Lex Anteinternet: J. D. Vance at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.

Lex Anteinternet: J. D. Vance at the National Catholic Prayer Breakf...: 

J. D. Vance at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.

Vance, on the same day he assisted in berating President Zelenskiy.

James Donald Bowman of Middleton Ohio is sort of a hard guy to figure out.  Bowman, and that's his real name, or rather the one he held at birth, grew up in a suburb of Cincinnati, not exactly part of Appalachia.  His parents divorced when he was very young, and when he was six, his mother married for the third time, and his name was changed to James David Hamel.  That's the name he served in the Marine Corps under, and went to university under.  He didn't become "J. D. Vance" until he was ready to graduate from Yale Law school.  Vance was the last name of his maternal grandmother.

Vance has also changed religions over the course of his lifetime.  As a proper Hillbilly would, he was once a member of an Evangelical faith, that of his fathers.  By the time he was out in the world, however, he was an atheist.  He became Catholic through the influence of a Yale law school friend, and became a very traditionalist Catholic at that.

I don't fault him the change in religions (I do the adult change of names, which I regard as phony).  I am, of course, a Catholic, and I therefore welcome those into the faith.  Moreover, I often find that converts are more devout than than "cradle Catholics", who often don't know their own faith all that well, although that's certainly not universal.  And I admire traditionalist Catholics as well.

But here's where I begin to have a problem with Vance.  Just as I don't admire Catholics who become another religion for convenience, something we've always experienced (it often used to be for economic reasons, but now is usually due to divorce and remarriage), I don't admire jettonsing of elements of the faith when it becomes difficult, and Vance has done just that.  Catholics believe that life begins at conception, and that conception should always be via natural means.  Vance has changed his position on abortion to tolerate it where states provide it should be, and he's okay with IVF ,which Catholics definitely are not.

Having said that, on basic moral principals, Vance was closer to the faith than many Catholic politicians have been since 1960.

But now he's an active Vice President, and things are beginning to shift again.  He attempted to strain Catholic social teaching the other day to suggest that Catholics have a diehard family first position in regard to loving our neighbor, and got immediately rebuked.  

Vance is actually the highest elected official in the United States right now, given that Donald Trump cannot Constitutionally occupy the position he pretends to without a Congressional dispensation he has not received.  He's a convert to Catholicism, but occupies an odd status in that he's an intellectual conservative traditionalist convert, but with a wife who is a Hindu and who hasn't followed him there (my Protestant wife hasn't followed me either) and who has heavily compromised himself on certain principal Catholic moral teachings in his recent campaign.

So he makes for an interesting, if predictable, speaker at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, something that I frankly didn't know even existed.

His speech, and some comments.

I came here last year as a very young senator not knowing how much my life would change, and I'm thankful to God — but also thankful to the friendship of the people in this room for helping us get there, because I think that we have turned a new page in Washington, D.C., and we are going to take advantage of the opportunity that God has given us. 

We? 

So I want to say a couple of words just about Trump administration policy because, while you're certainly not always going to agree with everything that we do in President Trump's administration, I feel very confident in saying that between protecting the rights of pro-life protesters, between ensuring that we have an opportunity to protect the rights of the unborn in the first place, and importantly, protecting the religious liberty of all people — but in particular, Catholics — I think that we can say that President Trump, though not a Catholic himself, has been an incredibly good president for Catholics in the United States of America.

Now we know of course the last administration liked to throw people in jail for silently praying outside of pro-life clinics. We know that they liked to harass pro-life fathers of seven, very often, Catholic fathers, for participating in the pro-life movement. And we know that the last administration wanted to protect taxpayer-funded abortion right up unto the moment of birth. 

The Biden Administration was extremely hostile to pro life positions, and tacked to the extreme left on social issues in general.  Whomever allowed Biden to take these turns, and I suspect it wasn't Biden's idea, should be severely dope slapped.  In large measure, it's such things that gave us King Donald. 

On every single one of those issues, in 30 short days, Donald J. Trump has gone in the exact opposite direction and I am thankful for that. And I'm sure that every single person in this room is thankful for that as well. But I actually want to talk about a couple of other things in particular. 

One of the most important parts of President Trump's policy, and where I think President Trump's policy is most in accord with Christian social teaching and with the Catholic faith, is that more than any president of my lifetime, President Trump has pursued a path of peace. And we very often, I think, ignore the way in which our foreign policy is either an instrument or an impediment to people all over the world being able to practice their faith. And we know — and as, of course, I learned in this breakfast last year — I believe there were some Nigerian priests who were being persecuted, and were trying to protect their flock despite incredible persecution. 

Trump has followed a path of being a bully, trying to extort the mineral wealth of another country, while making it compromise with an invader.

There will always be wars and rumors of war.  Ukraine is justly defending itself. Catholics are not pacifists. 

