we believe that there are about three times as many persons with the Sensing personality type as there are with the Intuitive personality type [See this link for one reference; there are a range of estimates to the proportion on the internet, but all of them assert there are more S than N people]. Sensing persons do not naturally think abstractly. I have worked with people who are so far over on the S scale that they wouldn’t recognize a pattern if they tripped over it.
That is not a problem if you’re spending all your working day behind a farm animal. In a modern industrial (or post-industrial) society, abstract thinking is a necessary cognitive ability (empathy is another). Just because a cognitive ability does not come naturally to some people, it does not follow that we can just skip over it while preparing them for effective adulthood. Not everyone needs to be a math major, but all citizens must have a minimum level of these essential cognitive skills to function in an interdependent society.
I understand the difficulty some students have with algebra, at least at a level where I recognize the difficulty is genuine. It’s not laziness or general lack of intellectual candlepower. Some students just have a harder time with it than others. They all deserve our help.
Abstract thinking is required to use problem-solving processes. The urgency of learning these is greater than having the ability to solve for x in a math problem; we need them to find win-win solutions for political problems.
Prohibition is a classic example of an attempt to solve a problem without abstract thinking. Given that there were lives and families ruined by persons who could or would not control their consumption of alcohol, what do we do? Let’s just make alcohol illegal; that will solve the problem — not!
The US Constitution is a process document and, in most cases, very abstract. It does not say what policies the government will pursue; it says what means are permitted or forbidden to the government in pursuit of its policies. A person who cannot think abstractly is going to have a hard time genuinely understanding the meaning of the Constitution.
People who can’t think abstractly have a hard time getting to root cause on problems. I have seen this in the workplace: people who I know are not abstract thinkers turning back from root cause analysis. I have seen this too many times to disbelieve it.
Now that we have a greater understanding of neurodiversity, it should be possible to find ways to reach more students more effectively and bring them along. It may require algebra to be spread over 7th and 8th grade to have more time to work with more students. We must make the effort. There is no longer any excuse for expecting 30 kids to all learn the same way.
Our current political problems are magnified because many citizens sense that they don’t have the means to persuade others of their point of view. They don’t expect to succeed at persuasion, so they don’t even try. In order to persuade effectively, you need certain cognitive skills. You must have enough empathy to understand where the person you seek to persuade currently is. You must have enough abstract reasoning ability to understand that persons’ point of view even though you do not agree with it, even if it is informed by experiences that you will never have.
Too Much Democracy
Yes, there is such a thing as too much democracy. It is otherwise known as mob rule.
The nation was founded on popular rebellion, but it could not succeed in an state of permanent revolution. We had to settle down and give our government a monopoly on violence against citizens, with proper checks to limit the application of such violence. These checks include legal and judicial processes. Following in the tradition of English Common Law, we deliberately biased these processes toward the protection of individual rights.
It is contentious for a group of citizens to be on a jury and decide that they do not want to enforce a law because the jurors find the law to be unjust. Many judges dislike jury nullification, but there is a tradition of its use, and it can be consistent with our legal traditions.
However, the opposite result, where citizens override the court and mete out punishment to an accused person, is completely out of bounds.
Similarly, it is unacceptable for a group to attempt to intimidate other citizens into political silence by threatening them or their property. Right now, we have situations where this occurs. In California, you can get your car keyed if people know you’re a Republican; in Wyoming, you can get your car keyed if people know you’re a Democrat. This is not OK; it is a form of mob rule. It would substitute the law of force for the principle of persuasion, threatening to descend into anarchy. Attack people’s ideas, not the people or their property.
This behavior has gone so far out of control that election workers are being targeted by political partisans who do not get the outcomes the latter want from the election. If we allow all the honest persons to be chased out of public participation, who will we have left to run the elections? Election workers are accountable; they must be held accountable through legal processes that have rules of evidence and whose participants are themselves accountable.
Roy Barnes, former Democratic Georgia governor. “Hypothetically speaking, do you want a bodyguard following you around for the rest of your life?” Another who turned her down was ex-federal prosecutor Gabe Banks.
— Michael Issikoff, 19 Jan 2024, dicussing public figures who declined offers by Fani Willis to join her team.
Nor is this problem limited to functionaries in state governments. We have learned that several people whom Fani Willis approached to serve as special prosecutors in the case against Donald Trump backed away because of the potential threat of mob action.
