Every man of base character, and therefore the more greedy for others' goods, thinks himself the only one really worthy to possess all the gold and jewels there are.

Every man of base character, and therefore the more greedy for others' goods, thinks himself the only one really worthy to possess all the gold and jewels there are.

Boethius

The Agrarian's Lament: What have you done for me lately? Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 5.

The Agrarian's Lament: What have you done for me lately? Addressing polit...: An agricultural country which consumes its own food is a finer thing than an industrial country, which at best can only consume its own smok...

What have you done for me lately? Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 5.

An agricultural country which consumes its own food is a finer thing than an industrial country, which at best can only consume its own smoke.

Chesterton.

A long time ago I started a post on one of our companion blogs about agriculturalist and the Republican Party.  I can't find it now, maybe I published it, or maybe I didn't.

As I"m in both worlds, the urban and the agricultural, I get exposed to the political views of both camps.  The Trump administration has made this a really interesting, and horrifying, experience.  By and large professionals detest Donald Trump and regard him as a charleton  Farmers and ranchers are, however, amongst his most loyal base, even though there's no real reason for them to be such.  Indeed, with the damage that Trump is doing to agriculture this will be a real test of whether farmers and ranchers simply reflexively vote Republican or stop doing son and wake up.

The Democratic Party, not the GOP, saved family farmers and ranchers in this country when the forces of the unabated Homestead ACt and the Great Depression were going to destroy them.  They've seemingly resented being saved from those forces, however, as an impingement on their freedoms, and they've bristled at every government act since that time.  Farmers and ranchers would rather sink in a cesspool of their own making than be told how to properly build one, basically.

We here, of course, aren't a pure agricultural blog.  This is an Agrarian blog, and that's different.  We are, quite frankly, much more radical.

"The land belongs to those who work it." 

Zapata.

Agrarianism is an ethical perspective that privileges an agriculturally oriented political economy. At its most concise, agrarianism is “the idea that agriculture and those whose occupation involves agriculture are especially important and valuable elements of society

Bradley M. Jones, American Agrarianism.

Still, we can't help but notice that American agriculturalist, more than any other class of businessmen, have voted to screw themselves by voting for Donald Trump. They voted for tariff wars that leave their products marooned here in the US while foreign competitors take advantage of that fact.  They've voted for a guy who thinks global warming is a fib (which many of them do as well) in spite of the plain evidence before their eyes, and the fact that this will destroy the livelihoods of the younger ones.  They've voted to force economic conditions that will force them off the lands and their lands into the hands of the wealthy.

Indeed, on that last item, they've voted for people who share nothing in common with them whatsoever and would just as soon see them out of business, or simply don't care what happens to them.

They've voted, frankly, stupidly.

Well, nothing cures stupidly more than a giant dope slap from life, and they're getting one right now.  The question is whether they'll vote in 2026 and 2028 to be bent over, or start to ask some questions.

We're going to post those questions here.

1.  What connection does the candidate have with agriculture?

They might not have any and still be a good candidate, but if they're running around in a plaid shirt pretending to be a 19th Century man of the soil, they should be dropped.

They should also be dropped if they're like Scott Bessent, who pretends to be a soybean farmer when he's actually a major league investor.  Indeed, big money is the enemy of agriculture and always has been.  

I'd also note that refugees from agriculture should be suspect.  The law is full of them, people who were sent off to law school by their farmer and rancher parents who believed, and in their heart of hearts still believe, that lawyers, doctors and dentist, indeed everyone in town, don't really work.  All of these refugees live sad lives, but some of them spend time in their sad lives on political crusades that are sort of a cry out to their parents "please love me".

I know that sounds radical, but it's true.

2. What will they do to keep agricultural lands in family hands, and out of absentee landlord hands?

And the answer better not be a "well I'm concerned about that". The answer needs to be real.

From an agrarian prospective, no solution that isn't a massive trend reversing one makes for a satisfactory answer to this question. Ranches being bought up by the extremely wealthy are destroying the ability of regular people to even dare to hope to be in agriculture.  This can be reversed, and it should be, but simply being "concerned" won't do it.

3.  What is your view on public lands?

If the answer involves transferring them out of public hand, it indicates a love of money that's ultimately always destructive to agriculture in the end.

Indeed, in agricultural camps there remains an unabated lust for the public lands even though transferring them into private hands, whether directly or as a brief stop over in state hands, would utterly destroy nearly ever farm and ranch in local and family ownership . The change in value of the operations would be unsustainable, and things would be sold rapidly.

Public lands need to stay in public hands.

4. How do you make your money?

People think nothing of asking farmers "how many acres do you have" or ranchers "how many cattle do you have", both of which is the same as asking "how much money do you have".  