We know that some of the biggest groups that are persecuted all over the world today are Christians and the Trump administration promises you that whether it's here at home with our own citizens or all over the world, we will be the biggest defenders of religious liberty and the rights of conscience. And I think those policies will fall to the benefit of Catholics in particular all over the world.

But I would say, my friends, that it's not enough simply to protect the rights of conscience, to pursue funding opportunities and grant-making opportunities that protect the rights of people to engage in religious conscience. We also have to remember that oftentimes the biggest impediments to religious liberty have not come through malice from the United States government but have actually come through carelessness. And one of the things that — I have to be honest — that I am most ashamed about, is that in the United States of America, sometimes it is our foreign misadventures that lead to the eradication of historical Christian communities all over the world. 

And so when President Trump talks about the need to bring peace whether it's in Russia and Ukraine, whether it's in the Middle East, we of course have to recognize that, as a policy oriented towards saving lives, and carrying out one of Christ's most important commandments, but I think we also must recognize it as an effort to protect the religious liberty of Christians. Because over the past 40 years, it has often been historical Christian communities who bear the brunt of failed American foreign policy and that is, in my view, perhaps the most important way in which Donald Trump has been a defender of Christian rights all over the world. He has a foreign policy that is oriented towards peace. 

Trump's peace policy in the Middle East involves siding with one group of people in their entirety while thinking, as his tiny brain does, that the others can happily simply be moved to a second rate Middle Eastern version of a Florida housing development. 

We have done it already so much in the past 30 days, and I'm proud that we will work for peace all over the world in the remaining four years of President Trump's term, and I think that's an important thing.

Now of course, we're not always going to agree, and I'm sure that there are people in this room who agree or disagree with some of our views on foreign policy on any number of issues. The one thing that I will promise you is that you're always going to have an open door with me and with the president. I think that you've already seen that, and if you haven't, please come and bring your concerns — and some of you have already brought many concerns to me over the last 30 days — but also your “attaboys,” because I think that part of being a good presidential administration for people of faith all over the United States, part of it is listening to people of faith when they have concerns.

And I think that it's important — and I'll make this commitment to you in front of God, and in front of all those television cameras back there — that we will always listen to people of faith and people of conscience in the United States of America. You have an open door to the Trump administration even if, and especially maybe when, you disagree with us. So please use that opportunity: communicate with us when we get things right but also when we get things wrong. And that is my solemn obligation but also my request because, of course, as I've learned during the campaign — of course, I've got Secret Service protection and it's bumped up now that I'm the vice president of the United States — I live in a bubble, ladies and gentlemen, I live in a roaming bubble and wherever I go, I'm surrounded by armed agents. The only way to keep me honest, and the only way to know what is actually affecting the real lives of people all over our country, is for you to talk to us. So please, consider that open door very much an invitation, but also a request.

And I will say that I believe that I'm the first Catholic convert to ever be vice president of the United States, [applause] — I appreciate you guys clapping because, it turns out, there are some people on the internet who don't like Catholic converts. And in fact, there are some Catholics who appear not to like Catholic converts. I've learned that the hard way. But of course, the gross majority of of my brothers and sisters in Christ have been incredibly welcoming and Incredibly charitable and for that I'm grateful.

Vance's comments about converts and the Internet here are quite valid.  Vance has proven to be polarizing, including amongst Catholics, which has lead to Twitter wars of a very unfortunate nature.  As noted, converts are often amongst the most devout Catholics. 

I wanted to just reflect on that, on being a Catholic and particularly a Catholic convert in public life, in the hopes that maybe it would provide some wisdom or some guidance, or maybe just some interesting stories for those of you who are enjoying your breakfast. And you know, one of the things that I try to remind myself of as a convert, is that there's a lot I don't know. When I was a kid, we used to call new converts to the faith “baby Christians” and I recognize very much that I am a “baby Catholic” — that there are things about the faith that I don't know. So I try to be humble as best I can when I talk about the faith and publicly, because of course, I'm not always going to get it right. And I don't want my inadequacies in describing our faith to fall back on the faith itself. And so if you ever hear me pontificating about the Catholic faith, please recognize it comes from a place of deep belief, but it also comes from a place of not always knowing everything all the time.

And you know, now I say that of course, I don't try to comment on every single Catholic issue. I try not to get involved in the civil wars between Dominicans and Jesuits and conservative Catholics and progressive Catholics. But as Michael Corleone said in The Godfather, “Sometimes they pull me back in.” Sometimes I can't help — I can't help but spout off. I am a politician after all, ladies and gentlemen. 

But the thing that I have tried to remind people of, and the thing that I try to remind myself of, is that what attracted me to the Christian faith, and what attracted me to this Church in particular, is the recognition that grace is not something that happens instantaneously. It's something that God works in us over a long period of time — sometimes many years, and sometimes many decades. I think that when I I was a kid, my assumption was that grace is something where the Holy Spirit would come in and it would solve all of our problems.