The citizens are also ineffective at identifying public enemies. There is no place for vigilante violence against Jews, Asians, Moslems or any other member of a group just for being a member of the group. When I was in college, Iran was holding Americans hostage. Some people on campus took it upon themselves to beat up someone who looked like an Iranian. But he wasn’t; he was the son of the guy who owned the local pizza parlor.
The thread of mob violence is a more dangerous threat than that posed by any politician, even one who has a history of inciting the mob. If no one were willing to participate in the mob, there would be no one to incite. If we are to remain a self-governing people, we, the people, must renounce participation in mob rule.
The Constitutional Virus
In 1787, when the US Constitution was accepted by the delegates of the Constitutional Convention, the political risks that the delegates understood were informed by their knowledge of recent history. They knew that they did not want excessive centralization of power, although they were not in agreement as to how much centralization was excessive.
Most were well familiar with English history from the previous century, which had included the arbitrary personal rule of kings who considered themselves above the law. Citizens had been forced to loan money to the king, and imprisoned if they refused. Religious dissenters had been thrown in prison without trial, and sometimes tortured and mutilated for their beliefs. Their ancestors had fought to end such practices, which led to the 1689 English Bill of Rights.
Some leading citizens, including Patrick Henry, were wary of the lack of protections for the rights of individual citizens against the government. These men become known as the Anti-Federalists. They opposed the adoption of the Constitution generally, fearing that it established a central government that was too strong. To overcome their objections, James Madison drafted a series of proposals in 1791. Ten of these became the first ten amendments to the Constitution, and are collectively known as the American Bill of Rights.
Even as late as 1791, new political risks were emerging. The French Revolution had not even progressed as far as the abolition of the monarchy; the Terror was still two years into the future. No one had experienced what a mob was really capable of doing. Some American thinkers were insufficiently attentive to these threats.
What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Stephens Smith, 1787
In the next century, these threats would be further developed. Crafty persons would view the limitations on government in process documents such as the Constitution as weaknesses. They would seek to exploit these in pursuit of power, while having no commitment to maintaining these limitations once they had gained power.
When I am the weaker, I ask you for my freedom, because that is your principle, but when I am the stronger, I take away your freedom, because that is my principle.
— Louis Veuillot (1813-1883), French writer and journalist
A virus is a parasitic entity that turns the structure of its host against it. In biology, a virus is an organism that inserts its malicious payload into the genes of a host cell. In computer software, a virus exploits the features and capabilities of a host system to persist and replicate.
The host cannot defend itself against a virus because the virus has a deep understanding of the host — at least, of specific aspects of the host — and knows how to exploit that understanding for its own purposes. Extraordinary measures are required to combat viruses.
There are also political viruses. The Louis Veuillot quote illustrates the mind of a simple political virus: I will use the freedoms of your system of government for my purposes, but revoke them when I achieve power.
The Ku Klux Klan used physical intimidation, but also had virus characteristics to provide air cover. It was called the Invisible Empire for a reason. Your mayor, your town police chief or the judge before whom you appeared in court may have been Klan members. If they didn’t want the fact of their membership publicly known, it wouldn’t be. Then they could intervene to shield the other members who used violence from the legal consequences of their actions. The officials could hide behind the protections of the Constitution to deny others their constitutional rights.
Over the years, people have recognized the dangers presented by political viruses.
The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.
— Justice Robert Jackson, dissenting opinion in Terminiello v. City of Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949)
Archibald Cox expanded on this metaphor when writing about the 1951 case Dennis v. United States (341 U.S. 494):
The government’s reply was that the Constitution is not a suicide pact formed by a people so blindly dedicated to liberty under the Constitution as to deny themselves the power to protect constitutionalism from forcible destruction by the subversive plots of a monolithic, authoritarian conspiracy.
— Cox, The Court and the Constitution, p. 223.
If a person really is acting as a constitutional virus, he hides in the bushes and takes shots at our political system from the cover of his constitutional rights. To leave him undisturbed in that cover is to treat the Bill of Rights as a suicide pact, as described above. The only effective defense is to strip the subversive of his cover, revoking his rights. We are not bound to respect the rights of a person who does not respect ours.
It is important to also distinguish between republican democracy and its degenerate form, mob rule. An attempt by an individual to summon the mob to take the law into its own hands cannot be tolerated. The rights of free speech cannot be extended that far. Granting free speech rights to persons inciting a riot would qualify as treating the First Amendment as a suicide pact.
The subversive political entrepreneur may also commit misfeasance in office, whereby s/he fails to exercise the duty of care required of the office while steering clear of committing overt criminal acts. Misfeasance would include such actions as speaking or writing thinly veiled innuendos calculated to incite a mob to violence and failure to act on duties to quell an insurrection s/he had maneuvered to foment.
