Lex Anteinternet: The End of the Reformation I. Christian Nationalism becomes a local debate. . .

Lex Anteinternet: The End of the Reformation I. Christian Nationali...:

The End of the Reformation I. Christian Nationalism becomes a local debate. . .

even though, I'd wager, most people don't actually know what it means.

Indeed, I don't think author Stubson actually does.

Luther at Erfurt. Father of the Reformation, and in many ways the father of the modern world, ironically on both the left, and the right.

Local attorney, expert pianist, and occasional op ed writer Susan Stubson wrote an op ed for the New York Times on the topic of her faith, her political party, and Christian Nationalism.  She is, as noted, a Wyomingite.

Stubson, I'd also note, is part of a political family.  Perhaps for that reason she can do what some even more frequent writers. . . namely me, cannot really, which is to sail into troubled waters under her own flag.  It may be cowardice on my part, but I really don't feel that I can.  I’m blunt to people who know me, but I'm not a politician and, as I recently noted here, while I once toyed with the idea, my time is past.  I still have to make a living, however. 

Anyhow, Stubson's NYT piece stated boldly in its caption was:

What Christian Nationalism Has Done to My State and My Faith Is a Sin

That was bound to provoke a reaction, and of course it did.  One of the reactors was the same letter writing dude who earlier tried to take on the Wyoming 41 in the same journal.  While it's digressing, I'll note what I wrote about that letter at the time, in which he stated as follows:

2. Your self-serving statement that lawyers have done more than any other profession makes me nauseous.  Talk to those who have served in the military to protect our constitutional republic, to include making us a free nation.  Talk to those who have served and lost limbs and have many other maladies that they received in battle.  Talk to the families of those who have given their lives for this nation in war.  Then you should reevaluate your arrogant statement about having done more than any other profession.  You should be ashamed.  You will better understand my ire on this issue when you have read my letter.

This time he wrapped himself in the flag less, and was less antagonist towards the lawyer author, stating:

Dear Editor:

It was an interesting article to read about Susan Stubson, Casper Attorney, saying that Christian Nationalists have “hijacked" the Wyoming Republican Party.  She says that they are, “super engaged are real extreme right, and they are gaining.”  

Apparently, Stubson thinks that it is a terrible thing that what she calls “Christian Nationalists” are involved in being “super engaged” in the political process and are “voting.”  This brings up so many points about the hideous bias of her view that it is quite nauseating.  Here are just a couple of points to consider:

- Her statements make it very clear that she does not know what a “Christian" is. If they go to any church, then they must be a Christian.  This is not true.  As a Christian myself, Stubson needs to understand that a true Christian is one who has put his or her (yes, only 2 genders) faith in Jesus Christ for forgiveness of their sin and then proceeds to love their neighbor.  Because Stubson is misguided…for which my letter calls her out…does not mean that I have a lack of love for her.  I just want her to know the error of her thinking so that she might become a true Christian.

- Her statements also show that she does not know what a “Nationalist” is.  This word is used to try to demean people as being crazy reactionaries who seek to have authoritarian or dictatorial control…kind of like the Wyoming Speaker of the House who won’t even allow debate in the House on issues that that matter to the citizens of Wyoming.  After 26 years in the US Air Force, I consider myself a Nationalist.  My country comes first, but not to the detriment of other countries, or to the detriment of any US citizen…regardless of their political beliefs.  If the US is strong, then we seek to protect other countries as we have  in the past, where tyranny has attempted to take hold.  We didn’t cut and run as Biden did with Afghanistan, which resulted in thousands upon thousands of murders by the Taliban using weapons that Biden left for them.

- Based on Stubson's views, I am a danger to her ideologies in Wyoming.  And to that, I say, “Hurrah!”  I wonder if she has ever written a 1736-word op-ed piece for the New York Times to condemn the riots and horrendous destruction by Antifa and BLM?  Has she ever come out against the disgusting protests at the homes of Supreme Court Justices, and even an attempted murder of one of them?  Has she ever condemned Senator Schumer for his inflammatory comments that he made on the steps of the Supreme Court against Justices in telling them that they would, “…pay the price,” for exercising their judicial responsibilities?  Stubson has been silent on these issues.

When I repeated my commissioning oath to become a US Air Force officer, I always remember that I had to swear to, “protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” 

As a member of the Air Force officer corps, we knew how to defend our country against foreign enemies.  But a domestic enemy was a subject with which we were never clear about how to defend against them. 

The words of Stubson about what she calls, “Christian Nationalists,” like it is a 4-letter word, contributes to inciting those of the violent left against Christians and Nationalists. 

She sets it forth in such a way that indicates that anyone who would fall into the category of what she considers to be Christian and/or Nationalist should not have a voice and they need to be stopped cold in their tracks by any means possible.

As a so-called lawyer, she should be ashamed.  While she uses her free speech right of the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution to defame a specific group, she wants to remove our free speech rights. 

But I would have to say that is a great thing about the United States.  Susan Stubson has every right to be wrong.

Sincerely,

__________________, Pinedale

Colonel, USAF, Retired

Pretty freaking insulting nonetheless.

While it's not my main point here (I'll get to that) wrapping yourself up in the flag as you were in the service is wearing really think on me.  Last time, I commented on this extensively, and I'll add that and some additional comments down below in the item foot noted here.¹

Anyhow, what did Stubson say, and was it even on Christian Nationalism?

Christian Nationalism is really hard to define.  It's almost more of one of those I know it when I see it type of deals.  We've tried to define it here before.  In its more intellectual areas, it seems to be sort of self defined as National Conservatism, whose manifesto states:

National Conservatism: A Statement Of Principles

A world of independent nations is the only alternative to universalist ideologies seeking to impose a homogenizing, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe.

JUNE 15, 2022

12:01 AM

THE EDMUND BURKE FOUNDATION

NOTE: The following statement was drafted by Will Chamberlain, Christopher DeMuth, Rod Dreher, Yoram Hazony, Daniel McCarthy, Joshua Mitchell, N.S. Lyons, John O’Sullivan, and R.R. Reno on behalf of the Edmund Burke Foundation. The statement reflects a distinctly Western point of view. However, we look forward to future discourse and collaboration with movements akin to our own in India, Japan, and other non-Western nations. Signatories’ institutional affiliations are included for identification purposes only, and do not imply an endorsement on the part of any institution other than the Edmund Burke Foundation.   

We are citizens of Western nations who have watched with alarm as the traditional beliefs, institutions, and liberties underpinning life in the countries we love have been progressively undermined and overthrown.

We see the tradition of independent, self-governed nations as the foundation for restoring a proper public orientation toward patriotism and courage, honor and loyalty, religion and wisdom, congregation and family, man and woman, the sabbath and the sacred, and reason and justice. We are conservatives because we see such virtues as essential to sustaining our civilization. We see such a restoration as the prerequisite for recovering and maintaining our freedom, security, and prosperity.