Knowing how politicians make their money is a critical thing to know.  No farmer or rancher, for example, has anything in common with how the Trump family makes money, and there's no reason to suppose that they view land as anything other than to be forced into developers hands and sold.

5. What is your position on global warming?

If its any variety of "global warming is a fib", they don't deserve a vote.

6.  What is your position on a land ethnic?

If they don't know what that means, they don't deserve a vote.

7.  What's on your dinner table, and who prepares it?

That may sound really odd, and we don't mean for it to be a judgment on what people eat. . . sort of.  But all agriculturalist are producing food for the table. . . for the most part, if we ignore crops like cotton, or other agricultural derived textiles, of which there are a bunch, and if we ignore products like ethanol.

Anyhow, I'll be frank.  If a guy is touring cattle country and gives an uneasy chuckle and says, "well, I don't eat much meat anymore" do you suppose he really cares about ranching?  If you do, you need your head checked.

You probably really need it checked if the candidate doesn't every grill their own steak but has some sort of professional prepare their dinner every night.  That would mean that they really have very little chance of grasping 

8.  What's your understanding of local agriculture?

That's a pretty broad question, but I'm defining agriculture very broadly here.  Indeed, what I mean is the candidates understanding of the local use of nature, to include farming and ranching, but to also include hunting, fishing and commercial fishing.

Indeed, on the latter, only the commercial fishing industry seems to have politicians that really truly care what happens to them. How that happened isn't clear, but it does seem to be the case.

Otherwise, what most politicians seem to think is that farmers wear plaid flannel shirts.  I see lots of them wondering around in photographs looking at corrals, or oil platforms, but I never see one actually do any work. . . of pretty much any kind.  That is, I don't expect to see Chuck Gray flaking a calf, for example.

Last and prior editions:

Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Don't support liars and don't lie. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 4.

Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 3.

Questions hunters, fishermen, and public lands users need to ask political candidates. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 2.

Labels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Commentary, Democratic Party, Politics, Questions for politicians, Republican Party, Trailing threadLabels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Camping, Climate Change, fishing, hunting, Politics, Public Lands, Questions for politicians, Right Wing Politics and Politicians, The Land Ethic, This is why we can't have nice things

Addressing politicians in desperate times. A series.

Labels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Commentary, Democratic Party, Politics, Questions for politicians, Republican Party, Trailing thread

Churches of the West: Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Don't support liars and don't lie. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 4.

Churches of the West: Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Don't s...:    Χαῖρε Μαρία κεχαριτωμένη, ὁ Κύριος μετά σοῦ, Ἐυλογημένη σὺ ἐν γυναιξὶ, καὶ εὐλογημένος ὁ καρπὸς τῆς κοιλίας σοῦ Ἰησούς. Ἁγία Μαρία, μῆτερ...

Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Don't support liars and don't lie. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 4.

 

 Χαῖρε Μαρία κεχαριτωμένη,

ὁ Κύριος μετά σοῦ,

Ἐυλογημένη σὺ ἐν γυναιξὶ,

καὶ εὐλογημένος ὁ καρπὸς τῆς κοιλίας σοῦ Ἰησούς.

Ἁγία Μαρία, μῆτερ θεοῦ,

προσεύχου [πρέσβευε] ὑπέρ ἡμῶν τῶν ἁμαρτωλῶν,

νῦν καὶ ἐν τῇ ὥρᾳ τοῦ θανάτου ἡμῶν.

Ἀμήν

So, a big one that we didn't include yesterday, as it deserves its own post.  This may be the most significant post of this thread.

Don't lie and don's support liars.

Everyone has heard the old joke, “How do you know a politician is lying?” The answer.  Because their mouth is moving."  That stretches the point, but there's some truth behind the joke, as there is with any good joke.

Indeed, we've become so used to politicians lying that we basically expect it. The current era, however has brought lying, as well as truth telling, into a new weird surreal era.

Lying is a sin.  It's been debated since early times if it's always a sin, or if there are circumstances in which it may be allowed, limited though those be.  If it's every allowable, it's in situations like war, where after all, killing is allowed.  Most of us lie, but it's almost always sinful.

In Catholic theological thought, lying can be a mortal sin.  It's generally accepted that most lies are not in that category. So, "yes, dear, I love gravy burgers" is not a mortal sin.  But lies can definitely be mortally sinful.  Lying over a grave matter is mortally sinful, if the other conditions for mortal sin are met.

Donald Trump, whom some deluded Christians refer to as a "Godly Man", lies routinely and brazenly, and this has brought lying into the forefront, even as he's shocked people, rightfully, by following through on some of his promises, but not all, that were assumed to be lies or at least exaggerations.  He's advanced lies about who won the 2020 election, and many of his followers have advanced those lies as well.  Some people, of course, believe the lies and advance what they assume to be the truth, but some of that is being wilfully ignorant that they are lies.