Incitement to riot is still a crime in the US Code (18 USC Ch. 102). The Bill of Rights does not protect citizens who call for others to join in a riot.
The duties of care of the President are laid out in Article II of the Constitution. The oath of office makes some of these very explicit:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
— Article II, Section 1
Section 3 also provides a clause stating: “[the President] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”
Implicit in any meaningful discussion of the duty of care required of a political official is the understanding that the official’s person is not identical to the office. Speech critical of the officeholder is not identical to disrespect for the office. Actions taken by the officeholder to obtain continuance in office cannot be considered part of the official duties of the officeholder.
How would we proceed where the suspected subversive agent is a US citizen? How would we make the determination that it is justified to deprive someone of her constitutional rights for the reasons given here? It is a difficult question. One wants a process to prevent the subject from being abused. At the same time, we know that subversive agents exploit the limits of process; that is what being a virus is all about. It is going to require human judgement and practical wisdom to determine when such a situation is in effect.
What I have described here is an extreme measure, and not to be tossed around lightly. We cannot shirk from considering it, for sometimes the measures are warranted. When they are warranted, they are our only effective defense.
Humility Hour: Threats to American Self-government
I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.
— Oliver Cromwell, 1650
OK, I accept the challenge. Today I will consider comparative threats to what everyone — when convenient — likes to call American democracy.
In this corner, we have Donald Trump, who is now under 91 counts of felony indictments. It is true that he is still an accused person, which is not the same as being a convicted person. In December 2022, Trump wrote that his claims of election fraud justified “the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution.“
In the other corner, we have the Progressive Left, who has a very rubbery interpretation of the Constitution. They are highly committed to upholding the Constitution — when upholding the Constitution leads to the outcomes they want. Otherwise, not so much. They like some amendments, such as the First and Eighth, much more than others, such as the Second and Tenth.
Consider the Paris Climate Agreement. The United Nations, which organized the conference at which it was signed in 2015, describes the agreement as “a legally binding international treaty on climate change.” However, the US Senate never ratified our participation in the treaty, as is required by Article II of the Constitution. In June 2017, as President, Donald Trump announced that the US would cease all participation in the treaty; on taking office, President Joe Biden signed an “instrument” to reverse this. The treaty has still not been ratified by the Senate. There is no clause in the Constitution excusing presidents from compliance with the other terms provided the president has really good intentions. The ratification requirement still exists and still has not been met.
Consider the legality of abortion. In June 2022, the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning prior Supreme Court decisions and finding the Constitution does not provide a right to have an abortion. Many people in this country were displeased by this ruling; I myself do not like the public policy consequences of it. However, influential people on the left have attached the Court over it; Laurence Tribe calls for packing the court to counter the influence of current serving justices.
Trump would not recognize justice if it hit him over the head — which may yet happen. The Democrats are campaigning for social justice, which is a contradiction in terms. All justice is individual, because only individuals are moral agents. Millions of Americans viscerally apprehend this, whether or not they can clearly articulate it.
The net is that neither side in this bout has any commitment to process. Both sides want the realization of their political agenda by any means available. Both sides claim that the other is a threat to our political process; on examination, both sides are correct. Neither side really gives a damn about process; they want what they want, period.
Donald Trump is entirely out for himself. Watching Joe Biden, I believe that he means well; still, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This calls the question: if the President makes bad policy decisions, does it really matter whether his intentions are good?
Donald Trump offers despotism straight up. The Democrats serve despotism with a sentimentality chaser. The Democrats deliver verbally facile justifications, claiming that the country wants what they are planning to enact. Donald Trump renders parodies of these, with barely comprehensible word salads. All Trump’s actions are “perfect”; every measure taken against him is a “witch hunt”.
We could be facing a general election in 2024 in which we have, once again, a choice between the advocates of these two camps for President? What do we do?
Would you rather shoot yourself in the head, or give yourself the gas pipe? I choose c) none of the above.
The Lesser of Two Evils
Yes, the lesser of two evils is still evil. Yet, there is a very real possibility that such will confront us next year.
It’s usually easy to decide between good and evil (it can be harder to summon the will to translate decisions into actions, but that’s another story). It is harder to decide between evil one way and evil another way.
I still consider Donald Trump the greater menace to the Republic. These are my reasons:
- The Democrats have some public to whom they must answer, which imposes some limits on them. Donald Trump is in it purely for himself.