We emphasize the idea of the nation because we see a world of independent nations—each pursuing its own national interests and upholding national traditions that are its own—as the only genuine alternative to universalist ideologies now seeking to impose a homogenizing, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe.

Drawing on this heritage, we therefore affirm the following principles:

1. National Independence. We wish to see a world of independent nations. Each nation capable of self-government should chart its own course in accordance with its own particular constitutional, linguistic, and religious inheritance. Each has a right to maintain its own borders and conduct policies that will benefit its own people. We endorse a policy of rearmament by independent self-governing nations and of defensive alliances whose purpose is to deter imperialist aggression.

2. Rejection of Imperialism and Globalism. We support a system of free cooperation and competition among nation-states, working together through trade treaties, defensive alliances, and other common projects that respect the independence of their members. But we oppose transferring the authority of elected governments to transnational or supranational bodies—a trend that pretends to high moral legitimacy even as it weakens representative government, sows public alienation and distrust, and strengthens the influence of autocratic regimes. Accordingly, we reject imperialism in its various contemporary forms: We condemn the imperialism of China, Russia, and other authoritarian powers. But we also oppose the liberal imperialism of the last generation, which sought to gain power, influence, and wealth by dominating other nations and trying to remake them in its own image.

3. National Government. The independent nation-state is instituted to establish a more perfect union among the diverse communities, parties, and regions of a given nation, to provide for their common defense and justice among them, and to secure the general welfare and the blessings of liberty for this time and for future generations. We believe in a strong but limited state, subject to constitutional restraints and a division of powers. We recommend a drastic reduction in the scope of the administrative state and the policy-making judiciary that displace legislatures representing the full range of a nation’s interests and values. We recommend the federalist principle, which prescribes a delegation of power to the respective states or subdivisions of the nation so as to allow greater variation, experimentation, and freedom. However, in those states or subdivisions in which law and justice have been manifestly corrupted, or in which lawlessness, immorality, and dissolution reign, national government must intervene energetically to restore order.

4. God and Public Religion. No nation can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment that are found in authentic religious tradition. For millennia, the Bible has been our surest guide, nourishing a fitting orientation toward God, to the political traditions of the nation, to public morals, to the defense of the weak, and to the recognition of things rightly regarded as sacred. The Bible should be read as the first among the sources of a shared Western civilization in schools and universities, and as the rightful inheritance of believers and non-believers alike. Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private. At the same time, Jews and other religious minorities are to be protected in the observance of their own traditions, in the free governance of their communal institutions, and in all matters pertaining to the rearing and education of their children. Adult individuals should be protected from religious or ideological coercion in their private lives and in their homes.

5. The Rule of Law. We believe in the rule of law. By this we mean that citizens and foreigners alike, and both the government and the people, must accept and abide by the laws of the nation. In America, this means accepting and living in accordance with the Constitution of 1787, the amendments to it, duly enacted statutory law, and the great common law inheritance. All agree that the repair and improvement of national legal traditions and institutions is at times necessary. But necessary change must take place through the law. This is how we preserve our national traditions and our nation itself. Rioting, looting, and other unacceptable public disorder should be swiftly put to an end.

6. Free Enterprise. We believe that an economy based on private property and free enterprise is best suited to promoting the prosperity of the nation and accords with traditions of individual liberty that are central to the Anglo-American political tradition. We reject the socialist principle, which supposes that the economic activity of the nation can be conducted in accordance with a rational plan dictated by the state. But the free market cannot be absolute. Economic policy must serve the general welfare of the nation. Today, globalized markets allow hostile foreign powers to despoil America and other countries of their manufacturing capacity, weakening them economically and dividing them internally. At the same time, trans-national corporations showing little loyalty to any nation damage public life by censoring political speech, flooding the country with dangerous and addictive substances and pornography, and promoting obsessive, destructive personal habits. A prudent national economic policy should promote free enterprise, but it must also mitigate threats to the national interest, aggressively pursue economic independence from hostile powers, nurture industries crucial for national defense, and restore and upgrade manufacturing capabilities critical to the public welfare. Crony capitalism, the selective promotion of corporate profit-making by organs of state power, should be energetically exposed and opposed.

7. Public Research. At a time when China is rapidly overtaking America and the Western nations in fields crucial for security and defense, a Cold War-type program modeled on DARPA, the “moon-shot,” and SDI is needed to focus large-scale public resources on scientific and technological research with military applications, on restoring and upgrading national manufacturing capacity, and on education in the physical sciences and engineering. On the other hand, we recognize that most universities are at this point partisan and globalist in orientation and vehemently opposed to nationalist and conservative ideas. Such institutions do not deserve taxpayer support unless they rededicate themselves to the national interest. Education policy should serve manifest national needs.

8. Family and Children. We believe the traditional family is the source of society’s virtues and deserves greater support from public policy. The traditional family, built around a lifelong bond between a man and a woman, and on a lifelong bond between parents and children, is the foundation of all other achievements of our civilization. The disintegration of the family, including a marked decline in marriage and childbirth, gravely threatens the wellbeing and sustainability of democratic nations. Among the causes are an unconstrained individualism that regards children as a burden, while encouraging ever more radical forms of sexual license and experimentation as an alternative to the responsibilities of family and congregational life. Economic and cultural conditions that foster stable family and congregational life and child-raising are priorities of the highest order.

9. Immigration. Immigration has made immense contributions to the strength and prosperity of Western nations. But today’s penchant for uncontrolled and unassimilated immigration has become a source of weakness and instability, not strength and dynamism, threatening internal dissension and ultimately dissolution of the political community. We note that Western nations have benefited from both liberal and restrictive immigration policies at various times. We call for much more restrictive policies until these countries summon the wit to establish more balanced, productive, and assimilationist policies. Restrictive policies may sometimes include a moratorium on immigration.

10. Race. We believe that all men are created in the image of God and that public policy should reflect that fact. No person’s worth or loyalties can be judged by the shape of his features, the color of his skin, or the results of a lab test. The history of racialist ideology and oppression and its ongoing consequences require us to emphasize this truth. We condemn the use of state and private institutions to discriminate and divide us against one another on the basis of race. The cultural sympathies encouraged by a decent nationalism offer a sound basis for conciliation and unity among diverse communities. The nationalism we espouse respects, and indeed combines, the unique needs of particular minority communities and the common good of the nation as a whole.

I'd bet dollars to donuts that most of the local populists who conceive of themselves of adhering to Roosevelt's 1912 cry "We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord" would probably agree with the manifesto and not really put hardly any thought into it.

So what did Stubson say?