Of course here, as always, I'm coming at this from a Catholic prospective.  I do not accept the thesis that some do that lies can be utilized to advanced something we regard as a greater good. Some hold the opposite view and I'm fairly convinced that some Christian Nationalist politicians hold the opposite view.  I frankly wonder, for example, if Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, hold the opposite view.  Johnson claims to be a devout Christian and if he doesn't hold the opposite view, based on the lies he spouts, he must despair of his own salvation quite frequently, unless he hold the completely erroneous "once saved always saved" view some Evangelical Christians hold, or if he's a Calvinist that figures that double predestination has the fate of everyone all determined anyhow, which is also a theologically anemic position.

A very tiny minority of Christians hold such views, however.  For the rest of us, it's incumbent not to reward lying, and not to advance lies.  It's dangerous and destructive to everyone.  It should not be tolerated by anyone.  And in this era, and for the proceeding several, it's destroying everything.

Last and prior editions:

Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 3.

Questions hunters, fishermen, and public lands users need to ask political candidates. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 2.

Labels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Commentary, Democratic Party, Politics, Questions for politicians, Republican Party, Trailing threadLabels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Camping, Climate Change, fishing, hunting, Politics, Public Lands, Questions for politicians, Right Wing Politics and Politicians, The Land Ethic, This is why we can't have nice things

Addressing politicians in desperate times. A series.

Labels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Commentary, Democratic Party, Politics, Questions for politicians, Republican Party, Trailing thread

Churches of the West: Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 3.

Churches of the West: Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Address...: Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora p...

Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 2.

Ave Maria, gratia plena,

Dominus tecum.

Benedicta tu in mulieribus,

et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.

Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,

ora pro nobis peccatoribus,

nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

This series was kicked off on a companion blog, and followed up upon in another one that has a more limited focus.  That's why we're posting this one here.  I.e., we acknowledge that questions that are important to hunters, fishermen, campers, etc., may not be to the sincerely religious.*

I fear, gentle reader, that this will have a rather long winded introduction, but there's no real way to avoid that.

More than any other era in my lifetime, religion is in the public sphere.  In Wyoming, the least religious state in the country, decades went by in which politicians never openly stated anything about their faith.  I knew very sincere Catholic politicians who never mentioned that in a race, or while in office.¹ The same is true of two deeply Mormon politicians I know.  If you knew them, you knew that they were Mormons, but they never mentioned it even once in their campaigns.

The same was true of Congressional candidates.  There were longserving Congressmen from Wyoming whom I could not tell you anything about their religions.  I assume that they were Christians, but it's just an assumption. I'm sure I could look it up, but it's not something you automatically knew.

Well, those days are over, and they're over because radical Calvinists of the New Apostolic Reformation are waging a holy war on American culture, and by extension, effectively on other faiths, including the main of the  Christian faith.  They're franky fairly open about it.  

As part of this, a lot of politicians now wrap themselves in the mantle or religion, claiming Christ and Christianity, and directly interjecting questions of faith and morals into their politics.  Prime examples today are people like Mike Johnson, who is some sort of Evangelical Christian and who has the Christian Nationalist Pinetree Flag outside of his office.² The election of Donald Trump brought to the forefront Christian Nationalist and National Conservatives, movements that were around before Trump but who see Trump as their once in a millenium opportunity.  

In that group, moreover, there are two distinct camps.  One one hand, you have National Conservatives, a movement defined by people like Patrick Dineen and Rod Dreher and who are often Apostolic Christians looking back basically to the 19th Century.  They distrust democracy entirely, and therefore espouse a sort of democracy that can only exist within cultural guiderails.  Adherents to their views who are in the Administration or who have close influences on it are J. D. Vance and Kevin Roberts.³ 

These people are influential, but not as much as the second group.

The second group are radical Evangelicals who are often part of the New Apostolic Reformation.  They really only barely tolerate Apostolic Christians and some of them, who are pretty ignorant as a rule on Church history and the early history of the Church, do not regard Apostolic Christians, particularly Catholics, as Christians at all.  The standard bearer for people of this mindset was Charlie Kirk, although he seemed to have been evolving steadily towards Apostolic Christianity.  Paula White, whom most Apostolic Christians and Mainline Protestants would fine to be a little weird, is the "faith advisor" from this camp who is very close to the Trump Administration.  Franklin Graham seems to be in this circle as well.⁴

The NAR people believe in a theology in which the United States sort of has a status roughly analogous to Israel in the Old Testament.  That is, they believe the US has a Devine mission.  They're serious about it, and they see the country as a Calvinist country, which is distinctly different from seeing it as a Christian country.  The U.S. is definitely a Protestant Country, even though many Americans don't' realize that, and Puritanism still influences it heavily.  Teh NAR people would bring Puritanism roaring back.