I learned the hard way, as a Catholic — in part, by following the sacramental life as best as I could — that grace is very much a process that God works in us over time. He makes us closer to him and makes us better people in the process. And so when I first became a Catholic, I would probably go to confession every other week because I would fail to go to Mass every other week. Things would come up, you'd have business trips you'd have — the kids would get sick — and I just remember that this process of thinking: okay, if I don't go to church this week I'm going to have to go and talk to some stranger about everything that I did bad the last two weeks, and that process worked in me a much better discipline, a much better prayerful life. And you know I'm batting probably like 95% of Sundays now that I actually go to Mass. This is, I think, one of the geniuses of our faith — that it teaches us through repetition in some ways, and it forms us through a process, of course, that is I think at the heart of the mystery of faith, that somehow by practicing the sacraments — even imperfectly, as I certainly do — God transforms us. 

And while I am as imperfect a Christian as any person in this room, I really do feel that God is transforming me every single day, and that's one of the great blessings of our faith, and one of the great blessings of following the sacraments as I try to do. So thank you all for welcoming a convert into your ranks, because I certainly benefit from it — and my family does too.

The second thing that I take from my Catholic faith is a recognition that the deepest and most important things are not material. They're not GDP. They're not the numbers that we see in the stock market. The real measure of health in a society is the safety and stability and the health of our families, and of our people. We are in the business, in President Trump's administration, of producing prosperity, but that prosperity is a means to an end. And that end is the flourishing, hopefully, of the life of every single citizen in the United States of America. 

Trump, his supposed boss, does believe that the only thing that matters in the world is wealth, and therefore is an extreme materialist.  He's put part of the government in the hands of a materialist atheist.

That's why we care about these things. I often remind myself that there have been times in the past where you know the GDP numbers were maybe moving in the right direction, where the stock market was moving in the right direction, but the United States of America was losing life expectancy. I think that what the Catholic Church calls me to do is to say that if the stock market's doing okay, but people are literally dying and losing years off of their life, then we have to do better as a country. 

We do, which raises the question of why we'd wipe out USAID, which was a lifeline for many people around the world. 

Catholicism — Christianity at its root, I think — teaches our public officials to care about the deep things, the important things, the protection of the unborn, the flourishing of our children, and the health and the sanctity of our marriages. And yes, we care about prosperity but we care about prosperity so that we can promote the common good of every citizen in the United States of America. 

And when I think about the deep things, the things that really matter there was something really amazing that happened to me in November of 2024. All my friends were there, all my family was there. We were gathered together in a great moment of celebration and, of course, I'm talking about when my 7-year-old chose to be baptized into the Christian faith. And he's at school right now, so he won't see this, but as amazing as it was to win the election of course in November of 2024, and as amazing as it was to know that President Trump would become president again and would get to accomplish so many good things for the American people, the thing that I was most excited about in November of 2024 is that the week after we won the election my son chose to be baptized in the Christian faith. 

Now here's the basic idea, and and for those of you, of course — you all mostly are cradle Catholics, I assume —  typically we do water baptism of infants in the Catholic Church very very early on. But as many of you know, I am part of an interfaith marriage. My wife, though she comes to church with us almost every single Sunday, she is not Catholic herself. And so the bargain that we have struck is that we will raise our kids Catholic, but we will let them choose the moment that they want to ultimately become baptized. And if that's terrible sacrilege, blame the Dominicans, because they're the ones who came up with this scheme. 

But my 7-year-old elected to become baptized and it was the proudest moment maybe that I've ever had as a father, and he took it very seriously and he wanted to know what are the right things to say: 'Dad what do I need to do? What does this mean? Why is this important?' 

And it was an amazing thing for me to see :my 7-year-old working through these things himself and when I talk about the deep things, the important things, that's what I I'm talking about. Of course we care about our economic indicators and of course we care about the wages of our citizens. We care about those things because when our people are doing better they can have the kinds of moments that promote the kind of flourishing that all of us believe is the very core of a good human life and that of course, in my case, was watching my little 7-year-old son become baptized.

And so while, again, I will never be perfect, I will always try to remind myself that the goal of our public policy is to promote the common good and I will fight for that every single day that I am a public official. 

And that brings me to the final observation I'd like to make as a Christian, a Catholic convert in public life, is that you know, sometimes the bishops don't like what I say and I'm sure, by the way, sometimes they're right and sometimes they're wrong. My goal is not to litigate when I'm right and when they're wrong or vice versa. My goal is to maybe articulate the way that I think about being a Christian in public life.

When you also have religious leaders in public life who have a spiritual duty to speak on the issues of the day and the way that I try to think about it is, the Catholic church is a kind of technology. It's a technology that was developed 2,000 years ago and it's coming into contact with a technology that's about 10 years old, 20 years old — and that's, of course, social media.