- The Democrats are a coalition, and there are natural problems keeping the coalition members focused on a common mission. This imposes further limits on the Democrats.
- With Trump, our expectations of his communication are reduced to the vanishing point. How do you hold a politician to account when you can’t even have a shared understanding of what words mean?
- To date, Trump and willing enablers have pushed the envelope of despotism further than have the Democrats.
Perhaps you don’t agree with my assessment of the relative risks. I can understand that. If you have considered the deficiencies of both sides and determined that there other risks that outweigh those I have enumerated, then you may decide on a different course of action than I have. Intellectual honesty forbids me from saying that you are wrong. I stand by my determination, using the facts currently available to me, but I recognize that I could be mistaken.
We will never know for sure which side poses the greater political risks. In 2024, the election can deliver at most one of the two possible results; the other will remain a speculation, a what-if scenario. You takes your choice and you pays the price.
Let your conscience be your guide.
The Religion of Humanitarianism
We shall start with a specific incident. A Roman Catholic couple in Massachusetts, Michael and Catherine “Kitty” Burke, applied to the state to become adoptive or foster parents in early 2022. After an interview, a social worker issued “approval with conditions, specifically around religion and LGBTQIA++ related issues.”, The couple report that their application was denied by the state Department of Children and Families. In later communication, the social worker wrote that “their faith is not supportive [of LGBTQ+ youth] and neither are they.” (insertion from reference) The couple has filed suit in federal district court asking for injunctive relief :
- declaring “that the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution require Defendants to cease discriminating against Plaintiffs and those who share Plaintiffs’ religious beliefs on the basis of their religious beliefs, exercise, and expression” (Prayer for Relief, p. 34, item (a));
- prohibiting the state from denying the Burke’s application “on the basis of their religious beliefs, speech, and exercise on the issues of marriage, human sexuality, and gender identity” (item (c));
- prohibiting the state from “construing and/or applying their policies to discriminate against prospective foster parents on the basis of their religious beliefs, speech, and exercise on the issues of marriage, human sexuality, and gender identity” (item (d));
- requiring the state to “expunge or amend the Burkes’ file so that it no longer reflects Defendants’ discriminatory statements, actions, and denial, and to take any further appropriate actions to prevent further harm from the discriminatory denial” (item (e)).
This incident is an illustration of a larger issue: we have people in this country who want to establish humanitarianism as the state religion and marginalize those with non-conforming beliefs. Let’s walk through the details.
What Is a Religion?
A definition of religion that requires the worship of one or more supernatural beings is too narrow. William James gave a series of Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh in 1901-02 that were later published as The Varieties of Religious Experience. James’s “Religion of Healthy-Mindedness” does not require a supreme being at all, just a willful effort to overcome the “misery-habit”:
On the whole, one is struck by a psychological similarity between the mind-cure movement and the Lutheran and Wesleyan movements. To the believer in moralism and works, with his anxious query, “What shall I do to be saved?” Luther and Wesley replied: “You are saved now, if you would but believe it.” And the mind-curers come with precisely similar words of emancipation. They speak, it is true, to persons for whom the conception of salvation has lost its ancient theological meaning, but who labor nevertheless with the same eternal human difficulty. Things are wrong with them; and “What shall I do to be clear, right, sound, whole, well?” is the form of their question. And the answer is: “You are well, sound, and clear already, if you did but know it.” “The whole matter may be summed up in one sentence,” says one of the authors whom I have already quoted, “God is well, and so are you. You must awaken to the knowledge of your real being.”
— The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lectures IV and V.
What, then, are the identifying characteristics of a religion? Any religion requires:
- Faith in statements of belief that can never be proven or disproven;
- A morality informed by that faith.
Effective religions — those that are attractive to large and diverse populations — also offer:
- A sense of purpose and meaning for believers;
- A sense of what Thomas Sowell has called cosmic justice: at some point the books are balanced, the just are rewarded and the unjust are punished;
- A separation of good and evil;
- A set of criteria by which one can distinguish the righteous from the unrighteous;
- A coherent answer to the the theodicy question: why do bad things happen to good people?
Judaism, Christianity and Islam offer all of these. So did Marxist Communism. So did the religion of “the people” — where “the people” are not to be confused for any specific person or persons — that the Jacobins sought to establish during the French Revolution.