Christianity has had splits and different views right from the onset.  There were early heracies, of course, but there were also local expressions of Catholicism that gave rise to different rights.  World events separated the churches from each other, and some of the divisions meant that distant branches of the Church spent long periods in isolation from other Christians.  I note that to counter what is so often generally supposed, that being that Christianity was completely uniform at first.  That was never true.  Christians could certainly recognize each other, and even when long separated Churches came back into exposure with the main they often instantly recognized that they were in contact with other Apostolic Christians, but there were local different.  Such differences gave rise to the Great Schism and then, more radically, to the Reformation.

I don't note all of this to try to set out a history of the Church, but to further note here a set of additional divides.

The Catholic Church has divides between orthodox, traditional, radically traditional, and liberal, with the latter camp really falling rapidly away.  We won't deal much with the liberal here, as its basically a Baby Boom thing and a product of a misunderstanding of Vatican II.  Over time, orthodox thinking has really returned to the Church, to the relief of almost all, and presently orthodoxy is the mainstream of the Catholic demographic, with liberalism sort of an old Priest and old Bishop hold out sort of thing.  Orthodox Catholics take their Faith seriously, and look inward at the Church, rather than expect all that much of society as rule.  Trads take that one step further, reincorporating some of the things that disappeared with the "spirt of Vatican II".  Rad Trads go even further than that, with hostility towards the modern Church.

Politically, sincere Catholics are hard to peg down.  Even the Trump administration gives us a glimpse of that.  I doubt that Rubio joins Vance for Mass, even though they both go each Sunday and Holy Days.  Anyhow, Catholics that aren't protestantized, and many are protestantized, tend towards the middle of things politically, being very conservative on most social issues involving life or gender, but potentially all over the map on other issues, save for one thing. They can't be "America First" or any nation first on anything.  They hold Christ first and everything else second, some things a distant second.  There's no such thing, for educated Catholics, as an "American church".  In that, they hold the same view as St. Thomas More as expressed in his last words before his martyrdom:

I die the king's good servant, but God's first.

St. Thomas More before his execution on July 6, 1535.

The Orthodox are much the same, save for the fact that there really aren't "liberal" Orthodox, although there certainly are unobservant ones due to a loose understanding of mortal sin in Orthodoxy. The interesting thing here is that the Orthodox, who are very traditional on things, have been experiencing an unanticipated influx into their ranks which is changing the Orthodox Churches.  

For decades, Orthodox Churches were ethnic in a way that Catholic Churches could not be.  Now, many people will note that somebody was "Polish Catholic" or "Irish Catholic", and indeed that meant and means something.  But at the time at which such phrases meant the most, it was also the case that the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church said its Masses in Latin, and that meant that the Church was always very much International in nature.  Any Catholic Church anywhere, no matter how ethnic its parishioners may have been, always had members who were converts or members of other ethnicities, in the United States as well as elsewhere, and CAtholics were always conscience of that.  Orthodox Churches, however, were often extremely ethnic.

The Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church and the Orthodox have, however, seen quite the influx of others in recent decades.  In the case of the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church, the influx started off with Trad Catholics who were seeking a traditional service. That may have continued on, but frankly at the present time the entire Latin Rite is much more traditional than it was even fifteen years ago.  Put another way, if you are seeking the traditional in the Latin Rite, it's not very hard to find it.⁵. 

But some Protestants who are fleeing their mainline Protestant Churches as those churches decline, and moreover as they've embraced liberalism, can't bring themselves to go all the way across the Tiber.  Many, many do, but some do not.  Some of those swim the metaphorical Bosphorus instead.

As they've done that they've brought a much needed widening to the Orthodox Churches, although not always in a way that ethnic parishioners have always welcomed.  Churches that were Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox have started to become American Orthodox, both figurately and early literally.

Holy Apostles Orthodox Christian Church, Cheyenne Wyoming.

In Protestantism, we see some similar things going on.

In the Mainline Protestant Churches we've seen some that have gravitated towards liberalism, and empty pews.  Usually in the same denomination there's a pull away back toward their Catholic origin.  One of the most Catholic wedding homilies I've ever heard, for example, was delivered by a Lutheran pastor.  It was blisteringly orthodox. Entire groups of the Anglican Communion had waded into the middle of the Tiber and waded there.

As that has happened, liberal branches of Mainline Protestant Churches have simply started to die.  Indeed, the entire Protestant Reformation is pretty clearly in its death throes.  The Catholic Church in much of the ground captured by rebels of the Reformation is gaining ground, including in the United States and United Kingdom.  In the same territory, the churches of the Reformation are dying away.