What I I try to remind myself of, is that the clergy are important spiritual leaders. You'll sometimes hear people say, ‘Well we'll let, you know, the clergy talk about matters of the Church, but we can ignore them when it comes to matters of public policy.’ I think that's the wrong way to look at it. That's certainly not the right way to look at it for me. But what I try to remind myself of is that we are not called as Christians to obsess over every social media controversy that implicates the Catholic Church, whether it involves a clergy or a bishop or the Holy Father himself. 

I think that we could frankly take a page out of the books of our grandparents who respected our clergy, who looked to them for guidance, but didn't obsess and fight over every single word that came out of their mouth and entered social media. I don't think that's good and I'm not again counseling all of you but I don't think it's good for us as Christians to constantly fight with one another over every single controversy in the Church. Sometimes we should let this stuff play out a little bit and try to live our faith as best we can under the dictates of our faith and under the dictates of our spiritual leaders, but not hold them to the standards of social media influencers because they're not. 

That brings me of course to the last point that I want to make which is that, as you've probably seen publicly, the Holy Father, Pope Francis, has criticized some of our policies when it comes to immigration. Again, my goal here is not to litigate with him or any other clergy member about who is right and who is wrong. You obviously know my views and I will speak to them consistently because I think that I have to do it because it serves the best interest of the American people. 

I hate the casual use of the world "litigate", but frankly it's one of Vance's favorite. 

What I want to do instead is remind, and I talk to a lot of conservative Catholics and I talked to progressive Catholics too, and I think that sometimes a lot of conservative Catholics are too preoccupied with their political criticisms of a particular clergy member or the leader of the Catholic Church. And of course, I'm not telling you that you're wrong because sometimes I even agree with you. I think that what I would say is that it's not in the best interest of any of us, again, to treat the religious leaders of our faith as just another social media influencer, and I think frankly that goes in both ways if I can be so bold. 

I think it's incumbent upon our religious leaders to recognize that in the era of social media, people will hang on every single word that they utter even if that wasn't their intention and even if a given declaration wasn't meant for consumption in the social media age, but every day since I heard of Pope Francis' illness, I say a prayer for the Holy Father because while yes, I was certainly surprised when he criticized our immigration policy in the way that he has, I I believe that the Pope is fundamentally a person who cares about the flock of Christians under his leadership. And he's a man who cares about the spiritual direction of the faith.  

I say this because every day me and my children have said a prayer for the Holy Father and we pray for his health and we pray for his comfort as he deals with what appears to be a a pretty serious health crisis. 

And while, yes, some of our media and some of our social media influencers and even some of us fellow Catholics I think, try to bring the Holy Father into every culture-war battle in American politics, I will always remember the Holy Father — whether he makes his way through this illness, and I certainly hope that he does — I will always remember the Holy Father in March of 2020 at a time of incredible stress for really the entire world, remember that was the height of the COVID pandemic. None of us knew how bad it was. We heard reports from Italy of people dying en masse on ventilators and personally, I had just a few weeks earlier welcomed our second child into the world and so when the pandemic happened, I had a 3-week old baby at home and I went to Dick’s Sporting Goods and I bought 900 rounds of ammunition and then I went to Walmart and I bought two bags of rice and I sat at home with my bags of rice and my  900 rounds of ammunition and said, “All right, we're just going to wait this thing out,” and into that void when a lot of people didn't know how bad it was, and of course, thankfully the pandemic was not as bad as the very worst predictions. It was quite bad, but not as bad as the very worst predictions.

Ugh, the AR15 Effect and the Stalingrad Weltanschauung making an appearance. 

I think all of us can remember that moment of the Holy Father standing in an empty St Peter's Square holding the Eucharist above his head and giving a sermon that I returned to consistently because it was incredibly meaningful to me at the time and it remains meaningful today — and so if you'll forgive me, I hope that you'll be okay with me reading just an excerpt of the homily that Pope Francis gave:

‘When evening had come’ (Mark 4:35). The Gospel passage we have just heard begins like this. For weeks now it has been evening. Thick darkness has gathered over our squares, our streets and our cities; it has taken over our lives, filling everything with a deafening silence and a distressing void, that stops everything as it passes by; we feel it in the air, we notice in people’s gestures, their glances give them away. We find ourselves afraid and lost. Like the disciples in the Gospel we were caught off guard by an unexpected, turbulent storm. We have realized that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented, but at the same time important and needed, all of us called to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other. On this boat … are all of us. Just like those disciples, who spoke anxiously with one voice, saying ‘We are perishing,’ so we too have realized that we cannot go on thinking of ourselves, but only together can we do this.

It is easy to recognize ourselves in this story. What is harder to understand is Jesus’ attitude. While his disciples are quite naturally alarmed and desperate, he is in the stern, in the part of the boat that sinks first. And what does he do? In spite of the tempest, he sleeps on soundly, trusting in the Father; this is the only time in the Gospels we see Jesus sleeping. When he wakes up, after calming the wind and the waters, he turns to the disciples in a reproaching voice: ‘Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?’