We've linked her article in up above.  Here's what she started off with:

CASPER, Wyo. — I first saw it while working the rope line at a monster-truck rally during the 2016 campaign by my husband, Tim, for Wyoming’s lone congressional seat. As Tim and I and our boys made our way down the line, shaking hands and passing out campaign material, a burly man wearing a “God bless America” T-shirt and a cross around his neck said something like, “He’s got my vote if he keeps those [epithet] out of office,” using a racial slur. What followed was an uncomfortable master class in racism and xenophobia as the man decanted the reasons our country is going down the tubes. God bless America.

I now understand the ugliness I heard was part of a current of Christian nationalism fomenting beneath the surface. It had been there all the time. The rope line rant was a mission statement for the disaffected, the overlooked, the frightened. It was also an expression of solidarity with a candidate like Donald Trump who gave a name to a perceived enemy: people who do not look like us or share our beliefs. Immigrants are taking our guns. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. You are not safe in your home. Religious freedom is on the gallows. Vote for me.

I know what she is talking about, as that was 2016 and in the Obama era of politics.  To my enormous surprise, the election of Barack Obama brought out racism in the country at a level that I thought long past.   A lot of the visceral reaction to President Obama was because he was black.

I don't think that has anything to do with Christian Nationalism, however.  That's rather deep old fashion racial prejudice, and frankly it reflects what Ronald Reagan did to the Republican Party, something that Republican Conservatives like the Stubson have still never really acknowledged. Reagan wasn't a racist, but he invited them into the party by courting disaffected Southern Dixiecrat's and Rust Belt Democrats.  Modern populism has a lot of the thin thinking, bad beer consuming, football watching Rust Belt culture that was Democratic in it.  Indeed, it's brought actual Rust Belt Republicans, former Democrats, at least demographically, directly into the party everywhere.  Jeanette Ward is a Rocky Mountain Republican, but a Rust Belt one.

Here's something that I’m going out on a limb on next:

The messages worked. And in large part, it’s my faith community — white, rural and conservative — that got them there. I am a white conservative woman in rural America. Raised Catholic, I found that my faith deepened after I married and joined an evangelical church. As my faith grew, so did Tim’s political career in the Wyoming Legislature. (He served in the House from 2008 to 2017.) I’ve straddled both worlds, faith and politics, my entire adult life. Often there was very little daylight between the two, one informing the other.

If Susan wants to avoid Christian Nationalism, she ought to come back to the Catholic Church.  Evangelical Christianity has always been more racially divided than the Universal (Catholic) Church.  I don't know how many black African pastors Evangelical Church's in Wyoming have, but they are a presence in Catholic ones, along with Vietnamese, Filipino and Hispanic pastors.  People being what they are, individual churches and diocese have never been perfect, but it's always been a hallmark of being a Catholic in Wyoming that you were going to Mass with the businessmen, the ranchers, and the sheepherders. . . all at the same time.

Indeed, well into the 20th Century "main line" Protestant Churches were associated with the Republican Party here, as they were everywhere else, and Democrats stood a good chance of being Catholic.  There were certainly exceptions, and after the Clinton era the Democratic Party just died here.  The point is that the fusion of secular interests with religion has long been a feature of American Protestantism in a way it has not been with Catholicism.

Anyhow.

I'm not going to quote the entire article.  But I'd note where she picks back up.

What’s changed is the rise of Christian nationalism — the belief, as recently described by the Georgetown University professor and author Paul D. Miller, that “America is a ‘Christian nation’ and that the government should keep it that way.” Gone are the days when a lawmaker might be circumspect about using his or her faith as a vehicle to garner votes. It’s been a drastic and destructive departure from the boring, substantive lawmaking to which I was accustomed. Christian nationalists have hijacked both my Republican Party and my faith community by blurring the lines between church and government and in the process rebranding our state’s identity.

Wyoming is a “you do you” state. When it’s a blinding snowstorm, the tractor’s in a ditch and we need a neighbor with a winch, our differences disappear. We don’t care what you look like or who you love. Keep a clean fence line and show up during calving season, and we’re good.

But new sheriffs in town are very much up in their neighbor’s beeswax. Legislation they have proposed seems intent on stripping us of our autonomy and our ability to make decisions for ourselves, all in the name of morality, the definition of which is unclear.

All that is very true.  When the movie Wind River used the line of "This isn't the land of waiting for back up. This is the land of you're on your own.", it was very true.

Stubson next makes this comment.

Rural states are particularly vulnerable to the promise of Christian nationalism. In Wyoming, we are white (more than 92 percent) and love God (71 percent identified as Christian in 2014, according to the Pew Research Center) and Mr. Trump (seven in 10 voters picked him in 2020).

Hmmm, here's where I think Stubson goes off the rails, because I don't think what we're seeing in the populist camp is Christian Nationalism.  Maybe that is, however, because I'm an Apostolic Christian, which looks outward towards something larger than the nation to start with, and which was also historically oppressed by the Protestant culture, and frankly is still held in contempt by it.²

Tell people you are a Catholic, even though we are the original Christian religion, and pretty soon some Protestant will tell you that you are not a Christian, and frankly even doubt a little that you are a real American.  And in Wyoming, you'll be in a religions' minority in a state which, in actuality, is the least observant tin terms of religion in the United States, something that Stubson didn't address in her comments.  This isn't new here, either.  With a high transient population, and a lot of unattached men laborers who work miles from any city, Wyoming has always been only loosely religious.  Being a member of a really adherent faith group probably by default meant that 1) you were a  Catholic, 2) you were Orthodox or 3) you were Mormon, all three of which are overall minorities in the state, although Mormon's are a majority in some communities in the southwest.

Nonetheless, up through the 1970s the "main line" Protestant churches remained the churches of wealth, and this was very much the case up until after World War Two, which was true for much of the United States as well.  Simply being a Catholic in Wyoming limited your economic possibilities until after the war.

Wyoming is overwhelmingly white, although what that means in Wyoming is a little confusing.  I doubt actually that he figure is anywhere near 92% in reality.  In part, that's because long time Hispanic (Catholic again) communities in Wyoming probably self identify as white, even though they certainly aren't WASPs  Most of the local politicians who cite religion are undoubtedly Protestants, although one is a California Hispanic.  The state has a large Native American population that is probably undercounted in statistics such as this.  Half of the state's population at any one time, at least, is transient and from somewhere else.  I'd guess that probably 70% of most of the state is "white", but no more than that.  Probably less.

My own place of work is probably a good example.  No matter how people might identify, ethnic minorities are strongly represented.

I do agree with what she next states.

The result is bad church and bad law. “God, guns and Trump” is an omnipresent bumper sticker here, the new trinity. The evangelical church has proved to be a supplicating audience for the Christian nationalist roadshow. Indeed, it is unclear to me many Sundays whether we are hearing a sermon or a stump speech.

As an Apostolic Christian, I find the phrase "God, guns and Trump" absolutely abhorrent.  I'd be less offended by "guns and Trump", even though I don't think the Second Amendment and support for Trump in an existential sense are linked, but to link in God strikes me as approaching blasphemy, and it is emblematic of a major problem.