As that happens, however, the radical Reformation churches, those that were the reformation of the Reformation, have held on in their own unique ways.  In some instances, they've done so through having a very lightweight adherence to Christ's message.  Entire branches of Protestantism don't take seriously much of Christ's message on multiple things, the sanctity of marriage, and its enduring nature, in particular.  Most Protestant churches have come around to being completely comfortable with divorce and remarriage, and even multiple mirages, as well as birth control and living together outside of marriage.  

While that's happened, on the far political right we now have a revival of hardcore Calvinism, the sort of Calvinism that's really intolerant of anything else.  And that's the branch of Protestantism that has the most influence on the Second Trump administration.  It's basically at war with American culture.

A Pastor's Warning: We're Not in a Civil War, But a Christian Nationalist Holy War—And They Must Not Win.

What those who are religious, or who take religion seriously must do, or even those who simply take the topic seriously must do, is to ask candidates a series of questions, or ask yourself a series.  We'll start off, after this very long introduction, with those.

1.  Does a candidate who clothes himself in the mantle of religion, in any fashion, live according to the tenants of the religion?

We are seeing a lot of claims by politicians now days that they are religious, or that perhaps some other candidate is.  But what's the evidence for this?

The prime example is frankly Donald Trump. Claims that he is a Godly man are simply absurd.  The claims that he's some sort of Cyrus the Great are less absurd, but still absurd.  He's a genuinely bad man.

You really can't practice serial polygamy and claim that you are some kind of adherent Christian. And while all things are possible with God, having extreme wealth and being focused on it likewise make a person quite unlikely to be any sort of sincere Christian.

I'd start in part with Trump here, not because Trump claims to be a sincere Christian, although he comes pretty close, but because of those who seek to wrap him in the mantle of Christianity.  It's simply not credible, and people who assert that seriously shouldn't be taken seriously.  In contrast, thsoe who take a more cynical view, that they're advancing some kind of Christianity through an irreligious man, are more credible.

This question is a very sincere one.  We have, right now, J. D. Vance, a Catholic, on record supporting IFV, which is condemned by the Church.  How can he do that?  And  he's certainly not the only Catholic politicians who has strayed massively from the tenants of the Faith.

But its not just Catholic politicians.  Plenty of Protestant politicians right now claim to be deeply religious, but are they?  If they are opently not living according to the tenants of their Faith, what is the reason?

2. What religion are they?

This may sound like an odd one, but right now there's a lot of politicians who cite "faith", or claim a relationship with God, or who broadly claim to be Christian, without saying what they really are.  If they make the open claim they need to be asked this question.

The reason is that there are significant differences in the world outlook of various Christian religions.  The Wyoming Freedom Caucus, for example, seems to be heavily influenced by NAR type views, which most Christians are not, and which most do not support.

What about Trump, again.  He was raised a Presbyterian but has disavowed that, interestingly, as an adult.  What is he?

On this, the answer "Christian" doesn't cut it except in the case of the non observant member of the American Civil Religion, who are just sort of vaguely aware that most people in the US are Christians and they are too.

3. Do they actually attend a Church?

There are politicians who might never attend a church. We don't know, for example, if Tammy Duckworth does.⁶ But we also know that Duckworth does not make her religion an issue.  Likewise, we mentioned the other day that one of conservative members of the legislature is Episcopalians, but he doesn't mention religion at all on his legislative biography.

It is not, we'd note, that we're encouraging people to be irreligious. Quite the contrary. But if a person makes being a "Christian" a banner in their campaign, what kind of Christianity do they espouse? The same would be true for any other religions. The new mayor of New York, for example, is a Muslim, but clearly of the branch of Islam, now rare in the Middle East, that was of the progressive tolerant variety.⁷

The long and the short of this is ,that if politician claim to be a devout member of "Fill In Church" here, but doesn't go, well, that says all you need to know about him.⁸

4. Do they adhere to the tenants of their religion?

This is a big one, and you are entitled to ask.

It's one thing for a person to say "I'm a ____________". But all religions  have the concept of a greater entity.  If a person claims, for example, to be a Muslim but slams down a fifth of Jim Beam every night, well. . . 

That is, of course, a bad example. But to give more concrete ones Joe Biden was often cited as a Catholic, but supported the seas of blood that abortion results in, as well as the biological abomination of transgenderism.  This might make more sense (well actually it wouldn't) if you did not claim to be part of a religion that condemns them, but if you do, it shows that you have weak moral character that you may betray for convenience.

Lest it seems like we are endorsing Republicans by default, Donald Trump, who claims sorme loose association with Christianity, is a moral sewer.

Vance has claimed Catholicism, but backs IVF, which the Church condemns.

But what about your local politician?  They may be ramrod straight claiming that they are a member of _______________, but do they live their lives that way? If they claim a faith, you have the right to ask, and demand that they do.  Indeed, part of the problem with modern politics is that politicians are allowed to claim a religion on a tribal, but not practice basis.