Let us try to understand. In what does the lack of the disciples’ faith consist, as contrasted with Jesus’ trust? They had not stopped believing in him; in fact, they called on him. But we see how they call on him: “Teacher, do you not care if we perish?” Do you not care: they think that Jesus is not interested in them, does not care about them. One of the things that hurts us and our families most when we hear it said is: ‘Do you not care about me?’ It is a phrase that wounds and unleashes storms in our hearts. It would have shaken Jesus too. Because he, more than anyone, cares about us. Indeed, once they have called on him, he saves his disciples from their discouragement.

The storm exposes our vulnerability and uncovers those false and superfluous certainties around which we have constructed our daily schedules, our projects, our habits and priorities. It shows us how we have allowed to become dull and feeble the very things that nourish, sustain and strengthen our lives and our communities. The tempest lays bare all our prepackaged ideas and forgetfulness of what nourishes our people’s souls; all those attempts that anesthetize us with ways of thinking and acting that supposedly ‘save’ us, but instead prove incapable of putting us in touch with our roots and keeping alive the memory of those who have gone before us. We deprive ourselves of the antibodies we need to confront adversity.

And that is how I will always remember the Holy Father: as a great pastor. As a man who can speak the truth of the faith in a very profound way at a moment of great crisis. And so I would ask all of us, if you would join me, in this prayer for Pope Francis:

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Almighty and generous God, we thank you for your charity. Please grant your mercy upon Pope Francis so he may be restored from sickness and guide us in watchful care. We pray that you bless our Holy Father's doctors, nurses and medical staff with wisdom and capability so that you may work through them to renew the health of your shepherd through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

As I conclude my remarks here: I'm not ever going to be perfect. I'm never going to get everything right. But what I will try to do is to try to be the kind of leader who helps our shared civilization build those true antibodies against adversity. And if the Holy Father can hear us, I hope he knows that there are thousands of faithful Catholics in this room and millions of faithful Catholics in this country who are praying for him as he weathers his particular storm.

God bless you. 

Thank you.

Well, could be a lot worse.

I worry, however, that the Trump administration is going to result in a lot of harm to Christians in general, and Catholics specifically.  Trump was raised as as Calvinist and both he and Musk act like them.  Trump isn't close to Catholicism, he's close, for political purposes, to the New  Apostolic Reformation Evangelical Christians who believe that the United States has a militant Protestant purpose. Catholic itself is a barely evolved Latin word, Catholicus, meaning universal.  We have a universal world outlook, which the Trump administration seems to completely lack.  When Trump's policies all fall apart, and they're already starting to, those on the outside will cast a negative eye towards "Christians", not realizing that much of what we're seeing has very little to do with "one, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church", and that we mean those words.

The last Catholic President, Joe Biden, didn't do Catholicism any big favors.  The prior one, John F. Kennedy, didn't either.  Let us hope and pray that J. D. Vance as Vice President, and probable President soon, won't walk that well worn path.

Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the United States? The Protestant Work Ethic.

Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the United States? The Protesta...:

What's wrong with the United States? The Protestant Work Ethic.

Professor Galloway "on follow your passion".

His advice?

Don't.

More particularly, his advice is dedicated yourself relentlessly to something you are good at, and it will become your passion, in no small part as you'll make money at it.

There's plenty of evidence that's right. . . and just as much that it's wrong.

Professor Galloway is a Calvinist.  He comes by it naturally as his father is from Scotland.  

Oh, sure, you'll note that Galloway states he's an atheist. Well, like a lot of people who are something on an existential level, he doesn't know what he actual is. And what that is, is a Calvinist.  Perhaps a cultural Calvinist, but a Calvinist.

And it was Calvin, not the Church of England, or the Lutherans, who gave us the Protestant Work Ethic.

Well, that's great, right?

Not so much.

John Calvin was as French radical Protestant reformer who was grim in his outlook and basically an asshole.  One of his central core beliefs was double predestination, which held that from the moment of conception almost everyone was going to Hell.  

Calvin taught that all men must work, even the wealthy, because to work was the will of God. Irrespective of their ultimate fate, which they could in no way impact, it was the unyielding duty of men (and I do men men) to toil here on Earth as part of God's plan to continue the creation of the Earth.  Men were not, in his view, to become wealthy, I'd note, but were to reinvest the fruits of their labor over and over again, ad infinitum, or to the end of time.

Calvin held that using profits to help others rise from a lessor level of subsistence violated God's will since persons could only demonstrate that they were among the Elect through their own labor.

The Puritans were Calvinists, and so were the Presbyterians, the latter of which has generally slacked up on Calvinist theology a great deal.  None the less, the impact of Calvinism on the US has been huge.  It founded the thesis that you should work and work, well past the point where accumulation of wealth made any sense.  When you look at people like Elon Must or Donald Trump who have vast sums of wealth but keep accumulating, you are seeing the Protestant work ethic at work.

You are also seeing it when you lay people off in droves. They're lessors, and their economic plight is existentially foreordained.  If they were among the Elect, this wouldn't be happening to them.