Skipping way ahead:

Yet fear (and loathing for Ms. Cheney, who voted to impeach Mr. Trump and dared to call him “unfit for office”) led to a record voter turnout in the August primary. The Trumpist candidate, Harriet Hageman, trounced Ms. Cheney. Almost half of the Wyoming House members were new. At least one-third of them align with the Freedom Caucus, a noisy group unafraid to manipulate Scripture for political gain under a banner of preserving a godly nation.

The impact of this new breed of lawmakers has been swift. Wyomingites got a very real preview this past legislative session of the hazards of one-size-fits-all nationalized policies that ignore the nuances of our state. ‌Last year, maternity wards closed in two sparsely populated communities, further expanding our maternity desert. Yet in debating a bill to provide some relief to new moms by extending Medicaid’s postpartum coverage, a freshman member of the State House, Jeanette Ward, invoked a brutally narrow view of the Bible. “Cain commented to God, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’” she said. “The obvious answer is no. No, I am not my brother’s keeper. But just don’t kill him.”

This confusing ‌mash-up‌ of Scripture (Ms. Ward got it wrong: The answer is yes, I am my brother’s keeper) is emblematic of a Christian nationalist who weaponizes God’s word to promote the agenda du jour. We should expect candidates who identify as followers of Christ to model some concern for other people.

Okay, sound familiar? 

If you read the entries here, it should, as I made this same observation at the time.

Stubson notes:

I am adrift in this unnamed sea, untethered from both my faith community and my political party as I try to reconcile evangelicals’ repeated endorsements of candidates who thumb their noses at the least of us. Christians are called to serve God, not a political party, to put our faith in a higher power, not in human beings. We’re taught not to bow to false idols. Yet idolatry is increasingly prominent and our foundational principles — humility, kindness and compassion — in short supply.

The answer here is obvious.

Susan, come home to the Church.

“It was a great day!” one of our pastors proclaimed on social media last year when Mr. Trump came to town to campaign against Ms. Cheney. Though many agreed with him, some of his pastoral colleagues grieved, traumatized by the hard right turn in their congregations.

Yup. and again. . . .  

She concluded.

This is the state I cannot quit. I rely on those gritty and courageous leaders who hold tight to our rural values. They are the Davids in the fight against the Philistines. They are our brother’s keeper.

So I'll go from here.

I don't think what we're seeing in Wyoming is actually Christian Nationalism.  Like it, hate it, or fear it, it's actually too intellectually deep for what Stubson is observing.

What she's actually observing is something that's been in the American culture for a long time. The Midwestern lower middle class WASPs and Southern WASP cultures, but just imported here. It's always been  here, but the state's insistence on never taking a second look at its economy has reinforced it.

Which is not to dismiss it.

The interesting thing about it is that the rage it is expressing, and it is rage, is in reaction to the same thing that Christian Nationalism is reacting to, which is the forced radical liberalization of the culture. A development decade in the making, but which finally really burst out in the open with Obergefell.  Ironically this comes out of the very same WASP culture, and its' interesting to note that this trend exists most strongly in the world where 1) the Reformation succeeded, or 2) the secular Reformation of the ideals of the French Revolution succeeded.

Their ultimate problem, at the end of the day, was the rejection of a greater existential reality.  Catholicism and Orthodoxy, like the more conservative branches of Judaism, and Islam, hold that there's something greater than us and that we in turn fit within that greater reality's organization.  We may be the greatest of the creatures, but we're still a creature, and as a creature, have what is set within us. We don't get to define it.

That's been discussed here in many threads, and it explains in the case of the Apostolic Religions and Judaism the strong attachment to science.  The "reformed" branches of Christianity, and for that matter the more liberal reformed branches of Judaism, lack those guide rails as they took them down.  When Luther started that process, he didn't mean to dismantle them as to Faith, but it happened pretty quickly, at first with any number of reformers declaring that they knew what the Faith was and rejecting what came before.

It was inevitable that ultimately that process would be self consuming.  The Protestant churches started dismantling themselves some time ago, most notably with the sticky topics of sex, which they made concessions on in some instances nearly immediately.  Luther through he'd discovered the Church was wrong on some things regarding the Bible and almost immediately thereafter discovered women, and that his vows could be booted on that topic, for instance.

Starting at some point, perhaps as early ago as the beginning of the prior century, the WASP culture in the US began to fatigue.  It was always the wealthiest section of the population.  Having eons earlier rejected Rome, it ultimately began to reject Canterbury, and anything else inconvenient. The wealthier its members are, the more likely this is true.  At the lower ends, it simply weakened things to where today, for many Protestants, the clear prohibitions on sex outside of marriage, remarriage and the like just don't exist. There are Protestant church goes who have been married multiple times, or who attend weekly with their "partners" who are not married at all.

That sort of faith is emblematic, in some ways, of where we are.  It's all internal, just like my definition of myself.  I'm okay as I'm not a sinner as I say so.  And if some want to say that they're girls if they're boys, well who is to stop them?

A recent editorial on something else I read stated, and here I agree with it, that at some point you know that things are just flat out wrong, and that's where we are now.  The remaining Protestant faithful know that something is wrong and are strongly reacting.  Those in the WASP rejection camp know it too and keep grasping, just like an alcoholic who hasn't had enough, for anything consumable.  That's' why we simultaneously see an explosion of ridiculous made up gender categories, with new labels weekly, at the same time we see both Christian Nationalism and populist who cite to their religion.

That's also why people like Stubson are baffled.  Many of those, indeed a very large number of  them, on the populist right will cite religion while at the same time seemingly not grasping it.  The religion of the populist right is a right wing conservative variant of the American Civil Religion. That explains why the same people can worship a political leader who is a serial polygamist or have local leaders who have been accused of icky behavior.  It explains why, as Stubson has noted, that some of them can quote sections of the Bible, but also hold the poor and needy in disregard.

But that's not actually Christian Nationalism.  That's populist right wing American politics of the Southern variety. Southern populism would be a better name for it.  And that it had arrived was clear with the campaign of Foster Freiss.

That doesn't say anything for or against Christian Nationalism.  That'll have to wait for another thread.  But we should make no mistake. When Ronald Reagan adopted the Southern Strategy, it helped lead to this point.  This is what was going to occur, at least to some extent.  Of course, it took the urban WASPs getting really wealthy first, at which point we learn that when a large section of the population becomes well off in real terms, its mind doesn't turn to higher thoughts, but the lowest of them.

Footnotes:

1. We earlier stated:

First, let me note that I looked this individual up, and he's a retired Colonel in the USAF.  A report on his career provides:

He is still fond of many of his UW instructors. After graduation, Steve received commission as a second lieutenant in the Air Force. He served as a contracting officer through his 26-year career, had 13 moves throughout the U.S. and spent about a third of his assignments in Europe. He also earned his master’s from the Air Force Institute of Technology.