5. Have they changed religions?

Religious conversions can be sincere or insincere.  In contemporary American conversions for convenience are less common than they once were, but they still exist.

Something to consider here is that conversion from no religion into a religion, and then practicing it, indicates sincerity.  Also, conversion into a religion that carries they byproduct of contempt for conversion does as well.

For this reason, while I have lots of problems with J. D. Vance, I sincerely credit his conversion into Catholicism.  This isn't something that you do lightly, and it isn't like just showing up at a service.    To be a Catholic is to endure contempt.

I'll also note that as a Catholic, while I feel that joining a Protestant faith if you are a baptized Catholic endangers your soul, I'll credit sincerity with some who have done so.  Mike Pence, who was a baptized Catholic is sich an example. While I feel that his faith journey has been deluded, and I hoep for his return, I believe he's sincere.

On the other hand, a conversion that was one of convenience shows a defect in moral character.  Without naming names, I can cite one local politicians who had a Catholic education and marriage, and then became a Presbyterian when a marriage situation suited that.  He's probably about as sincere Presbyterian as he was a Catholic, but that's the point.  A person whose attachment to the existential is so thin has no attachment to anything that matters at all, as is exemplified by the person I mentioned, who went from middle of the road conservative, to conservative, to MAGA, all with a stern look as if he was paying any attention at all.

5.  Why are they citing their religion?

If they are, why?

There's only two possibilities. Either they think it really matters, or they think it matters to you. 

That's it.

If they think it matters to you, they're claiming a tribal affiliation, not a moral one, and that should be problematic.

6. Do they think that: 1) this is a Christian nation and 2) it should be a theocracy?

The answer matters.

This is a Christian nation.  People who say otherwise are fooling themselves.  More than that, this ia a Puritan nation, although that's dying before our eyes.⁹   Accepting one, without the other, is significant.

Truth be known, this country stopped being 100% Puritan about a week after the Plymouth Rock landing, but it's been a long haul.  It wasn't until the Kennedy election that Catholic's really became part of the country.  Things continue to evolve.

This being the case, the weltanchaung of the NAR is fundamentally adverse to American culture and, oddly enough, the American Civil Religion.  We're not going back, and we're not going back as the NAR is fundamentally wrong.  

We're headed in a new direction. That direction can be conservative, but the NAR doesn't reflectd Christian reality, or the message of Christ. 

7. Does the candidate advocate or excuse bad things?

It's one thing to be irreligious and advocate a bad thing.  It's another to be a Christian.

Invading countries and killing people outside of self dense if deeply immoral. 

Killing people, including the unborn, is gravely wrong.

I'd argue avoiding the natural result of human intercourse is as well.

Theft, including of lands, is immoral

Avaracie is immoral.

Right makes might has been a proven failure since day one. Our current President seems to have adopted it. Does your candidate"

8. Does their embrace of religion make you 100% comfortable?

This would depend upon the faith, of course, but basically if you are sitting behind the candidate at Mass and wondering, 'how can he?", well, ask him?

Footnotes

*Although we would argue that if you are not out enjoying and experiencing God's creation in nature, in some fashion, you should be.

1.  Highly successful sheep rancher and politician Patrick J. Sullivan, who was Irish born, and a Catholic in Natrona County, supposedly tried to keep his distance from being too publicly Catholic, although that would have been due to the outright hostility to Catholicism in the first half of the 20th Century.  He served one year, more or less, as Wyoming's U.S. Senator upon the death of Francis E. Warren.

The unrelated Gov. Mike Sullivan is a devout Catholic who was ambassador to Ireland under Bill Clinton.  While his Irish heritage was very well known, pretty much nothing was every said about it while he was in office.

2.  Johnson provides an interesting example of what we're discussing here, in that he's from Louisiana.  Louisianans will often sort of wrap themselves around a faux Cajun personality to outsiders, but there are really five cultures that are basically naive to the state, Cajun, Creole, Black Creole and Southern White.  Johnson is Southern White.  This is quite significant in that Cajuns are descendants of Acadians transported there and have a strong French culture, including within it Catholicism.  Creole's and Black Creole's are  a"mixed" ethnicity in Louisiana, descendants of Cajuns, Spanish colonist, and African slaves.  They too have a culture that's heavily impacted by the French, through the Cajuns, but they are not Cajuns.  They are also often Catholic.  The third group, Deep South Whites, are descendants of English and Scottish colonist in the Southeast, and they're uniformly Protestant, and reflect the post Civil War shift from the Episcopal Church toward the Baptist Church and related Evangelical Christian faiths.

I've only known three Louisianans, and of them, only two fairly well.  Two of them were Creole, and one of them was a native French speaker.  One was a Cajun and could speak French, and interestingly was a Catholic with a French Jewish background.