Typically, the central definition of good in the religion is out of direct communication with the ordinary believer. As the religion scales up, a priestly class forms to interpret the animating will. The role of the priestly class was a contentious issue in the Protestant Reformation. Buddhism attempted to avoid the formation of a priestly class by not having a creed that a priestly class could monopolize to interpret events. Nevertheless, it is very human for believers to want a priestly class who can validate their beliefs and tell them that they are doing it right.
Humanitarianism As a Religion
Humanitarianism has all the necessary features of a religion. Compare and contrast Christianity and humanitarianism:
| Christianity | Humanitarianism | |
| Faith | in a trinitarian deity | in the perfection of humanity |
| Morality | yes | yes |
| Purpose | to earn one’s way into Heaven | to serve humanity |
| Justice | you’ll get your reward in heaven | must be achieved on earth |
| The Good | the will of God | human needs, which in practice are indistinguishable from human wants |
| Sin | putting one’s own will before the will of God | putting one’s own will before the General Will |
| Evil is found | within every person | only among those who will not get with the program |
| Theological Virtues | faith, hope, charity | faith, love, compassion |
Christianity addresses theodicy with an entire branch of purpose-built theology. The net is that humans have free will and God must allow evil in order that humans will exercise free will, even though that will cause pain, suffering and unpleasant consequences to the innocent.
Humanitarianism seeks to prevent pain, suffering and unpleasant consequences to the innocent. This is a higher purpose goal than having people account for their behavior.
The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.
— Numbers 14:17 (NIV)
Under humanitarianism, the above passage is morally monstrous. Humanitarianism can barely abide people being punished at all; it is intolerable that a child should be punished for the sins of ancestors.
As a matter of fact, the love or sympathy on which the romantic idealist puts so much emphasis is, … , a subrational parody of Christian charity.
— Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership, p. 73
Humanity, which is the object of worship and definition of good for humanitarianism, is also a jealous object of worship and will tolerate no others before it.
Humanitarianism and Christianity in Opposition
Christianity and humanitarianism have opposing moral values that cannot be reconciled. This is a fundamental truth that must be understood to understand current events in America.
Woefully ignorant of sin and of the tragic dimensions of the human condition, [humanitarianism] reduces religion to a project of this-worldly amelioration. Free-floating compassion substitutes for charity, and a humanity conscious of its unity (and utter self-sufficiency) puts itself in the place of the visible and invisible Church.
— Daniel J. Mahoney, The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity, p. 13.
We have a simmering Holy War going on between Christians and humanitarians. Calls for compromise are misguided and futile. Religions do not compromise with evil; they smite it root and branch.
Religion and the Constitution
The Framers were closer in time to the last series of holy wars, between Catholics and Protestants, that had devastated Europe. They were weary of holy wars and wrote the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment seeking to avoid these here.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
— First Amendment
Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment, commonly referred to as the Equal Protection Clause, establishes that citizens of the several states shall be entitled to the same rights in their relationship with the states as they have with respect to the federal government.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
— Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1
The First Amendment freedoms are among the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States. Thus, the states are also constitutionally forbidden from establishing a state religion.
By enshrining the principles of humanitarian morality into their determination of the fitness of a couple to be a foster or an adoptive parent, and by excluding those whose beliefs do not conform to humanitarian standards, the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families has acted to establish humanitarianism as the state religion. The state has subjected the Burkes to a form of a Test Act declaring their fidelity to humanitarian principles over the principles of their faith.
The issue is not the Roman Catholicism of the Burkes; any practicing faith that conflicted with humanitarianism would be similarly at issue.
I also pray that the Burkes obtain the relief from the court they seek.
Self-governing People
I have been reading Mary Poovey’s A History of the Modern Fact, and one particular aspect of the material caught my attention: the advance of Anglo-American society from government by a king to self-government.
This did not happen all at once, and certainly did not happen by design. The changes were evolutionary and fitful. Back in 1600, “everybody knew” that a king was anointed by God to be the lawgiver to the people. Really, everybody wasn’t everybody; there were many people who challenged that, but often they paid with imprisonment, torture and death for their beliefs.
The excesses of Charles I forced the British to reconsider, leading to the (First) English Civil War. The English Parliament had Charles beheaded in January, 1649. One of the supporters of the Royalists, Thomas Hobbes, wrote Leviathan from exile in Europe. Hobbes called for a strong sovereign ruler who was unquestioningly obeyed, in order to avoid society collapsing in anarchy.
The image from the book captures Hobbes’ idea that the sovereign embodies the people. The little figures all over the king’s body are the people: the great, the good and the ordinary. The king holds the sword and the crozier, symbols of temporal and spiritual power. The sovereign knows what is good for you; he knows what you need before you even realize it yourself.