A contracting officer for 26 years.

He ain't Audie Murphy.

Audie Murphy, then a lieutenant, wearing his awards.  All of these, it might be noted, are real combat awards.

They also serve who sit and work on contracts, but that's not exactly facing down the Red Coats at Bunker Hill, now is it?  Nor is it manning a cross road in the Ardennes, firiing your M1 Garand at the Red Chinese in Korea, or going on patrol in Vietnam.

It's service, but it points out something about the U.S. military that most people don't really like to consider, that being that the era when most servicemen filled a role like that portrayed in The Sands of Iwo Jima was so long ago that, well, it wasn't even the case in the era depicted by The Sands of Iwo Jima.

I might as well point it out here.  Do I think my six years of being an artilleryman during the Cold War are more significant and valuable service than 27 years of being an Air Force contracts officer?

Well. . . quite frankly I very well might.

It was, in a real sense, more military.

So, do I still feel that way.

Yep, more than ever.

What does the Air Force say about this position:

SECURING WHAT WE NEED

In order for our Airmen to complete their missions successfully, they need dependable, high-quality equipment at the right place and the right time. Responsible for securing and skillfully negotiating the sale of these necessities, Contracting Officers help ensure command units are well stocked with everything they need. Whether it’s planning, evaluating or awarding, these experts manage contracts for commodities, services and construction to properly oversee the contracting process every step of the way.

And:

QUALIFICATIONS SUMMARY

• MINIMUM EDUCATION

  • Bachelor’s degree in business, economics, math or engineering
  • Degree must include a minimum of 24 semester credit hours of study in any of the following: accounting, business, law, contracts, purchasing economics, industrial management, marketing, quantitative method and organization and management

• QUALIFICATIONS

  • Knowledge of contracting process fundamentals, federal acquisition and contracting directives and publications, budgeting and funding procedures and contract pricing
  • Completion of the Mission Ready Contracting Officer course
  • Completion of Officer Training School (OTS), Air Force Academy (AFA) or Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC)
  • Must be between the ages of 18 and 39

And at this point, I'll probably make everyone mad.

One of the things about the modern military has been the massive growth of non combat jobs.  Even during the Second World War, most American servicemen didn't fight, weren't going to fight, and were not at risk of dying in combat whatsoever.

Any conscripted serviceman of any kinds deserves a measure of our respect simply for doing something they didn't want to do, because their country asked them to.  That doesn't make them a hero, however.  And opting for a military career, as a career, has always been a solid career decision that a lot of people have made over the years, but that's what it is, taking it no further than that.  Most service jobs in the U.S. Military frankly aren't all that risky, and they haven't been since some point prior to World War Two.  Back in the day when Doonsbury was still funny, there was a classic instance of the cartoon when an outraged Vietnam vet calls into to complain about somebody being hosted on the radio, and it turns out they both spent the war in their domains smoking weed and listening to Jimi Hendrix.  An exaggeration, but only so much.

Combat vets, and veterans who have served in combat arms are, in my mind, a different deal.  Searching out contract details in an air-conditioned office is one thing, getting shelled or potentially getting shelled is quite another.  If your job could just as easily be done by a civilian, you ought to really rethink claiming special status.

2. The line that Anti Catholisim is the last acceptalbe prejudice in the United States is more than a little true.  It's not only accepted, but it's almost mandatory in some quarter, both from the right and the left.

Related Threads:

Confusing politics with religion.

Lex Anteinternet: A reminder that the last shall be first, and some of the people who figure they are in the front of the line, may not be in it at all.

Lex Anteinternet: A reminder that the last shall be first, and some ...: 

A reminder that the last shall be first, and some of the people who figure they are in the front of the line, may not be in it at all.

I earlier posted this item regarding certain people who profess to be Christians who are sitting in our legislature:

Lex Anteinternet: Hypocrisy?: Hypocrisy? Or just not really thinking things through? As noted here before, although it might not always be very obvious, I'm conservat...

I addressed in that, the bill to extend Medicaid, noting:

The bill to extend Medicaid, which only aids the poor, to mothers past 60 days to a year passed its committee, but barely.  

It was supported by Governor Gordon.

It was supported by physicians.

Deacon Mike Lehman, lobbyist for the Diocese of Wyoming, spoke in favor of it.

None of which kept some of the legislative guardians of public morals from speaking against it.  Jeanette Ward of Illinois spoke against it as an "entitlement program".

Eh?

Not hardly.

Deacon Lehman noted:“that not every government program is an inevitable slide into the fiery pit of Socialism.”  He further noted, according to the Cowboy State Daily: “We’re talking about a segment of the population that qualifies for Medicaid coverage while pregnant, then, when the mother and child are still extremely vulnerable, they no longer qualify.”

The physicians noted they were supporting it even though the program really doesn't pay them very well at all, just barely, in fact.

I don't know, I'd note, Ward's religious affiliation, but I’m sure she's some sort of Christian.  Prior to coming to Wyoming, she was very active in Illinois politics, where she was predictably controversial.  An example of that is as follows:

Do you know what your children are being taught: Muslims believe in the same God as Christians and Jews?

My 6th-grader came home with this assignment today. She was supposed to read the article and answer the questions. (She will not be completing this assignment). The full text of the article is below. Quiz questions are depicted in the pictures. This article is utterly incorrect and false on many levels. This is one of the many reasons I voted no on this curriculum resource.

Well, Christians, Muslims and Jews do in fact all worship the same God.  Their understanding of God's nature if quite different from each other, but they all worship the same God.

Are we really willing to deny this small class of women and their infants medical help?  Seems really mean.

It's also the sort of thing that causes some people to slam the Pro Life folks on the basis that they don't care at all once people are born.  That's actually completely false, and indeed many of the more dedicated pro lifers do indeed support helping mother and infant post birth.

Indeed, while often missed, there's a strong streak of liberalism in at least the Catholic pro-life crowd, which is not only opposed to abortion, but opposed to the death penalty as well.  It's not actually easy to politically pigeonhole it.

Which unfortunately doesn't appear to be the case for Ms. Ward.  She's pretty predictable.

So, frankly, this doesn't surprise me very much.

Without knowing more, I sort of guess that Ms. Ward is a fundamentalist of some type.  I don't want to pick on fundamentalist too much, as they are highly varied, and the term is one that is put on them, rather than one they adopt, but fundamentalist of any type, and there are Islamic Fundamentalist, Hindu fundamentalist, etc., risk reducing their religion to a set of sort of Pharisaic type rules and becoming mean thereafter.  Abortion is wrong because it is, premarital sex is wrong, aborting the results of premarital sex is wrong, but after that you are your own and if you get sick and die, well that's your problem.

I'm not saying that all fundamentalist of any type hold that view, but the fundamentalist of any stripe, and I'd note that for the Apostolic religions as well, run that risk.