As a total aside, these culture are really distinct and have distinct music and even distinct style of dancing.  

3. Vance wrote the forward to Robert's book  Dawn's Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America. Vance and Roberts are both Catholic.

So, of course, is Marco Rubio, who is a fairly devout Catholic  But he's not a National Conservative.

4.  I find White to be a little weird, and I have questions about how Christian she really is, given her personal life.  I can't stand Graham, and couldn't stand his father either, for reasons I really can't define.

I've been this way, I'll note, since I was a child.  One are where I really differ from my father, who grew up without television of course, is that I, who did, basically will never turn a television on until the evening and I never watch TV during the day.  Never.  My father pretty much turned the TV on as soon as he was in the house.  It was just sort of background noise, really.  As there were only three television channels locally when I was a kid, that means he'd sometimes turn the TV on and there'd be some Billy Graham revival, and he'd just leave it on.  I couldn't stand Billy Graham and I didn't like him being on, even though I probably was only ten years old or younger at the time.

5.  Thirty years ago I probably could have counted the women I'd see at Mass wearing a mantilla with one hand and have fingers to spare.  Now it's becoming common, and even with preteen girls.  There have been restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass, but most typical Catholic Masses now would rival any High Church service that Episcopalians might choose to hold.

6. She was raised a Baptist, but is intensely private about her religious beliefs.

7. The world's most oppressed religion, Judaism, seems uniquely exempt from this in some ways.  Secular Jews get tarred with the same brush as highly religious ones, while on the flip side, at least in contemporary America, opposing somebody simply because they are Jewish remains intolerable. Having said that, the prejudices that have resurfaced under the Trump Administration now make this statement suspect, as openly hating Jews because heya re Jews has returned (openly hating Catholics because they are Catholic will not be far behind).  

I'll also note that I've heard open contempt for the Mayor of New York, simply because he's Muslim. But then, at the same time, at least two members of Congress have received open contempt for the same thing, with one receiving contempt from Donald Trump seemingly because she's a black African.

8. I'll note that Mike Johnson, who at one time compared himself to a Biblical Patriarch, is on record as being too busy to alway attend church.

This is baloney. I've, to my regret, often worked seven days a week, but I make Mass.  I'd gladly exchange my role with Mike's.

9. Wihtin a generation, for multiple reasons, this will be a Catholic country.

Prior editions:

Questions hunters, fishermen, and public lands users need to ask political candidates. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 2.

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Addressing politicians in desperate times. A series.

Labels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Commentary, Democratic Party, Politics, Questions for politicians, Republican Party, Trailing thread

The Agrarian's Lament: Rejecting Avarice. Some radical rethinking.

The Agrarian's Lament: Rejecting Avarice. Some radical rethinking.: Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits, or that a wrong action ...

Rejecting Avarice. Some radical rethinking.

Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits, or that a wrong action is to be condoned because it pays.

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

We just published this item here on Donald Trump's insatiable lust for the destruction of land, lands even beyond our borders.

The Agrarian's Lament: Lex Anteinternet: Manifest Destiny and the Second ...: Lex Anteinternet: Manifest Destiny and the Second Trump Administrati... : Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, dramatizing Manifest ...

In the movie The Patriot, which is okay but not great, commences with these lines:

I have long feared, that my sins would return to visit me, and the cost is more than I can bare.

In a lot of ways, that opening scene is the best one in the movie.

No nation has a singular linear history, even though people tend to hear things that way. "This happened, and then that happened, resulting in this. . . ".  In reality, things are mixed quite often, and things are quite fluid with juxtapositions.  

Shakespeare claimed:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat;

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.”

Perhaps.  But in reality the tide in the affairs of men drags everyone along with it. But it's a rip tide.  People's individual goals, desires and aspirations often are quite contrary to the tide on the surface.

That's certainly been the case with the United States.

If you have a Trumpian view of the world, the history of the United States looks like this, sort of:

This again.  It never occurs to many that the mines and cities aren't really everyone's dream.  It particularly doesn't occur to a rich real estate developer who isn't smart and whose values are shallow.

Lots of people have that view.  We came, we saw, we exploited, and everyone got happy working for Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

Trouble is, that's not true for a lot of reasons, a core one being it doesn't comport with who we really are.  The entire worship of wealth and what it brings, and the wealthy and who they are, is deeply contrary to our natures, and frankly men like Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump, and Elon Musk are deeply perverted.  Not because of their relationship with women, or because their names appear in the Epstein files in some context, although in the case of Trump, we really still don't know what context, but because of their shallow avaricious acquisition for and desire for wealth.

Timothy warns us:

Those who want to be rich are falling into temptation and into a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge them into ruin and destruction.  For the love of money is the root of all evils, and some people in their desire for it have strayed from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pains.