In order to make this work, the sovereign must be above the law. If the sovereign himself must obey the law, what do you do when he fails to obey it? To whom is the sovereign accountable? This would set up a competing power in society, with inevitable conflict that must ultimately be resolved by force, leading to anarchy. Society would be back to square one.
The Glorious Revolution
Over the next fifty years, the British would have to work out what they wanted from a king. They were compelled to consider not only the idealized sovereign, but the real examples of the Stuart kings, with all their personal defects. Charles II was relatively successful in navigating this turbulent period, reigning from his restoration in 1660 to his death in 1685. His brother and successor, James II, was not a success.
James was openly Roman Catholic, directly confronting a determinedly Protestant aristocracy. He reasserted the principle of the divine right of kings. When the English and Scottish parliaments would not adopt the acts he requested, he made them into royal decrees, reigniting the conflict between King and Parliament that had motivated the English Civil War. When seven bishops publicly claimed he had exceeded his authority as King, James threw the bishops in the Tower of London and had them prosecuted for seditious libel, over the objections of his own Lord Chancellor. Finally, the birth of a son to James in 1688 threatened to establish a permanent dynasty.
A group of seven English nobles sent a letter to William, the Prince of Orange, asking him to please invade England and boot James out. In November, 1688, William did so. Support for James quickly collapsed, and he was allowed to “escape” to France. After some negotiating, William and his wife Mary, who was James’ daughter, were jointly crowned King and Queen of England in February, 1689.
However, there were conditions. Parliament had a Declaration of Rights read out, listing the reasons why James was deposed and setting limits on the powers of the monarch. This declaration became the nucleus of the English Bill of Rights. The English aristocracy decided that a Leviathan sovereign was an unacceptable risk. Instead, they would have Parliament be the ultimate authority.
Moreover, an absolute lawgiver was neither necessary or desirable. Instead, the English would do with less law because the (upper-class) people would govern themselves. It’s more than representative democracy; the people would be the first line of defense against lawlessness by applying standards of conduct to their own behavior. Just because an action was not against the law, did not make it acceptable for a gentleman. This was the really revolutionary part of the Glorious Revolution. All over Europe, absolute monarchy was in. The ultimate in absolute monarchs, Louis XIV (L’etat c’est moi.), reigned in France. But the British were going to go in a different direction.
The moral basis of the settlement had still to be worked out. How would the gentlemen in power determine what was right and what was wrong?
Government by Taste
First, since a gentleman was independently wealthy, not depending on his own work to make his living, he would be more free from self-interest than would a merchant, farmer or artisan. The contemporary importance of disinterested observation is a running theme that Poovey revisits several times in chapters 2-4.
A gentleman would also have access to the shared values instilled by family, school and church. This can become rather circular: a gentleman knew what was right because it was conveyed through his upbringing, and it was conveyed through his upbringing because it was right. By 1745, it would have appeared that there was some evidence for the claim, as Britain was experiencing increasing wealth, territorial expansion and growing international stature. The ruling class would have argued: We must be doing something right. At the same time, it is a short downhill walk from there to moral complacency. The social standards of taste at that time were not offended by use of slave labor on Caribbean sugar plantations, to cite one obvious example.
A thought leader from this period was the Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713). Once could say that he placed aesthetics above ethics, asserting that you knew an action was ethically correct because its results were aesthetically pleasing, or in good taste. Shaftesbury was influential on the Scottish Enlightenment, starting with Francis Hutcheson (1694-1745). Shaftesbury is remembered as the thinker who introduced moral sentimentality into western thought.
In trying to understand this, it is important to remember that people then would consider our individualism to be rather radical. There was more general readiness to learn the social norms of taste and conform to them. The English aristocracy was also a tighter circle. There were less than a thousand families in the English peerage. Once one had soiled one’s reputation, it would not easily be repaired.
A simple example of morality through taste is visible in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813). Elizabeth Bennet is given a tour of Mr. Darcy’s manor house in his absence.
The rooms were lofty and handsome, and their furniture suitable to the fortune of their proprietor; but Elizabeth saw, with admiration of his taste, that it was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine; with less of splendor, and more real elegance, than the furniture of Rosings.
— Pride and Prejudice, ch. 43.
The landscaping and furnishings give an indication of his taste. Coupled with the testimony of his servants to his generosity, they provide evidence of his character. Austen means us to understand that Elizabeth is justified in reconsidering his character; it is not merely a mercenary decision.