Note, orthodox, and fundamentalist, are not the same thing.

There's a real element of solidarity and subsidiarity missing in that thinking.  Yes, just the other day I criticized free school breakfast and lunches, on the basis that it encouraged parents in irresponsibility, but here a different concern exists, which is helping the most helpless in the most efficient fashion.  I.e, both solidarity and subsidiarity apply here, and they argue strongly for extending Medicaid here.  To argue against it as an unwanted "entitlement" really misses the boat.

Now, I learn from the Casper Star Tribune, that Ms. Ward stated the following:

“Arguing that if you’re pro-life you have to be for the expansion of entitlement programs does not follow,” Ward said. “Cain commented to God, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ The obvious answer is no. No, I am not my brother’s keeper. But just don’t kill him.”

Yes, Ms. Ward, you are your brother's keeper. That was the very point, and to a significant degree, of the entire Christian Gospel.  And in terms of the Torah, that was actually the point of the lesson.  Cain was Able's keeper. That was his obligation, not merely not killing him.

If you cannot grasp that, you've missed the message of the New Testament.  If you cannot be your brother's keeper, at least on occasion, you're claiming a crown that may well be beyond your grasp, if that is truly what you believe.¹

Truly, this is such a shocking position, that a person would have to be either blisteringly ignorant of the entire point of Christianity, or such a flaming Calvinist that even John Calvin would find your position abhorrent.

Appalling.

And a calling to repent.

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’

Then the righteous will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?

When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?

When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’

And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’

Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’

Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’

He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’

And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Matthew, Chapter 25. 

Footnotes

1.  Indeed, there has been in recent years a Catholic Bishop, perhaps still living, who took his obligation to the poor so seriously that he always carried money so as to give to every beggar.  When asked why, he replied "How am I to know which one is not Christ?", recalling the Gospel line that Christ would recall that whenever you gave to the least, you gave to him.

Lex Anteinternet: Something in the wind, part 3 of 3. The rise of the radical populist right. Getting what you wish for.

Lex Anteinternet: Something in the wind, part 3 of 3. The rise of th...: 

Something in the wind, part 3 of 3. The rise of the radical populist right. Getting what you wish for.

Part Three of this series is brought to you by Giogia Meloni and Clarence Thomas.

Meloni and Thomas.¹

Thomas?

Yes, we'll explain down below, sooner or later.

In the first two parts of this three part series, I've looked at the election of Giorgia Meloni and the reasons for her rise. In the last episode, we tried to sum up the source of her popularity, and how that relates to a now, semi-fawning, American far right.  Italy has now gone down this path.  Others, now more than ever, are urging the United States to do the same.

Which bring up the dread Law of Unintended Consequences.

All of us probably heard our mothers, or somebody, give us the warning "Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true!"  Probably, few stop to realize that this warning was delivered by non-other than Aesop as far back as 260BC.  His sage advice has hung around for a good reason.  The danger of getting something more than you asked for, in terms of secondary effects, is always pretty high.  Nobody tends to think much about that, however.

Far right admirers of Meloni, or Orban for that matter, are disgusted with the "woke" drift of American progressivism and goals that it has, some of which have been quite successful, which seem to offer promise to countering that.  These folks, in many instances, are horrified by progressive efforts that seek to remodel every institution of society and even our basic natures, if they can, and they likely really cannot, which doesn't mean that they can't do a lot of damage in the effort.

But others, and indeed most, of the Americans who are on the Trump train are on it only for one or two reasons.  Some are there for economic reasons, upset by the export of American jobs overseas for decades and a rising tide of immigrants.  Others are horrified by the seeming triumph of the woke and the redefinition of marriage.  Probably most have a vague sense that this ain't the way things ought to be.²

And I agree.

This ain't the way things ought to be.

But, I'm a dreaded intellectual Catholic, the very sort of people that the founders of this Great Nation abhorred and dreaded, and which many in the culture still do. 

Some feel that this era has passed, and such distinctions no longer matter, but I wonder, and I'm not the only one.  Ross Douthat, regarding current American Conservatism, has posted the following on his Twitter account within the last few days.

Current American conservatism: a low-church nondenominational Protestant mass movement trying to exert influence via intellectual Catholics strategically placed inside hollowed-out/secularized institutions of high-church denominational Protestantism.

If you dig deeper into this, you'll find that folks like Douthat, and Catholic intellectual circles, are concerned that ultimately they are there to be used, but when the time comes, they'll be dumped.

Now this may be surprising in an era when the real intellectuals on the Supreme Court, for example, are all Catholics.  All of them.  And its no surprise that this is the case.  By their training, both in their Catechism, and in their profession, they have to be, and were probably always inclined in that direction.  It used to be, however, that this was also true of others of different backgrounds, and while saying it is definitely dangerous, as it can be so easily misunderstood, it's still true of observant Jewish individuals, such as the recently departed Justice Ginsberg, which is part of the reason she was so widely, and justifiably, admired.  

It's getting pretty hard, however, to find serious intellects of the same type who are coming out of what's become of mainstream American conservatism.  Yes, they are there, to be sure.  Mitch McConnell is one, no matter what you think of him.  He's a Baptist. John Hickenlooper is a Quaker. Ben Sasse is a Presbyterian who was once a Lutheran.  And I don't mean to suggest a person has to be Catholic, or even religious, to be a heavyweight intellect by any means.

Rather, what I'm suggesting is this.

A lot of those in the Trump populist right are basically adherents to a sort of intellectualism lite, and often participants in the American Civil Religion, which claims Protestant Christianity as its foundation, but which advances it in a very lenient fashion, omitting, in its current form, darned near all of the New Testament list of behaviors between male and female, and indeed between male and male, and female and female, of a certain category, that were listed as sinful.³

So again, if we're turning the clock back, as Chesterton says we can, who will be comfortable with that and who won't?

Let's get back to voting and what you get, in the end.

In the German elections of the early 1930s, some people really did want to elect a radical racist party into power that would kill the Jews and hopefully, in their line of thinking, punish the French and wipe out the Bosheveks whereever they could be found.

But most voters who went to the polls probably didn't really have sending their sons to freeze to death at Stalingrad or being asked to put a bullet into a rabbi's head, or crush the skull of a Jewish infant in with a rifle butt, in mind at the time.

Observant German Lutherans, over half the county's religious community, didn't imagine that they'd have to fight off an attempt to consolidate them into a state approved variant of their faith.  German Catholics didn't imagine they'd be hiding impaired children from thinly disguised euthanasia programs.

Italians, in the 1920s, didn't imagine, for that matter, that some twenty years later they'd be sending their sons to fight one of the best armies in the world in North Africa, and others to fight the Red Army in the East.

Benito Mussolini.  He was the authority.  All you would have to do to verify this would have been to ask him. . .