Work is what it's all about.

You see that well expressed in Galloway's comments.  Galloway is an opponent of Musk, but they have essentially the same view on work.  Galloway presents in the grim Calvinist style.  You must find productive and useful work and love it, as that's the ticket to everything.

It isn't.

Contrary to what Galloway things, for one things, there are plenty of people who have done well in their carers and know a lot about what they do and hate it.  The legal profession is a poster child for this, but I've found it to be the case for medicine as well.  

And women have become particularly the victim of this in recent years, diving hard into careers as, John Calvin has told them, this would affirm that they were part of the Elect, in the modified American social view, only to find that they are miserable.

And all this because Calvin was flat out wrong.  His theology was wrong, and his understanding of human beings appallingly wrong.

The Catholic view has been much more nuanced than the Protestant one.  Catholicism itself holds to a degree that we work, because we have to, work being one of the results of the Fall.  It also hold, however, that we toil as part of a community and are never to put that aside.  The accumulative nature of the Protestant Work Ethic is basically antithetical to Apostolic Christianity, although there are certainly Catholics, such as Bill Gates, who have become extremely wealthy.  Largescale wealth, however, comes in Catholic theology with a heavy burden to everyone else.  Unlike Calvinist, you can't really morally justify investing over and over while those less well off suffer in your presence.  Indeed, that would be one of the four sins God hates.

Okay, so why is this a problem?

It's a massive problem in that deep in American culture is an anti human dedication to acquisition and toil, that's why.  People are expected to work themselves to death and tolerate those among us who acquire vast wealth.  Ultimately, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, who often have simply benefitted from the circumstances of their birth takes from everyone else, makes millions miserable, and actually makes the economy less and less productive.

Society doesn't exist to generate wealth for those who can accumulate.  Society exists for society.  That means, at the end of the day, that some must be protected, for the good of us all, from their appetites, weather that appetite be for drugs, dissolute living, or avarice.  

The fact that we have forgotten this is literally destroying the country.

The Agrarian's Lament: A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 7. What would that look like, and why would it fix anything, other than limiting my choices and lightening my wallet? Wouldn't every one be just bored and poor?

The Agrarian's Lament: A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with th...:   

 

His life will grow out of the ground like the other lives of the place, and take its place among them. He will be with them - neither ignorant of them, nor indifferent to them, nor against them - and so at last he will grow to be native-born. That is, he must reenter the silence and the darkness, and be born again.

Wendell Berry, A Native Hill.

So we've gone through this and lamented on the state of the world.

We looked at how working for largely local businesses, in an economy in which most were local, would work, in terms of economics.

In other words, if you needed an appliance, and went to Wally's Appliance Store, owned and operated by Wally, rather than Walmart, owned and operated by anonymous corporate shareholders, how would that look?

And we looked at something more radical yet, Agrarianism.

So how does this all tie together, and what difference would it really make?

Let's revisit the definition of Agrarianism.

Given the above, isn't Agrarianism simply agricultural distributism?

Well, no.

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.

Agrarianism is agriculture oriented on an up close and personal basis, and as such, it's family oriented, and land ethic oriented.

We also noted that agrarianism as we define it incorporates The Land Ethic, which holds:

All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively the land.

The Land Ethic, A Sand County Almanac.  Aldo Leopold.

So what would this mean to society at large, and a distributist society at that?

To start with, it would mean a lot more family farm operations, and no remotely owned and operated ones where the land was held by Bill Gates or the Chinese Communist Party. Combined with Distributism, it would also mean a lot more local processing of agricultural products.  Local packing houses, local flour mills, local bakeries.

It would also mean a society that was focused on local ownership of homes with residents who lived a more local, land ethic focused, lives.

Indeed, the local would matter much more in general.

And with it, humanity.

There would still be the rich and the poor, but not the remote rich and the ignorable poor.

Most people would be in the middle, and most of them, owning their own. They'd be more independent in that sense, and therefore less subject to the whims of remote employers, economic interests, and politicians.

All three major aspects of Catholic Social Teaching, humanity, subsidiarity, and solidarity, coming together.

An agrarian society would be much less focused on "growth", if focused on it at all.  Preservation of agricultural and wild lands would be paramount.  People would derive their social values in part from that, rather than the host of panem et circenses distractions they now do, or at least they could. 

They'd derive their leisure from it as well, and therefore appreciate it more.  If hiking in a local park, or going fishing, or being outdoors in general is what we would do, and we very much would as the big mega entertainment sources of all types are largely corporate in nature, preservation of the wild would be important.  

And this too, combined with what we've noted before, a distributist society and a society that was well-educated, would amount to a radical, and beneficial, reorientation of society.

We won't pretend that such a society would be prefect.  That would be absurd.  Human nature would remain that. All the vices that presently exist, still would, but with no corporate sources to feed them, they'd not grow as prominent.