More about Shaftesbury
- From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
America: Scaling Up
By 1790, there was new thinking in America about both morality and the duties of citizens. The First Great Awakening had caused some Americans to think of metropolitan Britain not as a model to be emulated, but as an example of sinfulness to be avoided. Americans saw the attempt by London to restrict colonial expansion after 1763 as self-interested, not morally principled. The Revolution advanced the status of lower-class Americans, since they had also paid for independence with their blood.
The founders had to construct a system of governance where many more citizens could participate. This was initially constrained by qualifications based on property ownership; these would be worked down in the coming decades. Even so, it was much easier for a man to acquire the required property, particularly in the states facing the western frontier, than it was in Britain. Because the founders wanted representative government whose authority was derived from the consent of the governed, they required a self-governing citizenry capable of meaningfully granting or withholding that consent.
The founders were not completely of one mind on how to go forward. Franklin was probably closest in spirit to Shaftesbury in terms of moral sentimentalism. Jefferson was expansive; he expected that the people would naturally do well with greater rights and increased powers, which also informed his favorable views on the French Revolution. Adams was not so sure, and wanted safeguards against the system degenerating into mob rule. Men such as Patrick Henry, George Mason and James Monroe already believed that the experiment was going in the wrong direction, and had campaigned against adoption of the Constitution.
[Jefferson] was for diminishing to the utmost the role of government, but not for increasing the inner control that must, according to Burke, be in strict ratio to the relaxation of outer control. When evil actually appears, the Jeffersonian cannot appeal to the principle of inner control; he is not willing again to admit that the sole alternative to this type of control is force; and so he is led into what seems at first sight a paradoxical denial of his own principles: he has recourse to legislation. It should be clear at all events that our present attempt to substitute social control for self-control is Jeffersonian rather than Puritanical.
— Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership (1924), pp. 277-278.
The founders called people who were self-governing virtuous. They were abundantly clear that only a virtuous people could sustain the system of government they sought to establish.
Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people. The general government . . . can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any despotic or oppressive form so long as there is any virtue in the body of the people.
— George Washington
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
— Benjamin Franklin
It is in the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigour. … degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats into the heart of its laws and constitution.
— Thomas Jefferson
Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.
— John Adams
The Loss of Self-Government
Although Hamilton’s vision of America’s economic future prevailed over Jefferson’s, the contest for our political destiny has belonged to Jefferson — at least until more extreme partisans would move it further than even Jefferson may have wanted to go. By 1900, it was clear that self-government was out and expansive pursuit of whatever one’s heart desired was in. Philosophies such as pragmatism raised expansive pursuit to a positive virtue.
‘The true,’ to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as ‘the right’ is only the expedient in the way of our behaving. Expedient in almost any fashion; and expedient in the long run and on the whole of course; for what meets expediently all the experience in sight won’t necessarily meet all farther experiences equally satisfactorily.
— William James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Lecture VI.
This is not working and cannot work. No amount of laws can overcome a lawless people. A nation of 330 million people who cannot govern themselves cannot be governed. Self-government means more than voting; it means refraining from actions that are wrong, even though not illegal. It demands respect for process even when the process does not deliver the outcome you want.
It has been estimated that for one Verboten sign in Germany we already have a dozen in this country; only, having set up our Verboten sign, we get even by not observing it. Thus prohibition is pronounced by the Government, largely repudiated by the individual conscience, and enforced (very imperfectly) by the police. The multitude of laws we are passing is one of many proofs that we are growing increasingly lawless.
— Democracy and Leadership, p. 279.
Solzhenitsyn recognized the importance of self-government. In his 1978 address at Harvard, he said:
I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale than the legal one is not quite worthy of man either. A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man’s noblest impulses. And it will be simply impossible to stand through the trials of this threatening century with only the support of a legalistic structure.
— “A World Split Apart“, 8 Jun 1978
We are already approaching the conditions of “war of all against all” that Hobbes feared and advocated a divine-right king to avoid. We have got to the point where Americans are recklessly advocating secession and civil war. People who have lived through civil wars know that they are nothing to be desired.
We the People must decide now how we are going to go forward. We can be self-governed, or we can tear up the Constitution and have a king. It’s a daily decision.
Crash and Burn in London
We can make one statement with certainty in favor of Liz Truss and her brief run as Prime Minister: she was not a cynical operator who made expedient promises to people to obtain office and then conveniently forgot them once there. Perhaps if she had been more of a cynical operator, she would still be in office.