Oh, I know, some will read this (among the few who do) and dismiss it as wild hyperbole.  And, for that matter, I'm not saying that anyone is going to be freezing in a few years on the Volga.

What I am saying is that a lot of right wing populist truly talk the talk, but don't really walk the walk, and probably don't want to either.

I'm also saying it's hard, when you go shopping for really radical political movements, to buy just part of the pie.  I.e, it's hard to say "I'll have a think slice of immigration reform please" and not get "here's your populist pie, including a complete set of family values you aren't following. . . "

Which takes us back to Clarence Thomas and more particularly his dissent in Dobbs.

Now, the Dobbs decision is 213 pages long in the original reporter, and we can't expect everyone to have read it.  I haven't read it all, either. But Dobbs, we know, got the abortion topic right.  Roe v. Wade, as most constitutional scholars long ago admitted, just made stuff up that wasn't in the Constitution, and it had long prior become completely unworkable.  Dobbs just sent things back to the states, where they belonged in the first place.

The Dobbs majority was quick to point out, in the text, that it was in no way shape or form seeking to expand the holding in Dobbs beyond the opinion itself, and it in particular it was no threat to Obergefell.

Well, baloney.

That's the same thing Justice Kennedy said in Obergefell. At the time that decision was handed down, the Court indicated it wouldn't expand into anything else, and those advancing the cause that prevailed in Obergefell likewise promised they had nothing else on the agenda.  Obergefell was, as noted, in our opinion on it at the time, a judicial coup, one preceding the attempted January 6, 2021, coup, and one basically fed into the other.

Kennedy was wrong in his declaration, and those 

I write separately to emphasize a second, more fundamental reason why there is no abortion guarantee lurking in the Due Process Clause. Considerable historical evidence indicates that “due process of law” merely required executive and judicial actors to comply with legislative enactments and the common law when depriving a person of life, liberty, or property. See, e.g., Johnson v. United States, 576 U. S. 591, 623 (2015) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment). Other sources, by contrast, suggest that “due process of law” prohibited legislatures “from authorizing the deprivation of a person’s life, liberty, or property without providing him the customary procedures to which freemen were entitled by the old law of England.” United States v. Vaello Madero, 596 U. S. ___, ____ (2022) (THOMAS, J., concurring) (slip op., at 3) (internal quotation marks omitted). Either way, the Due Process Clause at most guarantees process. It does not, as the Court’s substantive due process cases suppose, “forbi[d] the government to infringe certain ‘fundamental’ liberty interests at all, no matter what process is provided.” Reno v. Flores, 507 U. S. 292, 302 (1993); see also, e.g., Collins v. Harker Heights, 503 U. S. 115, 125 (1992).

As I have previously explained, “substantive due process” is an oxymoron that “lack[s] any basis in the Constitution.” Johnson, 576 U. S., at 607–608 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); see also, e.g., Vaello Madero, 596 U. S., at ___ (THOMAS, J., concurring) (slip op., at 3) (“[T]ext and history provide little support for modern substantive due process doctrine”). “The notion that a constitutional provision that guarantees only ‘process’ before a person is deprived of life, liberty, or property could define the substance of those rights strains credulity for even the most casual user of words.” McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 811 (2010) (THOMAS, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment); see also United States v. Carlton, 512 U. S. 26, 40 (1994) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment). The resolution of this case is thus straightforward. Because the Due Process Clause does not secure any substantive rights, it does not secure a right to abortion. 

The Court today declines to disturb substantive due process jurisprudence generally or the doctrine’s application in other, specific contexts. Cases like Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965) (right of married persons to obtain contraceptives)*; Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U. S. 558 (2003) (right to engage in private, consensual sexual acts); and Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644 (2015) (right to same-sex marriage), are not at issue. The Court’s abortion cases are unique, see ante, at 31–32, 66, 71–72, and no party has asked us to decide “whether our entire Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence must be preserved or revised,” McDonald, 561 U. S., at 813 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). Thus, I agree that “[n]othing in [the Court’s] opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” Ante, at 66.

For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is “demonstrably erroneous,” Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 7), we have a duty to “correct the error” established in those precedents, Gamble v. United States, 587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (THOMAS, J., concurring) (slip op., at 9). After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated. For example, we could consider whether any of the rights announced in this Court’s substantive due process cases are “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Amdt.  14, §1; see McDonald, 561 U. S., at 806 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). To answer that question, we would need to decide important antecedent questions, including whether the Privileges or Immunities Clause protects any rights that are not enumerated in the Constitution and, if so, how to identify those rights. See id., at 854. That said, even if the Clause does protect unenumerated rights, the Court conclusively demonstrates that abortion is not one of them under any plausible interpretive approach. See ante, at 15, n. 22. 

You get the point.⁴ 

So here's the deal.  Thomas would strike down an entire series of substantive due process cases.  And indeed, his logic on this is infallible.  He's correct.⁵

And that's why I wonder, quite frankly, if rank and file populists have thought this out.

Once you board the logic train, you have to go where it goes.  It's like going on a transcontinental railroad trip. 

Once you board the logic train, you have to go where it takes you and you can't get off early.  It's like going on a transcontinental railroad trip.  You buy your ticket, and you can't pretend the train doesn't run all the way across the country and just stops, and turns around, in Denver.  You'll go through Denver. . . but the train will keep going.

The string of cases that Thomas mentions are in fact in peril now, and they likely also ought to be.  But Thomas didn't mention Loving v. Virginia.  Now, I think Loving v. Virginia can still be defended, and it undoubtedly can be on Natural Law grounds.

Loving v. Virginia was, you will recall, the case that determined that states couldn't ban interracial marriages.

Now most people, and certainly any decent people, would find that concept horrific.  Of course states can't ban interracial marriages. But they did, in some instances, up until that time.  It was Loving v. Virginia that struck that down.  Not too many people want to go back to that.

As critics of Dobbs have mentioned, as the state's can and have litigated in all of the areas that Thomas mentions, it's odd, sort of, that he omitted this one.  Well maybe not.  There's another way to address this case too, but it's still worth noting that this is the one area that would personally impact Thomas in a very direct way, and which is contrary to his personal worldview.

At the Wyoming State Bar convention, this came up during a speech by a constitutional scholar who also publishes in the Tribune. At some point during the speech, I don't know where, Harriet Hageman left the room, and she was apparently pretty disgruntled with what the speaker was saying, although I don't know that it was this. An email that circulated among Wyoming State Bar members later claimed that Hageman "heckled" the speaker, and the speaker perceived it that way, although many people disagreed with that characterization.  If nothing else, this all goes to show how uncomfortable people on the far populist right are with where this all leads.

The backdoor out of this is, as noted, Natural Law, but most populist really don't want to go there either.  