And we will state that it would cure many of the ills that now confront us.

Such a society would force us to confront our nature and nature itself.  And to do so as a party of a greater community, for our common good.

Which, if we do not end up doing, will destroy us in the end.

Last prior:

A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 6. Politics

Directly related:

What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 3. Agrarianism.

Finis

The Agrarian's Lament: A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 6. Politics

The Agrarian's Lament: A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with th...: 

A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 6. Politics

James Monroe.  

And, yes, we're still not on to the Agrarian finale in this series.  That's because we have one more important topic to consider first.

Politics.

If you read distributists' social media, and you probably don't, you'll see that some people have the namby pamby idea that if we all just act locally everything will fall in line.  While people should act locally, that's a bunch of crap.

What these people don't realize is that politically, we're a corporate capitalist society, and we are where we are right now, in large part due to that.  Corporations are a creature of the state, not of nature, and exists as a legal fiction because the state says they do.  This is deemed, in our imaginations, to be necessarily because, . . . well it is.

Or rather, it's deemed to be necessary as we believe we need every more consolidation and economies of scale.  

We really don't, and in the end, it serves just itself.  We do need some large entities, particularly in manufacturing, which would actually bring us back to the original allowance for corporate structure, which was quite limited.  Early in US history, most corporations were banned from being created.

Legally, they would not need to be banned now, but simply not allowed to form except for actual needs.  And when very large, the Theodore Roosevelt proposal that they be treated like public utilities, or alternatively some percentage of their stock or membership would vest in their employees, would result in remedying much of the ills that they've created.

Likewise, eliminating the absurd idea that they can use their money for influence in politics could and should be addressed.

Which would require changes in the law.

And that takes us back to politics.

Nearly every living American, and Canadian for that matter, would agree that a major portion of the problems their nations face today are ones manufactured by politics.  The current economic order, as noted, is politically vested.

The United States has slid into a political decline of epic proportions, and its noteworthy that this came about after Ronald Reagan attacked and destroyed the post 1932 economic order which provided for an amplified type of American System in which there was, in fact, a great deal of involvement in the economy and the affairs of corporations, as well as a hefty income tax on the wealth following the country's entry into World War Two.  It's never been the case, of course, that there was a trouble free political era although interestingly, there was a political era which is recalled as The Era of Good Feelings due to its lack of political strife.  

That era lasted a mere decade, from 1815 to 1825, but it's instructive.

The Era of Good Feelings came about after the War of 1812, which was a war that not only caused internal strife, but which risked the dissolution of the nation.  Following the war the Federalist Party collapsed thereby ending the bitter disputes that had characterized its fights with the more dominant Democratic-Republican Party.. . . . huh. . . 

Anyhow, President James Monroe downplayed partisan affiliation in his nominations, with the ultimate goal of affecting national unity and eliminating political parties altogether.

Borrowing a line from the Those Were the Days theme song of All In the Family, "Mister we could use a man like James Monroe again".

Political parties have had a long and honorable history in politics. They've also had a long and destructive one.  Much of their role depends upon the era.  In our era, for a variety of reasons, they are now at the hyper destructive level.

They are, we would note, uniquely subject to the influence of money, and the fringe, which itself is savvy to the influence of money.  And money, now matter where it originates from, tends to concentrate uphill if allowed to, and it ultimately tends to disregard the local.

"All politics is local" is the phrase that's famously attached to U.S. politics, but as early as 1968, according to Andrew Gelman, that's declined, and I agree with his observation.  Nowhere is that more evident than Wyoming.

In Wyoming both the Republican and the Democratic Party used to be focused on matters that were very local, which is why both parties embraced in varying degrees, The Land Ethic, and both parties, in varying degrees, embraced agriculture.  It explains why in the politics of the 70s and 80s the major economic driver of the state, the oil and gas industry, actually had much less influence than it does now.

Things were definitely changing by the 1980s, with money, the love of which is the root of all evil, being a primary driver.  Beyond that, however, technology played a role.  The consolidation of industry meant that employers once headquartered in Casper, for instance, moved first to Denver, then to Houston, or were even located in Norway. As the love of money is the root of all evil, and the fear of being poor a major personal motivator, concern for much that was local was increasingly lost.

The increasing broad scope of the economy, moreover, meant that there were economic relocations of people who had very little connection with the land and their state.  Today's local Freedom Caucus in the legislature, heavily represented by those whose formative years were out of state, is a primary example in the state.  Malevolent politics out of the south and the Rust Belt entered the state and are battled out in our legislature even though they have little to do with local culture, lands or ethics.

Moreover, since 1968 the Democratic Party has gone increasingly leftward, driven at first by the impacts of the 1960s and then by its left leaning elements.  It in turn became anti-democratic, relying on the Supreme Court to force upon the nation unwanted social change, until it suddenly couldn't rely on the Court anymore, at which time it rediscovered democracy.  At the same time Southern and Rust Belt Populists, brought into the Republican Party by Ronald Reagan, eventually took it over and are now fanatically devoted to anti-democratic mogul, Donald Trump, whose real values, other than the love of money and a certain sort of female appearance, is unknown, none of which maters to his fanatic base as they apply the Führerprinzip to his imagined wishes and he responds.