Her 44 days in office were brief, but worthy of study. Her failure was so public, so immediate and so spectacular that it is possible to gain learning from it. Her first mistake was to ignore existing conditions. She can argue, justifiably, that the Conservative party members who voted for her wanted her to do exactly that. It raises the question: can anyone deliver what the Tory faithful want without wrecking the economy?
When the Conservative members of Parliament (MPs) voted on whom to replace Boris Johnson in July, Rishi Sunak always had more votes than did Liz Truss. Until the fifth and final round, Penny Mordaunt also had greater support than did Truss. However, when the vote went to the party members, Truss won with 57% of the vote against Sunak with 43%. One major reason for the result was that the program Truss put forward was what the party members wanted.
Her financing proposals sent government bond markets into a tailspin. Truss proposed tax cuts and assistance for British citizens anticipating a fearsome winter of energy costs, all to be financed with increased public borrowing. The British call their government bonds gilts, or “gilt-edged securities”. Investors fled from gilts in the face of her plans, forcing the Bank of England to intervene in an attempt to stabilize the markets. Truss canned her Chancellor and fellow true believer, Kwasi Kwarteng, on 14 Oct, but his sacrifice was not sufficient to right the ship.
Conservatives were spoiled as their opposition, the Labour Party, burned to the waterline under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. Since then, with Sir Kier Starmer and Rachel Reeves in the lead, Labour has been repairing its reputation and offering reasoned alternatives. If a general election were held now, most Conservative MPs could kiss their seats good-bye.
Meanwhile, the National Health Service (NHS) continues to burn in the background. The service is underfinanced and understaffed; morale is feeling for the bottom. Median wait time to see a specialist on a non-urgent basis is over 13 weeks.
No one in America should be sneering at the Brits over this. We have many problems in common. Start with public finance. The ratio of public debt to GDP is a crude but handy measure:
| Country | Debt as % of GDP |
| Greece | 177.00 |
| Italy | 135.00 |
| United States | 107.00 |
| Spain | 95.50 |
| Argentina | 89.40 |
| United Kingdom | 80.70 |
At these debt levels, the financial markets have the government by the short hairs. The scope of action of political office holders is reduced by what the markets will tolerate, as the Truss ministry vividly illustrates.
We have some advantages, most notably the size of our economy and the fact that the dollar is the world reserve currency, but neither of these are guarantees of invulnerability.
The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.
— Proverbs 22:7
The Conservative party also appears to have some long-term problems brewing. This month, the leadership was able to select Rishi Sunak as leader, avoiding another trip to the membership, who might have done something asinine like voting for Boris Johnson again. A split is opening up between what the politicians want and what the party faithful want. Sound familiar, Republicans?
Both countries have substantial unresolved political issues in the electorates. The people want more benefits and less taxation to pay for them. To make ends meet, please stop wasting money on benefits for other people.
“How did you go bankrupt?”
— Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.“
Why Are You in Congress?
About a month ago, 17 members of Congress were among the crowd protesting outside the Supreme Court, blocking the street. When the crowd disregarded three warnings from the Capitol Police, the Police arrested the Congresspersons and several other persons in the crowd.
The issue over which the crowd was protesting was the recent Supreme Court decision, Dobbs v. Jackson, in which a majority ruled there is no constitutional right to legal abortion.
I understand a lot of people did not like the outcome of that decision. I am not pleased with the outcome myself.
Having sitting members of Congress out there protesting makes me ask : don’t they have anything more effective they can do to register their grievances? How about passing a proposed constitutional amendment enumerating the rights of citizens that we want to protect against actions by the states, and then campaigning for the states to pass it? I realize that is a lot of work, but it’s called legislating, and it is why we send people to Congress.
These are the members of Congress who found protesting to be an preferable substitute for legislating:
| Rep. Jackie Speier (CA-14) | Rep. Katherine Clark (MA-5) | Rep. Carolyn Maloney (NY-12) |
| Rep. Sara Jacobs (CA-53) | Rep. Barbara Lee (CA-13) | Rep. Madeleine Dean (PA-4) |
| Rep. Cori Bush (MO-1) | Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI-13) | Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL-9) |
| Rep. Nydia Velázquez (NY-7) | Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12) | Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN-5) |
| Rep. Andy Levin (MI-11) | Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) | Rep. Ayanna Pressley (MA-7) |
| Rep. Alma Adams (NC-12) | Rep. Veronica Escobar (TX-16) |
I am particularly disappointed to see Rep. Speier on this list; I had expected better than this of her.
Clause 61: The Pushback Blog 