Natural Law has come up in American law repeatedly over the centuries, although now it is official eschewed. At one time it was not.  We've dealt with both of those themes here before, with the most interesting example of it being the case The Antelope, which we've written about at least twice.  That was the case in which the United States Supreme Court decided that slavery was contrary to the natural law, but allowable under the law of the United States as countries could legislate contrary to the natural law, to wit:

That it is contrary to the law of nature will scarcely be denied. That every man has a natural right to the fruits of his own labor is generally admitted, and that no other person can rightfully deprive him of those fruits and appropriate them against his will seems to be the necessary result of this admission. But from the earliest times, war has existed, and war confers rights in which all have acquiesced. Among the most enlightened nations of antiquity, one of these was that the victor might enslave the vanquished. This, which was the usage of all, could not be pronounced repugnant to the law of nations, which is certainly to be tried by the test of general usage. That which has received the assent of all must be the law of all. 

Slavery, then, has its origin in force; but as the world has agreed that it is a legitimate result of force, the state of things which is thus produced by general consent cannot be pronounced unlawful. 

Throughout Christendom, this harsh rule has been exploded, and war is no longer considered as giving a right to enslave captives. But this triumph of humanity has not been universal. The parties to the modern law of nations do not propagate their principles by force, and Africa has not yet adopted them. Throughout the whole extent of that immense continent, so far as we know its history, it is still the law of nations that prisoners are slaves. Can those who have themselves renounced this law be permitted to participate in its effects by purchasing the beings who are its victims? 

Now, if somebody is wondering how this gets us out of this mess, it doesn't.  Under the holding in The Antelope, outlawing anything not mentioned in the Constitution, no matter how shocking, would be okay.

But following this, on more than one occasion, the Court referenced Natural Law in order to support a decision. At least as recently as the 1980s, the Court found that laws addressing homosexual conduction were allowable, as homosexuality was contrary to the Natural Law.  A Wyoming jurist found that laws banning adoption by homosexual couples were allowable for the same reason, and more recently than that.

Now, some are going to find that really shocking as well, but once again, if we're on the populist train, this is where that goes, and frankly most of those on the hard populist right, are okay with this.  I.e., that would cure the Loving v. Virginia problem, as banning marriage between heterosexual couples based on race is contrary to the Natural Law.

But the ancient law of humanity also tried to make sure that the same impulses that gave rise to marriage assured them.  Hence, the creation of the Common Law's common law marriage.  How many on the Trump train want to return to the days of the Heart Balm Statutes?

My guess is not many, and certainly not Trump himself, who is a serial polygamist.  

Now, I'm not here to judge people's morals by any means.  But this is a topic worth considering.  In the current political world we live in, we have a Senator who is divorced and remarried and at least one extremely right wing politician entering the legislature has a wife who was married before as well.  You can be guaranteed that some of those now running have openly lived lives involving cohabitation outside of marriage, as it is so common.  Are people really comfortable with a return to the old law on all of this?

Well, sincere Catholics, like me, might be. But this is a Protestant nation.  Here in town, there's a huge Protestant church that I think is "non-denominational" (I'm not completely certain).  Somebody I know who attends it is on their third marriage.  In the American Civil Religion, that seemingly doesn't cause problems, and I don't doubt that person's sincerity in attending.  But in American law, prior to the post World War Two Supreme Court trip that Justice Thomas complained, of, it would have.

Do people have this in mind?

Looking around, I really doubt it.  People seem to believe that the Constitution applies only to other people, not to themselves, or worse yet, they have a false belief about what the history of our laws and the Constitutional law really is.  In reality, at one time marriage was solely the province of the states, and they could allow or ban whatever they chose.  Restricting firearm carrying was pretty common, and the concept of "open carry" around town nonexistent.  Prohibiting members of certain races from certain neighborhoods through restrictive covenants completely allowable and in fact the norm.  The only way around that is the Natural Law, but the Natural Law brings in concerns that most Americans aren't really prepared to deal with, even remotely.

And if you are dabbling with concepts of Natural Law, you sooner or later are going to stray into concepts of Subsidiarity and the like.  Those concepts make most Americans squirm in their seats, at least if they aren't of the left.  Vest the economy entirely downwards, accept a lower standard of living for the middle class and the wealthy in favor of vesting the economy in families and elevating the poor.  Nobody too rich, and nobody too wealthy.  An economy that favors sustainability forever over one that does not.

Chesterton would have been comfortable with all of that.

Jefferson might have been.

Giorgia Meloni is probably comfortable with all of that.

Most Americans now. . . definately not.

Footnotes:

1.  Okay, Meloni's photo here, taken from a Reel, is unfair.  She's an effective speaker and clearly highly intelligent, as is Thomas.  This illustrates, however, how Italian politics isn't American politics, gushing from Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor Greene aside.  Meloni is an intellectual, if perhaps a somewhat scary one, compared to Cruz and Greene, and Thomas is definately an intellectual.  Greene and Cruz certainly dont' seem to be, and frankly some or perhaps a lot of their positions wouldn't square with either Meloni's or Thomas'

Added to that, Meloni is a politician in a  unique Italian environment where things are done, said, or portrayed that definately would never be here.

2.  This is the source, I think, of the lot of election discontent.

It's also the source of a lot of election denialism. The thought is that "people can't have really voted for Biden, as people can't really be for. . . ".  In another form, which isn't the same, its "votes for Biden can't count, as what he stands for is vile, and therefore. . . "

Almost lost in all of this is the fact that Trump lost the popular vote twice.  His first election was only legitimate, and it was legitimate, due to the artifact of the electoral college.  Of course, this causes people to unthinkingly babble "we aren't a democracy" (we are) "but a republic".  I've addressed that elsewhere, but using that as an argument shows that the person advancing a point is largley ignorant of what they're trying to advance.

3.  It might be worth noting here that fully 1/3d of American Evangelical Protestants believe the United States Constitution, which never mentions God, was inspired by God.  The newly appointed interim Wyoming Secretary of State has publicly taken this position in his campaign material.

For reasons that are partially addresssed in this essay, that's a fairly startling and scary proposition.  Traditional Christianity holds that inspired texts cease with the end of the Apostolic Age, at which point there were no more general revalations.

4. It should be noted, and will be later in the text, that even if Thomas' logic is correct on the cases he mentions, he's only commenting in regard to procedural due process. For that reason, his comments have been read to probably mean more than they should be.

I'll address Loving v. Virginia below, but Griswald v. Connecticut is another such example.  Even if Thomas' criticism of the case in a procedural due process context are correct, it doesn't address Federal Supremacy might mean that the Federal Government has completlely dominated the field here to the detriment of indivdual states through the laws pertaining to pharmacueticals.

5.  But see footnote 4.

Prior Related Threads:

Something in the wind, part 1 of 3. The rise of the radical populist right. A second look at the Italian election. . . and a bunch of other stuff.

Something in the wind, part 2 of 3. The rise of the radical populist right. A second look at the Italian election. . . and a bunch of other stuff.