And not only have their pierced themselves, but they pierce others, and entire societies with them.

So let's look at a few concrete things that we feel should be done.

Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.

G.K. Chesterton, A Miscellany of Men

Revisit the Homestead Act.

Right from the onset of English colonization of North America, there was a pull between business exploitation and the simple desire for an agrarian place of one's own.

The truth of the matter is that when the nation started off, most people weren't "Pilgrims" seeking shelter from religious oppression.  Nor did they wish to be servants of big mercantile enterprises.  Most of the early English colonists were from agriculture or the trades and wanted to just work for themselves.  That's about it. 

The American Revolution was as much about that as anything else.  When American Colonials dumped tea in harbors, they were protesting taxes, but what they were also doing is dumping mercantile controlled property into waste.  It was grown somewhere else and it belong to rich remote classes.

The struggle was always there. The American South in particular had the planter class which depended upon enslaved labor to raise a market crop.  That was about generating wealth.  Most Southerners, in contrast, were Yeoman who had small places of their own.  When the Civil War came the wealthy had the South fight the war.

The analogies to the present day are simply to thick to ignore.

The Homestead Act came about during that war, and in real ways, it expressed a Jeffersonian dream. People willing to invest their own labor could acquire a place of their own.

The drafters of the Act never envisioned the wealthy controlling the land.  In some very real ways it was wealthy landowners that the North was fighting at the time.

Over the last few days residents of Wyoming have read about Chris Robinson, CEO of Salt Lake City-based Ensign Group, L.C., buying the Pathfinder Ranch.  I have nothing about him personally, but the listed price for the ranch was $79.5M due to its giant size.

I can personally recall when it was owned by locals  At that price, rather obviously, Robinson isn't planning on making money from cattle.  And to make matters a bit worse, residents of Natrona County got to read about another local outfit going up for sale, which is much smaller, for $9M.

Even into my adult years, by which time it was already impossible for somebody not born into ranching or farming to buy a place such that it could be their vocation, most ranches were owned by locally born ranchers.  This trend of playground pricing is making the status of the land the same as that which English colonists were seeking to escape from.

This could be fixed by amending the Homestead Act. The homesteading portion of that is fixed, but it would still be possible to go back and amend it such that land deeded to individuals under it, had to remain in agricultural use, and had to be held by families that made their money that way. exclusively.

I know it won't be, anytime soon, but it should be.

Revisit "Ad coelum ad damnum"

One of the absolute absurdities of the original Homestead Act is that it gave away not only the surface of the land, but the mineral rights as well.  This made the system sort of like buying lottery tickets. Some people got rich just of because of where they'd chosen to homestead.

I really struggle with the concept of private ownership of minerals, including oil and gas, in the first place.  I understand private enterprise exploiting it, but owning it?  Why?  It's not like private enterprise put the minerals in the ground.

Addressing this creates real constitutional problems, but ideally the mineral wealth of the nation should belong to everyone in it, not private parties.  And it should be exploited, or not, in the national interest, not in the primary economic interest of those who claim to own it.

I know that this brings up the cry of "that's Socialism".  It probably really is, but an unequal accidental distribution of mineral wealth on lands taken from the native inhabitants isn't just.  At a bare minimum, something needs to be looked into.  Indeed, as there was no intent to transfer that mineral title in the first place, perhaps it could collectively be restored and held in truth for the descendants of those original inhabitants.

Tax the wealthy

Every since Ronald Reagan there's been a ludicrous idea that taxing the wealthy hurts the economy. We know that this is completely false.  We also know that a certain percentage of the wealthy will allow themselves to become obscenely wealthy if allowed to, and that they'll harm everyone else as a result.

There's no reason on earth that anyone ought to be a billionaire.  Indeed, if you have more than $50M in assets, you have too much and something is potentially wrong with your character.  High upper income tax rates and wealth taxes can and should address this.  Elon Musk can be nearly just as annoying if his net worth was $50M as whatever it currently is, but he'd be a lot less destructive.

An alternative to this, if this is simply too radical, is to prevent corporations from owning most things, and to provide that once they get to be a certain size, at least 50% of their ownership goes to employees of those corporations.  It'd at least distribute the wealth some, and keep avarice from defining our everyday existence.

Final thoughts

What seems to be clear in any event is that we cannot keep going in this directly. Today's "conservatives" serve the very interests that the American Patriots rebelled against, remote wealth.  In spite of their tattoos and car window stickers, they'd form the Loyalist Militia trying to put down an an agrarian revolution in 1776.  The thing is, that those conditions always lead to revolution. They did in 1776 in North America, and then again in more extreme form in France a few years later.  They lead to the uprisings of 1848, the Anglo Irish War in 1916 and the Russian Revolution in 1917.  It's time to address this while we can, as it will be addressed.