We know, accordingly, have a Congress that's completely incapable of doing anything other than banning TikTok.

Distributism by design, and Agrarianism by social reference, both apply Catholic Social Teaching, one intentionally and one essentially as it was already doing that before Catholic Social Teaching was defined.  As we've discussed elsewhere, Catholic Social Teaching applies the doctrines of Human Dignity, Solidarity and Subsidiarity.  Solidarity, as Pope John Paul II describe it In Sollicitudo rei socialis, is not “a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of others. It is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good”.  Subsidiarity provides that that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority.

We are a long ways from all of that, right now.

Politically, we're in a national political era that is violently opposed to solidarity and subsidiarity.  Supposed national issues and imagined remote conspiracies, dreamt up by political parties, swamp real local issues.  Global issues, in contract, which require a competent national authority, or even international authority, to deal with, cannot get attention as the masses are distracted by buffoons acting like Howler Monkeys.

Destroying the parties would serve all of this.  And that's a lot easier to do than might be supposed.

And more difficult.

Money makes it quite difficult, in fact.  But it can be done.

The easiest way to attack this problem is to remove political parties as quasi official state agencies, which right now the GOP and Democratic Party are.  Both parties have secured, in many states, state funded elections which masquerade as "primary elections" but which are actually party elections.  There's utterly no reason whatsoever that the State of Wyoming, for example, should fund an internal Republican election, or a Democratic one.

Primary elections are quite useful, but not in the fashion that most state's have them.  A useful example is Alaska's, whose system was recently proposed for Wyoming, but which was not accepted (no surprise).  Interestingly, given as the state's two actual political parties right now are the Trumpites and the Republican remnants, this a particularly good, and perhaps uniquely opportune, time to go to this system.  And that system disregard party affiliations.

Basically, in that type of election, the top two vote getters in the primary go on to the general election irrespective of party.  There doesn't need to be any voter party affiliation. The public just weeds the number of candidates down.

That is in fact how the system works here already, and in many places for local elections. But it should be adopted for all elections.  If it was, the system would be much different.

For example, in the last House Race, Harriet Hageman defeated Lynette Grey Bull, taking 132,206 votes to Gray Bull's 47,250.  Given the nature of the race, FWIW, Gray Bull did much better than people like to imagine, taking 25% of the vote in an overwhelmingly Republican state.  Incumbent Lynn Cheney was knocked out of the race in the primary, being punished for telling the truth about Дональд "The Insurrectionist" Trump.  But an interesting thing happens if you look at the GOP primary.

In that race, Harriet Hageman took 113,079 votes, for 66% of the vote, and Cheney took 49,339, for 29%.  Some hard right candidates took the minor balance. Grey Bull won in the primary with just 4,500 votes, however.

I'd also note here that Distributism in and of itself would have an impact on elections, as it would have a levelling effect on the money aspect of politics.  Consider this article by former Speaker of the House Tom Lubnau:

Tom Lubnau: Analyzing The Anonymous Mailers Attacking Chuck Gray

A person could ask, I suppose, of how this is an example, but it is.

Back to the Gray v. Nethercott race, Ms. Nethercott is a lawyer in a regional law firm. That's not distributist as I'd have it, as I'd provide that firms really ought to be local, as I discussed in yesterday's riveting installment.   But it is a regional law firm and depending upon its business model, she's likely responsible for what she brings in individually.  Indeed, the claim made during the race that she wanted the job of Secretary of State for a raise income was likely absurd.

But the thing here is that Nethercott, as explained by Lubnau, raised a total of $369,933, of which $304,503 were from individual donations.  That's a lot to spend for that office, but it was mostly donated by her supporters.

In contrast, Jan Charles Gray, Chuck Gray's father donated a total of $700,000 to Chuck Gray’s campaign, Chuck Gray donated $10,000 to his own campaign and others donated $25,994.

$700,000 is a shocking amount for that office, but beyond that, what it shows is that Nethercott's supporters vastly out contributed Gray's, except for Gray's father.  In a distributist society, it certainly wouldn't be impossible to amass $700,000 in surplus cash for such an endeavor, but it would frankly be much more difficult.

To conclude, no political system is going to convert people into saints.  But it's hard to whip people into a frenzy who are your friends and neighbors than it does people who are remote.  And its harder to serve the interest of money if the money is more widely distributed. Put another way, it's harder to tell 50 small business owners that that Bobo down in Colorado knows what she's talking about, than 50 people who depend on somebody else for a livelihood a myth.

Last prior:

A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 5a. What would that look like, and why would it fix anything, other than limiting my choices and lightening my wallet? The Distributist Impact. The Professions.

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